Tillage, harvest residue, weeds - more effort and reward in farming, not a waiting game with no progression

[Thorfinn]

6 hours ago, MKMoose said:

How much do you need to make a farm larger? An extra flint hoe or two, a dozen or two dozen fences, and at most ten to twenty minutes?

You are not getting the scale I'm talking about. I consider my run a "fail" if I don't have battle jammies, a windmill with two full sets of sails and the sailboat by the end of June. Usually that takes on the order of 1800 blocks of farmland, though that depends on the mix of wild flax to everything else.

I believe the story @LadyWYT is alluding to is once I tried one of the weed mods, and before I got all the way through my field, it was time to start over. Hoeing the fields was all I was doing, 24 hours per day. And that still was not enough.

Granted the rates can be tweaked, but there is a world of difference between what most consider a reasonably-sized garden, and what I consider a minimum-sized field.

Edited November 18, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

27 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I believe the story @LadyWYT is alluding to is once I tried one of the weed mods, and before I got all the way through my field, it was time to start over. Hoeing the fields was all I was doing, 24 hours per day. And that still was not enough.

That's the story I was thinking of, yeah.

 

27 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Usually that takes on the order of 1800 blocks of farmland, though that depends on the mix of wild flax to everything else.

I think on average my farms are probably around 100-200 blocks, though on my friend's server the farm size is probably pushing more around 400-600 blocks given that we're playing with longer months and increased hunger rate. For my typical solo playthroughs though, 100-200 blocks of farmland is more than enough for standard settings, and it usually takes me around 100 hours worth of gameplay to finish the current implemented story and achieve steel by the start/middle of the second game year. I don't really rush things either, and do take my time, but I also don't lollygag that much.

For a speedrun though and achieving most things by the first fall, that takes a monumental level of effort and focus, and I don't get the impression that most players really find that enjoyable. Hence why I also consider "speedrunning" strategies outliers, and not really something that's detrimental to the game. What I typically find more issue with, is placing enough hurdles to player progress that they simply must sink several many hours into gameplay before they can do something like, say, leave the stone age, or have a productive farm, etc. Currently, the gameplay is balanced so that while taking your time to get things done is generally more ideal, it's also possible for a player to significantly speed up progress...provided they have the knowledge and focus required to do so.

39 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Granted the rates can be tweaked, but there is a world of difference between what most consider a reasonably-sized garden, and what I consider a minimum-sized field.

Pretty much. Making a farm that's a couple of thousand blocks is just as much a nightmare to me, as it is being forced to stick to a small backyard vegetable patch because game mechanics make large farms a monumental amount of effort(and thus not worth it, unless that's all one wants to do). I'd also note that one reason I prefer making bigger farms, is that it makes it much easier to manage crops via rotation. I don't necessarily have to plant every tile, I can just plant a portion of it with crops I actually need/want, and leave the rest to lie fallow and rebuild nutrients. But even then, fallow land isn't going entirely unused, as that's prime farmland for planting pumpkins, which require a lot of space but don't require many nutrients to grow(nor do they require critical nutrients like K or N).

[Bruno Willis]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Overall, I like most of the ideas, and think they would potentially fit in the game nicely, in one form or another. But just for me personally, anything like a more intensive weed mechanic is going to be a very tough sell. As I've mentioned before(or tried to), I don't necessarily mind putting a little more work into farms, but I want to be doing it according to my own time, and not so much feel like I'm being forced to do it to get a decent result.

I think the point with the weeds is not to completely shut down a crop, but to make it less efficient. I would balance it so that a garden which is hoed and planted might get weeds growing all through it if un-tended, and have a %80 yield. Yes, that's going to slow down a speed run which relies on mass farming, but it won't shut that playstyle down (and also the yield reduction could easily be altered until the balance is right).

Say weeds have 4 growth stages. 1 Little = do no harm but give visual interest. 2 Medium = host crop gives %80 yield, and the weed is visually obvious. 3 Grown = host crop gives %60 yield, harvesting the crop leaves the weeds at growth stage 1. 4 Overgrown = the farmland reverts to a soil block, crop is treated like a wild growing crop, and the weeds are tall and impressive. 

