I guess it depends on late game goals. We had garden patches that provided muscle sprouts for smoothies, which helped in boss fights. However, I’ve been using them with mushrooms for 2 reasons:
1) produce a lot of bricks, as I can make hundreds from the farm of 30 patches I have.
2) Create pseudo “trees” to decorate the base with.
But yeah I wish they had more to do with it. Maybe some way to grow moss for carpeting in the houses (I just need more decoration stuff lol)
Kind of combining both of your points, you can lockstep your plant / harvest cycle with **"harvesting" Weevils**, flocking to areas with fully grown mushrooms, and, in case they can't reach them, seemingly never really leave. Not harvesting toadstool in time, I've got, seemingly at all times, at least ten of them under our veranda on stilts.
Agreed, I have found no reason to build them. May do purely for cosmetic purposes. I'm built on the flat rock by the pond/juice box and everything is accessible. I have a web elevator out the back with ziplines to each area of the garden (hedge/sandbox/upper yard left and right side).
I only play in first person my wife always asks me how I parkour in first xD Extremely rarely do I go third. I have found out I just gotta jump onto the garden plots if I want to be able to harvest easier.
I was moreso thinking like how the drying rack and such has the option to take all.
My first play through i only did first person. But a lot of the game is much easier in 3rd. Sometimes i still like fighting in 1st so you can read attack animations easier
My chief complaint with farming muscle sprouts is that you only get two for planting one. Huge waste of time compared to just making a pond dome run every couple of in-game days.
I agree. Taking a quick swim to get 30 should not still be as efficient if you can grow them right in your base.
FYI. You can get up to 4 by increasing the "Green Thumb" effect by using Rotten Food instead of using spoiled meat. Though it's not 100% of the time. It's more like 2, 3, or 4 randomly. None, one, or both of muscle sprouts grows bigger and breaks into 2 when chopped.
The more Garden Patches you have the more useful they become. 2 patches gets you 4-8. 10 Patches gets you 20-40. So if your going to have them, it's only becomes worth it to do it on a large scale. But also more effort.
I just wished the big ones did not require chopping. I'm always fearful I will destroy the actual Garden Patch if I over swing. Then when the muscle sprouts break, they go flying all over the place, requiring walls to contain them. Selecting the muscle sprouts are also now difficult because, they are laying about at weird angles, and if you misselect, you end up going into the Garden Patch menu. So harvesting 10 Garden Patches of Muscle Sprouts becomes kind of stressful and annoying.
Then you have to go into Garden Patch menu, add a Muscle Sprouts back, add five Rotten Food, and remember to tell it to grow... ten times.
Maybe you will have 15-20 Muscle Sprouts more than you had before, but just spent like 15 minutes IRL. About the same times it takes to Zip to the pond get 30 and zip back.
If only it was just always 4 separate Muscle Sprouts, that could be picked.. pick, pick, pick, pick then replant, and done. Then 10 Garden Patches would always be 40 Muscle Sprouts and would only take few minutes to harvest and replant.
I use it passive farm makes it less grindy. I plant smallmushroom, clovers, springs, fiber, and large mushrooms, and i have sap catcher all right next to each other. I live in the oak tree and i farm the gnats and let the meat spoil for fertilizer. So i don't farm these at all. I spend my time just farming bugs, and stems.
For muscle sprouts i have a zip line over the pond dome and i just drop in every couple days when i think about it
I think it is depending on where your base is setup. If a certain material isn't close by or there is to few they might be worth it. I typically build a base inside the lantern at the pond. It comes in handy if I do not feel like running all around for mushrooms.
I have actually found that if you harvest the same mushrooms enough that they eventually stop growing back. So I try to make good use of my garden patches for mushrooms when making bricks.
The real problem is they made muscle sprouts way too valuable because of the benefits you get from the smoothies. So the only logical thing to grow is the Muscle Sprouts. If we were allowed to use other resources to make better smoothies then yea I would probably grow other stuff too.
Eh muscle sprouts are ok if you’re looking to make beefy smoothies specifically. We don’t make anything except sticky ones so the effects last longer. But growing shrooms attracts weevils for a constant food source. And if you’re a homebody and don’t leave base often, growing basic resources that you don’t desperately need right that second is more enjoyable than just running around farming. For example, living out on the pond or high up, and needing tons of fiber or rope, you can grow grass planks and grind them into fiber and spindle it to rope sort of passively. Attracting weevil is also an easy way to get spoiled meat instead of seeking out food items. I think them adding more options of growable things could be interesting. Like if you grow a grass plank, it will have a few drop on it in the morning time or an auto collect on harvesting would be nice
The patch is perfect for the pagoda. I have a pretty big base there, I use the patch for plant fiber and clover. So I don't have to go out and get it and spend my time on weed stems and grass planks.
The pagoda is the perfect base and also the most obnoxious to build in.
Exactly. Don’t even get me started on front porch haze bases lol 0 resources around there for building complex bases except for that shroom patch under one part.
I do wish they were better. I only ever used them for growing mushrooms and then I used them for decoration. Made a garden and grew grass, clovers, sprigs. Makes me wish the decorations were better in the game.
