Amish Farm Science

Amish's Farm Science Notes

This is my personal theory crafting page, if you are looking for the main Farming Page, this is not it. It isn't that I am antisocial, that page is just getting very cluttered and I wanted some place to organize my thoughts.

Background

I am using a MushClient written by Lorderon which I have made a sourceforge group for. Using it will make collaborating with me easier, though we're working on a common language for recipes.

Farming "rounds" are around 12 seconds long so now I have my ticker set for 4 seconds to get good coverage.

Basic Principles

• There are five basic observables, which are probably independent. I will call them Brown, Gold, White, Yellow/Green, and wetness. The first four seem to be related mainly fertilizer and the last is mainly showing the quantity of water. There is no direct observable for air as far as I can tell, though like water it also changes the quantity of fertilizer in the soil.
• The mushrooms, insects, and weeds are also variable, though this seems to be a more higher level thing it might be worth looking at for difficult lower level plants.
• The observables are visible with no equipment by looking at the ground. The different types of fertilizer (and other things) affect these observables.
• When you do things (fertilize, water, etc) it takes effect immediately. I was fairly sure about this, but someone was talking about a delay on the craft line so I thought I would mention it.
• The plant only checks is conditions occasionally.
• There is a minimum (and at least sometimes a maximum) of these observables (and non-observables) required for growth. If the plant has too much or too little, it dies. The messages do not seem to be related strongly to any particular reason for death or growth, just more of a growing/dying thing. There are "strength" indicators to some of the emotes that indicate you are growing a higher quality plant. The smell of angel feathers is a higher quality growth than cumin and sage for example.
• Values change in between growth emotes, though the plant seems to remain happy if you get the observable back up to the proper value before the next growth tick.
• The resources do not decay past the initial values unless something else consumes that resource. This can be something the player adds or it can be the plant.
• Plants that are growing consume resources. I am not sure if a dying plant does.
• Plants that stay happy their entire growth are Superior. Bad rounds can decrease the quality of the plant. Legendary seems to be random, probably more likely with higher skill.

Initial Soil Conditions

Basic Dirt (crafting area & majong field):

The light brown soil is tinged with some flecks of gold, a few flecks of white, and glistens a sickly yellow-green colour. The soil is bone dry.

Richer Dirt (Old McDonald's, Hippie, and Chaos Gardens):

The light brown soil is tinged with some flecks of gold, many flecks of white, and glistens a sickly yellow-green colour. The soil is somewhat dry.

Scale

The observables have the following scales. Thanks to Kurosh for pointing out that there was a "brown" color. I think I must be blind sometimes.

#	Brown	Gold	White	Yellow/Green	Water
0	pale	few	few	Yellow	Bone Dry
1	light	some	some	Yellow/Green	Somewhat Dry
2	dark	many	many	Green/Yellow	Damp
3	black	swath	swath	Green	Soaked

Fertilizer Effects

I am doing some experements with fertilizer which I am keeping the data here: Amish Fertilizer Page Keep in mind that the soil doesn't start at "zero" in all categories.

So one of the reasons that Fingolfin's (et al) Method works reasonably well is that it saturates (or nearly so) the observables of three of the four categories. As long as the observable isn't toxic to the plant there's a fair odds of getting some growth sooner or later.

#	Fert	Brown	Gold	White	Yellow/green
10	Happy Ed's	black	many	many	green
10	Alphabet	dark	swath	swath	yellow-green
10	Hippie	black	swath	many	green
10	Smurfy	black	swath	swath	yellow-green
5	Happy Ed's	black	some	some	green-yellow
5	Alphabet	light	many	swath	yellow-green
5	Hippie	dark	some	swath	green-yellow
5	Smurfy	black	many	swath	yellow-green

Water Effects

Water increases the wetness of the soil, but also decreases one of the observables by a comparable amount to how much water was added. From what I can tell, there is only one "wetness" variable, though since there is an instrument for measuring something about water, this isn't clear yet. We'll see when I get to 10, so I suppose I should try growing something I can level off of at some point.

Water	Black	Gold	White	Y/G
Gulf of Mexico	Down
R'yleh				Down
Wayhaven		Down
Atlantis			Down

Air Effects

Air	Black	Gold	White	Y/G	Water
Detroit					Down
Genlab	Down
Royogi-Pei		Down	Down
Serinth	Down

Pesticides

Air	Black	Gold	White	Y/G	Water	Mushrooms	Insects	Weeds
Ant Cave
Hunch
Mount Perplexus
Murus Faralain

Techniques

Currently I am starting off with:

fertilize lots Smurfy fertilizer
fertilize lots Smurfy fertilizer
fertilize lots Hippie fertilizer
fertilize lots Hippie fertilizer
water lots Gulf of Mexico water
water lots Gulf of Mexico water
water lots Gulf of Mexico water
fertilize lots Happy Ed's fertilizer
fertilize lots Happy Ed's fertilizer
fertilize lots Happy Ed's fertilizer
fertilize lots Happy Ed's fertilizer
fertilize lots Happy Ed's fertilizer
aerate lots Genlab air
aerate lots Genlab air
aerate lots Genlab air
aerate lots Genlab air

Which gets you:

The dark brown soil is tinged with a swath of flecks of gold, a swath of flecks of white, and glistens a sickly green colour.  The soil is soaked.

The general idea being that as it decays away on its own it will hit the magic combination and start growing. This doesn't often work in practice, but it seems to be similar to what other folks are doing. I just use a more broad spectrum basis. If most things have a category they are averse too, this could explain why Fingolfin's method works better since it only has a few observables high. I might try something where I maximize one observable at a time.

This also fails to take into effect bugs and mushrooms, which I only just recently started looking at.

Recipies

I am attempting to determine actual target resource levels, instead of in terms of what to add. Practically speaking, I am not sure this is as useful except to beat out random fluctuations.

Level 1-6

• (+str) Rasperies -- yellow-green (default level)
• Nantes Carrot -- requires some white, air
• (regen) Tangerine -- possibly only air, had to add air most ticks to keep it happy
• (+con) blueberry -- gold many
• (+str) valencia orange -- white some
• (+str) yellow bean -- (gold many)

Level 6-10

• (+1 int) Navel Orange -- some white flecks, damp (?)
• (regen) 'Cantaloupe -- Many gold flecks, some white flecks, damp (?)

Cooking

• blueberryyellowbean added +1 in con/str, sp regen