The growth stages would be slow, so that after a year's growing without weeding, there would be weeds all through your garden at growth stage 2. In your second year, if you didn't bother A. weeding, or B. tilling out a new big field, you'd get into the weeds seriously and end up at harvest time with reverted farmland and wild crops. 

The weeds would be extensions of what already grows on fallow farmland: overgrown grass, abundant horsetail and flowers, so it wouldn't be all bad. If you were implementing weeds like this, you'd want to add mulch too, which would maintain moisture and prevent weed growth until it broke down. You'd also get the materials to make mulch by harvesting a weedy garden, so you could do one massive field to get your sails up, and use the weeds to make mulch for a more condensed and easily managed garden in your second year. 

It adds long term complexity, but I don't think it'd make that first crop push much more challenging. 

[Thorfinn]

35 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

For a speedrun though and achieving most things by the first fall, that takes a monumental level of effort and focus, and I don't get the impression that most players really find that enjoyable.

I think that's probably true, though I do not consider that a speed run. That's way too much effort for a speed run, considering that if you are good at dodging, Chapter 1 is achievable with day 1 equipment. You could do it right away, or, probably more realistically, put it off and do Chapter 1 and 2 back to back, maybe using jammies.

A real speed run would use much smaller farms, as you could put off the jammies until just before doing the story, you don't need the sailboat at all, and a 3-sail set mill is plenty if you have it at altitude. The mill isn't even worth doing on a real speed run. If you are only making enough leather for 1 set of backpacks, and maybe one piece of borax, and only enough flour to make the pies you want, that's not worth automating. Probably isn't even worth building the ovens; stews work just fine. And since you don't care about making it through the winter, there's not much sense growing more than the bare minimum that you cannot forage, which is pretty much means you only need flax. Though people often turn their noses up at flax grain, I usually use it for porridge and pies, because otherwise your grain remains topped, and everything else drops.

All told, this would probably have little to no effect on a true speed run. Only those who, to use the terminology from AoE/AoK, want to use a boom strat.

[MKMoose]

39 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

You are not getting the scale I'm talking about. I consider my run a "fail" if I don't have battle jammies, a windmill with two full sets of sails and the sailboat by the end of June. Usually that takes on the order of 1800 blocks of farmland, though that depends on the mix of wild flax to everything else.

I am not getting the scale you're talking about. Assuming default world settings, the first "by the end of June" comes in 2 months from the start of the world, which isn't enough time to grow almost anything, so at this point farms are irrelevant. But if you have time for a proper harvest (i.e. the second "by the end of June" at 14 months), then that seems oddly easy to me. If I understand correctly, you're talking a total of 81 linen, which should take 162 flax crops, maybe bump that up to 200 to account for other uses as well. It could be that I'm just misunderstanding something that should be more obvious, but I really don't get what you're using those 1800 blocks for.

[Thorfinn]

33 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Assuming default world settings, the first "by the end of June" comes in 2 months from the start of the world, which isn't enough time to grow almost anything,

Not true. With med fert soil, whatever flax you planted in the first 2-3 days comes in. Large farms are mostly for the bees, though. Which, yeah, I overdo, too. Not a real speed run when you quit harvesting skeps because you already have lanterns and several barrels of honey and a couple trunks of wax.

[MKMoose]

25 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Not true. With med fert soil, whatever flax you planted in the first 2-3 days comes in. Large farms are mostly for the bees, though. Which, yeah, I overdo, too. Not a real speed run when you quit harvesting skeps because you already have lanterns and several barrels of honey and a couple trunks of wax.

The base growth time of flax is 18 days (exactly two months), and that is also affected by moisture and nutrient levels. For medium fertility soil the actual growth rate appears as 88% at first, but will drop to 58% once nutrient levels are low enough, and maybe even dip to 29% for a brief moment. That's assuming 75% moisture, which requires direct proximity to a water source, though it might get increased by rain as well. You're gonna reach something like stage 7 at the end of June, and complete growth in middle to late July. And you're also hoping to have low enough temperatures to avoid getting your crops killed, and ideally with no yield reduction due to heat as well, though maybe that can be circumvented by planting in a colder area.