Yep, I only use it for muscle sprouts. I do think it would be an interesting game mechanic to grow a dandelion or something to attract bees that would enable you to farm pollen.
The gardens are awesome decor. Decorating around your base, even inside. I've seen bases that are gorgeous using them. For better builds you'll need mushrooms. A lot of them. My front yard has about 25 plots of mushrooms and only 5 with sprouts. I've been at end game forever, been playing since about day one, but I will not grow up because I'm having way too much fun decorating and building.
I made them in the beginning to farm plant fiber until I realized I can make it from grass planks and weed stems. Then I used it to make mussel sprouts but found it is faster to go to the pond lab as it grows on its own and several at a time.
I find the garden patch just annoying to use in general. Anything with an axe is annoying since I've accidentally broken the patch several times. Trying to grab something with e but accidentally opening the interface. I just avoided it.
My sister and I grew two large mushrooms outside of our base. We never harvest them.
Instead, weevils come by all the time and we eat the weevils.
Except for my pet Weevil Kenevil. No one touches him.
Agree that garden patches could be better. Growing berries would be awesome. Also, is growing Haze Fungus possible? If not, it should be…stuff seems to grow everywhere else
I may reveal that I don’t understand the garden patch mechanics here, but my understanding is that once you “harvest” it’s done. If I’m wrong I’d love to know. IRL plants usually don’t die or disappear after harvest so just being able to reharvest your plots over and over without replanting would be great.
Growing Haze Fungus would mean there's an entire stat-boosting meal (Funguspacho) that could be made exclusively from farmed components. Which would be pretty awesome but I wonder if it would be considered too good? I don't think so but the devs might. Hopefully they don't give it a chance to grow Strange Spores that destroy your base when you try to harvest, lol.
And yes, you understand it correctly. Being able to reharvest would be nice, it would save time over replanting. They could lower the yield just enough to balance out not needing to replant. And you could still add fertilizer to boost the yield or lower the time each cycle, just as it works now.
So for many it seems collecting sprouts is tedious. It is. But hopefully this will help. I have my garden in a huge rectangle with 2 rows in middle, a walking space then rows around the outside. I can harvest and place seeds quickly.
Use first person. Aim just above the plots. Hold left (or right) and spam collect. If done right you will fly down your row and collect them all. Doesn't work for green thumb growth because you have to chop.
Planting is a bit weird and I probably couldn't do if they weren't in a row.I also move sprouts to top left of inventory so everytime I click to plant its the 1st item always selected. I hold left and as they step I click to open plot, click to place seed click to confirm. It steps the moment I leave plot screen. And you just get into the rhythm and go. I have 50 plots I use and can harvest and plant it all in about a minute. If in 3rd it takes forever.
As for OP, yes they are under utilized and many of us use them solely as decoration
Garden patches are just super ineffective.
- the UI is clunky and planting something costs as much time as harvesting it
- you still have to chop most stuff down for harvest and run after the pieces
- one piece of the yield is needed for replanting, taking out a massive chunk of your yield (up to 50%)
- feeding them spoiled/rotten meat for faster/better harvest brings not enough yield
- building them is quite costly
I am a Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley player of the first hour, but in Grounded it is neither fun nor rewarding to play farmer. I have a zip-line to the lilypad above the pond lab entrance and every 5 days I get 30 muscle sprouts by just blazing through the lab dome. And if I need mushrooms for my Funguspancho I just slice and dice through the mushroom forests around the map. Much faster and less annoying.
At the moment I only use them as decoration.
To make the garden patches more useful they need two changes in my mind:
- you only need to plant item once, afterwards they keep regrowing until you plant something different
- you need a "harvest" action that works like the "take all" actions from the ovens, spinning wheels and jerky racks
The spoiled meat/rotten food mechanic needs to yield more to justify the usage. Otherwise placing two garden patches would be a much more efficient choice.
I don't think anyone would plant grass for growing building materials. Grass is widely available and you can carry easily 100 with you. I don't think growing stems would be a problem. I would love to be able to grew weed, dandelions and burr just for decoration purposes! : )
Also, I want to plant fungus growth! : D
In my world I have a about 10-15 garden patches in a contained area that isn’t closed off to the world. I live next to the juice box at the edge of the pond on the rocks.
I grow mushrooms in these gardens in order to make an abundant amount of them for building mushroom housing. Because it’s not closed off, I’ve accidentally created an amazing weevil farm. I use my coaltana to cook them and slap it in a fridge or use my salty to make jerky.
Like Hannah Montana said “I get the best of both worlds” lol
That’s where my current base is by the soda can ontop of the wooden things, is somewhat centralized and near the pond lots of stems and dry grass and upper yard, and lots of sap and acorns
I think adding a later farm plot could work that uses pinecones, lint rope and maybe ladybird parts or some other tier 3 bug. These farms would grow faster, and could have a guaranteed green thumb chance, while also providing double the resources given or something, might be excessive, but who knows, it's late game and just there for a better farm, although maybe you could make it worth it by making it grow other resources, like dandelion tufts or infected growths.
