Why are reed roots such a finite resource? They are a classic survival food!

[DeanF]

New here, be gentle.  And sorry if this has been hashed out already.  Loving the game, by the way, and I haven't even gotten farther than building a rammed earth hut.

So, according to what I read in the wiki if you cook and eat a reed's roots (rhizome), it is gone forever.  So you have to make a choice about whether you want to eat it or replant it, and if you eat them you will deplete the local reed population, leaving you without reeds to make baskets, etc.  This gives me anxiety- I never want to eat one!

I propose that when you dig up a reed's roots there should be a small chance that two are produced instead of one.  "Small" meaning less than than 0.1, though I'm not sure what exact figure would be appropriate.  But 0.01 seems too small, so somewhere in between? 

Anyway, then you could eat one now and again with a clear conscience.

[cjameshuff]

I think they should just regrow in that block. When you harvest a root, leave an invisible remnant that grows back after a year. That is a place where they can grow and seeds are going to grow there, it's unnatural for them to disappear permanently after you harvest them. A way to actually prevent them from coming back if desired would be to remove and replace or bury/build on the dirt block.

It would allow you to multiply the plants year after year, but is that really something to prevent? Just give the roots spoilage like everything else, so they're a workable but not broken food source. If the non-spoiling advantage is taken away, the slower harvesting seems like enough of a con.

[DeanF]

19 minutes ago, cjameshuff said:

I think they should just regrow in that block. When you harvest a root, leave an invisible remnant that grows back after a year. That is a place where they can grow and seeds are going to grow there, it's unnatural for them to disappear permanently after you harvest them.

IRL that is totally true, but I didn't think that it would pass game balancing.  And as you point out, the spoilage time is an issue- it would have to be changed.

Edited April 12 by DeanF

[cjameshuff]

56 minutes ago, DeanF said:

IRL that is totally true, but I didn't think that it would pass game balancing.  And as you point out, the spoilage time is an issue- it would have to be changed.

And if it is, it becomes like the other vegetables, but doesn't grow in cropland and requires a shovel to harvest each root individually. You can go back after a year and harvest more roots to expand your reed production, but you can just spend a year scouring the countryside and gather all the roots you need anyway. It has little effect on balance, it really just means you don't leave the surroundings oddly bare of reeds.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, DeanF said:

So, according to what I read in the wiki if you cook and eat a reed's roots (rhizome), it is gone forever.  So you have to make a choice about whether you want to eat it or replant it, and if you eat them you will deplete the local reed population, leaving you without reeds to make baskets, etc.  This gives me anxiety- I never want to eat one!

In the meantime, there are at least a handful of mods that add ways for stuff like cattails and tule to be propagated. At least a couple are usually kept up to date.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way to propagate more plants like reeds and flowers in the future. As for why that's not a thing right now...dunno, other than it's not been a priority compared to other things. I'm also guessing that it might not make the most sense to add right now either since those roots are meant as an emergency food, rather than a regular source of nutrition for the player. Cattails grow pretty fast IRL, and in the game don't require nutrients from the soil like other crops, so if the player could propagate them then the player might easily end up ignoring farming almost entirely in favor of relying on cattails for vegetable nutrition.

[cjameshuff]

14 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

In the meantime, there are at least a handful of mods that add ways for stuff like cattails and tule to be propagated. At least a couple are usually kept up to date.

That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way to propagate more plants like reeds and flowers in the future. As for why that's not a thing right now...dunno, other than it's not been a priority compared to other things. I'm also guessing that it might not make the most sense to add right now either since those roots are meant as an emergency food, rather than a regular source of nutrition for the player. Cattails grow pretty fast IRL, and in the game don't require nutrients from the soil like other crops, so if the player could propagate them then the player might easily end up ignoring farming almost entirely in favor of relying on cattails for vegetable nutrition.

Even with the shovel now helping with harvesting, they're a pain to harvest compared to other crops. Provided the spoilage is changed, I don't see any real advantage. You *could* live off cattails, but doing so wouldn't be an exploit, and you could augment your food with them without permanently destroying the plants.

[LadyWYT]

22 minutes ago, cjameshuff said:

Even with the shovel now helping with harvesting, they're a pain to harvest compared to other crops. Provided the spoilage is changed, I don't see any real advantage. You *could* live off cattails, but doing so wouldn't be an exploit, and you could augment your food with them without permanently destroying the plants.

Harvesting crops will always take a bit of time, and unlike most other crops, cattails can be used for more than just food. Hence why I think that if they had been made a renewable resource at this point in the game, or even earlier in development, many players might turn to relying exclusively on cattails rather than bother with farming vegetables and rotating crops. One balancing solution might be cutting the satiety value of cattails or making them provide no nutrition, but I don't think either of those are very good options since the former removes their utility as an emergency food and the latter removes a way for the player to get early vegetable nutrition. Making them grow slowly is also an option, but not very realistic since cattails and other reeds tend to grow rather fast in real life.