Side note, the size estimation was more about the amount of farmland required to feed a person, though admittedly flax can change things up in sometimes pretty drastic ways.

Loaded a new world, planted the flax, and accelerated time (assuming high calendarspeedmul shouldn't disrupt growth rates):

I would still genuinely love to know if you are actually using this massive farm for anything other than for the sake of it, though. Let's not get bogged down in stupid details too much, as I admit it doesn't matter that much whether you get stuff on the first or fifth of July, but I just don't see a purpose for a farm this large. In my first world I had a couple dozen leftover linen and almost nothing to do with it in the second winter except healing items and a sailboat, and that was with 200 blocks of farmland.

Either way, an increase to the effort required for farming could well end up coming with a small yield increase as well, so I reckon that unless it's completely overdone you might not even see too much of a difference in the total effort you need to put in to make your farms. This applies especially if the farm's importance declines after you get all your flax and large part would be left fallow anyways in subsequent years, so you probably wouldn't care too much if it starts growing weeds.

[Thorfinn]

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

The base growth time of flax is 18 days (exactly two months)

Couldn't tell you, other than  I'm not watching "C" as closely as I thought I was,. Might explain why getting the mill ready seems a whole lot easier anymore. Used to be I was never ready when the flax ripened, now I always am, often with time to build paths to the mill rather than climbing ladders up the cliff face.

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

I would still genuinely love to know if you are actually using this massive farm for anything other than for the sake of it, though.

Guess I edited that out. Bees. That's it. If you don't do crop rotation, and instead put the same crops back on depleted soil, they stay in the stage that they count as flowers for pretty much the rest of the season. 

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 11/15/2025 at 11:02 AM, LadyWYT said:

the mod that...uh...makes bathroom functions a thing.

you too can poo

[Thorfinn]

13 hours ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

you too can poo

I should think if you half tried, you could work in more, like "used", "stew" and "loo". "Used" isn't quite right, but I've seen far worse rhyming schemes, and I think you need some adjective for "stew". And that adjective can't really be "new".

Edited November 19, 2025 by Thorfinn

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I think you need some adjective for "stew"

Blue, rue, glue, rubaboo...

[Teh Pizza Lady]

51 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

I should think if you half tried, you could work in more, like "used", "stew" and "loo". "Used" isn't quite right, but I've seen far worse rhyming schemes, and I think you need some adjective for "stew". And that adjective can't really be "new".

You, too, can poo in the new loo after eating the blackguard's suspicious stew that she made in the pot used for glue. The pot was made from blue clay, too.

I rue the blue glue stew. It made me poo in the new loo.

[Bruno Willis]

On 11/19/2025 at 6:07 AM, MKMoose said:

Same point of making it less appealing to just keep replacing dirt. Also, only after initially converting dirt to farmland, not after every tilling, just so we're clear.

Thinking about it from a different perspective, it would reward dedication to a piece of land and the effort put in to make it suitable for farming. Makes quite a bit of logical sense for soil that isn't naturally fertile (especially barren and low-fertility soil), while high-fertility soil and terra preta might not be affected by it.

I really like this idea. Say when you first turn the block into farmland, all its nutrients start at half full. It's got some, but it's also got somewhere to go. 

I think the goal of rewarding dedication to farm plots is really interesting. What if soil types were treated more like levels that can be 'leveled up' with good farming practice: If you leave barren farmland under mulch for a single winter, it would become low fertility soil -> Low fertility soil under mulch for 2 winters becomes medium fertility soil -> Medium fertility soil under mulch for 4 winters becomes high fertility soil. By the same token there could be a mechanic for making abused soil revert down a level - perhaps overuse of chemical fertilizers, or growing the same crop repeatedly on the same soil (build-up of specific pests and diseases in the soil). 

Terra Preta would still be something special you need to make, but maybe it would be by placing charcoal and bonemeal and compost on high fertility soil and then tilling it, instead of using a crafting grid.

