Mushroom Farming

Well the system seem pretty straightforward, in the breakout the spreadsheet and day-planner kind of way.

i think if you do a moon check lore, you should get a little buff icon come up for the time remain in the day or the moon phase, The little icon should show you the moon phase graphically, and it's tool tip should tell you fancy name of the phase and the quarter one. This would help with mushroom farming.

However;
If there is some trick to using 12 HR (etc) boxes, using them for multiply crops, I sure can't figure that out. You seed a 2 hr crop, come back right when it is done and your option is to retire the box. You close the dialog without clicking retire, it still despawns as soon as the dialog window closes.

If you return to the same mushroom box BEFORE its timer is expired, you should be able to start another crop of mushrooms. If you return AFTER the timer (e.g. on hour 13 of a 12-hour box) all you can do is harvest the existing crop. That's the intended behavior, anyway! It may be buggy.

Edit: it's buggy. Will be fixed in an update coming Friday!

I'd like to gather more feedback on XP earned in this skill. We have reports that it's much too fast and much too slow. That's probably because the XP is earned per mushroom, and if you properly prepare, it's possible to harvest quite large batches of mushrooms. If you don't prepare properly, the XP earned will be small. There is random fluctuation involved as well -- if you use good fertiliizer and grow in the right moon phase, you can conceivably get hundreds of mushrooms at once (though the chances of that are small).

After you've grown a few dozen crops, please report your general opinion of the XP curve here, with notes on what you're raising and whether you're using appropriate fertiliizer / growing in appropriate moon phases!

Edited to add: the amount of XP earned from some of the substrate recipes is higher than intended, and the amount of XP earned from most of the grow-box recipes is lower than intended. Those will be tweaked in the next update. But in any case, the core way to earn XP here is supposed to be from growing mushrooms in grow-boxes!

First bit of data, I'll add a new set each day. Wasn't recording enough data from earlier days.


Day 1

Spoiler:

Mushroom	SubSoil Result	Moon Result	Harvest	XP	Box Type
Field	Dirt poor	Poor Wan Cres	2	23	PB lvl 3
Blusher	Dirt poor	N/A	4	51	PB lvl 3
Milk Cap	Dirt fine	Robust Wan Cres	15	218	PB lvl 3
Milk Cap	Bone poor	Robust Wan Cres	7	70	LB lvl 1
Milk Cap	Organ very well	Robust Wan Cres	25	250	LB lvl 1
Mycena	bone fine	N/A	6	36	LB lvl 1
Milk Cap	Meat poor	Robust Wan Cres	7	70	LB lvl 1
Mycena	limbs very well	N/A	9	54	LB lvl 1

I like the way the HR boxes work, not what I was expecting but they even can be used the way I was expecting, neat. :)

Day 2

Spoiler:

Mushroom	SubSoil Result	Moon Result	Harvest	XP	Box Type
Blood	Limbs very well	N/A Wan Cres	16	234	PB lvl 3
Blusher	Limbs poor	N/A Wan Cres	4	47	PB lvl 3
		Post Update
Milk Cap	Organ very well	Robust Wan Cres	22	220	LB lvl 1
Milk Cap Blood	Organ very well	Robust Wan Cres	22 5	270	LB lvl 1 bonus
Mycena Boletus	Limbs very well	N/A Wan Cres	9 2	66	LB 12hr lvl6 bonus
Mycena Boletus	Limbs very well	N/A New Moon	9 2	66	LB 12hr lvl6 bonus

I'm Les Nessman and this is the mushroom report.

Day 3

Spoiler:

Mushroom	SubSoil Result	Moon Result	Harvest	XP	Box Type
Iocaine	Organ poor	N/A New Moon	6	78	LB 12hr lvl6
Blastcap	Limbs poor	Poor New Moon	2	23	LB 12hr lvl6
Parasol	Organ very well	Poor New Moon	3	15	LB 12hr lvl6
Boletus	Meat fine	Robust New Moon	10	70	LB 12hr lvl6
Field	Organ very well	N/A New Moon	12	96	LB 12hr lvl6
Boletus	Meat fine	Robust New Moon	10	70	LB 12hr lvl6
Field	Organ very well	N/A New Moon	12	96	LB 12hr lvl6
Boletus	Meat fine	Robust New Moon	10	70	LB 12hr lvl6

Ok i throw some of main:

Spoiler:

