Guide: How to Farm for Quality

[riotman477]

I can’t explain it, but I really enjoy farming in HnH. There is something about watching plants grow and turning them into tasty treats that is rewarding, particularly when you hear someone say “OOo! Honey buns!” in Village chat. I am also a sucker for efficiency and “lean manufacturing”. It has taken me a while, but I think I have finally refined the process of farming to the point where I’d like to share it with others.

The very very basics:

The first step to farming is seeds. You can get these by begging or by drying wild windsown weed (WWW) on either drying racks or an herbalist table. Once complete they give you seeds, which should be immediately put in plowed ground.

Different seeds grow at different rates and just when you can’t bear the thought of eating another apple, the plants will be ready to be harvested for seeds and the cycle can begin again. These seeds should be replanted (If you are lucky enough to get wheat as your first crop, the straw should be used to build a bee hive right away, which will increase the growth speed of crops around it).

The number of seeds you get depends on your industry/nature slider. If you are going to be a farmer, this slide is the first one you should move. When you are full nature you will get 3 seeds per crop. This guide assumes you have done so.

Keep replanting the harvested seeds until you have a 4x4 square of whatever crop. Congradu-lions, you have your first quality control field! I continue in this manner until I have a 4x4 field for every seed type I have picked up and add additional 4x4 fields for high demand crops such as wheat and flax.

Next basics-Why Quality matters:

Quality control of these fields is important. Higher quality wheat leads to higher quality flour, to higher quality dough, to higher quality food items, to more FEP, to higher stats. Higher quality crops also increase the quality of your honey (capped by the quality of the hive, so when you start getting q20 straw it would be best to rebuild the hive).

For these reasons, it is important to replant the best seeds, feed the next best ones to your animals, eat the other good ones, and throw away the low quality seeds that will never get used for anything ever(people seem to struggle with that last part). Extra flax seeds can be used to plant huge rows of fax where quality doesn’t matter, since low q linen is useful in banners.

The important part-How to find the best seeds:

You may be tempted, as I was, to use seed sacks. I have learned that it is better to avoid them. Instead gather 4 straw baskets around the area you are going to farm (Chests would make your life easier and one large chest would make it down right pleasant, but I assume if you want a farming guide you’ll only have access to straw baskets). Straw baskets can hold 16 items. You get three seeds per harvest. Simple math says that you can harvest 5 crops and fill one basket with seeds and the last plant can be used to fill the remaining slot in each basket. Any drops such as straw or plant fibers should go in the fourth basket.

When every plant is harvested in your 4x4 control field all 4 baskets will be full. The first three will have seeds, the last will have straw/plant fibers/leafs/ect.

The trick now is finding the best 16 seeds that are spread across three baskets. To do this we use a combination of control, shift, mousewheel and the right mouse button. These shortcuts are extremely important. Try not to hurt yourself, as I did, as you faceplam at the realization that you haven’t been using them.
http://ringofbrodgar.com/wiki/Keyboard_Shortcuts

Ctrl + click on an object in inventory or a container Drop object at feet
Shift + click on an object in inventory or a container Transfer object to container/inventory
Use shift+mousewheel to transfer items from container to inventory, or back.
Use shift+ctrl+mousewheel to sort by quality (descending) when transferring.
Use shift+ctrl+mousewheel+right mouse to sort by quality (ascending) when transferring.

The trick with these is that the mouse cursor has to be over the container, not your inventory. Mouse down is from inventory, mouse up is to inventory.

On to the real guide.

Finding the best seeds for planting
1) Harvest 5 plants, dump these seeds in basket one (shift+mousewheel down while hovering over the basket
2) Repeat this step for basket two
3) Repeat this step for basket three
4) Harvest the remaining plant and transfer these seeds each of the three baskets
5) Transfer the 5 best seeds from basket 1 to your inventory (control+shift+mousewheel up)
6) Repeat this step for basket two and three (copy one extra seed from any basket)
Note: It is more than reasonable to stop here and plant these seeds. You have the 5 best seeds from each section and one extra high quality seed. Continue only if you are a true quality slut.
7) Go back to basket one and transfer the 5 lowest quality seeds from your inventory to basket 1 (mouse over basket 1 and hold control+shift+right click+mousewheel down).
8) Copy the 5 best seeds from basket 1 to your inventory
9) Repeat last two steps for basket 2 and 3.
10) Plant these 16 seeds.
Any harvestables such as tobacco leaves or straw can go into basket 4. If they don’t fit (Tobacco would take two baskets) another place to store them is (obviously) required. If the harvestables go straight into your inventory, it is important to store them before you start the seed sorting process.

