What fruit do you grow in your main save?

[Facethief]

Just wondering what fruit you guys use most in your main save. Currently, I’m eating mostly cranberries, but I’m also growing some apple trees for next year.

[hstone32]

Bluberries mostly. All other berries go to compost, and the handful of apple trees I've found aren't ripe yet.

Wish blueberries were a little bit rarer and more filling than they are currently. I think I remember seeing Tyron say in a dev update that they plan on expanding the utility of some berries.

[LadyWYT]

Apples, pears, and cherries ASAP. Otherwise, currants and blueberries. Cranberries...uh...not really a fan of those, so those tend to be juiced and turned into aqua vitae within short order. The longer shelf life and relative abundance makes them a prime candidate for that.

[MKMoose]

You're making me want to list out all the little details that make me like this game so much. Granted, I'm taking some of my information from the wiki with limited testing, so take it with a grain of salt.

3 hours ago, Facethief said:

I’m eating mostly cranberries

I ain't here to criticize how you play, but cranberries due to their low satiety tend to be most optimal for juicing (be it for drinking, alcohol, fruit mash for animals, or to produce rot) and less useful than the four other types for cooking meals. If you have to eat them raw or preserve to use later then they will last longer, at least. For the other four, though, I don't know of any notable differences aside from appearance and the ability to stack two currant bushes, so you can get quite literally whichever you prefer and I personally just do all of them.

 

15 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Apples, pears, and cherries ASAP.

Of the temperate fruit trees, all apples and pear don't have any big advantages or disadvantages. Pink apple has a bit higher yield and is arguably best, while pear and yellow apple are general all-rounders, though pear is more resistant to cold and takes longer to bear fruit. Red apple seems to fare best in colder than temperate climates but produces slightly less fruit, and cherry is the standout with half the satiety and very short spoil time but nearly 50% higher yield, pretty bad for cooking but king for juicing.

Peach just seems kind of bad, honestly, I don't know why but I don't think it has any notable advantages while having very short spoil time and poor temperature resistance.

Among the warm-climate fruit trees there is much more variety, and the most notable mentions are breadfruit which is excellent for meals and lychee which is great for juicing. There's the olive impostor as well, which actually provides vegetable nutrition and therefore can't be juiced, but can be pickled, which gives it a unique niche.

 

2 hours ago, hstone32 said:

I think I remember seeing Tyron say in a dev update that they plan on expanding the utility of some berries.

I would imagine they might rework berries to be more similar to fruit trees in terms of flowering and fruiting mechanics, with different timings and temperature requirements to differentiate the species between each other. They may serve as an early introduction into the same mechanics that fruit trees follow, similar but slightly reduced in complexity.

I'm not sure about other utility, though, since realistically berries are pretty much only used culinarily and sometimes for dyes, both of which we already largely have. At best they could allow drying or freezing food, which would include berries. Maybe also add them to bread dough? Kinda stretches it thin, though, since berries already have plenty of gameplay depth between meals, jam and juicing.

[Bumber]

On 11/10/2025 at 12:55 PM, MKMoose said:

I ain't here to criticize how you play, but cranberries due to their low satiety tend to be most optimal for juicing (be it for drinking, alcohol, fruit mash for animals, or to produce rot) and less useful than the four other types for cooking meals.

Cranberries last longer than the other berry types. The nutrition per berry is somewhat irrelevant if they start to rot before you're able to consume them all. You can juice whatever once you've got access to the press. Before that they balance well with flax porridge, which has equivalent low grain nutrition, and you can wait slightly longer before being forced to cook them.

Apples last a very long time, but I suffered years of failed attempts before my cuttings took. Doesn't help that wild fruit trees generate with barely any branches to cut, nor that this was before the buff to success chance.

Edited November 12, 2025 by Bumber

[MKMoose]

7 hours ago, Bumber said:

Cranberries last longer than the other berry types.

That's fair, and I did mention it in the next sentence after what you quoted.

