Make farming harder

[Evoken]

Hi all,

 

I like my Vintage Story playthroughs how I like my life -  hard and miserable. That's why im a big fan of Wilderness Survival mode and mods - for example with Rhinos sneaking up on me The problem is... food. It's so easy to get food that in the first year I have enough to completely stop thinking about such a crucial aspect of the game for about next 2 years.

 

And it's mostly all because of how easy is farming. I would love to just adjust the yield of crops, so that after the first harvest season I won't have supplies that it could be enough even for my grandchildren. I saw somewhere that the crop yields are connected to the full time seeds need for growth. I play on 12 days per month and I don't know if this even matter.

Does anyone have any ideas to make farming harder, I mean... less rewarding? So after the harvest season I would be forced to also look for food outside of farming. Maybe some commands or mods? Please help me!

Edited May 3, 2025 by Evoken

[Tom Cantine]

How long have you set your months? I'm playing through in my solo world with 30 day months, and while it gives me a lot of time to forage, explore, mine and build up infrastructure, I'm anxious about the fact that I'm gonna need food for EVERY DAY of the long winter months. I'm also in an area where I've never seen a sheep, and only just saw my first boar today, quite far from my starting base. 

I'm always coming up with personal house rules that make the game more challenging, though it's usually because I want to make some aspect of the game more realistic. In Minecraft, for example, I adopted additional rules about tool tiers: a wooden pick could only break a block that had at least three faces exposed, stone could break a block with at least two exposed faces, and iron or better just needed one exposed face. This made it harder to find appropriate quarrying sites, and combined with another rule that I could only craft wooden tools (and had to buy higher tier tools from villagers) it multiplied the difficulty level.

So you can always impose some additional limitations on yourself. Say, no watering cans allowed. Or only use them once you've dug a well, or built an aqueduct out of suitable materials. For the well-digging, make sure you enable lateral instability for dirt, sand and gravel, and allow cave-ins. 

Oh, and another highly limiting self-imposed rule: Settle within a tight radius from where you spawn, no matter how unsuitable it is. It can get really challenging then. 

[Zane Mordien]

Start with Snowball earth. It will challenge you on food your first time. I personally use the "hot start" but that isn't a great start as it is still butt cold and if you really want to challenge yourself do regular "temperate" start. Bears and wolves will start to look very tasty. 

[LoveWyrm]

You could always make fewer farms.

If this sounds like blasphemy to you, then you might be suffering from self control issues and ...as harsh as it might sound...no game developer should ever cater to that kind of problem.

Any gameplay change in any game that is rationalized/liked via "it forces you to" is usually bad, and ultimately tends to make any game more tedious.

 

And the worst thing is...it's never enough. If you indeed suffer from that condition (it's very common, I have it to an extend myself) then no fix will help you.

Okay, now the farming is harder, and you love it. And you know why you love it? Cause you're good enough to deal with it.

And because you're good enough to deal with it, harder farming won't be an issue and you'd get bored of that anyway, because you'll find a way to optimize that new problem.

 

So the game got more tedious and you're still getting bored ...so...let's cut out that middleman and just have you get bored anyway now, and NOT increase tedium.

 

...looking at you, Project Zomboid...Rimworld... Cataclysm DDA, Seven Days to Die and all the other games that got more contrived and tedious trying to 'patch out' number addicts.

Cause that's what usually is the cause, glutton for raising numbers, especially through tedium...it's partially normal cause it's like cleaning up a really nasty stain, you made it despite the tedium, but it IS tedium.

 

I hope the staff lets you get bored cause that's gonna happen anyway, embrace it, put restraints on the game by yourself, if you can't, mod it, if you don't want that, just get bored and stay bored.

It's impossible to satiate the tedium lovers. It just makes everyone else (especially those who CAN play with self made challenges) more miserable by *forcing* them (aka the 'good reason for change, it forces you...) to do it.

 

I dunno man...I really want you to be bored instead. It's fine to be bored. Better than being annoyed at tedium...

 

P.S.:

Of course there's the other extreme too, too easy and it's not as much fun... but you know.

I think the problem of farming is not that it yields too much, but that it's handwaved, but that's tricky too and game change decisions should of course be a case by case thing.

Perhaps farming yields could stay the same, but have more additional options to actually increase yields. Like weeding them, making pesticide etc, doing none of that would not be penalizing to the player, but instead doing them would be a bonus and be denoted as such.

And THOSE steps could be made contrived..maybe you'd enjoy that? Maybe you'd then be fine with having fewer farms while still giving you something to do?

 

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, that I personally find the yields fine, and that food is not that big of a deal to me for VS. I play it less for survival via details and more like a cozy, yet involved landlife simulator.

Again, this isn't to deride you or anything, but I do fear "buttock strain mechanics because you didn't QWOP the farmland correctly" mechanics.

