Farming is too annoying

Pastah · 2019-07-23 11:38:05

I try to be a farmer for towns mainly focusing on compost but it's just too annoying hauling everything around. There's never enough soil and never enough water. Ontop of that, it's almost impossible to have a milkweed farm. If you don't have a backpack, good luck even trying to get anything done as you need so many items on hand like a bowl and a sharpstone.
Anyone else think farming needs to be overhauled?

ollj · 2019-07-23 13:44:54

You seem to chose the more disfunctional cities, a bit sardistic, but thats your choise.

Theres currently plenty of functional cities ingame, with milkweed farms along roads and plenty of all the sorts of gathering and construction happening.

Baker · 2019-07-23 13:58:23

ollj wrote:

You seem to chose the more disfunctional cities, a bit sardistic, but thats your choise.
Theres currently plenty of functional cities ingame, with milkweed farms along roads and plenty of all the sorts of gathering and construction happening.

It's not so much the towns as the people who inhabit them.

Ziv · 2019-07-23 18:38:25

as a farmer your job is to get soil and water not overs get if for you

The_Anabaptist · 2019-07-23 19:02:44

As a child, farming can indeed be frustrating as you have little access to labor saving devices, or there are no clear roads connecting important locations.

As an adult, I find the addition of a cart to be a huge boon. You can load up four filled berry bowls and take them to the carrot patch, mass insert carrot and grind them there, then take the finished bowls to the future compost location. If the straw ain't there yet, take the cart and load up all four sheaves and bring them back to the bowls. Sadly, shoveling shit is just that.

The cart is also nice for those times where you just have to get four baskets and go out of town for soil or a couple buckets and a bowl and drain some ponds.

The_Anabaptist

Pastah · 2019-07-23 19:22:14

The_Anabaptist wrote:

As a child, farming can indeed be frustrating as you have little access to labor saving devices, or there are no clear roads connecting important locations.
As an adult, I find the addition of a cart to be a huge boon. You can load up four filled berry bowls and take them to the carrot patch, mass insert carrot and grind them there, then take the finished bowls to the future compost location. If the straw ain't there yet, take the cart and load up all four sheaves and bring them back to the bowls. Sadly, shoveling shit is just that.
The cart is also nice for those times where you just have to get four baskets and go out of town for soil or a couple buckets and a bowl and drain some ponds.
The_Anabaptist

What if your town has no carts and no milkweed?

arkajalka · 2019-07-24 00:21:33

Ive been running with sheep skin only mode for few days now. Saying backbag is a must is a joke.

Farming is real easy, maybe too easy. People just dont do it and think they need to be focusing more important tasks. It gets out of hand quickly when neglected. Cycle of doom.

I open up nearby wells a lot before the pump and oil gets up and haul the water with carts. If you are not smithing or scavenging you really should be focusing on the water situation. Without water soil is useless and you cant even make it.

If you want milkweed just roam out of town. Just got cartfull of ropes before apoc in like 10mins or so. Other way to go is to just make a new well at nearby green biome with soil. Town gonna need the well anyways. You can just one stack soils and use skewers from the biome. Profit --->bondage parties.

Last edited by arkajalka (2019-07-24 00:23:55)

Morti · 2019-07-24 02:38:14

Pastah wrote:

What if your town has no carts and no milkweed?

Look at https://onemap.wondible.com and you can find any example of what I'm about to show you.
(which arkajalka has already hinted at)

I'm just going to zoom in to a random place and show you one example.

Let's say your family starts at the red X. You were born there, the Eve is recently dead and people are just getting started on virtually everything.

All the 13 of the milkweed in the grassland you started in have been plucked and turned into hatchet, firebow and snare. All the saplings have been cut and used to make nozzle, cook a rabbit, and till the 36 soil around the well where berries were planted and watered using clay bowls from ponds to the north and east.

What do you do?

You run, in any direction, taking nothing with you but a berry from the nearest bush. You run until you find a stone, you crack it on a big hard rock, you cut down 2 reeds from the swamp and make a basket, or 2 wheat from the prairie, smack them with a cedar or maple branch and turn the straw into a basket. If you are in the prairie with a sharp stone and a basket, you dig up a carrot and keep running away from home. If you are in the swamp, find a biome with something edible and grab it or dig up, put it in the basket and carry on.