I don't know how normal that is, but I haven't had any real issues with berry spoilage after the first winter, especially considering that berries can easily fruit twice per year. I just use them up roughly as they appear for pies and juicing (and I have never even found bees for jam yet), and any excess can get juiced regardless to get more rot (for some reason the combined mash and juice rot is almost double that of unprocessed berries). The juice gets mostly fermented into alcohol, while fruit mash fulfills a large part of the need for animal feed in the summer.

Flax tends to be more useful for animals than for meals, since they get the same number of portions from the same amount of grain despite flax grain's lower satiety. Pies also give you more satiety per portion of grain than porridge, and they last longer.

Maybe I'm hyperoptimizing some things, but I've genuinely never found good reason to use the low-satiety fruit and grain for meals, since I've practically never ran out of better foods.

Granted, cranberry's slower spoilage can be really nice before you get a cellar and a complete meal-making setup with sufficient supplies.

Edited November 12, 2025 by MKMoose

[Maelstrom]

Berries from bushes.   All varieties end up in food except cranberries which go to making dye if I find cinnabar.   That reindeer herder garb fetches a pretty penn... err gear with the traders.  Until recently didn't realize fruit from trees had a longer shelf life so will start attempting to become an Orchardist.

[LadyWYT]

13 hours ago, Bumber said:

Apples last a very long time, but I suffered years of failed attempts before my cuttings took. Doesn't help that wild fruit trees generate with barely any branches to cut, nor that this was before the buff to success chance.

My strategy with fruit trees is to leave the ones within reasonable travel distance of base intact, and get my cuttings from the trees farther out. That way, I can pick the wild trees when year one rolls around. As for planting the cuttings...I'm easily planting 20-40 minimum at a time, so even if a lot of them don't survive there should still be several that actually do take root.

[SavageZahar]

When playing Vanilla, I usually try to collect at least 6-8 of each bush for a vineyard ASAP.  I prefer currants for food, but Cranberries are eaten if needed until I can ferment them, at which point they always become wine.  Or syrup with Expanded Foods.  With WildCraft F+N, mostly raspberry and dogrose.  I really need to start planting fruit trees.

Edited November 12, 2025 by Nicholas Salazar

[Feycat]

Pink apples are peak, but I have other fruit for the vibe.

[TFT]

20 hours ago, Bumber said:

Apples last a very long time, but I suffered years of failed attempts before my cuttings took. Doesn't help that wild fruit trees generate with barely any branches to cut, nor that this was before the buff to success chance.

This is what holds me back from fruit trees, though not for the lack of trying. They're very hard to get started and move, so you want to know exactly where your home is going to be and where you want to plant them. Like other long term projects you want to plant them very early so you can get the best chances of having good trees for next spring as you'll invariably need to replant the failed ones, but there's a catch to that. You wont know how winter in your area will affect them until you take the time and make readings during the winter. Makes me wish we could ask traders about these things, like average rainfall and what the lowest and highest temperatures are like in their area.
Realistically most players will be settled and can afford to start doing fruit trees after the first year, but then you'll be waiting to get fruit for next year, which depending on the player is when burnout starts to set in as you probably put in 80 some hours into that save so far. Your source of fruit is best from wild trees you find. They do have this weird juxtaposition with normal trees in that popping up a forest of oaks is far more fruitful than a fruit orchard.

It's similar to cheesemaking in that it requires such a long time investment before you have a chance at any payoff for something with a niche use. Which by the point you are filling out your dairy nutrition you likely already have the other four filled and have good armor, so the extra HP from dairy is bordering on diminishing returns.  

Sure there's the challenge and prestige factor of having a lush orchard and a cellar full of cheese, but overall it's a vastly overlooked mechanic. Glad that it's there in either case for anyone with the patience for it.

[Shoom]

Berries are great in summer, with enough bushes, the first sets of bushes will have fruited again by the time the time you pick the last ones, more firewood for the charcoal gods.

As for fruit trees, apples and pears, peaches and cherries got me scratching my head, I think only fruit mash and raw dough beats them in the rot race, more juice for the booze gods.

Pumpkins deserve a honorable mention, probably not the most space efficient but they're really fun to grow.

Don't sleep on pumpkins, metaphorically speaking (solid figurative advice as well)

[Broccoli Clock]

Like fruit trees for the vibe, don't really bother cultivating them though. They do provide a ton of fruit, but all that fruit tends to be quite low on sat.

