RE: 1.22 - Berry bush rework (i.e. add greater mechanical depth to them)

[Phantom72]

Some more ideas...

when the plants are trimmed

1. allows the berries to mature faster
2. faster harvesting, or multi-harvest even
3. they drop cuttings so LadyWYT can replant them.

Just my 2c

Edited November 19, 2025 by Phantom72

[LadyWYT]

I would go the opposite route--trim the bushes to get cuttings, that you can then plant to get more bushes(similar to how fruit trees are propagated). No more breaking bushes to relocate them to one's base, as attempting to do so will just destroy the bush.

[Blue_Helix]

3 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I would go the opposite route--trim the bushes to get cuttings, that you can then plant to get more bushes(similar to how fruit trees are propagated). No more breaking bushes to relocate them to one's base, as attempting to do so will just destroy the bush.

I'm not 100% sure, but what you are describing seems a lot like how wildcraft fruits and nuts works.

[LadyWYT]

4 minutes ago, Blue_Helix said:

I'm not 100% sure, but what you are describing seems a lot like how wildcraft fruits and nuts works.

That's where I got the idea from. 

[hstone32]

yeah, weird how we can't propagate berries. I know of some places in the world where preventing berry bushes is the real challenge of gardening. you'll know if a place has been neglected for a year or two if it's being engulfed by the ever encroaching wall of blackberry briars.

obviously, since VS is meant to be post-apocalyptic, the devs must have decided against making the players deal with an additional berry apocalypse.

[Phantom72]

10 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I would go the opposite route--trim the bushes to get cuttings, that you can then plant to get more bushes(similar to how fruit trees are propagated). No more breaking bushes to relocate them to one's base, as attempting to do so will just destroy the bush.

Not sure how that is the opposite route but you can have your cuttings :).
And I've have soo many bushes and it gets boring as hell harvesting them all.

[LadyWYT]

12 hours ago, Phantom72 said:

Not sure how that is the opposite route but you can have your cuttings :).
And I've have soo many bushes and it gets boring as hell harvesting them all.

Finally getting around to giving an answer here, but...

 

On 11/18/2025 at 4:50 AM, Phantom72 said:

when the plants are trimmed

1. allows the berries to mature faster
2. faster harvesting, or multi-harvest even

The reason I say it's the opposite of what you initially suggested, is that in my opinion berry bushes are currently too strong in relation to other aspects of VS agriculture. The player can't propagate them, but there's no penalty for hoovering up all the ones found in the wild and relocating them to one's base. Berry bushes also produce more than one yield of berries a year, which isn't particularly accurate to real life(not that everything has to be), but it's one reason that a lot of players skip fruit trees in favor of berries. Berries are just a ridiculously easy source of food, or compost if one just leaves the harvest to rot.

Thus I think it's a better change to have a propagation system, so the player will actually need to put in a bit more effort if they want their own berry patch at home. Likewise, reducing yields to one or two harvests per year(depends on climate and berry species) would help push the player to vary which berries they target for foraging/cultivating, due to different berries maturing at different times of year. Berry bushes would still be less work than fruit trees, to be sure, but overall they'd require a bit more management(that isn't too frustrating) in order to get the most out of them.

[Phantom72]

11 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

berry bushes are currently too strong in relation to other aspects of VS agriculture

No disagreement here and I'd welcome an additional mechanic. What I would like to see eventually is wine-making being a bigger thing in the game. Possibly traders buying a certain wine, maybe even a certain vintage, discount/sell buff for providing their favorite wine, player buffs, endless possibilities.

But, as it stands now, harvesting is boring, and I'd take a 2 pass(trim/harvest) over grr grr grr to harvest the berries. It's more exciting breaking them or just modding the scythe(below for those whom are interested).

At the end of the day it's all about balance, harder to get berries, they might have to bump up the rot->compost process.
 

