Soil improvements

[Echo Weaver]

I haven't been able to find anything other than low quality soil in my world. I've explored around quite a bit and consequently been killed by wolves far from home enough times to be really annoying. I even installed the mod that makes high quality soil give off particles, and I haven't see any of those yet (though I only installed that a couple of days ago).

I've read the forum posts on this topic, which all conclude, "Medium quality soil should be easy to find." With the lovely light and shadow in the game, I'm not even sure I would see the color difference, though since I haven't seen anything for comparison, that might not be true.

Perhaps I should have been more careful with my seed. I just picked this one because it was lovely at spawn point. But it seems to me that I shouldn't have to pick a seed for soil quality options.

Which brings me to the suggestion --

In the real world, one can upgrade soil with improvements. We have a set of fertilizers that can increase soils temporarily over their nutrient levels, but other than bonemeal, they're so difficult to obtain that it's not worth it. I can't even craft our way out of the soil quality hole now that the compost-to-soil recipe requires high quality soil out of the gate.

It seems much more logical an immersive to me that we should be able to upgrade soil to the next level with a recipe involving the three fertilzers and/or compost. It doesn't have to be easy, but it does offer a viable farming path for people like me who don't find running randomly around the world looking for soil to be terribly fun. I love to explore, mind you, but this particular exploration I just find annoying.

[Maelstrom]

Yep.  VS can be like this.  I have started two worlds where spawn was in the middle of low fertility soil plains for hundreds of block radius.  Pick a direction and start running.  Eventually you'll run into vast expanses of medium fertility soil.  Along the way you may see patches of high fert soil. Typically those patches spawn about 20 to 60 blocks of soil.  I suggest marking those in the early game when inventory space is limited, that way you can come back later to gather that precious resource.

[Thorfinn]

I'm finding a lot more luck in the regions like fens or finger lakes. The huge open fields of medium. fertility still exist, but I think they are a lot less common than they were. Hi fert, I've found slightly less than two stacks in May-August and May-June runs, combined.

[Echo Weaver]

17 minutes ago, Maelstrom said:

Yep.  VS can be like this.  I have started two worlds where spawn was in the middle of low fertility soil plains for hundreds of block radius.  Pick a direction and start running.  Eventually you'll run into vast expanses of medium fertility soil.  Along the way you may see patches of high fert soil. Typically those patches spawn about 20 to 60 blocks of soil.  I suggest marking those in the early game when inventory space is limited, that way you can come back later to gather that precious resource.

Yeah, clearly my preferred form of exploration does not cover enough ground fast enough. I guess I should do the reverse of preparedness -- just grab some ready-to-eat food and run naked for a long distance, marking anything useful on my map? Are medium and high-quality soils visually different enough to grab my eye as I run past?

The suggestion still stands. Running around the world like a crazy person in the first months of play in order to build a viable farm is not a terribly immersive part of a typically very immersive game.

[Maelstrom]

The different fertility soils is most visible from the side of the block.  Darker color means higher fertility.  If I start in an huge expanse of low fertility soil, I'll gather my essential materials and pick a direction and run.  While running I'll glance at the side of the dirt block to check it's fertility level.  You shouldn't have to run more than a day, usually half a day will do. 

The worst I've had it was a pretty food barren world and running would consume too much satiation and it took two days at walking speed to get to a medium fertility area.

[Maelstrom]

13 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I'm finding a lot more luck in the regions like fens or finger lakes. The huge open fields of medium. fertility still exist, but I think they are a lot less common than they were. Hi fert, I've found slightly less than two stacks in May-August and May-June runs, combined.

You should know that fertility isn't a season thing, except for snow covering it.  But the mentioned mod makes that a moot problem.

[Thorfinn]

The mod feels too cheaty to me.

What I was trying to get at is that either I'm having bad luck in two different worlds in 1.20 or the mapgen has been tweaked. Four months of play time usually gets twice that or better.

[Krougal]

Look for rainy areas. Stay out of forests, especially pine forest, as soil is low and wolves are common.

Also high fertility seems to be a lot more common in warmer latitudes.

I find so much high fert, I can afford to "waste" it on farmland and still have plenty left for making Terra preta to replace it later.

[Maelstrom]

I concur with @Krougal given my 1.19 experience.  Maybe this weekend I'll attempt a parallel installation of the 1.20 update.

Edited October 24, 2024 by Maelstrom

[Echo Weaver]

1 hour ago, Krougal said:

Look for rainy areas. Stay out of forests, especially pine forest, as soil is low and wolves are common.

This is actually a recent revelation for me. I was heading to more visually lush areas, which are often forested. The initial advice I read was that "forest floor" was of unknown quality, so I should dig up a chunk periodically to see what is there. Was this true at one time, or just a general misunderstanding?

But I read in the wiki that "forest floor" is always low quality. I've probably been looking in a lot of the wrong places, which are also the most dangerous places. (The forest around me is almost all pine even.)

With this newfound knowledge, the whole process might be a lot less painful. I'll have to play and see

Edited October 24, 2024 by Echoweaver

[Thorfinn]

3 minutes ago, Echoweaver said:

But I read in the wiki that "forest floor" is always low quality.

Since 1.17, I think, I've never seen it anything but low. The wiki is probably right. Whoever wrote it probably pulled up the JSON and saw the only drop was low.

[Ivyrum]

At least I understand that with certain plants like "nettle" you can make natural fertilizers that provide a large amount of nitrogen. In real life these fertilizers or "purines" are made by placing a large amount of these plants in a container with water and covering them. This could be done with the barrel mechanics.
In addition, this could give some plants usefulness and not just be something decorative.