Interestingly my current world is warm, meaning I can plant berries all year round, but the trees don't seem to mature as quickly. I know that in the colder climate young trees need to vernalise in order to become fruit bearing. That process happens in the Winter, without a Winter a lot of my trees just stay "young". I'm not sure if that is for balancing or a bug, but I've been in this world for about 3 in game years, certainly enough for fruit trees to mature, but I've yet to see a ripe tree.

[Scorpixel]

Collected most bushes and fruit tree on my island, cranberries are so plentiful next to everything else, plus they give just as much juice as more nutritious berries so there's no loss. On my first harvest, all other berries combined got me six barrels while cranberries fifteen. The later are being converted into aqua vitae as i write because why not?

Got apple, pear and some cherry trees that have yet to grow into something. Sure their production can scale-up from farming but the process is so long that i just treat them as decorative until i actually need proper long-lasting fruit nutrition for long travels.

[Bumber]

On 11/12/2025 at 6:17 PM, Shoom said:

Pumpkins deserve a honorable mention, probably not the most space efficient but they're really fun to grow.

Don't sleep on pumpkins, metaphorically speaking (solid figurative advice as well)

I really dislike the mechanics of pumpkins, TBH. It seems like providing high fertilization actually reduces your yields to the point of unsustainability. You have to actually neglect them to get them to bear fruit before the plant progresses to the dead stage.

Faster growth should mean the connected vines propagate faster too.

Edited November 14, 2025 by Bumber

[Shoom]

1 hour ago, Bumber said:

I really dislike the mechanics of pumpkins, TBH. It seems like providing high fertilization actually reduces your yields to the point of unsustainability. You have to actually neglect them to get them to bear fruit before the plant progresses to the dead stage.

Faster growth should mean the connected vines propagate faster too.

Strange, I haven't had any issues with pumpkins, I plant mine on terra preta and harvest about 4-5 pumpkins per seed on average.

I do play on 30 day months however which slows down all the growth stages, perhaps that's why I'm having luck with them, I've never tried pumpkins on any other setting.

Now I'm tempted to try growing them on low-fert soil just to see if that increases the yield, have to wait for spring however.

[Valsalan]

On 11/10/2025 at 8:09 AM, Facethief said:

Just wondering what fruit you guys use most in your main save. Currently, I’m eating mostly cranberries, but I’m also growing some apple trees for next year.

For me it's what I can get. First year is always berries, I try and get bushes of the five major types (Cranberry, Blueberry, Red/Black/White Currants). As well as cuttings of whatever fruit trees I can find planted near my base.

In practice I find I always get pear trees and cherries, but then have to struggle to get apples just because I always have bad luck on finding them (at least finding red and yellow ones) and having the cuttings take to the soil.

But I always go out of my way to get every type of fruit I can since I like the making alcohol game. I don't drink a tone of it in game, but I like making it. Can't say why.

[ArgentLuna]

Berries. Havent bothered with fruit trees yet and just pick local apples.

We go the OG server back and pears allll the pears aswell as the berries and some apples. Cherry trees didnt take sadly and nothing else has been found yet

Edited November 19, 2025 by ArgentLuna

[CABLES]

big fan of cranberries myself. due to the combination of mods i play with (notably From Golden Combs, Primitive Survival, and Expanded Foods), berry bushes in general are super powerful. they count as flowers for bee hives, they add "pollination charges" which increase the drops of crops within the hives' radius, they can be placed atop furrowed farmland to maximize space efficiency, and they can be juiced and the mash dried into dried berries to make extremely long-lasting fruit sat at a 16:5 ratio of fresh to dried berries.

the juice itself can be cured into wine just like in vanilla, but that wine turns into vinegar when it spoils, which allows you to make pickled vegetables without having to find salt first. plus, if you're willing to deal with some efficiency losses, you can render the juice into syrup, which lasts essentially forever (25+ years) and can be added to other meals for a satiety bonus, particularly fruit bread.

the type of berry itself doesn't seem to matter too much. i just prefer cranberries because they last twice as long as currants and are way easier to find than blueberries.