by Sevenless » Sat Jul 27, 2013 2:43 pm Following Xcom's experiments, I have "unlocked" the techniques of the master villages... the secret of high q wax! Ok, honestly not really, but I've some refinements to add and a simple explanation for how to wax farm to anyone who wants to get in on it and is new. Here are the basic mechanics from these infernal contraptions (summarized from xcom's work, copied from my guide, and modded a bit from my own findings):
-The beehive itself has no material based quality, don't waste good wood on it.
-Beehives store crop changes up in 20 minutes intervals and then decide what (if anything) they produce after that time.
-Planting a tile counts as a crop change for production, but it counts at 1/2 the crop's quality. Normal farming will produce wax roughly half the average quality of the plants in the radius because of this.
-To get any wax output from hives, there's a minimum number of tile updates.
- No information is saved between updates, if you fall under the minimum crop changes for production you get nothing.
-If the area unloads the beehive's quality is reset to 100. Server resets and alt crashes will force the hive to reset as well.
Additions from my own discoveries
- Tiles mature in a random pattern over roughly an hour. They seem to age in batches, so I'm guessing the 20 minute "tick" the hives are using also assigns the crop's age.
- Beehive quality is set to the quality of the first crop change around it (they don't start from zero, or the quality of material inputs).
These refinements have a couple important things to tell us. A beehive that has been capped down to 100 can be recovered by destroying it and putting a fresh one out after the harvesting is done. Crops mature over roughly an hour, meaning the tile changes of a garden is split over three 20 minute segments. This is actually why 90-95% of wax in the game is created during planting time (and is exactly half crop quality), very few people grow a large enough batch of the same crops to produce wax other than with luck. Different crops mature at different speeds and will rarely change in the same hive cycle.
Can you get away without botting this?
You definitely could. The maximum production per plants planted in 20 minutes is 12 wax (4 maturations, three 20 minute intervals for maturing). You cannot split it between hives. The "lower threshhold" for efficiency is still multiple wax/cycle so you end up topping over 5 wax per hive. However, the number isn't insane really. I've done it botless by harvesting wax once in the middle of the production with my afking alt that was keeping the area.
However, this relies on ***bulk*** crop planting. The number for efficient yield that I've decided to go with for this example is 240 tiles of carrots. That gave me 6 wax and 1.0L of honey. This means you'd need to farm on average 40 tiles of crops per wax produced, or 800 tiles to make a cutthroat cuirass. I was farming those carrots and replanting though, and of it I only managed to plant 150 within the 20 minute period. If you had two people farming it, you'd get a better density and maybe the full 9 wax from the harvest, but it did work nicely enough for my tastes. 90 tiles of farming and 120 tiles of farming were both too low for the production of any wax, I may change the number as I experiment to see where the best efficiency lies with these.
I *think* that the full crop circle is overkill and less efficient per wax/tile farmed than it could be. But a quick chat with xcom suggests bigger is more efficient. More tests and refinement to follow.
How to Farm Wax - Quickstart version, no botting required, Yields ~6 wax/gen, Planting speed important
-Plant 240 tiles of carrots (wax q will = lowest carrot q)
-Build a fresh hive after all planting is done (cannot overlap any crop except the carrots)
-Afk an alt beside the hive for the 12 hours to finish the carrot generation
-Harvest wax at least once sometime after 6 hours to prevent wax loss
Optional: If you want to build a log cabin for hive re-use if you're running the farm day/night feel free to. Otherwise, leave your hive from last run outside during planting and harvest an extra wax and honey at a lowered quality before replacing it.
My setup:
