Agriculture changes: The good and the bad

It was exciting to see that Agriculture was a focus in R46. However, the implementation of bulk planting leaves something to be desired. :/ The bulk watering function was well done.

The issue with bulk planting is it assumes you just want to randomly plant one seed anywhere in a given area, which is quite often incorrect. When ways to improve agriculture was brought up some time ago, I posted a forum thread on what would be a very useful way to do this, and the response from the devs was positive (https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...ons-to-improve-agriculture.64211/#post-672100)

However, this unfortunately was utterly ignored when it came time to do the actual implementation. This is problematic, because it's often the case that you want to plant specific beds with specific items, or portions of a specific bed with a specific item (For example, I may want one row to be corn, the other row to be tomatoes). Instead, we have a haphazard "I'll grow in a random circle" planting situation. That probably works well for some folks, who don't care about what ends up where, but for those of us who do, it doesn't really help at all. It should be possible to keep the current method as well as making it possible to implement what I'd described before. So I hope that will be pursued.

 

At least in the latest QA build, my planting target is only 2x2. It's not a large circle like it was in previous QA builds. 2x2 is big enough to speed up planting while being small enough to plant bed by bed.

Is that not the case for you or anyone else?

 

That's not what I'm looking for. Please re-read what I wrote. I'm looking to bulk plant specific rows in a bed with specific seeds. You cannot do that with the new batch planting stuff.

As far as the planting radius, if you unlock the skills at the crafting trainer, you can increase the radius significantly.

 

It does make more sense from a conventional agriculture (which is what we have with these planting boxes) perspective to have the circle actually be a long line.

And watering actually looks quite silly since you can wave your can around in front of you and water something 11 meters away. We need a Kobold hose.

 

The water plants function takes so long to animate it does not water the plants much faster than the current way.

The trainers arent training "Sow Seeds Bonus" to me. I cant even use that skill to test the 2x2 you mention above without training. Is there a master trainer somewhere? My water plants is 30 so it should be trainable. The harvest plants skill trained just fine. But not "Sow Seeds Bonus".

 

As per the R46 instructions, to batch plant you drag your seeds to the utility bar. Then click on the seed. If you have the necessary ingredients in your inventory, a planting reticule will appear.

 

I am so glad the "sow seeds bonus" is now being trained by all crafting trainers!!! This will make agriculture so much more fun!!