[
    {
        "op": "addmerge",
        "path": "/attributes/codePrefixes",
        "value":  ["bigberrybush","smallberrybush"],
        "file": "game:itemtypes/tool/scythe.json"
    }
]

 

[Shoom]

On 11/18/2025 at 7:32 PM, hstone32 said:

yeah, weird how we can't propagate berries. I know of some places in the world where preventing berry bushes is the real challenge of gardening. you'll know if a place has been neglected for a year or two if it's being engulfed by the ever encroaching wall of blackberry briars.

obviously, since VS is meant to be post-apocalyptic, the devs must have decided against making the players deal with an additional berry apocalypse.

Omg now I imagine bushes with unrestricted pumpkin code, holy cow this could make for a hilarious mod.

[Thorfinn]

10 hours ago, Shoom said:

bushes with unrestricted pumpkin code

Sometimes Wildcraft feels like this. You've got to slash and burn some of those on a regular basis or they do the Pinky and the Brain thing...

[LadyWYT]

50 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Sometimes Wildcraft feels like this. You've got to slash and burn some of those on a regular basis or they do the Pinky and the Brain thing...

It also means that if you go planting a berry patch, you actually need to trim it every once in a while in order to get the full harvest. Otherwise, you'll end up with bush segments that are impossible to reach.

[Phytotoxin]

Here's an Idea:

What if it requires a shovel and some durability to dig up berry bushes, then in inventory they can die if left unplanted too long, and once replanted there's a sort of penalty in terms of extra time until the bush starts its normal cycle of flowering and bearing fruit.

[LadyWYT]

8 hours ago, Vincent Schneider said:

Here's an Idea:

What if it requires a shovel and some durability to dig up berry bushes, then in inventory they can die if left unplanted too long, and once replanted there's a sort of penalty in terms of extra time until the bush starts its normal cycle of flowering and bearing fruit.

Possibly, but that also means that the bush can be lost permanently. If the player just takes a cutting, that leaves the parent bush intact for use, so it's still able to be foraged, or used for more cuttings later once it recovers.

The way Wildcraft handles it, the cuttings need to be planted fairly quickly, or otherwise they will dry out. I'd probably add on to the concept by allowing cuttings to potentially fail, but with a higher success rate of taking root than fruit tree cuttings.

[Heart_Afire]

Once again, to throw in my two cents, I like the idea of propagating from cuttings on Berry Bushes, and of having to trim them back to prevent them from just...taking over, as berry vines irl tend to do. One thing that could also be added is that certain berries could...if untrimmed...do damage to Seraphs walking through them, as many berry vines have some wicked thorns. Source: I fell in a blackberry patch when I was about 9. Was not a fun time.

[Bruno Willis]

On 11/20/2025 at 7:34 PM, Shoom said:

Omg now I imagine bushes with unrestricted pumpkin code, holy cow this could make for a hilarious mod.

I would really like it if berry bushes had a mechanic where they actively spread and try to fill their niche - but then we need some way to keep them in balance. I feel like the world as we enter it is supposed to be represent natural balance, so we can assume that by nature the berry bushes end up in small bunches with a bit of separation. 

So, say the bushes spread like pumpkins, but unrestricted and slowed well down. At the start of every spring, unpruned bushes get 'overgrown' which means they produce far fewer berries and damage you if you move through them (old black current canes turn into nasty, splinter-stakes, spikes grow, etc. ) Animals and players also have a chance to trample overgrown bushes into loose sticks when they move through them, implying that the bush has become brittle and less vigorous. Browsing animals like deer might also be able to, occasionally, destroy young berry bushes by eating them (this would have to be a very low chance).

That way you'd get bushes spreading wildly, then getting broken up by animal movement and browsing, and hopefully end up producing dynamic versions of the current berry bush growth. 

- this gets me into a wider issue, where the world at the start of the game is not implied by the events of the game, especially when you've got cave-ins, soil instability, and lightening fires enabled. It would be amazing if the world could naturally re-establish a good looking equilibrium after disasters, if forest floor could recover and forests could spread/recover slowly over time, etc. It needs it's own thread.

It'd also buff pruning, not by increasing berry drops, which are quite a lot already, but by letting you keep your bushes healthy.