Wild Windsown Weed does not have sustained purpose as it is. Introducing farmable seeds and plants only used when new plant is added to the game, but once you start a farm you'll barely need WWW ever again. So here is couple of (hopefully simple) ideas which could give WWW hunt some meaning:
- recycle "trash pool" of drown/questgiven items: after drying WWW at the table there should be a chance it will turn into some seed/plant from the pool
- both "pool" and new random result should be affected by herbalist's table quality for the initial transformation only (unlike sprouting wheat and barley).
PRO:
Implementation of the quality change should help new players to start faster while not buffing top farmers.
This will also go on par with tree planting and gardening (better equipment = better the result).
Also will help develop usually snail-slow paced cultures like hops.
Newly introduced plants will quickly get to a meaningful level in quality.
Higher quality of everyday food (less cheese slavery).
Will not affect initial world development (pure farmers will still gain plants Q faster than boosting carpentry+smithing+masonry for better trees and tables).
CON:
Herbalist's tables price will probably skyrocket
If pool recycle implemented, abusing "initial transformation" might end up in barrels of drown seeds (while also spreading these to other people).