Life is Feudal Official Forum

[Willbonney]

I've now played the LIF:YO stuff now for a good 380 hours, and think I've come up with some suggestions that would really help improve ya'lls game.

1. Reduce the amount of time it takes to complete menial tasks.
As of right now, it takes 12 seconds according to the logs to "snap a branch." It's the same for getting a sprout, gathering plant fiber, gathering herbs, and hundreds of other every day tasks. A lot of these should have their timers reduced, up to half. A 100 quality oak tree has 120 branches. That would take at minimum 24 minutes to empty if you were precise with your branch collecting. To put it another way, 10 plant fibers + 2 branches = 1 snare (144 seconds minimum). That's about 2.5 minutes of menial tasking for something you often will produce 20 of at a time.

Farming a field of say 50x10 blocks, so 500 squares. The plough is awesome with reducing time to plow, however planting is still the 12 second deal. 500 x 12 = 6000. That's an hour and 40 minutes, to replant a decent sized field, minimum. That's not including the plowing, fertilizing, or harvesting of said field.

As for the lucky chances, I personally don't see it making that much effect. The times when you were "lucky enough to figure out how to do this task faster" messages, it looks like it might be a 2 second bonus, so 10 seconds instead of 12 for the same task.

So please, reduce these times, as right now it's what is killing the fun factor of the game for me personally.


2. Change the Warehouse Inventory windows to have seperate "folder" style tab options. Basically, multiple inventory windows.
My idea for this would be, say for the small warehouses, there would be 3 200 mass sections of it. The first tab being labeled "barrels" for stuff that would normally be stored in barrels (soil, clay, rocks, water). The second section "Cold Storage." Stuff like apples, fresh produce, wild meat, beef. And the last section being "Shelves." Basically for anything and everything else.

For the large warehouse, something similar, but with bigger mass availabilities.

As things stand currently, it is very difficult to keep things organized in warehouse storages with just a single inventory window. It's very difficult to the point of absurdity.


3. Multiple personal inventory options.
A normal person has many different ways of carrying items. Pockets, a backpack, a purse, a sack. I do not hold everything in a magical "inventory." I like the carrying of stuff on my back, but it annoys me a bit that in a sandbox style of game, that I don't have a big sack for carrying ore, or small bags hanging off my belt to hold small items. The back slot shows a quiver when I have arrows equipped, but it too magically appears and took nothing to create.

Please give me more personal inventory options, more than that magical "hold all" inventory that's currently in the game.

[Terminus_Zaire]

1. In regards to menial tasks, I completely agree, and believe it should be fixed similarly to how they did Apples.
Right now, you have the chance to harvest a percentage of the apples hanging from a tree depending on your skill level.
For example, at level 10 you harvest maybe 2-3 apples at a time, but at level 90 you can harvest 30 apples in one bundle. Doing something like this for sticks would be fantastic, and plant fiber is much too hard to gather (I mean, it's just underbrush...).

2. and 3. - Inventory Management

I'm just going to lump these into, inventory management and storage systems.
Right now, they are quite lacking.
It's my understanding that they plan to include more storage bags such as bags, pouches and sacks. I look forward to seeing these implemented, as well as more advanced methods for players to store materials in constructed buildings (being able to use the barrel that's sitting in the corner of that Herbalists shop).
http://lifeisfeudal.gamepedia.com/Category:Inventory

[Orsus]

Unfortunately with the apples it is a percentage base of the remaining total, instead of the beginning total used for each successive harvesting of the apples.

As for reducing the time it takes to complete a task I could not agree more. It is annoying how long it takes to complete the menial tasks, when you need 30 or more of the items to build.

[Tymefor]

Im sure cast times will be shortened on many on the menial tasks. But have you played on 1xskill level multiplier?? In a way you are grateful for the repetitiveness as it takes ALOT of tasks to skill up. I see this as adding depth, but understand how many don't. The 20 traps your talking about would end up sort of taking you 1 in-game day to create deploy and harvest. To me that's quite realistic as if you were doing it in "real-life" that's about how long it would take. That's the sort of depth I like.

