Oats, Oat Flour, and Oat Bread, etc.

[Morrigan Stuart]

I think it would be really cool if Oats were added to the game! I have a wheat allergy in real life and oats are my favorite grain for baking.

[Monkeylord]

I always felt oats should be in the game. Oat species (genus Avena) are really common as wild grasses too, so we could have both crop oats for eating and wild oats for the landscape!

[Vexxvididu]

I like oats and like the idea of them being in the game. ....though I'm a bit torn on what to do differently with them so it's not just another crop.  I'd hate for them to be just a third option of regular grain like Spelt and Rye.

[LadyWYT]

30 minutes ago, Vexxvididu said:

I like oats and like the idea of them being in the game. ....though I'm a bit torn on what to do differently with them so it's not just another crop.  I'd hate for them to be just a third option of regular grain like Spelt and Rye.

I think it's fine if they fill the same general role; the bigger attraction I think is just the variety(mods like Wildcraft are popular for a reason). Oats could differ as to where they spawn, in that perhaps it's the only available grain aside from flax for that region. 

[marmarmar34]

1 hour ago, Vexxvididu said:

I like oats and like the idea of them being in the game. ....though I'm a bit torn on what to do differently with them so it's not just another crop.  I'd hate for them to be just a third option of regular grain like Spelt and Rye.

Maybe have them use phosphorus as a primary nutrient? It may not be accurate to their actual needs, but it would be different for crop rotation I suppose.

[Forceous]

1 hour ago, Vexxvididu said:

I like oats and like the idea of them being in the game. ....though I'm a bit torn on what to do differently with them so it's not just another crop.  I'd hate for them to be just a third option of regular grain like Spelt and Rye.

Make a "Rye Allergies" mod so it gives you negative HP every time you use it, so it forces you to only use Oat hahaha

[marmarmar34]

1 hour ago, Forceous said:

Make a "Rye Allergies" mod so it gives you negative HP every time you use it, so it forces you to only use Oat hahaha

How about of instead of losing HP, it reduces your max air capacity for a few hours.

[MKMoose]

4 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

I think it's fine if they fill the same general role; the bigger attraction I think is just the variety(mods like Wildcraft are popular for a reason). Oats could differ as to where they spawn, in that perhaps it's the only available grain aside from flax for that region. 

I think introducing more complexity to the farming system through new or revamped mechanics like moisture, nutrients, soil pH, seeding, weeds, plant diseases and pests, different growth systems, complex processing methods, and player nutrition, all could do a lot of good for crop variety, with one condition: the properties of various crops would have to be different enough to produce tangible gameplay differences in how these crops are cultivated, and to introduce more meaningful factors into the player's decision-making. If need be, some mechanics, especially diseases and pests, could be made only relevant for a small subset of plants, to make them stand out as more difficult ot risky without impacting the rest of the farming experience.

Oats, for example, grow thick enough to outcompete many weeds, are fairly resistant to diseases, and tolerate low-nutrient and acidic soils - this could give you a reliable, low-maintenance crop which can be set up quickly at the start of the game as the player is rushing to get things done before winter, and later on still can be useful to guarantee a safe harvest even if the player leaves on a long expedition. To counterbalance the ease of farming, oat could have reduced yield or be in some way restricted in its uses, potentially even going as far as to make it exclusively usable for porridge (and probably animal feed as well).

And for a couple more examples:

• wheat is much more demanding on soil and relatively vulnerable to diseases and pests (at least nowadays, I would need to double-check if that also applied to spelt in the Middle Ages), which could make it a high-maintenance, high-risk, high-yield late-game crop,
• rice requires a lot of water to grow and would likely end up as a crop with special requirements (if only just extremely high moisture), which would likely only grow on paddy fields (a specialized type of farmland, or a condition applied to farmland by flooding it in some way),
• potatoes could provide low nutrition but high satiation, to serve as a good early-game subsistence crop but ending up less desirable when optimizing for full nutrition bonuses,
• soybeans and other legumes can improve soil fertility by fixing nitrogen, which could make them valuable for optimizing crop rotation and maintaining good soil quality without using fertilizers.

The potential issue of overloading the player with all the variables in a complex system could be largely addressed by making several mechanics only really relevant for specific crops and potentially even entirely disabled for others. Ideally, simpler plants like oat and several common vegetables should still allow the player to quickly understand the basics of farming and sustain themselves easily enough, but a larger variety of more demanding and rewarding crops would allow not just to fill out the cellar with more stuff and make more colors of food, but also to produce more meaningful gameplay variety depending on player choice and a number of other factors.

It could also be beneficial to make several crops or even entire mechanics opt-in to reduce the number of choices thrown onto the player, e.g. by restricting certain species to only be purchased from traders or domesticated over multiple years from less demanding but low-yield wild plants. Especially applies to something like cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, which all originate from the same feral plants. Looting from ruins is largely fine as well, but still risks throwing these plants onto a new player quite quickly.

Edited Saturday at 12:03 AM by MKMoose

[Monkeylord]

12 hours ago, MKMoose said:

I think introducing more complexity to the farming system through new or revamped mechanics like moisture, nutrients, soil pH, seeding, weeds, plant diseases and pests, different growth systems, complex processing methods, and player nutrition, all could do a lot of good for crop variety, with one condition: the properties of various crops would have to be different enough to produce tangible gameplay differences in how these crops are cultivated, and to introduce more meaningful factors into the player's decision-making. If need be, some mechanics, especially diseases and pests, could be made only relevant for a small subset of plants, to make them stand out as more difficult ot risky without impacting the rest of the farming experience.

Great idea, we would need a higher variety of crops in order to add sustantial differences of course. Different crops should have a different nutrient consumption rates. different fertility tolerances (Some may grow fine in low fertility, some will need high fertility to even sprout), have different soil humidity tolerances (Some plants will grow fine between 50%-100% humidity, other might stop growing if humidity is below 80%), different pest tolerances (wich I think could appear if you replant the same crop on the same land repeatedly) and of course have the heat tolerance be more varied between different crops. This way the crop species that you choose would feel truly important and impactfull.

On 1/24/2026 at 1:02 AM, MKMoose said:

And for a couple more examples:

Very good examples I say