[LadyWYT]

On 11/18/2025 at 11:07 AM, MKMoose said:

Same point of making it less appealing to just keep replacing dirt. Also, only after initially converting dirt to farmland, not after every tilling, just so we're clear.

Thinking about it from a different perspective, it would reward dedication to a piece of land and the effort put in to make it suitable for farming. Makes quite a bit of logical sense for soil that isn't naturally fertile (especially barren and low-fertility soil), while high-fertility soil and terra preta might not be affected by it.

 

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

I really like this idea. Say when you first turn the block into farmland, all its nutrients start at half full. It's got some, but it's also got somewhere to go. 

I think the goal of rewarding dedication to farm plots is really interesting. What if soil types were treated more like levels that can be 'leveled up' with good farming practice: If you leave barren farmland under mulch for a single winter, it would become low fertility soil -> Low fertility soil under mulch for 2 winters becomes medium fertility soil -> Medium fertility soil under mulch for 4 winters becomes high fertility soil. By the same token there could be a mechanic for making abused soil revert down a level - perhaps overuse of chemical fertilizers, or growing the same crop repeatedly on the same soil (build-up of specific pests and diseases in the soil). 

On the contrary...if the soil is barren, why on earth would you even try to start farming there to begin with? The only exception I can think of is if you're playing in an extreme environment and that's literally your only option, but still...

Likewise, lowering the nutrients of the soil after it's been tilled doesn't make logical sense, unless it's a case like the Oklahoma Dust Bowl where the dirt is getting blown away, or the land is otherwise being poisoned somehow to inhibit plant growth. Tilling doesn't cause dirt to lose nutrients; growing certain crops over and over again without fertilizing, changing crop type, or otherwise giving the land a break will drain the land of nutrients. 

Incidentally, I'm not sure that artificially lowering nutrients of fresh farmland discourages players from just ditching old dirt in favor of new either. If anything, it's going to aggravate the average reasonable farmer player, since now they're being punished for even trying to farm, and needing to overall work harder to get the same results as before. Ideally, you want to be planting seeds right after you till the ground, given that's the whole reason to even till the ground to begin with. As for replacing old dirt with new...sure, the whole process is more tedious if the nutrients are artificially lowered for fresh farmland, but all the player has to do in this case is just...make bigger farms and wait for nutrients to replenish.

Apologies for the overly pedantic farmland rant, but now that that's out of the way...  I think the main underlying issue here is that it's a very aggressive solution to a pretty minor problem. I do agree that "dirt ditching" isn't ideal gameplay, but replacing farmland in that fashion wrecks the countryside(who really cares when it's a singleplayer world though) and takes a fair amount of effort in itself, especially for larger farms. Overall, I think dirt ditching is a fairly rare occurrence, and not something to worry about given that most players seem to enjoy farming as intended.

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

By the same token there could be a mechanic for making abused soil revert down a level - perhaps overuse of chemical fertilizers, or growing the same crop repeatedly on the same soil (build-up of specific pests and diseases in the soil).

I will note there's already mechanics in place for abused soil. If the player doesn't vary their crops, and doesn't otherwise use fertilizer or give the land a rest, the nutrients will end up plummeting and the plants just stop growing.

 

1 hour ago, Bruno Willis said:

Terra Preta would still be something special you need to make, but maybe it would be by placing charcoal and bonemeal and compost on high fertility soil and then tilling it, instead of using a crafting grid.

Now this I do like, though there ought to be a way to account for the recipe that doesn't involve high fertility soil as well. Not that high fertility soil is incredibly rare or anything, but unless you happen to see the sides of the block, or otherwise mouseover the block and notice it has a different name, or install a mod that makes the blocks emit particles, they can be hard to find.

[Teh Pizza Lady]

12 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

Now this I do like, though there ought to be a way to account for the recipe that doesn't involve high fertility soil as well. Not that high fertility soil is incredibly rare or anything, but unless you happen to see the sides of the block, or otherwise mouseover the block and notice it has a different name, or install a mod that makes the blocks emit particles, they can be hard to find.