Not sure which way balancing will end up being directed, but lately ive been thinking a lot about how fast we really want to be progressing in the MMO. To that end ive been looking at what I can achieve in a "game day" and seeing if that feels realistic.

[Jezbelle]

+1 to shortening cast times.

Even if it is halved, you would still have to put in a considerable amount of work to complete something.

Yes, this is suppossed to be a hardcore game, but even so, it is currently 2x harder than hardcore haha. Hopefully YO has taught us that it is OK to make adjustments.

[Tymefor]

We have yet to see how the minigames affect collecting and crafting. they will possibly change how we feel about the grind alot. Even if its just the added variety of options.

[Valerius]

1. I disagree here. First of all, 20 snares is alot. If it only took a few minutes to produce that many it would make catching animals trivial and coops worthless. Keep in mind that if playing in a group you should eventually get some coops and barns up, which will (once they are working properly) lower the amount of trapping needed.

Second, a 50x10 farm plot is huge. That would be a crop yield of 500-6000. Don't get me wrong, a bad crop yield would suck, but it is meant to. If you are planting food, an average yield would feed all but large clans for weeks. If farming flax, it would produce enough flax to keep someone busy for several days turning it in to fibers.

A larger clan would need those kind of yields, but they will have several farmers working together, which will reduce the time required to complete it. If you are playing solo or in a small clan, you really shouldn't need that much on a daily basis.

2. I would like to see a way to better organize warehouses.

3. I believe this is already planned.

[General-Zod]

1. I disagree here. First of all, 20 snares is alot. If it only took a few minutes to produce that many it would make catching animals trivial and coops worthless. Keep in mind that if playing in a group you should eventually get some coops and barns up, which will (once they are working properly) lower the amount of trapping needed.

Second, a 50x10 farm plot is huge. That would be a crop yield of 500-6000. Don't get me wrong, a bad crop yield would suck, but it is meant to. If you are planting food, an average yield would feed all but large clans for weeks. If farming flax, it would produce enough flax to keep someone busy for several days turning it in to fibers.

A larger clan would need those kind of yields, but they will have several farmers working together, which will reduce the time required to complete it. If you are playing solo or in a small clan, you really shouldn't need that much on a daily basis.

2. I would like to see a way to better organize warehouses.

I pretty much agree to everything said here...

[Tymefor]

If the craft buildings had inventories that would solve a lot of the sorting problems. Then we could just craft out of the building inventory and clan members stock it up. The warehouse would be for finished goods only. Also fixing the bug where everyones version of the inventory/bagspace window is different would make life a lot easier. but really I like the open bag window atm. To me its refreshing to see something different from other games.

[Valerius]

As of now warehouses seem mostly used to protect inventory. Once claims are implemented things will change. We have several crates and barrels inside our workshops to keep crafting specific items organized. We also have a trade cart that is sort of a dumping ground for finished tools and food. Once claims are implemented we would store weapons and armor in containers inside our keep. I see the warehouse being used more for raw material like ore, billets, flax stems, etc.

[Willbonney]

1. I disagree here. First of all, 20 snares is alot. If it only took a few minutes to produce that many it would make catching animals trivial and coops worthless. Keep in mind that if playing in a group you should eventually get some coops and barns up, which will (once they are working properly) lower the amount of trapping needed.

Second, a 50x10 farm plot is huge. That would be a crop yield of 500-6000. Don't get me wrong, a bad crop yield would suck, but it is meant to. If you are planting food, an average yield would feed all but large clans for weeks. If farming flax, it would produce enough flax to keep someone busy for several days turning it in to fibers.

A larger clan would need those kind of yields, but they will have several farmers working together, which will reduce the time required to complete it. If you are playing solo or in a small clan, you really shouldn't need that much on a daily basis.

That would be the minimum sized flax farm you would want/need to make 1 of the most basic articles of clothing per day.