Eventually you are going to run into another grassland. Note where the food is that you passed as you got there, and where it is as you are looking for milkweed. Keep your sharp stone and a piece of food in the basket. Dig up food as needed, while you make rope from the milkweed, also consider bringing skewers home to help till more soil. Replace your sharp stone with the second rope or skewer. Replace your food with the third rope or skewer. Run home along the path you recall the food being, only eat it if you can benefit from all of it.

Gooseberries are 5 food.
Wild Onions are 6 food.
Wild Carrots are 7 food.
Burdock Roots are 9 food.
Bananas are 9 food.
Cactus Fruits are 10 food.

Try to work on increasing your YUM bonus the whole time by eating something different as you go, but , let's say you are down to 2 pips on your food meter and all you have around is a berry bush, but berries are MEH, you can eat two berries and start chaining food again after you get home.

When you get home, drop the basket of rope and/or skewers off, and head back out. Put a berry in a bowl and eat it for the separate bonus from the berry itself and grab an ear of corn or a carrot while you are there. Carrot and wild carrot count as two separate foods towards your YUM bonus.

One berry from a bowl is 5 food.
Corn is 5 food.
Carrot is 7 food.

Run back out with a single piece of food, back towards the grassland, eat the food when it will give you the full value, grab a stone, make a sharp rock, cut some reeds for a new basket and head back to the grassland to gather more skewers and ropes or thread if needed.

Repeat that until there are an abundance of ropes, thread and skewers.

Then do the same basic thing for iron in the badlands, or, if no one has made a kiln or forge yet, do the same for clay and adobe from the swamp. Then go after iron in the badlands.

You do this sort of thing, because people are counting on you.
Those people sitting by the fire and the farm, who don't know what you know now, are counting on you.
Whether it's gathering rabbits, adobe, iron or ropes; you go out with nothing, you make a basket, and you return the goods home.
Each time you return you make a quick assessment of what the family needs most, then you go out and get it.

If people need clothing, you can get two seal skins at a time by using a sharp stone on a flint rock and a maple branch, clubbing seals with the straight shaft and cutting the skin off with the flint. You wear one skin, you carry the other, you drop them both off at home, and go back out to get more.

Be careful searching the tundras for seals if you are naked, find the seals first while carrying a basket of food or only make short trips into the tundra.

After you get lots of seal pelts back home, bring home baskets of thread from the milkweed of nearby grasslands. Once you've exhausted the milkweed of a grassland and get back home, pick another direction and explore that way. Make your basket out in the field, bring the goods home, leave the basket, grab a piece of food if you need it, and head back out.

Repeat that for 30 years or so, getting skewers, rope, thread, soil and iron. Then, you can either begin farming milkweed, or working with the iron to make the tools needed to make a cart, if, someone hasn't already done it while you were out in the field.

And please, be careful out there, snakes, boars and wolves can easily catch you off guard, so, move cautiously, but quickly.

Don't be one of those people at home counting on others, be the one people are counting on.

testo · 2019-07-24 02:39:59

For me farming is ok, it´s just tedious because the useful crops are limited: berry, carrot, corn, beans, squach, wheat.

Milkweed is useful but getting it from the wild is a lot better than using resources and having to wait for it to grow. I mean its 8 bowls of soil and 4 water to make a single rope.

As The_Anabaptist said, carts are the best option when looking for soil and moving stuff inside the town.

If your village doesn´t have carts you should definitively focus on those before improving your farm (Assuming the first crops of berries and carrots are ready). Carts are pretty much the next tech after iron tools, so they should not be far away unless you are in a very early Eve camp.

testo · 2019-07-24 02:52:17

Just to add to what Morti said, it´s really easy to gear up while you are gathering outside. Reed skirt is amazing early on if you can find enough rope, sealskin is amazing even if not sewed and wheat hats are also amazing. When I get into early camps that have few things around (like one 3x3 berry farm and some carrots and fire) I just pick up a needle and move ouside town to gather rope and gear up. You don´t even need snares, you can make them on the way, hunt rabbits, make a backback and come back with the rabbits. Maybe just forget about the bp and go straight to hunt for iron if there is no iron in town. Farming is not always a priority.