Mushroom	Substract	Moon Phase	Harvest	EXP
Parasol	dirt(fine	Wanning Crescent(robustly)	7+1mycena	40
	Bone(fine)	Wanning Crescent(robustly)	7+1mycena	40
	Meat(poor)	Wanning Crescent(robustly)	3
	Organ(very well)	Wanning Crescent(robustly)	11	55
	Leg(poor)	Wanning Crescent(robustly)	3	15
Field	Dirt(poor)	N/A	4	35
	Bone(adequatly)	N/A	5+ Blusher x2	88

All of them were grown in Lucky Box lv 6

Day 4

Spoiler:

Mushroom	Substrate Result	Moon Result	Harvest	XP	Box Type
Groxmak	Limbs poor	N/A New Moon	7	98	LB 12hr lvl6
Porcini	Limbs poor	Poor New Moon	3	45	LB 12hr lvl6
Groxmak Porcini	Limbs poor	N/A New Moon	7 1	112	LB 12hr lvl6 bonus
Black Foot	Limbs poor	Robust New Moon	12	192	LB lvl1
Blusher	Limbs poor	Robust New Moon	6	54	LB 12hr lvl6

Day 5

Spoiler:

Mushroom	Substrate Result	Moon Result	Harvest	XP	Box Type
Coral	Meat Fine	N/A New Moon	12	144	LB 12hr lvl6
Blusher	Meat Fine	Robust New Moon	13	117	LB 12hr lvl6
Coral	Meat Fine	N/A New Moon	12	144	LB 12hr lvl6
False Agaric	Limbs very well	N/A New Moon	18	279	LB lvl1
Mycena	Limbs very well	N/A New Moon	9	54	LB 12hr lvl6

Day 6

Spoiler:

Mushroom	Substrate Result	Moon Result	Harvest	XP	Box Type
Iocaine Groxmak	Limbs very well	Robust Wax Cres	33 8	533	LB 12hr lvl6 bonus
Wizard's	Limbs poor	Robust Wax Cres	12	222	LB 12hr lvl6
Iocaine	Limbs very well	Robust Wax Cres	41	533	LB 12hr lvl6

Day 7

Spoiler:

Mushroom	Substrate Result	Moon Result	Harvest	XP	Box Type
Iocaine	Limbs very well	Robust Wax Cres	87	1131	Epic lvl25
Field	Organ very well	N/A Wax Cres	12	96	LB 12hr lvl6
Blood	Limbs very well	Robust Wax Cres	28	308	LB 12hr lvl6
Parasol Mycena	Organ very well	N/A Wax Cres	7 1	40	LB 12hr lvl6 bonus
Parasol	Organ very well	N/A Wax Cres	10	50	LB 12hr lvl6
Mycena	Limbs very well	Robust Wax Cres	20	120	LB 12hr lvl6
Parasol	Organ very well	N/A Wax Cres	7	35	LB 12hr lvl6
Mycena	Limbs very well	Robust Wax Cres	15	90	LB 12hr lvl6
Parasol G. Puffball	Organ very well	N/A Wax Cres	7 1	40	LB 12hr lvl6 bonus
Parasol	Organ very well	N/A Wax Cres	7	35	LB 12hr lvl6
Mycena	Limbs very well	Robust Wax Cres	13	78	LB 12hr lvl6
Parasol	Organ very well	N/A Wax Cres	7	35	LB 12hr lvl6
Mycena	Limbs very well	Robust Wax Cres	13	78	LB 12hr lvl6
Parasol	Organ very well	N/A Wax Cres	7	35	LB 12hr lvl6

That looks like so much work, thank you for doing it.

Thank you, [MENTION=22]ShieldBreaker[/MENTION]! Seven straight days of data is really quite useful for looking for problems with the numbers. You can stop there if you like - a full week should do it for now.

Now ... Please tell us how you feel about it. :) Tedious, fun, slow, stupid fast, buggy broken, over-powered broken, completely incomprehensible ...? (And not just Shieldbreaker - we'd like to know more from everyone who's mushroom farming.)

Look at Shieldbreaker numbers, it seems your success at growing low level mushrooms is tied to your level: I've tried all combinations of mushroom and substrate and I'm barely getting 'adequate', most are 'poor' and no 'very well' yet. Therefore, contrary to brewing, I'm probably going to skip the lower levels and just power-level on substrates alone.