IRL if you add enough nutrients to any soil and get the composition just right, it can also be high-fertility soil. I've seen my dad turn the worst field of dirt into a bountiful garden. It just takes a lot of effort, fertilizing, adding stuff to that wasn't there before and tilling it in. Currently in the game we have 3 different types of soil and 4 different types of farmland. Here's how I think they could be done so that advancing your soil has meaning aside from "my crops grow faster now".

• Low-fertility soil - can support trees and shrubs. Trees that grow here are small. Fruit trees don't produce much fruit. Grass grows very slowly as well.
• Low-fertility farmland -- doesn't grow much of anything very well, but it's better than nothing. Harvest is minimal.. enough to get your seeds back plus a few other harvestables.
• Medium-fertility soil -- Trees are normal size. fruit trees produce a normal amount of fruit. Grass and other plants can grow here normally.
• Medium-fertility farmland -- Plants grow normally and often produce extra seeds. Crops produce a fair amount of harvestables.
• High-fertility soil - Trees grow quickly and can be quite large. Fruit trees have a chance of producing a double crop. Grass and other plants can grow here and do so at an accelerated rate.
• High-fertility farmland -- Plants grow more quickly, produce extra seeds, and can produce a bumper crop occasionally.
• Terra Preta -- Plants grow the quickest. You often have a chance to get in one last harvest before it's too cold to grow anything. Bumper crops are more frequent. Can regress to high-fertility farmland or worse if over-farmed.

Between these you have:

• Prepared Low-Fertility Farmland -- you have spread plant matter or fertilizer or something over the farm land and tilled it in. Over time the farmland will have a chance to progress to medium-fertility farmland.
• Prepared Medium-Fertility Farmland -- you have spread even more plant matter or fertilizer over the farm land and tilled it in. Over time the farmland will have a lower chance to progress to high-fertility farmland
• Prepared High-Fertility Farmland -- You have spread the ultimate mixture of plant matter, compost, fertilizer, and everything you can think of over this farmland and tilled it in. Over time it will progress to terra preta, the ultimate form of farmland. You have done it. You are the ultimate farmer.
• Prepared Terra Preta -- Progresses to rot.. You got too greedy and your lands are now ruined. Tobias is disappointed in you. How could you? How dare you bring back the Rot???

It's not the best idea, but I think it compliments what you said nicely and gives the player reason to interact with the soil aside from crop rotations, fertilizing the soil and hunting for High-Fertility all the time. That way if you never find the HF soil, you aren't barred from having TP ever.

[LadyWYT]

14 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Currently in the game we have 3 different types of soil

Five, actually. Barren, Low Fertility, Medium Fertility, High Fertility, and Terra Preta. Although I suppose it's technically six if you count Bony Soil.

 

16 minutes ago, Teh Pizza Lady said:

Here's how I think they could be done so that advancing your soil has meaning aside from "my crops grow faster now".

I wouldn't mind a way to improve poor dirt over time as an option, however...I do think you've overcomplicated it here, and that's my general complaint about most farming overhaul suggestions.

To me, the current system is balanced just fine in relation to other parts of gameplay. I can't recall having seen many complaints about it, most players seem to enjoy it, so it seems to be working as intended, for the most part. The only thing I can really pick out as feeling off, is how berry bushes work. Currently, they're quite prolific in regards to crop production, and while they can't be propagated, there is no penalty for relocating bushes back to one's base. As a result, berry bushes heavily overshadow fruit trees, and are a cheap means of mass producing compost as well. Curbing the yields to once per year for specific seasons, and requiring the player to actually propagate new bushes at their base if they want to have a berry patch, would be a much better farming change, in my opinion.

Likewise, when it comes to modded territory, I've seen at least a handful of mods that tried to make farming more in-depth by adding weeds or mulch or similar complications. However, I can't really recall any of those mods being popular, and many seem to have fallen to the wayside. The farming mods that I do recall actually being popular, are the ones that add more crops(like Wildcraft). And I think that would also be a great way to improve farming, without overcomplicating gameplay that's already solid. Players like variety, but having more options available means they'll need to either be pickier about what they plant, or else put in the effort to make much bigger farms in order to accommodate the variety. Some crops, such as grapevines, may even need specialized care with trellis.