Looking for the Fun in Farming

[DeadlyPencil]

maybe they could implement some "weeds" that only grow on crop tiles. You could harvest it and use it for something cool.

[Skorm]

maybe they could implement some "weeds" that only grow on crop tiles. You could harvest it and use it for something cool.

i dont see how that makes it " fun" anyway, farming isnt supposed to be fun, its supposed to farming, some ppl can find it fun, some ppl might not, point is, you gotta do it, or have someone else do it, fun or not.

[Jackard]

In my opinion, farming is a tedious, low LP grind. It is just not very fun. I only do it because I need full nature for my silk (and my trees).

Perhaps some already submitted suggestions could be implemented to lower the tedium — larger seed bags, auto sort to plant high Q seeds first, faster seed dump options for useless seeds, etc.
Less tedium means more game time spent doing other, more fun stuff.

To make farming more attractive and fun; increase the LP, have rare and useful items like potions, "Lost" treasure, and useful artifacts (weapons, armor, tools and enchanted items) be "discovered" during plowing or harvest.

Finally, with increased rewards, include some risks like acts of Jorb er, I mean, God, natural disasters like storms or locusts, a set harvest "window" for optimum Q. Lots-O Stuff.

I can see some problems with this suggestion. Farming could become the new LP grind. Found treasures could be too good and natural disasters too harsh. Having a harvest window, while very realistic, could also make the game a grind, like silk is now and steel making was.
Still, I would be willing to risk this to add some spice into this aspect of the game.

coriander did you see this viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4869

also, your item suggestion doesnt really sound like a good idea but it might work rather well if you used Curiosities instead

[Punkk]

To make farming more attractive and fun; increase the LP, have rare and useful items like potions, "Lost" treasure, and useful artifacts (weapons, armor, tools and enchanted items) be "discovered" during plowing or harvest.

Your whole topic looks like a "turn H&H into Farmville" crisis but this particular paragraph made me lol too hard.

Also farming is already a good way of gaining LP. People are just too lazy to understand it.

[Oddity]

anyway, farming isnt supposed to be fun, its supposed to farming, some ppl can find it fun, some ppl might not, point is, you gotta do it, or have someone else do it, fun or not.

This is a video game. Why should we just accept the farming feature as being a chore that can't be fun and "someone has to do"?

[Jackard]

i dont see how that makes it " fun" anyway, farming isnt supposed to be fun, its supposed to farming

what.


what??

[burgingham]

Farming was the best LP in world 3 plus its some of the best food.

Where the hell was I when this was true?
I'm pretty sure it was hunting, since animals were plentiful and world 3 was pre-LP nurf.
Followed by Warri's kuksa/apple script

It was farming, nothing came even close. Grinding flour/spamming doughs that is.

Chars like this were purely made by farming, no hunting involved:

[dra6o0n]

Increase the possible number of tools to use in farming.
These tools assist in the growth of your produce and will come with LP benefits too!
Look at it a la harvest moon style, the tool determines how efficient you farm specifically, whether it be watering, fertilizing, or bug catching.

Watering - The current farming system has you plowing/digging a plot of land, then putting seeds on it. Why not improve on this by making it mandatory for certain crops, to be watered in order to continue the growth process. If a crop isn't watered in days, it will wilt and die, possible dropping seeds on death (a low chance).

Watering gives you a fixed amount of LP for each plot, and better tools will allow you to water in a larger radius (3x3). To balance this, have a efficiency ratio between low level tools to higher level tools.

Say the lowest level would be a wooden watering can, which can water 1 plot of soil, and gives a fix LP rate, while draining a small amount of stamina.
The next level (3x3 watering radius) uses up 8x more stamina (base efficiency of -1 plot of land).
And so on, as the level increases, the efficiency of watering increases a bit, making the use of large watering tools more effective.

But there's also a downside to using these tools, if you don't meet the stat requirements in between the different levels for the tool, you will use up more stamina and apparently take more time to water than usual. This is because using a super high level tool while your new to farming will put a large strain on you, and causes the efficiency to work against the player.

Fertilizing - Fertilizing involves uses items to increase the quality of the plowed land. It works like normal fertilizing methods, throwing better quality natural items into the soil can increase the crop's QL and maybe even accelerate the growth. Unlike watering, fertilization gives a small fixed LP per plot, and it doesn't use any tools to use, but will use fertilizing related items in your inventory to do so. Earthworms can be used to fertilize soils for example. The item's quality level and type has different effects on the soil.

Fertilizing a crop can work like character stat raising from foods... You Feed the plot of land items and it'll give them one of three possible traits to use for 24 hours:

Growth - By feeding the crops items that boosts this, the crops can be produced sooner than usual.
Quality - By feeding these, the crops will gain 1 QL level up over the base QL of the crop.
Specialty - By feeding crops these types of items, will enhance it's effects on players when the crops are eaten directly (i.e: pumpkin slices).

Bug Catching - Yes you heard me, bug catching! Well it's not from harvest moon, but is from Mabinogi. The idea of bug catching is that you pit your stats against this skill to catch bugs on the field. These bugs aren't actual mobs, but doing this action enables you to increase the crop's chances of growth (there's a small chance of the crop dying from bugs). To use, you basically stand in a spot, and activate the skill. You'll catch bugs within a 3x3 area, and the duration takes a while and does cost some stamina.

These three features should make farming at least more interesting.

A handy skill for knowing the soil's statistic, is probably a magnifying glass or a skill that uses the player's perception to know the status of the soil.
A tool to work with laying seeds can be a seed spreader tool, which can be interacted and have a slot with 9 spots to put seeds in. When used, it will spread the seeds out in 3x3, with the player in the center.