Pastah · 2019-07-24 04:08:17

testo wrote:

Just to add to what Morti said, it´s really easy to gear up while you are gathering outside. Reed skirt is amazing early on if you can find enough rope, sealskin is amazing even if not sewed and wheat hats are also amazing. When I get into early camps that have few things around (like one 3x3 berry farm and some carrots and fire) I just pick up a needle and move ouside town to gather rope and gear up. You don´t even need snares, you can make them on the way, hunt rabbits, make a backback and come back with the rabbits. Maybe just forget about the bp and go straight to hunt for iron if there is no iron in town. Farming is not always a priority.

Spending half of your life outside of town just sounds odd, especially how you probably need to start your own fires out of town to cook rabbit to get a needle to sew clothes.

Last edited by Pastah (2019-07-24 04:08:40)

RodneyC86 · 2019-07-24 04:31:51

Pastah wrote:

testo wrote:
Just to add to what Morti said, it´s really easy to gear up while you are gathering outside. Reed skirt is amazing early on if you can find enough rope, sealskin is amazing even if not sewed and wheat hats are also amazing. When I get into early camps that have few things around (like one 3x3 berry farm and some carrots and fire) I just pick up a needle and move ouside town to gather rope and gear up. You don´t even need snares, you can make them on the way, hunt rabbits, make a backback and come back with the rabbits. Maybe just forget about the bp and go straight to hunt for iron if there is no iron in town. Farming is not always a priority.
Spending half of your life outside of town just sounds odd, especially how you probably need to start your own fires out of town to cook rabbit to get a needle to sew clothes.

You're supposed to bring a needle with you

Pastah · 2019-07-24 10:44:37

Morti wrote:

If people need clothing, you can get two seal skins at a time by using a sharp stone on a flint rock and a maple branch, clubbing seals with the straight shaft and cutting the skin off with the flint. You wear one skin, you carry the other, you drop them both off at home, and go back out to get more.
Be careful searching the tundras for seals if you are naked, find the seals first while carrying a basket of food or only make short trips into the tundra.
After you get lots of seal pelts back home, bring home baskets of thread from the milkweed of nearby grasslands. Once you've exhausted the milkweed of a grassland and get back home, pick another direction and explore that way. Make your basket out in the field, bring the goods home, leave the basket, grab a piece of food if you need it, and head back out.
Repeat that for 30 years or so, getting skewers, rope, thread, soil and iron. Then, you can either begin farming milkweed, or working with the iron to make the tools needed to make a cart, if, someone hasn't already done it while you were out in the field.
And please, be careful out there, snakes, boars and wolves can easily catch you off guard, so, move cautiously, but quickly.
Don't be one of those people at home counting on others, be the one people are counting on.

What if your town is kinda advanced and all the milkweed in a .6 km radius around the town is already gone?

ollj · 2019-07-24 10:55:51

by then you got more speed.

arkajalka · 2019-07-24 17:41:36

"Spending half of your life outside of town just sounds odd"

Roaming for resourses is the main reason why some towns prosper.

"What if your town has no carts and no milkweed?"

Then you get one

"You seem to chose the more disfunctional cities"

You dont choose "functional" cities you make them...

XD peeps. Git good.

Last edited by arkajalka (2019-07-24 17:41:53)

schmloo · 2019-07-24 18:16:41

Farming is easy as hell. You just have to dedicate your life to it, and not expect everything to be lain out before you on a red carpet.

Morti · 2019-07-24 23:05:46

Pastah wrote:

What if your town is kinda advanced and all the milkweed in a .6 km radius around the town is already gone?

A 600 meter radius?
In a lifetime you think you are going to explore every grassland in, whats that 10...15, 15 springs out in every direction?

A=πr²
r=600
r²=600*600=360,000
3*360,000=900,000+180,000=1,080,000
0.1*360,000=36,000
0.04*360,000=12,000+2,400=14,400...

1,080,000
+36,000
+14,400
=1,130,400...

You are asking me what to do if you've looked at over one million, one hundred and thirty thousand, four hundred tiles, and you didn't find one milkweed plant?

What do I say to that?

I understand what you mean.

Let's focus in on the area within a 200 m radius, that's a more discussable 2, 4, 12, approximately 120,000 tiles, a little more, but who's counting, really?

