Question about crop quality change through farming

[Bertelemy]

The wiki says the range of quality change for crops is -2 to +5. But I am seeing values outside of that. For example, I planted q77 pumpkin and got q84 pumpkin when I harvested. Another time, I planted q71 grapes and got q79 when harvested. Also, sometimes crops that I planted in the same area in the same time has different values after harvest. For example, I planted 5 q110 beetroot in a row and got 3 q113 ones and 2 q114 ones. What is going on?

[The_Blode]

In the interest of giving you a speedy answer on a dead forum:

Pretty sure the wiki is out of date on that particular subject and that crop value changes are a lot wider for crops that take a while to grow.
As for differing qualities of the same crop, it could be that you're on the edge of two map 'grids' and some crops are working on one grids RNG while others are working with another.

I'm sure someone more informed can correct any mistakes I've made and elaborate a bit further but there's the quick dirty answer for ya

[Bertelemy]

Thank you very much

[Sevenless]

Adding pointless detail since I was testing it this world:

Potential crop quality change is proportional to the number of days between planting and first possible harvest. This causes problems for leeks for example, because their first harvestable stage only gives 1 leek so it can't be used for quality gain. This is based off the default time required though, any crop growth speed nodes effectively act to increase the rate of quality gain. Mind you, unless you're a bot most of the speed node boosts get lost anyway so it's not super relevant unless you hit a huge one. My carrots this world grow in 3 days instead of the base 4, so that does help.

Crop "quality rolls" were originally supposed to need "5 hours, or 3 minimaps distance" to be "completely unrelated". My testing this world did not support this however, it seemed that only quality of seed and time of planting mattered. Distance had no effect within 4 minimaps. I did not organize any more extreme tests (same low seed Q, different provinces, different continents, etc) but for the sake of any sane person you can consider it to be purely time based.

If you have huge fields (I think I do 2.8k or so tiles of carrots) and get distracted mid plant you'll definitely notice the quality difference as a gradient over time. The gradient comes as the possible quality in the field travels from the last 5 hour roll to the next type idea.

[Mr_Bober]

Crop "quality rolls" were originally supposed to need "5 hours, or 3 minimaps distance" to be "completely unrelated". My testing this world did not support this however, it seemed that only quality of seed and time of planting mattered. Distance had no effect within 4 minimaps. I did not organize any more extreme tests (same low seed Q, different provinces, different continents, etc) but for the sake of any sane person you can consider it to be purely time based.

Would be worth testing if 2 different people plant it in the same area. Since distance is no longer the thing making a difference, what does? Are neighbouring villages stuck with each other's timers?

[Hickupp]

Leek => Carrot.

If some players near the corners of the world have the same crop-change result ... its global. Would eliminates the need to search for some minimap distance in this.

Are you sure its not "(only) time of planting mattered" ? (never tested with mixed qualities myself)

[landreaum]

The game has a lot of catch up technology that no one sees, when you aren't the cap crops can jump somewhat nicely, the +5 is more when you are the leader in crops in the world, they will only go up +5, the rest of us can have massive q jumps, I've seen upwards of 20-50q jumps last world

[Vanko]

5 rl hours or 5 in-game hours?

[Hickupp]

5 rl hours or 5 in-game hours?

Not sure if that 5 hours is outdated data or not.
Its at least 2 Real hours. Which is a bit over 6.5 in-game hours.
Leaving that 5 as potentially in-game hours. Which is a bit over 1.5 real hours. Which is plausible.
(Game to real time ratio: 3.29)

Best option is to super charge your farming and look for www's. Might potentially work best around suspected high quality crop farms.