Compost

[8 Bit Chef]

Been playing the game for about two months with my coworker, and most of the game is good.

However....he and I believe the output for compost is perhaps a tad bit lacking.

Any one else think we should get more compost/barrel, considering the amount of time it takes to make?

[Sparkle Kitti]

I'd need to know the reasoning behind how it is now to decide for sure, but I certainly like the idea. Though a faster way would be to get tons of berry bushes and keeping the berries in a basket to rot.

[Streetwind]

What exactly are you planning to use so much compost for, anyway? True, it makes slightly better farmland than medium quality soil, but considering that you can have a practically infinite supply of medium quality soil right from the moment you spawn into the world, your farm's total output is better increased by just making more farmland and planting more seeds. Additionally, you need to invest food into making compost. If you just ate the food straight-up, you wouldn't need so much extra farmland in the first place, right?

(And then there's terra preta... and fertilizer...)

[The_Lazy_Warlock]

Yeah, as it stands I feel compost is not very useful. I plan on making it as a component for Terra Preta production in an up-in-coming lazytweaks addition. It'll be used in combination with charcoal and bony soil to make terra preta (similar to how it was done in real life). It will also take much less rot to produce and will allow for alternative sources to compost with (IE grass, straw, flowers etc.)
 

[cat]

Compared to the effort for compost, it's far too easy to acquire Terra Preta at the moment. IMO compost should be a way to fertilize existing farmland and replenish the nutrients in the soil (and the yield should probably still be increased a tad).

[ApacheTech]

I don't really see the point in compost at the moment. One long expedition a couple of thousand blocks around your base can yield an entire inventory full of Terra Preta, and you can be back before a single compost block has been formed. In order for it to have any use in the game, it would have to be better than Terra Preta by a significant margin.

[Streetwind]

I like Lazy Warlock's idea, to be honest.

Just remove terra preta spawning entirely, and make it craftable with compost, charcoal, and bony soil. Still requires exploration, adds a usage to a currently useless block, makes composting a valuable game mechanic, takes cues from real life, and makes a full field of the best soil something you can be really proud of.

The amount of bony soil per ruin could easily be adjusted to tune how difficult it is to get.

[ApacheTech]

I'd prefer that compost just adds temporary fertility to a farmland block, when broken down from block form into handfuls of compost. Then it's useful in all scenarios. The only thing fertility saves on is time, so deliberately removing naturally generating items from the game, purely to add more grind is a bad idea. Terra Preta gives the ability to make functional rolling farmlands that look really good. But that takes hundreds of stacks of Terra Preta. If you can only make one block of Terra Preta every 20 days, in the immortal words of Sl1pg8r, it would "un-fun" the game.

Edited April 11, 2020 by ApacheTech