 

I personally just advise game devs of sandbox/survival games to err on the side of "boredom > tedium" ...just gotta keep the attention of the player long enough to exceed the refund period, really ;^)

(joking...a game should be made well...but ...you know... boredom is actually a force of good (or crazy ) stuff humans do. cause limitation is the mother of invention and creativity and all that... etc )

Edited May 3, 2025 by LoveWyrm

[Evoken]

Thanks for the tips  I had already thought about most of them sadly...

10 hours ago, Tom Cantine said:

Say, no watering cans allowed.

That's a good idea for "nerfing" farming a bit. I have my world set on 12 days per month, so i assume the crops will grow longer without watering but still yield as many crops () when the harvest season comes.

 

I try to roleplay in Vintage Story, so it's still mostly a cozy game to me ^^ I really like the farming aspect of VS and i don't want to let it go because it's too overpowered. I could try not to water the crops (even tho i like it :D) but i don't think it will resolve my problem  

I didn't think about starting in very cold/very dry regions, maybe that could do but again, i would love to start my new world in temperate region. In my old world save i had a very little farmland, something like 20-25 blocks and didn't paid much attention to it, the soil was medium fertility, my region had very few rainings etc. and still after the end of summer i had so many vegetables and grain that i was never hungry again in next year. Of course, it was still worth looking for other types of food to balance the diet, but crucial aspect of this game which is hunger was not longer a thing.

 

Now i'm thinking... even if i find the solution for lowering the crops yield the next problem would be flax As there is never enough flax! Well, maybe then i would just focus on flax. Anyway, I really like farming so i don't want to ignore it but still would like to lower the crops yield to make it less overpowered, if anyone have an idea how to accomplish that, please let me know!

2 hours ago, LoveWyrm said:

You could always make fewer farms.

As for now i will just try that and big NO to watering cans, but i still hope there is more i could do to fix my problem ^^

Edited May 3, 2025 by Evoken

[Never Jhonsen]

1 hour ago, Evoken said:

I have my world set on 12 days per month, so i assume the crops will grow longer without watering but still yield as many crops ()

Two things about crops and time:

- Crop speed growth is based on months, not days. Flax takes about two months to grow, so on a 3-day month world, that's 6 days. On a 30 day month world, like how I play, that's 60 days.

- The longer a crop takes to mature, the more it yields (Citation needed, someone on the forum told me this and I haven't tested it myself). On my 30 day month world, my 32-seed Rye farm gives me about 10+ stacks of grain, more than enough to last through a long winter.

12 hours ago, Evoken said:

The problem is... food. It's so easy to get food that in the first year I have enough to completely stop thinking about such a crucial aspect of the game for about next 2 years.

I'm gonna recommend doing 3-day months. You have about 6 in-game days to get your crops planted or else you're screwed for winter. Every minute you spend on your world is valuable, there is zero time for idling.

[Thorfinn]

Obviously, you've probably already tried cranking the spoilage rate and the hunger rate? That still doesn't help the fact that you will have way more than you can eat. Particularly with wolf spawn rates.

The problem with longer months is it makes farming even easier. Or did when I last checked. The nutrient depletion rate is based on crop growth, so with long enough months, you don't have to worry about crop rotation.

Used to be a mod that tweaked the grow rates and such. Fields of Gold, I think it was called. Might have been ababdoned. I don't think it's been updated since 1.18 first came out.

But never fear. Much of what you seek is well within your ability. All the crops in the game are detailed in .\assets\survival\blocktypes\plant\crop

Open one of the primary offenders, turnips.json in your favorite text editor. (FWIW, I use Notepad++.) Scroll down a bit and you will find the magic numbers. Currently it starts at line 58.

	dropsByType: {
		"*-4": [
			{ type: "item", code: "seeds-turnip", quantity: { avg: 0.99 }  },
			{ type: "item", code: "vegetable-turnip", quantity: { avg: 3, var: 1 }  },
		],
		"*-5": [
			{ type: "item", code: "seeds-turnip", quantity: { avg: 1.2 }  },
			{ type: "item", code: "vegetable-turnip", quantity: { avg: 7, var: 1 }  },
		],
		"*": [
			{ type: "item", code: "seeds-turnip", quantity: { avg: 0.7 }  },
		]
	},
	cropProps: {
		"__comment": "Use 1/3 cup of a nitrogen-based fertilizer, such as 34-0-0 or 21-0-0 - http://homeguides.sfgate.com/fertilize-turnips-24795.html",
		requiredNutrient: "N",
		nutrientConsumption: 30,
		growthStages: 5,
		totalGrowthMonths: 1.0,
		heatDamageAbove: 27

Most of this is pretty easy to figure out. Want to reduce the number of turnips from a stage 4 growth from 3 to 0.5 (a 50% chance of a single turnip), and the mature crop from 7 to 1? Like you might expect of a root crop like a turnip? Change avg for those  lines to those values. I'd probably drop the var to 0, as well. Reduce seed drops if you want to have to explore constantly to get new seeds. If you set the avg seed drop to 0.9 (from the current values of 0.99 and1.2), and the drop for the * stage growth to, say, 0.2, you will have to explore just to have seeds to replant your existing fields

Want them to take lo take longer to grow? Change the totalGrowthMonths to something more to your liking, or, increase the nutrientConsumption, so that growth slows down dramatically as the soil depletes, and it gives meaning to fertilizing and composting and improving your soil.

