My spin on Farming

Farming is a craft of the production of goods that can be harvested and sold to players of other crafts to create a finished product. Main idea is to create goods required for cooking and alchemy, while being able to product home decor.

Cultivating would be the gathering of resources used in Farming throughout the land i.e. 'Potato Roots' and the ability to fertilize soil.

Cultivating:

I don't have names for items that could be gathered. This is more of building the system. However, I do have a few concept items based off of historical British farmer Charles "Turnip" Townshend. During the medieval era, farmers started using two new methods developed by Mr. Townshend. The first was to use turnips as a cleansing crop to allow the land to be hoed to kill weeds, and clover was grown to replace the nutrients in the soil that the crops had depleted. The second method is called marling, which is when rich subsoil with a poorer sandy soil to produce better quality crops. The marling process consisted of spreading clay containing carbonate of lime onto the soil, thus restoring much needed nutrients to grow crops.

So using this historical information I created a 3 tier prototype system where you start off as an apprentice. As an apprentice, you don't use advance methods to tend to your fields and just plant your crops. You develop into a journeyman, leaving new methods such as the turnip and clover technique. You then advance into a Master by using enriched soil mixtures to produce a better crop.

Farming:

Minus the obvious growing of the crops I have come up with two concepts ideas to increase production of the craft.

Cross-pollination would be an ability to take two materials either already grown by the farmer or gathered from the wild and produce a single unique item. These materials could be used for alchemy and cooking. The mechanics behind cross-pollination is to take two resources and create a single resource of higher grade. So this would work well to create a demand for these goods from farmers so that they can turn around and sell the finished product to cooks or alchemist.

Decorations, you could be able to Cultivate rare plants and Farm them for housing decorations. Also the ability to cross-pollinate interesting decorative creations, all of these items would be for house use and trade market. I would have a small range of common plants, some rare plants, and hard to find very rare plants. Or some mix of a common plant pollen and a rare pollen to create a different type of rare plant.



Well community, please let me know what you think. I know this is still an incomplete system but would be nice to get ideas on farming. What cool things could we grow, how would be gather their resources, etc.

Cheers

 

I like these ideas. Another game I've played has a cross-breeding thing where you use two types of seeds together to produce a third type.

I do hope farming is more than just producing food though, someone in another thread mentioned bee keeping, which I think could be combined into farming, and the products used for both food as well as other things like candles or even in crafting weapons (bees wax for bow crafting or something maybe?)

I also like the decorative item ideas, who doesn't want to grow flowers to decorate their castle? Or happy trees for their yard? Or maybe even flower wreaths to wear or something (for weddings maybe?)

 

So very light-weight genetics would really add to the game IMHO. I wonder if quality will be a part of the farming system.

The decoration element mentioned would be excellent if flowers would be implemented. Getting genetics in there would be relatively easy I think.

Bring on the farming. I'm a ******** like that.

 

Farming ideas expressed here are very appealing to me.

 

Farmville works really well. They even put it into WoW. I'm open to ideas, but don't over complicate something that 100 million people have tried and like just fine.

Make the simplest possible system and add complexity later.

I'm more interested in raising sheep on my land if i can.

 

@Primerib: Sheep, haha i remember in UO taming so many sheep and locking them in my house so every other day or so i can skin them for the wool, then wait for it to grow back. Memories! hah I was thinking the same thing reading this about farming, not only about crops but animals as well. Sheep for wool, cows for milk, chickens for eggs, things like that.

1 farmer makes the food or crops for people and animals, another farmer buys the food to feed to their animals, and get the good food FROM their animals, and sell it to other people to make things like bread, cheese, cookies, pizza, and whatever.

 

@Legenis,

Would also be things like grafting and growing from cuttings if they were modeling after real farming. I don't know whether those would be worth putting in the game, I haven't thought about it.

But flowers like roses are basically highly cultivated, roses as they grow wild are a bit different. Would be nice to have a rose garden, then maybe pick rosehips :<em></em>)

I never really understood the comment that farming wasn't part of a 3 tier system. If 3-tier means gathering materials, processing them, then converting them to consumables, then farming is tier 2 in a 3-tier system. <em>1.</em> Foraging for seeds, cuttings, etc, which is the gathering stage. <em>2.</em> Farming, which is the processing stage. <em>3.</em> Cooking and baking, which converts them to consumables, the final stage.