Farming

To be honest I haven’t really played since they reduced the retail price of items grown by farming,
I have played this game since it’s conception but I feel I have have ran out of patience.
I have messaged Elgarion about farming but he was quite firm that I shouldn’t make money From selling to vendors. Well….. I planted millions of garlic and sold them to other players but no other crop was worth it.
To grow millions of anything takes many deeds and time but because it’s against the norm then I have had no support in growing anything apart from garlic.
If I grow red apples it actually costs me money to sell them, no player wants to buy apples.
If I kill elves by the dozen I can sell their scrap weapons for a profit to shop owners but not plants?
I haven’t seen Lord British for ages and who remembers Darkstarr? I loved watching Chris doing his early morning streams whilst world building, I live in the UK and could tune into twitch and watch the guy work. This doesn’t happen anymore, I have 4 accounts and I pay a monthly subscription for each one. I think this is going to end.
I see from the last twitch that experience is being added to fishing yet no love is coming to farming, my own opinion is that the devs or those that continue to add bits to their stream don’t actually like farming and therefore no love is forthcoming.
It appears to me that garlic is the only crop you can plant in order to make money.
Chris take the lead and do something, providing colours to roses will make me no money, these guys are having a laugh

 

Are you looking at the leaderboard? The 2 most used (and grown crops) are currently Garlic and Nightshade. Those 2 are definitely in demand (over 45K are used over 30 days). Also garlic is also used for the most consumed item in the game, Teleport to Zone scrolls.

 

Garlic is a very quick crop and I find it hard to fit into my real life, I grew many millions and got bored. A lot of work but as I said the only crop worth devoting time into. Why only garlic? Or nightshade. There are so many crops to grow and only 1 or 2 worth growing. I thank you for your reply but I can’t help feel that because the devs don’t like farming on a large scale then it’ll never happen. I can mine now and do much better because at least one dev likes mining and it’s had a lot of love. Agriculture is dead unless you grow garlic. I have now unsubscribed from my accounts. I think my time here is coming to an end.
I’ve let other players use my property including a castle deed, I have two Pots that lie idle, certainly one in the new lands has hardly been visited. it’s more than farming though, there is something I can’t put my finger on. Maybe it’s this pandemic that’s irritating me but I can’t help feel my second favourite game (behind UO) is segwaying down an unwanted path. The devs used to put so much love into the game, the world building is still great, the story is still great, something is missing though

 

Keep in mind how our game has been developed in stages.
I know Elgarion didn't take our crops for no reasons, but I'm certainly not happy that such a developed part of our game suddenly had few legs left to stand on.
I think our agriculture was sacrificed to the crafting god or the hunting god or the first to be sacrificed to the god of gold sumps.
I still have many greenhouses with no real flavor left in planting things in them.
The decline in venders combined with the zombie death of agriculture has made "townie life play" sort of bleak.
Makes one thing it's sort of like the Irish potato famine, yet instead of driving the potato farmers to America, in this case it drives agriculture players to think of other farming games to play.

You have a point, but I do have faith something will come, because something was definitely taken away.

I was never a gold motivated mercenary about farming. It was the variety of things to grow that gave it some RP flavor fun.

It's not on my sota burn list of things yet,

but it's certianly on my disapointment list.

~Time Lord~

 

What they're doing is eliminating a way to easily create gold with little effort. Making items in this game and selling them to players is not the easiest thing to do. It takes planning, countless recipes, tons of materials, a way to advertise, vendors to sell on etc... It's hard to do.

Planting stuff and selling to an npc takes no effort, it just takes time (set up deeds and planters) and money(to buy deeds, seeds, and water). They want to eliminate that because if everyone did it on a massive scale it would screw the economy.

 

So if players have arthritis and find it hard to hunt harder monsters due to control issues, screwing the economy is much more likely to come from some guy afking in a dungeon and selling the artifacts. I’m not convinced you understand the time it takes to do farming properly, if you miss one watering all your profit is lost. It take so much time to do it right. Yes, I made a few thousand profit in a day but I could spend the same time killing low level monsters and selling their loot, mining is another simple way with no risk to make alot of crafting so and money (ore is always sort after) yet why target farming?
Your statement “plating stuff and selling to an npc takes no effort” is completely wrong sir. It takes a lot of time and dedication to ensure a watering is not missed.
I’m afraid I’m arguing for no other reason because I feel why would a game allow a skill that on its own can not make money on npc’s yet all other trade skills can

 

How much money do you make crafting armor and selling to NPCs? How much gold/hour do you make fishing? Not every trade makes money on its own, most of them need processing to make them work, actually the majority of them

 

We agriculturists need this... and in a meaningful way.