Save, repeat for all the rest of the crops that need to be nerfed, make a copy of that folder somewhere else (it will load twice if you put it any deeper than your game directory, so I'd just put it somewhere like Documents), and give it a whirl. When you get something you like, bundle it up into a mod using ModMaker.

Congratulations! Welcome to the modding community. Expect your membership pin to arrive via passenger pigeon in 5-7 business days.

[EDIT]

Oh, and don't worry too much about screwing up your game's data files. If you run ModMaker (in the game directory) there's an option to put all your files back to their defaults, so you don't even have to reinstall.

Edited May 3, 2025 by Thorfinn

[gilt-kutabe]

I, too, have found the farming way to easy for what was a full-time profession in an era without pesticide and automation. I’ve tried these in varying combinations:

 

Greatly increase hunger rate and/or food spoilage rate, no cellar, only plant ‘x’ plots of each crop/crop type (optionally only water them with a watering can - no water sources), only eat raw/roasted ingredients (no cooking pot meals). Tangentially related: no keeping animals, you must hunt them if you want their drops. And/or don’t eat animal meat at all (you still need to hunt for fat/leather).

Also this mod: https://mods.vintagestory.at/mmaa

Edited May 3, 2025 by gilt-kutabe

[Evoken]

Some of you have misunderstood the concept of gameplay that I wish to achieve I still want this game to be cozy, relaxing and challenging where it needs to be, without ignoring half of the mechanics in Vintage Story. I play VS mostly because i can build my own "place" and it would lose so much immersion if i had to say no to cellar for example ^^

Anyway

26 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

But never fear. Much of what you seek is well within your ability. All the crops in the game are detailed in .\assets\survival\blocktypes\plant\crop

This is the solution I was looking for! I never assumed it would be so easy, lol. That's crazy Do i have to use mod maker (cuz i don't know if this part is also that easy) or can i just leave the changed json files?

Another solution for my problem i found out on reddit is mod called "Art of growing" If i understand it correctly it will make farming harder, i really like the concept of choosing between seeds and vegetables/cereals. If this mod makes farming too OP anyway then i will have my plan B to change drops by myself. Thanks! ^^

[Thorfinn]

You need to run it before you update. Either that or copy your changes back after updating.

But ModMaker is even easier than tweaking the values. Start it, select (I think) "1", create a mod from changed assets, or something like that, follow the prompts, and it bundles up your mod in the default mods directory. Run ModMaker again with (I think) option 3, to restore your vanilla assets. Start the game, make sure your mod is enabled, and that's it.

Uploading it to ModDB is almost as easy, though there are some things you will want to do first, and there are a couple quirks, but, still, pretty darned easy.

[Thorfinn]

I have not checked AoG in probably 6 months, but when I did, I didn't think it was harder, as in reduced yields, but rather more detailed or "immersive", and added variety to the "always harvest when ripe". routine.

I wanted to make the biennials true biennials -- their seed stage is in the second year, so farming is both more realistic and a long-term commitment. but I didn't want to put too much work into it before farming was more or less in a finished state.

[Evoken]

7 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

I have not checked AoG in probably 6 months, but when I did, I didn't think it was harder, as in reduced yields

A couple of weeks ago the author have separated the mechanics into two mods. I choose to play without the crop variety option so i won't have in 1-2 years gigantic carrots or turnips which double the satiety ^^ I'm curious if I could lower the drops even with the mod loaded, guess it depends if the mod itself add changes to crop yield

Beside adding the mod I changed one more thing to make farming harder/less rewarding... I doubled the length of days. Now my in game day takes 96 irl minutes. As crops grow per months I will still have the same amount of vegetables and grains but will need double the amount to satisfy hunger!

Thanks again for the help guys ^^

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Evoken said:

I'm curious if I could lower the drops even with the mod loaded

Sure. At the very least, the mod changes when (as in what stage) the drops happen, so you would need to mod the mod.

It's a little different process. You make a patch mod for the mod, and declare a dependency on the mod you are patching. I'm thinking Diamond Crates(?) is a great example of how to do it. If that's not the mod that does it, post back and I'll think/search a bit.

[Thorfinn]

Oh, hey, just occurred to me that you might want to check the license on AoG.. It might allow you to just adapt their mod rather than just mod their mod. While no one but you would know if you just adapted it, it is considered inappropriate.

[Evoken]

Thanks for the info ^^ I guess that change would be just for me as I didn't see anyone except me complaining about crop yield