Perhaps I missed it, but I didn't see any instructions about moon phases. Right now we alternate between waxing crescent moon and new moon, and sometimes there is no moon phase at all. Is is a bug, is it a feature, I have no clue. :)

Moon Phase

Spoiler:

Different mushrooms grow better during certain moon phases, some mushrooms also grow worst during certain moon phases. There is always a moon phase it is what the actual moon phase in the real world is. We have had 4 phases since mushroom farming has been introduced. We caught the tail end of Last Quarter, then we had Waning Crescent, New Moon, and we are in Waxing Crescent which will shortly become First Quarter. N/A moon phase just means the moon phase doesn't help or hurt the growth of that particular kind of mushroom. Ingame if the moon phase doesn't effect the result, it just says nothing about it in the result dialog.

I only picked up mushroom farming a couple days ago, and made it to level 10 so far. So, take my opinion for what it's worth. :)

I like "drop it and forget about it for a day" skills in general. I enjoy icefishing, so I was expecting to like mushroom farming, too, and I wasn't disappointed. I like it that the materials for it seem very reasonable so far (thank you for not requiring nails for the growing box!) and that I am able to grow any type of mushroom even at level 1. I also appreciate it that the mushroom farming teacher will accept mushrooms I can grow myself. (And, ok, I laughed at Hemmit's jokes, although I'm embarrassed to admit that.)

The mushroom farming interface seems very straightforward and intuitive to me. I'm looking forward to compiling my own set of data on proper substrates and moon phases for each mushroom. I'll check my data against Shieldbreaker's in a month or so but don't want to spoil my exploring phase yet by looking at his data.

I'm not really concerned about leveling, so I haven't been paying attention to the xp. Since I can grow the mushrooms I want, it doesn't really matter too much to me if I'm growing them in the most efficient box possible. I'd mainly like to level to get access to different substrates for experimenting and hopefully a non-oak-based box at some point since oak wood is one of those eternally scarce materials for me. Right now though, it seems I have enough possible mushroom/substrate combos even at level 10 to keep me happy for a very long time.

The Feelings Feedback Report

Skills it feels better than leveling; Shamanic Infusion, Cheesemaking, Tailoring, Flower-arranging
It far faster, and far easier then those four, there are many skills easier to level then Mushroom farming. I think anyone who wants to finish it will finish it in one real month, one month to learn all the ins and outs and then if they haven't already maxed out, growing only top XP crops once they have circled round to a familiar moon phase. Conversely, future players who want to look up completed grow charts and spam substrate will probably only take a week or 2 at most. Casual players probably take 2 to 6 months doing it more naturally. The slowing factor in all cases is the actual grow time for crops, which is just bearable if you are in a hurry, and probably completely fine if you are not in a hurry and have maxed out mushroom farming.

Buggyness:
Well I put all my data up, and now that grow boxes actually take multiply crops, nothing jumps out at me as being buggy. Really need more moon phases to get a complete look at the mushroom farming picture. With more phases and more other tests I'd be able to tell for sure if things don't make sense, but it seems to make sense so far.

Fun Factor
Well getting surprise mushrooms I've never heard of is certainly fun, and getting big crops is fun. Doesn't quite reach the level of hitting a jackpot on a slot machine level of fun. With that in mind, those slot machines where you earn a tweak and can make a small adjustment and influence a big jackpot after the wheels stop spinning seem to me to have a high fun factor. So if you could translate that into making a tweak, adding water to increase dampness, adding fire dust to decease dampness. Which boost an already good crop into an even better crop, maybe this tweak is at the half way point, or at the start of the last hour. You would need to actually do check mushroom box at the right time window to get a chance to tweak the enviroment for a better result. Otherwise and maybe even with that change also Mushroom farming only ranks as a nice skill to have, maybe not something you get excited about.

The only problem I have with system is that I don't have any worm's teeth. It took me like a year to get the 10 I needed for a work order. Level 40 in anthropoid anatomy. Wish the behavior report said how many worms I killed, I feel I probably haven't killed enough to warrant suspecting that it isn't right. But it is hindering my exploration of mushroom farming :)

Certainly have enough Iocaine mushrooms now, I would suspect one good moon phase focusing solely on Iocaines and you would have enough to max Iocaine Resistance. Is that overpowered, it certainly is a change of pace.

So, with a bit more experience mushroom farming, I'm forced to concede that the multi-use mushrooom boxes are just not going to work for me and my schedule. I'm unable to play PG for stretches of 8-10 hours at a time since I work and also like to have some uninterrupted sleep time at night. I've been trying to make efficient use of the 12 and 24 hour boxes by growing mushrooms in the 9 hour growing range or shorter but those are usually not the mushrooms I'd like to grow, or they grow poorly in the current moon phase. And, after all my careful timing of mushroom growing hours, I still find myself wasting several harvests of mushrooms because I can't log in when I'd originally planned and that throws off my whole schedule.

