Forest Stewardship -- Tree Planting

[Venant]

[This is a work in progress. There is a bit of copying from other sources (Wikis, Forum) and formulas may not be updated. As a newer player, I found it hard to get up-to-date information on this all in one place and wanted to compile what I have found for people to help fact check and to help others.]

Stewardship of a forest requires attention to detail and a good amount of patience. The Forest Steward must be supported by a capable potter (to build the kiln that fires the Treeplanting Pots) and carpenter (to build the Herbalist Table to sprout the trees) but in turn supports these occupations with higher quality wood or they must do these things themselves.


The Process...

To plant a desired seed, one will put it inside of a Treeplanter's Pot with Soil x4 and Water 1.0L. All of which will be placed on an Herbalist Table for 5 in-game hours (approx 1.5 real hours). The Herbalist Table can hold up to four Treeplanter's Pots and I personally recommend two Herbalist Tables to either be able to grow a variety of saplings or to minimize the death of a desired crop.

Forest Stewards will want to continuously increase the quality of the forest which they are tending. In order to do so, the supporting industry must also improve.

The quality of a planted tree depends on these factors:
tree_q = (2*qSoil + 2*qWater + 3*qPot + 3*qTable + 15*qSeed) / 25 then +/- 5

The total quality is also softcapped by the seed planter's Farming Skill. In order to improve the quality of the pot and herbalist table, read onward.

The Kiln
Skills Required: Pottery
Objects Required: Clay x45
End Quality: avg(clay_q) (see Resource Quality)

The quality of items produced by the kiln is product_q = 1/2 unburntpot_q + 1/4 fuel_q + 1/4 kiln_q.
The quality of an unburnt treeplanter's pot is softcapped by the DEX (dexterity) of the crafter. It is easier to find higher quality branches early on in the process for fuel than high quality blocks.

The Herbalist Table
Skills Required: Plant Lore
Objects Required: Block of Wood x4, Board x4, Plant Fibers x8
End Quality: ( (fiber_q*2) + board_q + blockwood_q ) / 4

The quality of products produced on an Herbalist Table is the average of the precursor item (potted tree) and the table quality.
As the Forest Steward provides higher quality wood, the quality of the fuel used to fire the treeplanter's pots and the blocks of wood and boards will increase. The better pots and herbalist table will further increase the quality of new saplings planted.

Resource Quality
Board quality is softcapped by the Carpentry Skill but is otherwise determined by:
sqrt ( saw_q * lumber_q). To make higher quality boards, bone saws are recommended because it is easier to make a higher quality bone saw than metal saw. This sacrifices two boards (4 instead of 6) per log but is important in the construction of higher quality Herbalist Tables.

Block of Wood quality solely relies on the quality of the tree.

Plant Fiber quality is determined by the quality of the seed used at time of planted, softcapped by the planter's Farming Skill.

Water, Soil, and Clay quality is a complex subject best described by the Ring of Brodgar wiki article: Finding high quality water, clay, and soil


The Forest...

Now that the process to nurture and maintain high quality trees is outlined, the trees and bushes chosen will be primarily up to the individual steward and their ability to find the seeds required.

List of Bushes with pictures
List of Trees with pictures

There are different reasons to grow different trees. A skilled Forest Steward will maintain a variety of trees, improving the quality each generation, with an end-goal in mind. Popular choices for different products are:

Item Production: apple, mulberry
Bough Quality: elm, spruce (produce multiple boughs)
Block Quality: blackthorn bushes (bushes grow quickly)
Log Quality: chestnut, walnut (produce quantities of seeds, harvestable earlier in the growth stages)


The Steward...

Skills & Complementary Industry
Aside from Farming, the major skills that benefit forest growth also benefit Silkfarming.
Woodsmanship (Cost: 12,500 LP)
Forestry (Cost: 25,000 LP)
Druidic Rite (Cost: 150,000 LP)

Since the Forest Steward already requires high quality Herbalist Tables, time spent tending to a Forest can also be spent tending to the production of silk. Since the Forest Steward can concentrate on improving the quality of Mulberry trees they can also improve the quality of silk over time. In order to do this, the Forest Steward would require both a high level of Farming & Sewing in order to maximize silk production.

Equipment
(future growth of article)

[Venant]

[saving for article growth]

[Venant]

I have several questions if the veterans can help fill in the gaps...