Let's consider what your town might look like.

So now what do you do? No cart, no milkweed.
Well, if I really wanted milkweed, I might do one of many things.

1. Get a shovel and dig up the remaining mushroom pits in the south for their soil, spread it out with a basket, and spread that those piles of 3 into piles of two with a bowl. Check the farms for hoes, if you see two, grab one and take it south, otherwise, go to the smith and craft a head for one, and take it south. You should be able to find a maple branch in the southern grassland that you can whittle once with a sharp stone and turn it into a straight shaft. Attach the hoe head to that and till all that soil.

Now the long journey begins. Take a bowl out with you and head straight in one direction, veering too and froe to check for signs of grasslands. Maybe you have to go 400m, maybe 600m, maybe even more, but you go until you find a milkweed. Wait for it to be seeding and fill the bowl up, bring it back with you along with any seeds you can put in a backpack, if you've got one.

Spread those seeds in the tilled soil and water them with whatever you can get from the wells or ponds nearby, but you should probably get a bucket. and fill it. While those seeds are going, fill the bucket back up and bring it back down to your new milkweed farm.

Don't make the same mistake as the last person and not leave at least one bowl with seeds after those have sprouted. If you're low on bowls and cant afford any for seed, then you get clay and fire more bowls.

2. You could make a cart from one of the least important boxes around town. Go south, grab a maple branch, turn it into a straight shaft, attach it to the box. Check the swamps for a butt log , if there aren't any wooden disks near the saw, otherwise, take an ax to the nearest tundra or desert, pine and dead trees will give you a butt log when chopped down. Cut the log with the saw and use a drill on the wooden disks. If you don't have a separate firebow and firebow drill, you may need to add an arrowhead to the firebow, just use a sharp stone on a piece of flint. The arrowhead can be removed with another piece of flint of needed to build fire.

Now you have a cart, if all has gone well. If anyone complains about you turning a box into a cart, just tell them there is no milkweed and no seeds (if there are no seeds) and that you are going to get some.

I wouldn't take 4 baskets, you'll probably be able to make them on the journey out, but, you can, if there is an abundance of them not being used for anything more important. Reducing the mess of 30 rabbit carcasses down to 10 baskets filled with rabbit carcasses, is not that important.

What you may want to bring would be bowls for seeds, if you want to start a milkweed farm back at home, or just bowls to start a farm in the next grassland you get to, but if you are planning to do that, you may want to bring a hoe head made at the blacksmith, but you can probably just till the soil with baskets of skewers wherever you go. If you see a lot of marked graves around the town, the other grasslands may not have many saplings in them to use for skewers, but it's unlikely you're not going to find any 200 m away from the town, let alone 400, and almost certainly 600 m away. But you can bring a hoe head in your backpack, a basket or the cart, and just make one where you go, if, you plan to grow milkweed there.

You don't like farming, that's the name of the thread, but you want goods that need to be farmed in the long run, otherwise, your long run is going to be even longer.

Farming milkweed for thread, rope and lassos is one of the most the most tedious things in the game, but look around you, at the buckets, the stanchions, the boxes and doors; it has to be done. It's extremely important, especially when it comes down to carts and horses and the transportation and storage of goods.

Once food is remotely stable, farming milkweed is one of the most vital roles in any community.

It's best if you make the farms, whether you need them or not, because someone will. Towns can always use more carts, buckets, boxes and horses. And the easiest way to inject those things into the community, is to go out and gather a backpack and basket with milkweed early to mid game, or farm milkweed mid to late game. Usually that means feeding a shit ton of sheep a crap load of berries and carrots, making just as much again, and turning it into compost, that you can use to grow milkweed, and continue feeding the berries, carrots, wheat and sheep, just to do it all over again.

But you, personally, don't find that rewarding, well, you're just going to have to leg it then. As many biomes over as you have to to find a grassland untouched, but if you do that, please, PLEASE, leave at least one milkweed in every grassland you go to, so that someone in your position later in your families life, who knows what they need to do, can go there with a basket, a bowl, and turn all the unused soil there into a field of milkweed.

Because we know that's what is more often than not what people are going to do with it, if someone 30 generations down the road, does't wander out there and try to make a satellite farm, and potentially small town, out of it.