I like the multi-use box concept and the game mechanism makes perfect sense to me, but sadly I think I'm just going to drive myself crazy if I actually try to make use of it. So, back to single use boxes to be harvested whenever for me.

Creating mushroom boxes is a bit of a problem for me. I'm indifferent to the mushroom suspension used, but obtaining oak wood is always a problem for me. I think the new trees might make it better but I've not been playing or been a rabbit since they were introduced, so until rabbits get the beaver teeth ability (please? ;) ), coming up with 8-16 pieces of oak wood per day for my mushroom testing is not all that easy. ( Maple and cedar are less of a concern at the moment since I have several saved stacks of them. I gave myself a bonus mushroom level doing substrate combines in the hopes that the level 18 box would allow me to use maple, but unfortunately it looks like I'll be using oak for a long time.)

So, I think I'll need to buy some wood from other players. That is probably not the end of the world, but from this perspective, here are some types of mushroom boxes I'd love to be able to make:

Sturdy box, straw-lined box: Due to the careful construction of the box or the low acidity of the mushroom suspension, there is an x % chance that the box can be reused after the current crop of mushrooms has finished growing. Or, there is an x % chance that either the growing frame or some of the wood in it can be recovered after the mushrooms are done growing.

Reusable box: This box can be used multiple times. It starts with a durability rating that is decreased when mushrooms are grown in it. Higher level mushrooms use more durability, and when the durability reaches 0, the box is destroyed.

Sample box: This box uses a smaller growing frame (less wood!) but grows fewer mushrooms. Or, this box uses a regular frame, and grows fewer mushrooms faster. Both of these would be nice for experimenting with unknown moon phases and substrates, or just for growing a handful of mushrooms more on demand.

About sample box idea

Spoiler:

There is a Very Fast Mushroom Box, grows faster, reduced XP

Figures, thanks ShieldBreaker! I was fuzzily looking at current and future recipes on Hemmit but either missed it or forgot about it by the time I actually posted.

I'm curious - what do you think of the 12 and 24 hour boxes? I really like the concept of them and the idea of planning how I can get the best possible harvest from them, but in practice, they never seem to work out the way I'd want. Not sure if it's just me.

Well I use the longest lasting box that I have the most resources on hand to make. I got almost a whole stack of Blusher Mushrooms Flakes so I think I usually end up with Lucky Mushroom Box (24 hour). During the day I try to seed the low level mushrooms, and at bedtime I put in the high level mushrooms. Once I get around to familiar moon phases I'll probably switch to higher yield boxes. The day I did low level mushrooms all day I found that a grueling day.

I'd stick with going for the hr boxes unless you can find one that your resources match up better with. Wood is the limiting factor, and hr boxes don't use up any more wood then a single use. So except for planning to optimize your harvests, there is no downside to using an hr box over a single use of the same kind. As a dumb perk I found to hr boxes, if I have an hour box going and I forgot to check what substrate was in it and it happens to still have time on it, I can check or double check what the substrate was by checking the box right away. Of course once research is over that is not a perk anymore. Hour boxes are a little annoying if you are obsessive about maximizing effectiveness, but even so, not getting back in time to get the harvest is still more efficient or as efficient as doing single use boxes.

Good point on the materials. I think if I have a box with a ticking timer, I'm going to feel that I must optimize it, so I'm safer sticking to the single use boxes since they won't tempt me. That's more of a me problem than a game problem though. :p And no, I can't bring myself to abandon still usable boxes either...

I do like the idea of being able to go back to check the substrates, though.

Oh, by the way, if the moon phase changes during the box growth period, is it going to use the moon phase at the time the box was started, or at harvest time? I sort of want to test this too, but don't really want to tie up a box for several days for that...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Tagamogi

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Oh, by the way, if the moon phase changes during the box growth period, is it going to use the moon phase at the time the box was started, or at harvest time? I sort of want to test this too, but don't really want to tie up a box for several days for that...

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I'm about 95% sure it uses the harvest time it check the moon phase to figure the results. It seems to me that, that is the way it works.

I am at 50+ Mushroom farming. I too like the boxes that are one use and leave them alone. I don't want to micro manage boxes 4 times a day either so I go for the long-use ones. I am sure if I did the math the "very fast" box or something is the best but I can't stand having to run across the world that many more times to check on them in my cave.

On moon phases: I have observed that it is the harvest time, or when the box is actually opened, where the moon phase is checked. I grew some Iocaines I believe and received twice as much when it first said Waxing Crescent when I opened it.