Agriculture

The agriculture skill allows players to grow their own food. As of 3.13 crops include:
 * Broad beans
 * Pea
 * Turnips
 * Barley
 * Rye
 * Hemp
 * Nettle
 * Sorrel
 * Meadsweet
 * Golden rod
 * Yarrow

Agriculture provides a good source of food and healing herbs, although there is a long time lag between sowing the crops and harvesting (around 8 weeks). Crops start to become ready in late summer (exact time to maturity, the month when planting is possible and the month when plants disappear can be discerned from flora*.urw files as well), through to late autumn. There are two ways to harvest the crop. All crops except for cereals can be simply picked, but plants and cereals must be threshed to obtain seeds.

Agriculture, in this game, is overpowered. Pre patch-3.13 information follows, which is only partially relevant:/1 fistful of broad beans can be planted in 6 steps. Each step bring from 1 to 4 fistful. So you can have a return from 6 to 24 for each one. Too productive, since Unreal World doesnt have pest or vermint to wreck the harvest. Even if you have only one fistful of beans, by the end of autumn you can have enough to survive the winter, provide that you occasionally hunt some small games to make meat stew. By this calculation, Turnip is the least productive, since 1 turnip can be planted in one step, and each step yield from 1 to 4, so it's a return of less than 4 for each planted. Version 3.13 nerf this a bit: longer growth plant life and less plant per pinch of seeds. And you actually have to hunt/fish to supplement your cooking because of nutrional value of crops are not that great./

In order to start farming, land needs to be prepared with a shovel. This land needs to be fertilized with the remains of a fire.

It's advisable to plant your farm in a different site (at least two sectors away) than your house, due to some quirk of game engine, espcially in case of big fields. Best place tend to be empty grounds which is fairly rare, or empty grounds along river banks. You could plant in farming fields around the villages but it may be too far from your settlement.

Although it's too much work, it's also advisable to plant a big fence surround your farming map. Mostly it's to prevent party of foreign traders from coming through, therefore triggering the item limit bug. It's a quite rare case, however, so it's up to you whether the loss of a crop is worth the hassle of building a 8-map-long fence ringing this map.

You cannot plant more than one plants at the same location, but more than one plant can grow at the same location. The addition of a second plant seems to be random, but there might be more to it - in the field of mostly peas and turnips, with peas prevalent, peas appeared more often. It is possible, that plants grow in accordance to some modification of "Life" game rules.

Veerserif's Agriculture Tips - Small Fields
A popular method is to arrange firewood in a rectangle like the diagram below: 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 etc. where the numbers represent how much firewood is on the tile. Light the tiles with 2 firewood on them, and wait. Of course, other types of fuel can be chosen, but firewood is often used for its quick burning time.

The ground with burnout fire can be prepared with a shovel. You must be quick before such grounds disappear due to a combination of rain and time. As such, it's advisable to burn no greater than 40 steps each time, prepare all of them, then restart to the next patch. The 'prepared' ground take about 2 days to cool down sufficiently to start planting.

Sowing fields grants the largest skill gain. The rate of plant growth is affected by rain and sunshine, and the earliest time a plant can be harvested is around 2 8 weeks (v3.13). In winter, no plants can grow, and when snow falls all plants are automatically destroyed. There's suspicions that plants are not destroyed as such but 'sleeping' beneath snow cover and can be harvested in April. No definite proof/game experience for that, however.

Rhys's Agriculture Tips - Large fields
Firstly, it essential to have fertilized land for your field. This can be obtained easily, especially if the player's settlement is in a wooded area. Here is a simple guide to get quick and good results:
 * Clear the area. If there are any grown bushes, then harvest them. If there are any trees, fell them. Do not worry about large rocks, they will not have an impact on the field itself.
 * The field you are preparing will be 8 tiles wide, so make sure there is some clear space either side of the field (fences and buildings can be set alight very easily).
 * Line a single column of tree trunks down one side of your field.
 * Chop all of these into blocks
 * Run down the line from top to bottom, moving 7 of 8 blocks to one side
 * Continue in this way until all tiles of the field only have a single block upon them
 * Set fire to the top row as shown above, with the ones at each side also set alight
 * Have a nap or do some cooking, but stay in the same area and don't leave for more than 3 or 4 hours
 * Start preparing the soil in rows, remembering to keep at least 1 row away from fire (you will find out fairly quickly that prepared ground is highly flammable if you ignore this!) Note: Patch 2 for 3.12b should have fixed this glitch.
 * Every time you take a 3-4 hour break, you will be able to complete a couple of rows. You will notice that as you keep on top of this, the burnt soil behind you will start to revert to normal tiles. This is why the short breaks are essential, rather than long ones.

Using this guideline, you can easily create and 8 tile wide, but very long field. I have previously created field that are as long as the 100m wilderness tile with little effort. This process will, however, take you a few days depending on the size of the field - so do make sure to have plenty of food before you attempt it. I am not implying that this is the most time efficient method of creating a big field, but it is definetly one of the easiest and has never let me down. Plus, you will use a lot of tree trunks but if you are in a wooded area, you will also chop a lot of trees down for firewood over winter, so you may find you manage to complete several tasks at once!

Rhyscoombs 21:16, April 15, 2010 (UTC)