1) Are the formulas listed correct for the current version of the game?
2) What trees are you growing and why?
3) How many herbalist tables are you dedicating to planting?
4) How often are you growing the different trees to improve quality? e.g, replant of mulberries once a week, replant of blackthorn bushes twice a week.
5) Spruce & Pine were mentioned in a different thread to gather tar from. Any other resources other than unique food items, mulberry and laurel leaves, to be considered?

[chillfolk]

Well written! Thanks for taking the time man. The formula you've listed looks to be current.
Here's what I've got cookin:
Tea Bush - For the tea and for the bush, if you know what I mean.
Elderberry Bush - Because I like to gamble on my blocks sometimes.
Blackthorn Bush - Because I tend to lose when I gamble.
Spruce Tree - Boughs.
Laurel Tree - For the odd chance I'll need Rootfill. By the way, HUGE help for Deep Cuts. If I remember correctly, the last one I made was ~q14 and healed four deep cuts right up. Not bad!
Apple Tree - Food production.
King's Oak - Logs & I kinda like em!

I have been replanting trees in a hurry while getting established just for the sake of time, but now that I'm more or less settled I will probably replant depending on necessity.

Currently relying on three tables, will most likely settle on four and rebuild for improved quality whenever I can.

[Turtlesir]

pretty much everything on the tree page is correct.
where did you find that tree q formula? there's a completely different one on that ^ page which is believe is better (seed q is much more important).
tree pot is capped by sqrt(dex*farm).
bat guano can be used instead of soil, which more often spawns of higher q.

2) What trees are you growing and why?

QUALITY
walnut (general quality)
spruce (bough, tar)
mulberry (silk)
laurel (druid's cloak)
apple (apple pie and curio)

COSMETIC
plane (opposite of spruce, dark wood with pale bark)
conker (grayish)
hazel & chestnut (warm)
cypress (mystical)

OTHER
king's oak (lots of wood)
olive (wine bottles)

3) How many herbalist tables are you dedicating to planting?

depends on need of the village. for an average player only one or two is enough, they sprout fast and 4 at a time is enough.

4) How often are you growing the different trees to improve quality? e.g, replant of mulberries once a week, replant of blackthorn bushes twice a week.

as soon as it grows a seed. mulberry grows one around 30% of full size, walnut around 22%. non-fruit trees are much slower (i believe spruce only grows one at 98%), which is why fruit and nut trees are much better for quality.
bushes are fast too, but provide much less wood obviously.

[Venant]

I'll edit my original post to include that formula. I believe I got the formula off one of the Wiki pages -- possibly Wikia. A lot of the Wiki information is either outdated or conflicting, which is why I wanted to create this "guide" as a compilation of more recent developments and as a thread for people to ask their questions.

After a few generations of tree growth, I would have started out my "slow-growing" trees in larger batches (possibly 16x q10 seeds). I originally thought 4 Elm trees would be sufficient. Only one grew to full maturity (q14) while my stunted q18 hasn't provided seeds. This gave me two q14 seeds to grow the new generation. The faster-growing bushes and trees are flourishing due to early seed-gathering times. I have loads of chestnuts, blackthorne bushes, cherries, and plums of high quality. Mulberries & apples are moving along nicely. But the Kings Oak / Elm trees are growing very poorly due to a bad start...

If you are beginning tree farming, you can grow your nut / fruit trees in 4-8 to start but I'd recommend starting with 16 of the slow-growth trees. Gather a ton of seeds of the same type before beginning a batch. This will help mitigate death of saplings on the Herbalist Table, stunted trees in the ground, and give you potentially a higher quality start on the 2nd generation. Also, since most of the trees only provide 2 seeds anyway, your future generations have diminishing returns.

Upgraded our kiln & pots and the herbalist tables since I wrote the first post. Still looking for olive seeds !

[Ysh]

One correction to you is that skills ''Druidic Rite'' is costing 150k LPs, not 125k.

[Thedrah]

had to go on a 2-3hour hike to find plane tree and olive >>

druidic rite and i have had goodluck with trees. probably 10% of stunting and only one dead so far

[min_the_fair]

I believe I got the formula off one of the Wiki pages -- possibly Wikia.

Yeah, that's your problem right there. Don't use the Wikia, while it's great for some games it's much less so for Haven. While there are still some out of date pages on the Ring of Brodgar, it is being updated - and indeed you can update it yourself, whereas editing the Wikia seems to attract a lot of attention from Wikia staff, who revert edits if they don't like them.

[synaris]

olive (wine bottles)

exactly what do olives have to do with wine bottles? dont you mean cork?