2. I would like to see a way to better organize warehouses.

3. I believe this is already planned.

1. 20 Snares is not a lot, it is to catch what is considered the "lowest level" of farm animals. When I do my dung catching (as that's mostly what it's for), I often makes 20 and set them out, and get to work on 20 more, just to fill 2.5 coops with animals. It takes roughly 4 hours. That is way to much for what I consider to be the "low level" of something.

Second of that part, a 50x10 farm you consider to be large? Well, again, it's not. 1 Linen cloth takes 25 Hanks of Linen, that's 125 flax stems/fibers. The most basic of clothing, "Rags", takes 2 Linen Cloth to make, so 250 flax stems/fibers. To make the next level, is 5 linen cloth, or 625 stem/fibers. So how can you think that a 50x10 flax farm is a lot? That seems to me to be a minimum for anyone wanting to specialize in tailoring.

[DichBach]

I am getting close to 500 hours in--most of which has been playing on my 1x skill progression server, i.e., the speed at which the MMO is projected to operate--and I'm thinking about posting my own list of suggestions.

Still, given so much of the game is incompletely implemented I've been holding off, trying not to bother them with comments that (a) may prove very shortly to have been irrelevant and not useful or (b) inaccurate and invalid relative to the way the game will actually work.

Since you have opened the can of worms, I'll add my two-cents to the discussion, at least with respect to the couple issues you raise.

Have not looked at warehouses so cannot really comment. I was under the impression based on what other players have said on TS that they basically were worthless right now?

Along these lines, one thing that certainly needs to be looked at: a dropped "bag" (which I think of as being a pile of stuff on the ground) can hold I think 10,000 stones. This is enormous compared to what "real" containers can hold, including if memory serves the warehouse.

Referring to the 'casting' time issue . . . I agree that the time to complete actions is "long," . . . still I'm not comfortable asking them to shorten it, particularly by a factor of half.

Instead, what I'd like is a slider bar in the config GUI for servers: want your fast casting? Find a server where it is set that way. Want your "atmospheric" protracted duration casting? Find a server that has it set that way.

I would imagine it is possible for a slightly competent modder to change these parameters already, but in order for a thorough test of the emergent effects of the different speeds to be conducted by the community of "testers" (which is evidently what all of us are based on the in-game load-screen hints ).

Make it drop dead easy for even a trained chimp like me to set the casting time however I want and then you got a good setup to allow each group of testers to try it out their own way.

Even better would be if there were some system to ethnographically study how the different settings tend to play out on servers.

My guess is that the servers with fast settings on casting time would have a similar effect as fast settings on skills and other actions.

[Valerius]

1. 20 Snares is not a lot, it is to catch what is considered the "lowest level" of farm animals. When I do my dung catching (as that's mostly what it's for), I often makes 20 and set them out, and get to work on 20 more, just to fill 2.5 coops with animals. It takes roughly 4 hours. That is way to much for what I consider to be the "low level" of something.

Second of that part, a 50x10 farm you consider to be large? Well, again, it's not. 1 Linen cloth takes 25 Hanks of Linen, that's 125 flax stems/fibers. The most basic of clothing, "Rags", takes 2 Linen Cloth to make, so 250 flax stems/fibers. To make the next level, is 5 linen cloth, or 625 stem/fibers. So how can you think that a 50x10 flax farm is a lot? That seems to me to be a minimum for anyone wanting to specialize in tailoring.

The game has a lot of things that have yet to be implemented. Coops are not a good source for dung, once we have bigger animals barns will produce much more. I also doubt breeding is working as intended. I imagine once the game gets more refined farmers should be able to maintain coops/barns through breeding. Also, I wouldn't call them low level. Chickens are your only source for feathers needed for arrows. It's not like you will stop trapping/farming chickens once you get access to bigger animals.

And yes, a 500 plot farm is big. First of all private claims in the MMO are...250-400 cells (differs between wiki and the faq) And like I said, an average yield on that plot would be 3000 flax fibers. Not sure how many tubs you have, but with 10 you are looking at 30 hours to turn all of that in to fibers. Depending on how much you play you are looking at 2-7 days before you finish that work. Keep in mind you are waiting 1 hour for it to finish and would have plenty of time to kill making traps and plowing/planting more crops.