I think once the game is fleshed out more then we'll see stuff like flowers and cattails become a properly renewable resource.

[KahvozeinsFang]

23 hours ago, cjameshuff said:

When you harvest a root, leave an invisible remnant that grows back after a year. That is a place where they can grow and seeds are going to grow there, it's unnatural for them to disappear permanently after you harvest them.

They disappear because the root has been taken. It's totally natural for them to be gone forever. There is no more root. Its gone. 

[cjameshuff]

17 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Harvesting crops will always take a bit of time, and unlike most other crops, cattails can be used for more than just food. Hence why I think that if they had been made a renewable resource at this point in the game, or even earlier in development, many players might turn to relying exclusively on cattails rather than bother with farming vegetables and rotating crops. One balancing solution might be cutting the satiety value of cattails or making them provide no nutrition, but I don't think either of those are very good options since the former removes their utility as an emergency food and the latter removes a way for the player to get early vegetable nutrition. Making them grow slowly is also an option, but not very realistic since cattails and other reeds tend to grow rather fast in real life.

I think once the game is fleshed out more then we'll see stuff like flowers and cattails become a properly renewable resource.

You can sweep a scythe and harvest half a dozen blocks giving multiple vegetables each, or you can spend about the same time to dig up a single root with a shovel. It'd be far more work to try to live off cattail roots. And they give reeds, which you don't have a use for in the quantities you'd be getting if you were using the roots as your main food source. A player could rely exclusively on cattails, but I doubt many would choose to do so, and see no reason to stop it. You could also live off pig fat. It might not be what was intended, but doesn't give an advantage that exceeds its drawbacks.

[DeanF]

13 hours ago, KahvozeinsFang said:

They disappear because the root has been taken. It's totally natural for them to be gone forever. There is no more root. Its gone. 

Not really- it is functionally impossible to remove every scrap of root, and they grow back from the tiniest fragment.  Like sunchokes.  You can feel certain that you found every tuber, but the things just grow back the next year anyway.

[Mac Mcleod]

Yes, reeds should propagate in some way.   For example, on some set day of the  year (say the first day of spring), give reeds a small random chance to spread to a nearby valid square within 2 blocks.

[cjameshuff]

8 hours ago, DeanF said:

Not really- it is functionally impossible to remove every scrap of root, and they grow back from the tiniest fragment.  Like sunchokes.  You can feel certain that you found every tuber, but the things just grow back the next year anyway.

There's also stunted/immature plants that can grow once you've removed others, germinating seeds, etc. They aren't growing there initially because someone planted a root there, they're growing there because it's a good environment for them to grow in. Expecting them to stop growing there because you dug some of them up is not reasonable.

[Thorfinn]

On 4/11/2026 at 10:26 PM, LadyWYT said:

In the meantime, there are at least a handful of mods that add ways for stuff like cattails and tule to be propagated. At least a couple are usually kept up to date.

@DeanF, one that is kind of hard to become obsolete is from @Zippy Wonderdust (search ModDB for "zippy") because it just changes drop rates. It's a little different in that it gives an occasional bonus root when you harvest the tops. It seems to me it's something like 25%. Which is not as unbalanced as one might think.

Easy enough to change, though. Look for the "drops" lines of the mod and change 0.25 to 0.01, or whatever you think appropriate.

[DeanF]

On 4/13/2026 at 5:17 PM, Thorfinn said:

@DeanF, one that is kind of hard to become obsolete is from @Zippy Wonderdust (search ModDB for "zippy") because it just changes drop rates. It's a little different in that it gives an occasional bonus root when you harvest the tops. It seems to me it's something like 25%. Which is not as unbalanced as one might think.

Easy enough to change, though. Look for the "drops" lines of the mod and change 0.25 to 0.01, or whatever you think appropriate.

Interesting...  I cannot say that I am in any way qualified to be a modder, though, even secondhand.

[Thorfinn]

On 4/14/2026 at 9:41 PM, DeanF said:

I cannot say that I am in any way qualified to be a modder, though, even secondhand.

 Sure you can.

Unzip the file.

Use your favorite text editor to open .\zippysreseedingreeds\assets\patches\zippysreseedingreeds.json.

Edit the line

"value": { "type": "item", "code": "cattailroot", "quantity": { "avg": 0.15, "var": 0 }, "tool": "knife" }

to anything you like. (0.15 means 15% chance.)

Zip the folder.

Congratulations. You are now a secondhand modder.

[EDIT]

Probably should mention that if your favorite zipping program doesn't preserve directory structure, I use BandiZip. The free version is fine.

Edited Sunday at 04:42 PM by Thorfinn