If you're anything like me, each time starting up a DST server you often change your base setup. As in, you do not base the same location/way you have on another server obviously due to resources, set pieces, etc. I am well aware of the top strats for food generation such as Bunnyman farms, but I like to experiment and try out different methods due to the fact there is an innate sense of satisfaction in the process of setting up a large berry bush farm, or generalized food crafting tab farms. It is quite zen to tend to it, and work through the cycle of gathering beefalo so you can fertilize them.
If you've also played this game for any length of time, you'll also quickly realize that farms kinda suck. The basic ones are completely useless, and the advance tier while nice, pales in comparison to many other methods of getting food. Their only huge claim to fame being the fact they allow you to farm dragon pies or the like once you've gotten a bird cage to feed seeds to. With this topic however, I would like to suggest my set of changes to the farms and how I'd like to see them improved to be a viable method of food production. These will not be perfect by any means so consider it a more general set of changes. Less about the exact execution, and more about the direction of them! So with that, let me begin with the first big change I'd like to see;
#1. Carrots are no longer the only veggie to be found in the world.
This is pretty straight forward. I would like the current over abundance of carrots growing in the world to be randomized with different selections of veggies from the pool. With some seasons favoring others more often due to seasonal changes. With this change the current rate of random growth would be tweaked, so that with every seasonal change the veggies in the world would star to regrow at the start of the season to show what new food items would start spawning that season. My suggestion for veggies across seasons would be thus;
All year round--Potatoes, Carrots, Onions
Winter--Sweet potato, Radish (Slower rate than the others!)
Spring--Tomato's, Asparagus, Garlic
Summer--Pepper, Corn
My reasoning being, it would make the current static world growth feel much more alive and varied than it currently is. And allow characters such as Warly to have more leeway in terms of being produce their crock pot meals. Most importantly, it would allow more varied crock pot dishes to actually see some usage without relying solely on farms.
#2. Both tier's of farms now produce their own unique set of crops from the pool.
My thought process for this is pretty simple. It's really hard to justify building a basic farm, and the fact the veggie pool is so wide and connected makes it hard to get a single fruit, veggie you want without a birdcage. So, my changes for it would be thus;
Basic farms--Carrots, Corn, Potato's, Onions, Tomato, Radish, Sweet potato, Pomegranate
Advanced farms--Pumpkins, Watermelon, Pepper, Garlic, Asparagus, Eggplant, Dragon fruit, Durian
This would require more space and resources if you're solely going for both types, but this where the typical birdcage methods would come in. You could tweak it to make it so the rarer veggies from T2 have a low chance to spawn from the basic ones, but that's the finer details. Additionally, I would appreciate it if farms as a whole took roughly 4 days to grow their crops without help. With spring decreasing that, and winter increasing the timer. But over all, farms should not have their growth stunted in winter solely. Perhaps a firepit by them to decrease freezing...? That way they have to be maintained by someone at base such as Warly who has become the base's chief and maid. (<-This is a joke, but I genuinely like this style of play but I'm in a minority I am sure.)
#3. Rebalance crockpot meals as a whole, to buff up weaker ones and lightly bring down the stronger ones.
Straight forward. I would appreciate it if the crockpot meal selection was BROUGHT UP, rather than solely brought down. You could say this makes it even easier to survive or the like, but I'm speaking from a place where if you were to make these changes, I would like to see Bunnyman farms be nerfed as compensation. Either removing carrots from their drops, or the meat. That way one would be forced to build more farms/actually use them in order to have a steady, non meat food supply.
#4. Give everyone a Warly-lite passive where eating a single crockpot meal repeatedly lessens it's impact to a set amount, but not prevent one from eating it.
This is the one I think would be most in need of fine tuning, but the changes are as stated. I would like if, and that's the if you gotta focus on, that farms/crock pots meals were to be changed in a similar manner, that a new mechanic to be introduced where eating the same meal would reduce its benefits the more you ate it. Let's say, by 2/3rd's as a spitballing estimate? After eating meatballs 4 times in a row, it would halve off 5 of the hunger or something similar each time. Stopping at only 40 hunger per meatballs once you've eaten enough of it. This would encourage more varied crockpot usage, but also with the hopefully decent buff to other foods and farms, etc allow one to actually have a reason in cooking various foods!
I would appreciate it if all characters had a mechanic where they would have a 'favorite foods' to eat as well, and eating them would provide a minor bonus. Such an additional 5 hunger or sanity. They would take longer to get tired of eating them as a bonus too, mayhaps?
Regardless, if you got down this far and actually enjoyed the thought play here, thank you. Keep in mind, these could be heavily tweaked to be more balanced or even nerfed depending on how you feel. But this is the general direction I would like to see farms and other type of non-meat resources to go, as I find the current balance of them to be all over the place. As it feels farms, something being so basic in this type of game, are so weak or pointless depending on situation.
That, and I just would really like to play farming simulator while feeling elation at cooking varied foods at base for my non-grateful teammates to eat. But once again, I am a minority there.
![:wilson_cry:]( ":wilson_cry:")
EDIT: Very quick edit here as I forgot, but a few of these ideas were inspired by others. I cannot for the life of me remember their names, but if you see an idea similar to yours here this was spurred on by you, you brilliant fellows!
.thumb.png.c9a4882cb1a765fc867bf430389e7211.png)
.thumb.png.fd702a25e59e86a52df1b887c231ccf9.png)
.thumb.png.e94afab73d64a386298a3fdf6141bd40.png)
.thumb.png.a01fbabe608e7932b0bbbfc540895f7c.png)