[Willbonney]

I don't know what you're doing to think you get 3000 fibers from 500 cells... with that size of a farm you never have the dung to keep it fertilized, so is all normal soil for the most part. A good harvest from it is out of 10 cells, you have 5 1 stem, and the other 5 either 2 or 3 stems harvests. How you're getting 6 per cell, gotta say, wish I knew your tricks.

On my server with the normal 3 hour plant growth cycle, you get 1 harvest per day. With a 500 cell farm you're looking at 800 flax stems on a good harvest, closer to 600 with a bad one, and 1000 with a great harvest, no where near the 3k.

1000 stems = 500 fibers = 100 hanks = 4 linen cloth. All for that is basically enough cloth for ONE, just one, article of slightly useful clothing. What you are saying is that a player who specializes in nothing but growing and making the materials to make a single article of clothing, should not be able to produce the materials for just one useful article per day... I have issue with that.

[DichBach]

My observations suggest to me that flax yield on fertile soil ranges between 6 and 12 flax stems per cell. 500 cells would be a huge farm in my opinion and yield between 3000 and 6000 flax stems.

I never fertilize and I never use anything but fertile soil. If you plant on depleted soil you may well get a lot lower yields.

[Willbonney]

My observations suggest to me that flax yield on fertile soil ranges between 6 and 12 flax stems per cell. 500 cells would be a huge farm in my opinion and yield between 3000 and 6000 flax stems.

I never fertilize and I never use anything but fertile soil. If you plant on depleted soil you may well get a lot lower yields.

That must be some mod or setting on your server. The server I play on is unmodded and is the "basic" game. Fertile soil you sometimes get 6 on a good harvest, but again, that's fertile soil. On a 10x50 plot, you aren't going to dig up 500 soil every day to lay down as top soil every time you want to replant, so you will be replanting on soil, not fertile soil.

[Valerius]

I don't know what you're doing to think you get 3000 fibers from 500 cells... with that size of a farm you never have the dung to keep it fertilized, so is all normal soil for the most part. A good harvest from it is out of 10 cells, you have 5 1 stem, and the other 5 either 2 or 3 stems harvests. How you're getting 6 per cell, gotta say, wish I knew your tricks.

On my server with the normal 3 hour plant growth cycle, you get 1 harvest per day. With a 500 cell farm you're looking at 800 flax stems on a good harvest, closer to 600 with a bad one, and 1000 with a great harvest, no where near the 3k.

1000 stems = 500 fibers = 100 hanks = 4 linen cloth. All for that is basically enough cloth for ONE, just one, article of slightly useful clothing. What you are saying is that a player who specializes in nothing but growing and making the materials to make a single article of clothing, should not be able to produce the materials for just one useful article per day... I have issue with that.

No mods. I've done some experimenting on my server. I planted several cells in soil, fertile soil, and fertilized soil. Yield is the same, quality is different. Yield seems to be determined by weather, which will be luck of the draw. If all you are getting is 1-3 per cell you are having some very bad luck.

I don't bother with dung at the moment, once we get bigger animals it will be worth collecting. For now it is pointless. I just dig up bad soil and dump it outside my fields and dig up fertile soil elsewhere to replace it. I don't dig up my entire field every day. I do parts of it when I'm either waiting on tubs or crops to grow.

This is a team based game. Specializing in tailoring doesn't mean much if you are expected to collect all of the resources needed to produce your goods. I mostly handle tanning racks and tubs and produce finished tailoring products. I also plant and harvest flax. But we have other farmers that help contribute flax. I don't mess with animals, we have another farmer that handles that. A few other players have hunting that help keep our coops full.

5 players working together are going to produce much more than what 5 solo players working by themselves will produce.

[Willbonney]

I don't know what you're doing to think you get 3000 fibers from 500 cells... with that size of a farm you never have the dung to keep it fertilized, so is all normal soil for the most part. A good harvest from it is out of 10 cells, you have 5 1 stem, and the other 5 either 2 or 3 stems harvests. How you're getting 6 per cell, gotta say, wish I knew your tricks.