The scheduals agriculture must keep are very difficult and very risky, and the time spent harvesting is no different than the time any player spends hunting.
Time placed into the game should reflect value in return to the player, no matter what activity the player is doing. Differing very much from how easily the hunter or the crafter can just stop what they're doing and maybe come back next week to spend a few hours, agriculture take time, more time than hunting, more time than crafting, because both of those activities can be easily picked up and put back down, "yet agriculture cannot!" Agriculture is a time demanding activity which cannot be simply walked away from.

If Agriculture is going to be compared with other activities, then get the average gold made per hour and then compare.
This was a click decision, and farmers weren't in the click. Our development team adjusts gold values on things all the time through their drop rates, but when it came to agriculture, it was held to a different standard.

I've never been happy with what happened. I know what gold and wealth can be easily hunted up in a matter of 30 minutes in high content and how much can be hunted up in low content and it doesn't lack at all, both are vastly more than agriulture can, given any time parameter as mesurement.
~Time Lord~

 

I don’t want to sound negative, I only wanted to show my frustration. I loved this game and put a lot of hours into over the years. As I stated earlier it may be frustration brought on with my real life lately but I honestly feel unless feedback is given then nothing will change. I agree the devs can’t please all the people all the time but violets comment on ‘how much profit can u make selling armour’ is a prime example of what I’m saying. Making armour actually earns you money, if course you earn more selling to other players but the basic concept is you make money. Growing apples actually costs you real money. I have less gp buying seeds and spending days growing them selling them for less than I paid for them? This is nonsense

 

I would really love to see agriculture-based daylies or quests to encourage various farming. Love the idea of the turn-ins!

There is money to be made in farming. You can still double your money planting cotton and selling to an NPC. Water usage was dropped as well to just a 10% chance of using water which saves me thousands on growing costs. It isn't sexy (and it is really annoying to grow), but if I need to make money by selling to an NPC, cotton is still my go-to crop.

Now for selling to players (which is I believe the true goal of the price changes), I operate a vendor in Britt Mart for grown goods. I sell out fairly often and have regular customers but it is not a steady income. I'm sure if I put more effort into it I could do much better, but for my current activity level just one vendor works well.

Where I get really, really excited with farming is custom bulk orders. When someone orders 500k of crops and I can bring all my farms to focus towards a single goal. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it is crazy exciting If there was a way to simplify connecting player needing bulk orders to folks providing them that would be pretty nifty. It would be neat too for the turn-in idea but the reward would have to be worth the cost.

Now with all that said, I can make 10k in 30 mins farming KEC with just loot gold and then selling the looted equipment to Pip. In addition during that same time period I usually end up with up 4 - 8 artifacts, supply bundles, Zinc, mechanical parts, and other various valuable things. Folks that can't kill quite as fast should still be able to come close to make 10k in 60 mins there. I can make 18k from a large cotton farm over the course of 60 mins total of planting/watering/harvesting but that time is spread out over several sessions.

 

Let me testify about what all I know through having taken 2 weeks to explore almost every POT and Mega-Farm in our game, "They were empty!" and the ones that had anything grew the only two plants that matter for magic.

Let me testify of what all of all else I saw surrounding those Mege-Farms...

Their homes were filled with dragon heads and most of their fields were empty. It was easy to see what was happening there. The Hunter hunted top level areas because the evidence was everywhere. Their hunting afforded them many land deeds and those land deeds allow those hunters to plant only once or twice, which nets them what their magic needs to go out and hunt even more.

These were not the types of players who hoe potatoes for their gold. Not even cotton could catch up to the wealth they pull in in a single hour of their play time.

AGRICULTURE FACT:

• There is a finite amount of crops a player can tend, no matter if they farm all day, and farming all day is not easily done, yet still will never catch up to that hunter's or that crafter's ability to make more gold than the farmer in a much shorter amount of time in sota gaming devotion.

