Seed Decay and Wild Windsown Weeds

[barra]

Wild windsown weeds should draw from a pool of decayed, dropped seeds in the same way that fishing includes items dropped in water. This would make it easier to get out-of-area crops and later in the world provide a higher quality starting point for new players. Because crop growth is linear, grinding to catchup later in the world is kind of pointless. A starting player is likely to ignore WWWs and simply ask a neighbour for some good seed. This would give people another route to catchup beyond somewhat-risky begging.

[Drakemoore]

I have mixed feelings on this to be honest. In most cases it's not like you have to start from Q10 when you begin farming, I found WWW as high as Q40 so far this world and I haven't explored that much.

I can understand the plight of coming into an existing world and having to play catch up, I've done it numerous times. However I don't think we should reduce the need to interact with other players for trade purposes, new player or not. Haven is a persistent world, for so long as the world doesn't wipe anyways. I find it strange to give incoming players a huge boost in any way to equalize them with existing players, except I like the Mirkwoods, though they're very finite in the long run of a world. Equalizing new players with existing players in the "system" does away with the time the existing players have invested into the game if those equalization don't come through trade or conflict.

An example, for me coming into an existing world in Legacy some years ago. My friends and I created a village, we were using lowish quality seeds, and we began trading with some of the larger villages. A few cubboards of foragables later we had ourselves some decent wheat and carrot seeds, metal tools, and we used that to help further our trade relationships with those villages by providing food goods as well as intelligence on their enemies. I would never have had to do any of that, or have any interactions with other villages if I had just been given the high quality seeds off the bat.

[Glorthan]

edit: actually wouldn't this lead to lower quantity crops like grapes being super rare?

[barra]

edit: actually wouldn't this lead to lower quantity crops like grapes being super rare?

Yeah, people rarely throw away pepper or barley. I think an implementation would have some of the WWWs draw from the original plants rather than the ones discarded by players and how much rarer the less-common crops are would depend on that balance. The types could be balanced instead, otherwise most seeds would probably be flax.

[GenghisKhan44]

Hmm... there is some precedent for this. In previous worlds I often came late to the game, and just as often began farming WAY earlier than most beginning characters do earlier on (at least, judging by this world). I was farming q10 and below crops before I could even kill a fox or build a palisade.

The reason I was able to is because there were tons of abandoned fields and settlements and random planted crops lying around, free for the taking.

But whether we would want to make this a natural phenomenon... Hmmm...

[Ysh]

It is making some sense these seeds will get scattered by winds naturally. Maybe WWW picked nearby where some high quality crops are having a grow (within a few minimaps or such) can get a bonus to seed quality when dried?