On my server with the normal 3 hour plant growth cycle, you get 1 harvest per day. With a 500 cell farm you're looking at 800 flax stems on a good harvest, closer to 600 with a bad one, and 1000 with a great harvest, no where near the 3k.

1000 stems = 500 fibers = 100 hanks = 4 linen cloth. All for that is basically enough cloth for ONE, just one, article of slightly useful clothing. What you are saying is that a player who specializes in nothing but growing and making the materials to make a single article of clothing, should not be able to produce the materials for just one useful article per day... I have issue with that.

No mods. I've done some experimenting on my server. I planted several cells in soil, fertile soil, and fertilized soil. Yield is the same, quality is different. Yield seems to be determined by weather, which will be luck of the draw. If all you are getting is 1-3 per cell you are having some very bad luck.

I don't bother with dung at the moment, once we get bigger animals it will be worth collecting. For now it is pointless. I just dig up bad soil and dump it outside my fields and dig up fertile soil elsewhere to replace it. I don't dig up my entire field every day. I do parts of it when I'm either waiting on tubs or crops to grow.

This is a team based game. Specializing in tailoring doesn't mean much if you are expected to collect all of the resources needed to produce your goods. I mostly handle tanning racks and tubs and produce finished tailoring products. I also plant and harvest flax. But we have other farmers that help contribute flax. I don't mess with animals, we have another farmer that handles that. A few other players have hunting that help keep our coops full.

5 players working together are going to produce much more than what 5 solo players working by themselves will produce.

I understand that and for the most part agree. A tailor is going to want/need sources of flax, wool, and silk. It's considered a skilled craft, where as the gathering of the materials is considered more basic farming.
However, the point of the OP still remains accurate. Regardless of where you got the 1000 stems to turn into 4 linen cloths, it's still 1000 stems that at minimum took (using 2 per harvest, 500 plantings, using 12 seconds per planting) 6000 seconds to plant, or an hour and 40 minutes. It then takes more time to wait for it to grow, and then harvest, which for whatever reason seems to be a 3 second timer instead of the 10/12. So what we are looking at here is likely 3 man hours worth of work to gather enough materials, and then the time it takes to turn the stems into actual linen hanks (1 hour per 10) to make 4 linen cloths. So say 10 tubs, 100 stems per hour, there's another 10 hours of "waiting" and not true work. That's enough linen to make 2 sets of "Rags," you need 5 cloths to make the Simple Male Clothes and some other stuff, or you could make 4 out of the 6 Novice Padded armors.

If this does not seem excessive to you, let me put it in perspective, to make a full set of any of the metal novice armors it takes me less than an hour, and the leather stuff about 3 hours just because of the 2 hour waits on drying then tubbing the leather. To make a full set of the padded armors through tailoring, is between 12 and 15 hours worth of work/waiting for the tubs. If you do not see this as a problem, well, I don't know how else to explain this issue I have.

[Tymefor]

when is it going to sink in that WEATHER affects yield rate not soil quality. soil quality affects flax quality NOT QUANTITY. sigh

stop speculating about whats going on and just jump on your own server and TEST it. It takes like 15 mins of stuffing around in GM mode to figure it out. spawn some quality 1 soil and a quality 1 flax seed. change the weather and accelerate the growth rate. bang sunny weather whole time and on harvest 6 flax result on the WORST possible soil and seeds.

[Willbonney]

Don't think the discussion was ever the one your are speaking of. My first discussion was about the time it takes in gathering, then moved on to the whole flax/tailoring/farming thing. Was never a discussion about the whole soil quality/weather effect of harvesting. For that argument, there are plenty of other discussions on this forum.

[Willbonney]

when is it going to sink in that WEATHER affects yield rate not soil quality. soil quality affects flax quality NOT QUANTITY. sigh

stop speculating about whats going on and just jump on your own server and TEST it. It takes like 15 mins of stuffing around in GM mode to figure it out. spawn some quality 1 soil and a quality 1 flax seed. change the weather and accelerate the growth rate. bang sunny weather whole time and on harvest 6 flax result on the WORST possible soil and seeds.

