Take perishable off Berry Bush cuttings

[Veil]

It makes no sense to have Berry Bush cuttings be Perishable,
when Fruit Tree cuttings, and Seeds are already not Perishable.

No, this does not mean you should make Tree cuttings Perishable.

Perishable food is difficult enough for always-on servers,
there is no reason to make Berry Bush cutting Perishable too.
Especially since you can't get another cutting for 12 months.
And you can't move them if you plant them.

If they're going to follow Farmland rules, they need to give
seeds every time if harvested fully, just like Cabbages or
any other plant does.  Even Cat tails can be fully harvested 
and replanted with zero penalty.

It takes a lot of time to explore and gather these things, 
and even longer to find a plot to build on, perishable bush cuttings
just doesn't line up with the rest of the game features. Especially
not for these always-on servers. Hope this helps!

[Rainbow Fresh]

If consistency is the issue, I'd quite honestly rather vote for fruit tree cuttings also becoming perishable. We'd need to argue longer and harder about the "balance vs. realism" debate of every other "normal" seed in the game and how much immersive/challenge value it adds versus the tedium and frustration of having to manage yet another timer for stuff - but for cutting it just makes sense. They are living plants that you cut off from the main organism that is set up for survival. If you don't replant them quick enough (and atleast fruit trees have a low survival rate even then) they simply just die. Much like when you go buy a boquet of flowers in real life, they will wilt.

As for your "always on" multiplayer server argument - Yeah, all the always-ticking timers in the game kinda are problem for those. It's why I don't understand the appeal of playing on servers like that. But personal preferences aside, what exactly would be the problem? You go out to grab a cutting, and then you come back and plant it. If you need to go out so far to grab one that you cannot fit the trip there and back in a single sitting... you probably have bigger concerns here. And could probably ask a friend with more time available to do it for you. I don't see much reason to bunker cutting aside from potentially trying to sell them... in which case, I don't know how the auction house system works but it seems to be the thing made for it.

[MKMoose]

13 hours ago, Veil said:

And you can't move them if you plant them.

The funny thing is that you can actually pick them back up after planting (which also results in #8848) as long as they are still cuttings and haven't grown into the young state, and doing so also resets the spoilage timer. And if you're absent for long enough that the cuttings end up growing into bushes, then you can just take new cuttings from them.

 

12 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

If consistency is the issue, I'd quite honestly rather vote for fruit tree cuttings also becoming perishable.

If consistency is the issue, then fruiting bush cuttings being perishable is clearly the odd one out. Crop seeds, tree seeds and saplings, fruit tree cuttings, as well as cattail, papyrus and tule roots, are all non-perishable. Virtually all plant matter in the game besides food has always been non-perishable, actually, right up until fuiting bush cuttings and plant debris have been added.

I wouldn't necessarily mind a shift in design philosophy here, as long as implementation is actually decent and not plagued by problems like the fruiting bushes, but consistency is not what such a shift would be driven by.

 

12 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

We'd need to argue longer and harder about the "balance vs. realism" debate of every other "normal" seed in the game and how much immersive/challenge value it adds versus the tedium and frustration of having to manage yet another timer for stuff - but for cutting it just makes sense.

I think that many people in a context like this tend to focus on the wrong things. If the only reason to make plant matter perishable is that it's realistically perishable, then you're making a simulation instead of a game in the best case scenario. From a gameplay perspective, "because it makes sense" is not a sufficient explanation - the best you've given is that it would prevent long-distance relocation of plants, but I personally don't see why that even matters. As long as plants aren't restricted by the climate conditions that they can grow in (which currently is largely the case), this just makes transfer more tedious and time-consuming instead of actually preventing it, whereas if they are restricted by climate conditions, then long-distance relocation doesn't even really matter. And also, that spoilage timer would have to be very short - fruiting bush cuttings currently have 15 days, which is easily enough to go at least from the tropics to the temperate climate on default settings.