Edited November 2, 2024 by Ivyrum

[Hammerweld]

I think it'd be cool if placing a block of bone soil below a piece of farmland upgrades it by 1 tier, maxing out at high quality if need be.

[Echo Weaver]

4 hours ago, Hammerweld said:

I think it'd be cool if placing a block of bone soil below a piece of farmland upgrades it by 1 tier, maxing out at high quality if need be.

I love that idea.

[Micah Holmes]

I just released charcoal expanded that allows you to go from low to Terra Petra 

[Khornet]

On 10/24/2024 at 4:52 PM, Echo Weaver said:

I haven't been able to find anything other than low quality soil in my world.

For the life of me I simply can't fathom how that's possible. Medium quality soil is, well, it's the second most abundant block in world generation, right behind low quality soil. If you spawn anywhere close to a temperate climate, you'll get rainfall, and if you have rainfall, you have medium quality soil...
And you don't need to search for the different shade of brown with it, it's always going to be on the top layer of low quality soil. 

 

On 10/24/2024 at 4:52 PM, Echo Weaver said:

I can't even craft our way out of the soil quality hole now that the compost-to-soil recipe requires high quality soil out of the gate.

It doesn't, though?  You can make Terra Preta without high quality soil. It's "only" just half as efficient. And I get that farming compost sucks, because it takes a lot of time... but other than that it's not hard, just throw your stacks of berries and all bushmeat  in a chest outside for it to rot fast.

Bony soil having a purpose other than panning is pretty cool idea. I think it should simply be usable for even more efficient crafting of Terra Preta. Though on the other hand, just because it's "bony", doesn't mean it's "fertile"...

 

[LadyWYT]

21 minutes ago, Khornet said:

For the life of me I simply can't fathom how that's possible. Medium quality soil is, well, it's the second most abundant block in world generation, right behind low quality soil. If you spawn anywhere close to a temperate climate, you'll get rainfall, and if you have rainfall, you have medium quality soil...

Somewhat depends on how far out from spawn one travels, assuming that spawn is nothing but low fertility soil. Generally there's going to be at least some medium fertility soil close to spawn though; it's a little unusual for there to be none for miles. Now if there's a lot of forest around--I believe forest floor always drops as low fertility soil when broken.

I will note that low fertility soil isn't entirely useless for farming...it'll just mean that you shouldn't wait too long to plant your crops, and you'll probably only get one harvest out of the field for that year. By the time you've scraped by your first year on that, you should have plenty of compost to turn into terra preta, if you've not found higher quality soil elsewhere.

27 minutes ago, Khornet said:

Bony soil having a purpose other than panning is pretty cool idea. I think it should simply be usable for even more efficient crafting of Terra Preta. Though on the other hand, just because it's "bony", doesn't mean it's "fertile"...

I don't know about using it to craft terra preta...I think high fertility soil should perhaps be a more efficient way of accomplishing that. And given what you pan out of the bony soil...I think there's more bones and deteriorated clothing bits in there than dirt.

[Echo Weaver]

59 minutes ago, Khornet said:

For the life of me I simply can't fathom how that's possible. Medium quality soil is, well, it's the second most abundant block in world generation, right behind low quality soil. If you spawn anywhere close to a temperate climate, you'll get rainfall, and if you have rainfall, you have medium quality soil...
And you don't need to search for the different shade of brown with it, it's always going to be on the top layer of low quality soil. 

It's true, though. I have found several medium soil deposits since posting this. I loaded in a cheaty mod to locate it for me the first time, and indeed there wasn't any in the entire area I had searched previously. Since then, though, I've found it several places as I explore. I guess I was just unlucky.

I will say it's annoying that forest floor is (almost?) the same shade of brown.

1 hour ago, Khornet said:

It doesn't, though?  You can make Terra Preta without high quality soil. It's "only" just half as efficient. And I get that farming compost sucks, because it takes a lot of time... but other than that it's not hard, just throw your stacks of berries and all bushmeat  in a chest outside for it to rot fast.

Yeah, I didn't realize that until after I posted here. I thought there was only one recipe for Terra Preta.

34 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Somewhat depends on how far out from spawn one travels, assuming that spawn is nothing but low fertility soil. Generally there's going to be at least some medium fertility soil close to spawn though; it's a little unusual for there to be none for miles. Now if there's a lot of forest around--I believe forest floor always drops as low fertility soil when broken.

It does. I looked this up on the wiki to be sure because the forum advice varied. I think it might have changed in one of the releases.

34 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I will note that low fertility soil isn't entirely useless for farming...it'll just mean that you shouldn't wait too long to plant your crops, and you'll probably only get one harvest out of the field for that year. By the time you've scraped by your first year on that, you should have plenty of compost to turn into terra preta, if you've not found higher quality soil elsewhere.

This is essentially how my first winter went. I made several mistakes from just not knowing the game, including trying to leave wild crops to mature before harvesting them, so I didn't plant as much as I would have with what I know now. I ran out of my produce with a decent bit of winter left and filled in the gaps with tule and cattail roots. My ewe lambed in winter, and I was able to get some milk out of her that helped a lot. In retrospect, that's surprising, because all my milking attempts failed after spring hit. 

All-in-all, though I'll probably never have a winter that ill-prepared again, it felt pretty immersive to be out in the freezing cold, digging roots out of the ice to keep from starving. You only get to be completely clueless once. I hope.