~TL~

 

Talk about comparing apples to oranges.

Effort may have been the wrong word to use, but you don't really have to do any critical thinking to farm. It's just plant, water, and keep your schedule. I had 5 lots to farm on a while back before batching was put in, so I know how farming works.

You know how much effort it takes to get to a high enough level to do all the things you guys are talking about?

You can farm with new characters and hardly any skills. You could be ready to go in a week of playing just a few hours a day.

It takes countless hours to get to end level in this game. Not to mention you need high end gear and you have to learn how to kill mobs, where they are, where to sell etc.

 

Tirrag, I wholeheartedly agree with you sir. I sold many millions of garlic, like you I had my vendor and couldn’t grow enough. Garlic is a very quick crop and to dedicate my greenhouses to this proved time consuming. Every 2 hours ! If I missed one then thee was no profit. if there was a chance of an artefact I could sell or turn in quests like the fishermen get may make farming worthwhile.
I actually just mine ore now, there is tons of xp to be had and no risk. But to make money farming gives some folk the shivers? They should actually try it large scale and work out the outlay, time spent etc against afking in a dungeon or creating a fishing script that will prove lucrative once they increase the Xp as alluded to this last stream.

 

Adam, your statement “You can farm with new characters and hardly any skills. You could be ready to go in a week of playing just a few hours a day.” Is simply not true for large farms. Without spending a lot of Xp on skills the area you plant, crop or water is tiny and the time spent on each one of these actions will prevent you from any large scale operations.
Anybody who has/had a large farm would agree. My skills in each are at least 150, that might not be a lot now that crafting xp is given away now but it was hard for me

 

It's not just apples, letus, peppers tomatoes, "I still can't make a f'in salad?" LOL We can talk about what was left and how it's valued, and when we're at the top of the food chain in hunting, does that actually translate into gold sump like apples now do? I know armor takes a beating and all that, but it's not just the gold, agriculture was gutted as a common activity for any player looking to "RP" call themselves a farmer.

As a farmer, I need to make vodka, I need to produce bio fuel to burn in something, I need a donkey with a wheel attached to it for water, not attach water amount to my skill. And I also take issue with the way agriculture skill is made so easy to get, while other skills are not. Where's the blight? I need blight! I need fertilizer, I need infestations and I also need drought!

Our agriculture can be a game, but we're killing it and I just don't see how apples and coconuts (ect) were somehow exploiting our game ~TL~

 

Completely agree with you!

That might make it go faster, but you don't need 150 to do it. And yeah you can earn millions of prod xp an hour now.

Look I agree farming needs love. But removing npc selling is the first step to making it better in my opinion.

 

Great ideas Time lord. Some positivity is all I’m looking for. I know I come across negatively but It’s certainly not my intent.
Let’s make farming large scale worth it again

 

Maybe it wasn't exploiting, but it's boring and wouldn't you rather have farming be more fun and interactive? So you actually have to plan out what to grow and where to sell things. Maybe pass in some dailys, or quests or something. I just hate the idea of planting things and selling them to the npc, I really don't see how that brings anything positive to the game. It could be so much greater than that. But being able to sell to npcs is what is holding it back from becoming anything worthwhile.

 

Both of these things are bannable offenses...

Anyways, I am not against farming as a money making method, not at all, but what I think should happen is

1. Any farmable resource should be removed to NPC vendors so the player farmers will be the ones who can make money from this and not the NPCs.

2. Find another way to produce gold from farming. Already they added trophies (pumpkins) decorations (This release!). I know that people who brew their crops can make millions of gold per month, and a lot of these crops serve as materials for crafting recipes such as dyes.


Just find a better way than just gold inflation. FYI, I was against making loot from mob tables as good as they are, I wanted different types of drops that could make loot more interesting, but tons of gold + junk weapons, that's something I was against as well. Money in this game is already too easy to come by, and keeps getting inflated by all our demands and requests when the gold income before was actually good.

Once again, I repeat myself, but why not find another solution than just printing money?

 

While I agree, I have no idea why what crops they took, from being able to sell to npcs, were so harmful or needed to be rendered useless.
Everything we are told is harmful (on this side of the rehtoric) can still be accomplished through the magic 2 and cotton. "What did we have against letus?" What did letus do that was so bad?
~TL~