If I were to design actual reasons for making plant matter perishable, I would focus on three primary aspects:

• Incentivizing storage options. For example, pasture and meadows which can provide grass, hay, or other fodder which can feed animals, as well as thatch and potentially some other materials, but are only available in the summer unless the player prepares appropriate storage. A lot of plant matter, quite notably wood as well, could be effectively non-perishable only when stored in a sufficiently dry place.
• Preventing eternal storage and reducing hoarding. It makes the game less stressful, but it also trivializes some things. For example, making sticks and wood perishable (not necessarily turning to rot, but becoming unusable or at least less useful for most purposes like mechanical parts or charcoal) would place more importance on securing local wood sources and deliberately gathering as much as needed when it is needed, instead of hoarding huge amounts of materials in case they might be useful at some point in the far future. Making seeds and cutting perishable falls under this category, but keep in mind that making them fully perishable would probably not be a good idea in several cases (primarily in the case of crop seeds) unless they are made fully renewable as well and certain exploits are prevented. Partial spoilage or reduced quality are also an option.
• Driving a more developed composting system. I don't see much reason to make things perishable as long as it is as inconvenient as it currently is, forcing the player to wait for items which are already effectively worthless but haven't yet turned to rot - ideally, perishable items should be out of sight the moment they are no longer useful for their primary purpose, and rotten items could potentially have some special uses in their own right. Creating a proper composting system would allow more convenient waste disposal as a much more interesting and immersive source of compost, as well as possibly some other items including earthworms for fishing bait (and as feed for some animals like chickens, hopefully).

Do note that making plant spoilage into a difficulty option would make a lot of sense as well.

Edited June 28 by MKMoose

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, MKMoose said:

Incentivizing storage options. For example, pasture and meadows which can provide grass, hay, or other fodder which can feed animals, as well as thatch and potentially some other materials, but are only available in the summer unless the player prepares appropriate storage. A lot of plant matter, quite notably wood as well, could be effectively non-perishable only when stored in a sufficiently dry place.

On hay, I think it would be okay if perhaps it had to be dried first before it could be turned into a haybale for storage, since that is how it works in real life. If I'm recalling correctly, the reason you don't bale freshly cut stuff is that the moisture in the grass will cause it to rot much faster, which in turn can potentially start a fire since the internal bale temperature can increase during decomposition. 

For a videogame though, I think it's enough to just let the grass dry within a couple of in-game hours after cutting. It gets the idea across and pushes the player to do their mowing on a sunny day rather than a rainy one. A couple of hours also isn't prohibitive to the early game when it comes to making torches.

16 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

If consistency is the issue, I'd quite honestly rather vote for fruit tree cuttings also becoming perishable.

I'd vote for that as well, since that makes more sense to me than eternal cuttings of live plants. I wouldn't go so far as to make seeds perishable though; while seeds do lose viability over time, they aren't nearly as time-sensitive as a cutting, and it's also possible that the player might decide to skip a planting or two. In that case, the player is going to want to have seeds available for the next time they do plant, and they may not want to go scavenge an already-scavenged countryside or hunt down an agriculture trader.

Also worth noting that perishable cuttings is by no means a new concept. Wildcraft has had that mechanic for a long time, and it's one of the most popular mods out there currently.

[Veil]

On 6/28/2026 at 8:20 AM, LadyWYT said:

On hay, I think it would be okay if perhaps it had to be dried first before it could be turned into a haybale for storage, since that is how it works in real life. If I'm recalling correctly, the reason you don't bale freshly cut stuff is that the moisture in the grass will cause it to rot much faster, which in turn can potentially start a fire since the internal bale temperature can increase during decomposition. 

For a videogame though, I think it's enough to just let the grass dry within a couple of in-game hours after cutting. It gets the idea across and pushes the player to do their mowing on a sunny day rather than a rainy one. A couple of hours also isn't prohibitive to the early game when it comes to making torches.

I'd vote for that as well, since that makes more sense to me than eternal cuttings of live plants. I wouldn't go so far as to make seeds perishable though; while seeds do lose viability over time, they aren't nearly as time-sensitive as a cutting, and it's also possible that the player might decide to skip a planting or two. In that case, the player is going to want to have seeds available for the next time they do plant, and they may not want to go scavenge an already-scavenged countryside or hunt down an agriculture trader.

Also worth noting that perishable cuttings is by no means a new concept. Wildcraft has had that mechanic for a long time, and it's one of the most popular mods out there currently.

Fruit tree Cuttings becoming perishable doesn't help the consistency any,
because they aren't affected by the soil they're planted in. They'd have to
exactly match the new Berry Bush rules, and/or make everything perishable
which isn't what anyone wants.