But to add to this, someone did post they he saw no difference in harvest from type of soil, whether it is plain soil, fertile soil, or fertilized soil, in quantity. That information is appreciated, as I was wondering personally.

[Valerius]

I imagine cloth will eventually get balanced, I agree it takes a little too much to produce cloth. Then again we really don't use cloth for anything at the moment. Clothing doesn't serve any purpose other than aesthetics and nobody bothers with the militia skill line since there are no horses in the game yet. If they don't change things moving in to the MMO I would be disappointed. But the solution wouldn't be making it easier to plant 500 cell farms.

Think about this though, personal claims are going to be ~250-400 cells(as I've stated before, I've read conflicting reports on the size) Town claims will be larger, 3850 according to the wiki. Finding room to plant 500 cells worth of crops is going to be difficult.

But a 500 cell farm is very big. I've already mentioned that a yield of 2 per cell is bad, very bad if you keep getting that...Your server has way too much bad weather.

[Willbonney]

I imagine cloth will eventually get balanced, I agree it takes a little too much to produce cloth. Then again we really don't use cloth for anything at the moment. Clothing doesn't serve any purpose other than aesthetics and nobody bothers with the militia skill line since there are no horses in the game yet. If they don't change things moving in to the MMO I would be disappointed. But the solution wouldn't be making it easier to plant 500 cell farms.

Think about this though, personal claims are going to be ~250-400 cells(as I've stated before, I've read conflicting reports on the size) Town claims will be larger, 3850 according to the wiki. Finding room to plant 500 cells worth of crops is going to be difficult.

But a 500 cell farm is very big. I've already mentioned that a yield of 2 per cell is bad, very bad if you keep getting that...Your server has way too much bad weather.

Eh, bad crops occur based on the "season/yearly" cycle. Currently I'm in the yearly cycle that is poor for farming, it will swing around to a better season soon enough. Maybe one day someone will track the good planting seasons/days, or there will be something in game to track that sort of thing, but that's something to start tracking later when the game is more complete.

[Tymefor]

Yeah but the clothing doesnt require the sort of effort to wear that armours do. when you look at the amount of effort that goes into actually Equipping armour as opposed to just crafting it. The amount of time for clothes makes more sense.

[Valerius]

I tend to view clothing as a mere status symbol than anything else. In the MMO clothing is going to be at the bottom of the list for things to use flax for. Rope will probably be the first priority early on. Next up would be armor. Keep in mind you aren't going to be making just 1 set of armor for each militia man. You are going to want to have several sets so that you can rearm people who are killed in battle. I'm also not sure how equipment maintenance will work but If you need cloth or hanks to repair damaged armor you will need to stock for that as well. Only after sufficient armor and rope is made and enough reserves are saved would I consider using cloth to make clothing.

Maybe clothing will add some sort of bonus to crafting, that might make it more worthwhile.

[Willbonney]

I tend to view clothing as a mere status symbol than anything else. In the MMO clothing is going to be at the bottom of the list for things to use flax for. Rope will probably be the first priority early on. Next up would be armor. Keep in mind you aren't going to be making just 1 set of armor for each militia man. You are going to want to have several sets so that you can rearm people who are killed in battle. I'm also not sure how equipment maintenance will work but If you need cloth or hanks to repair damaged armor you will need to stock for that as well. Only after sufficient armor and rope is made and enough reserves are saved would I consider using cloth to make clothing.

Maybe clothing will add some sort of bonus to crafting, that might make it more worthwhile.

If you look, is already clothing in game that gives crafting bonuses. Only Blacksmith and Cook outfits can be mad at the moment, others take wool so can't be made. Monks outfit can also be made.

[Valerius]

If you look, is already clothing in game that gives crafting bonuses. Only Blacksmith and Cook outfits can be mad at the moment, others take wool so can't be made. Monks outfit can also be made.

I've not read anywhere that they actually do anything. I know they have a skill requirement to wear. Guess it would be possible to test but with a blacksmith shop and kitchen we are already making 100 quality stuff.