So, 2. and 3. are basically, you go out and gather milkweed from a grassland farther out than anyone has gone, or, you go out and just get seeds from one milkweed plant, along with any rope you can make, and return home with those.

If you go that far out for rope, get more, save others the time, as others have saved your ancestors the time, life after life. Bring home as much of the resources your town is missing, as you can hold. If that's just rope, well, then your whole life was lived being the rope guy; enjoy the peace that comes from seeing the landscape and the abundance of wild food and animals you spot along the way. I recommend a good set of warm clothing before your journey, and do remember to set a home marker before you set out. If you realize you've forgotten to do that, set one as soon as you can. If you ever get lost, set a home marker and use the arrow to help you navigate as you search for your old home. Never give up if you get lost. Enjoy that life. Facing the elements when lost in the woods, is one of the most rewarding, most challenging aspects of the game, and if you don't stumble into your home before you are 60, you've at least got a thrilling life to look back on, but if you find home in your late 50s just before you die, it's satisfying in ways no one but you will truly know.

testo · 2019-07-25 07:16:45

I am not as kind as Morti to make a full post on how to. I´ll just say I´ve never, ever gone more than 300 tiles away radious to find rope, even in the most advanced town. And I´m not talking about 1 rope but at least a full cart.

Also as Rodney pointed out, you are suposed to take the one thing that speeds up everything while gearing up: a needle.
I understand your problem is farming, but sometimes having all the stuff needed to make a big farm (pen for compost, enough bowls, plates, croks, iron for tools) is priority.
And gatherer/hunter is by far the most important role in a town. Most of the stuff has to be brought from the wild afterall.

arkajalka · 2019-07-25 13:51:37

Yes you simply dont run out of outter edge biome milkweeds. Its a total lie that big towns would harvest every milkweed nearby. Get real, get out of town and see for yourself.

Ruben · 2019-07-25 19:24:09

Pastah wrote:

Anyone else think farming needs to be overhauled?

Lately, I've been thinking about the 'chores' of this game, like:
- Farming
- Cooking
- Gathering
(...and getting angry about no water, hungry sheep, no shovel, no hoe, no axe, no kindling...)
Engineering has certainly been given much more interesting things. The diesel engine alone relies on complex machinery that needs to be built previously.

Still, I do find myself soiling and watering the berries in the first minutes of my life. Why is that?
Being a kid is uncomfortable, you do not posess enough stamina to start doing great things.
But great things are a matter of perspective: Building a berry farm from scratch is actually an achievement.
This gives us a solution on how we could deal with 'chores': There should be no other way to avoid it.
Therefore, I think chores can exist in this game, especially when theres nothing else for you to do. In a well built town, first you only get to do the 'boring' stuff.

How could we implement such a thing more clearly? -> Harsher age restrictions for 'great things', as an example.

One Hour One Life Forums

#1 2019-07-23 11:38:05

Farming is too annoying

#2 2019-07-23 13:44:54

Re: Farming is too annoying

#3 2019-07-23 13:58:23

Re: Farming is too annoying

#4 2019-07-23 18:38:25

Re: Farming is too annoying

#5 2019-07-23 19:02:44

Re: Farming is too annoying

#6 2019-07-23 19:22:14

Re: Farming is too annoying

#7 2019-07-24 00:21:33

Re: Farming is too annoying

#8 2019-07-24 02:38:14

Re: Farming is too annoying

#9 2019-07-24 02:39:59

Re: Farming is too annoying

#10 2019-07-24 02:52:17

Re: Farming is too annoying

#11 2019-07-24 04:08:17

Re: Farming is too annoying

#12 2019-07-24 04:31:51

Re: Farming is too annoying

#13 2019-07-24 10:44:37

Re: Farming is too annoying

#14 2019-07-24 10:55:51

Re: Farming is too annoying

#15 2019-07-24 17:41:36

Re: Farming is too annoying

#16 2019-07-24 18:16:41

Re: Farming is too annoying

#17 2019-07-24 23:05:46

Re: Farming is too annoying

#18 2019-07-25 07:16:45

Re: Farming is too annoying

#19 2019-07-25 13:51:37

Re: Farming is too annoying

#20 2019-07-25 19:24:09

Re: Farming is too annoying

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