The same sorting method could be used to find the next best seeds for fodder or food, just decide how many seeds you want, divide that by the number of baskets you have, and use that number as the amount to transfer between baskets.

In the case of grapes, which can’t be planted right away, the top 16 would be taken straight to the press, pressed, and then the seeds planted.

In the case of pumpkins, use all 4 baskets to hold one pumpkin each. Arrange them in basket order from lowest to highest. Compare each new pumpkin to find out if it displaces any. If not drop it on the ground (they are easy to see and can take a while to rot away). When the top two are found, slice them and plant their seeds. Combine their flesh into one basket. Take the next highest pumpkins and place them directly into fodder troughs or chicken coups (counts as 16 fodder each). Really, probably best to let the other pumpkins rot, they are not that useful.

In the case of tea you only get two seeds each, so you only need two baskets. Use the other two for leaves. Use the same process to find the best quality leaves and the best quality seeds (7 from each basket in this case, return the lowest q 7 a basket, then copy the highest quality 7 back).

I think I covered everything, but if I didn’t, please respond and I’ll keep this updated.

[cobaltjones]

This is a ridiculously wordy "guide" for something that boils down to "harvest/shiftsort/plant".

Thanks, I guess?

[RJT]

Way to over complicate things, bro.

[Zelacks]

Great guide, this is what I did essentially in world 3, but instead I used a plot of 5x6 (number of slots in inventory) and used cupboards instead of buskets.
I recommend everyone follows OP's advice if they are not already doing it.

[Fichina]

I just fill six seed bags, dump their content into an empty cupboard. Sort them back quality back into my inventory and from there back into my seedbags. Top two bags get replanted, the third bag stays in the cupboard for the next sorting, and the bottom half get used in destructive recipes or otherwise are lost.

Easy peasy.

[Potjeh]

I put cupboards next to field

[Ziggyzog]

Why 4x4 crops?

[riotman477]

I don't like seed bags because of the lag involved with opening and closing them and the fact that they cover each other up. Also, they like to shift+click into eachother and have funky shift+click results in general.

I don't think about cupboards. Do they last outside? I still like baskets because you have them right next to you and can use a cart to get the parts where they need to go. Also they don't block much of the screen. A single large chest would eliminate the basket dance and can still be loaded into a cart (I think).

I like 4x4 because for many many crops, you do not need more than that. Beetroot? Peas? Pumpkins? TEA!? Tobacco? Most of those just end up in cupboards and crates spread all over camp. It also makes things much more modular. If you find you are hurting for a lack of wheat you can add another 4x4 without much effort.

I do have a tendancy to over explain things, but I wish someone would have told me this in world 3 and when I started up again a couple of weeks ago. I'll review the post later and see if I can trim it down.

[Halagaz]

Seed bags are a must for me as well as few straw baskets (easy and cheap, but you can use whatever you like) next to my feilds for a fast and effective work. I don't even understand how you can tell the opposite, planting each seed individually is so much time consuming and ineffective, you better find for your own sake a better way to do it, so here is how i personally do it.

First i harvest the entire feild in seed bags, i put full seed bags in the baskets _usually one or2 is enought). I take few empty seed bags in my back pack (i usually know how much seed bags i need to plant the entire feild), then i look in the full bags and make a quick scan to see the best quality seeds. Once i know the best q crops, i give myself a fork, for exemple the q30/35 seam to be enough, so i just take those. I just shift click on those seed that will go in my seed bags in the back pack; no error here you just need to be confident enough in what you do, thats all. Never open but the bags you take seed from. If you took all the seed in that fork and you still have empty bags, you take a wider fork, like you add q28/30.

Once you filled your empty bags, just take them and plant, its so much quicker. Remember the order you put the seed bag in your pack, so that you can plant from best to worst q, it is really not that hard.

I use huge feilds because the biggest the feild the best seeds i will get in the best place. I always plant the best seed near the best soil, the worst near the worst soil because i know wich bag have the best seed and how is my feild soil configuration.

It really isn't hard you just need to be confident in what you do, and not open yoour bags all the time like a retard without memory. Just do it in order, thats all.

[Jackard]

i use seedbags