In other news, i noticed the FAQ was updated and Bobik actually answered a question asking about looking in to the amount of flax needed to make cloth. He said they would look in to it.

[DichBach]

when is it going to sink in that WEATHER affects yield rate not soil quality. soil quality affects flax quality NOT QUANTITY. sigh

stop speculating about whats going on and just jump on your own server and TEST it. It takes like 15 mins of stuffing around in GM mode to figure it out. spawn some quality 1 soil and a quality 1 flax seed. change the weather and accelerate the growth rate. bang sunny weather whole time and on harvest 6 flax result on the WORST possible soil and seeds.

Two issues:

1. In my experience farming skill level is a major influence on both yield and quality. I've done no systematic observations though.

2. Someone commented on these forums that "spawned chickens do not breed the same as 'natural' chickens." That may be completely false, but I do not know. If it is true, then "testing" by spawning things in GM mode may in itself be erroneous.

We need one of the Bitbox Staff to step up and start establishing the real story on all of these matters. I'm happily still playing the game, but until each and every thread in which these sorts of speculative discussions arise quickly gets an authoritative source, i.e., a dev stepping in to say "Yes" or "No" or "Well sort of, but here is how it works . . ." any attitude about anyone else 'not getting it' seems a bit presumptuous.

[Willbonney]

when is it going to sink in that WEATHER affects yield rate not soil quality. soil quality affects flax quality NOT QUANTITY. sigh

stop speculating about whats going on and just jump on your own server and TEST it. It takes like 15 mins of stuffing around in GM mode to figure it out. spawn some quality 1 soil and a quality 1 flax seed. change the weather and accelerate the growth rate. bang sunny weather whole time and on harvest 6 flax result on the WORST possible soil and seeds.

Two issues:

1. In my experience farming skill level is a major influence on both yield and quality. I've done no systematic observations though.

2. Someone commented on these forums that "spawned chickens do not breed the same as 'natural' chickens." That may be completely false, but I do not know. If it is true, then "testing" by spawning things in GM mode may in itself be erroneous.

We need one of the Bitbox Staff to step up and start establishing the real story on all of these matters. I'm happily still playing the game, but until each and every thread in which these sorts of speculative discussions arise quickly gets an authoritative source, i.e., a dev stepping in to say "Yes" or "No" or "Well sort of, but here is how it works . . ." any attitude about anyone else 'not getting it' seems a bit presumptuous.

+1

Just today, on the small area of 20 cells in which I did fertilize the soil with dung, was getting 4-5 stems per harvest. The 180 cells that were replanted on soil, 1s and 2s, with 5 three stem harvests. Not enough of a data pool to make real conclusions, but will start saving up 50 dung and do a 50 dung fertilized and 50 soil plantings over the course of the next couple weeks.

[Tymefor]

that's not really a test.

Im sort of done with testing harvest yields as I cant refine results without ALOT more work. Firstly don't test on a normal server that's just silly. You don't have enough control of all the variables and cant standardise easily.

I ran that test for you on a private and yet again weather is the biggest contributing factor. To summarise most of the testing please try and get into the headspace of RNG. A calculation is occurring when we harvest and PERHAPS during growth.

I say perhaps because in playing around with different weather during growth stages I can return some false data. I personally think this is more of a broken RNG than intended as the results sit WELL outside any estimated results.

to summarise. On harvest for each of the 3 weather patterns a range is determined. (not fully confirmed need larger sample) Shower 1-7 Cloudy 3-9 Fair 6-12. The actual yield amount varies for each of those patterns WITHIN the range of expected RNG for the sample sizes I've checked sofar.

Interestingly, Farming skill and soil quality MAY (and I repeat MAY) have an effect on the actual result WITHIN a particular range. playing with both of those settings in a standardised test does seem to result in a slightly higher yield (5-8%). But with such a small difference I would need a MUCH larger sample size to confirm which I really cbf doing with only a potential 8% difference.

So if it is intended that skill and soil affect yield rates their contribution to the RNG calculation really needs to be buffed for it to make any meaningful difference to gameplay.