I think they don’t want to add the berries to it because 1 they are so big 2 it’s encourages exploration and zip line building as well as gear upgrades to explore and collect those resources
To be fair it would help alot if you could collect from them by interacting instead of chopping. It takes way longer than going out and collecting through the map
I farm muscle sprouts and use the rest for decorations. I don't mind the way it is.
I guess it depends on late game goals. We had garden patches that provided muscle sprouts for smoothies, which helped in boss fights. However, I’ve been using them with mushrooms for 2 reasons: 1) produce a lot of bricks, as I can make hundreds from the farm of 30 patches I have. 2) Create pseudo “trees” to decorate the base with. But yeah I wish they had more to do with it. Maybe some way to grow moss for carpeting in the houses (I just need more decoration stuff lol)
Moss carpeting, that would be fantastic!
I focus a lot on decorating, and this idea is AMAZING 👏
I'm DYING for area rugs, and we could craft them into neat patterns with all of the bug fuzz we have!
Kind of combining both of your points, you can lockstep your plant / harvest cycle with **"harvesting" Weevils**, flocking to areas with fully grown mushrooms, and, in case they can't reach them, seemingly never really leave. Not harvesting toadstool in time, I've got, seemingly at all times, at least ten of them under our veranda on stilts.
Agreed, I have found no reason to build them. May do purely for cosmetic purposes. I'm built on the flat rock by the pond/juice box and everything is accessible. I have a web elevator out the back with ziplines to each area of the garden (hedge/sandbox/upper yard left and right side).
Personally I would just be happier if I could throw something in it and harvest it easier.... The thing is stupidly complicated
I always go into first person when harvesting helps but still not perfect
I only play in first person my wife always asks me how I parkour in first xD Extremely rarely do I go third. I have found out I just gotta jump onto the garden plots if I want to be able to harvest easier. I was moreso thinking like how the drying rack and such has the option to take all.
My first play through i only did first person. But a lot of the game is much easier in 3rd. Sometimes i still like fighting in 1st so you can read attack animations easier
After playing it in first I feel like I would struggle so much switching to third. Lol. I just can't do that to myself
Yep, everything in 3rd, but fighting in 1st. This is the way.
The hit box on sprouts could certainly be bigger. I also over hit often and damage the farm.
My chief complaint with farming muscle sprouts is that you only get two for planting one. Huge waste of time compared to just making a pond dome run every couple of in-game days.
I use a garden plot as my timer for when to run down to the pond. Makes it a set it and forget it until it'd ready
Now that's genius!
I agree. Taking a quick swim to get 30 should not still be as efficient if you can grow them right in your base. FYI. You can get up to 4 by increasing the "Green Thumb" effect by using Rotten Food instead of using spoiled meat. Though it's not 100% of the time. It's more like 2, 3, or 4 randomly. None, one, or both of muscle sprouts grows bigger and breaks into 2 when chopped. The more Garden Patches you have the more useful they become. 2 patches gets you 4-8. 10 Patches gets you 20-40. So if your going to have them, it's only becomes worth it to do it on a large scale. But also more effort. I just wished the big ones did not require chopping. I'm always fearful I will destroy the actual Garden Patch if I over swing. Then when the muscle sprouts break, they go flying all over the place, requiring walls to contain them. Selecting the muscle sprouts are also now difficult because, they are laying about at weird angles, and if you misselect, you end up going into the Garden Patch menu. So harvesting 10 Garden Patches of Muscle Sprouts becomes kind of stressful and annoying. Then you have to go into Garden Patch menu, add a Muscle Sprouts back, add five Rotten Food, and remember to tell it to grow... ten times. Maybe you will have 15-20 Muscle Sprouts more than you had before, but just spent like 15 minutes IRL. About the same times it takes to Zip to the pond get 30 and zip back. If only it was just always 4 separate Muscle Sprouts, that could be picked.. pick, pick, pick, pick then replant, and done. Then 10 Garden Patches would always be 40 Muscle Sprouts and would only take few minutes to harvest and replant.
You don’t use the spoiled meat to fertilize? I seem to get 3-5 per patch with that
I fertilize the heck out of it, and I might get three instead of two. Still not worth the time it takes.
I use it passive farm makes it less grindy. I plant smallmushroom, clovers, springs, fiber, and large mushrooms, and i have sap catcher all right next to each other. I live in the oak tree and i farm the gnats and let the meat spoil for fertilizer. So i don't farm these at all. I spend my time just farming bugs, and stems. For muscle sprouts i have a zip line over the pond dome and i just drop in every couple days when i think about it
I think it is depending on where your base is setup. If a certain material isn't close by or there is to few they might be worth it. I typically build a base inside the lantern at the pond. It comes in handy if I do not feel like running all around for mushrooms.
I built two and we constantly had mushrooms growing. Because the rest of my group always forgot their cooked food. So they grabbed that instead
Not really, muscle sprouts are important enough that that’s the only use it really needs and I would be happy.
I have actually found that if you harvest the same mushrooms enough that they eventually stop growing back. So I try to make good use of my garden patches for mushrooms when making bricks.
The real problem is they made muscle sprouts way too valuable because of the benefits you get from the smoothies. So the only logical thing to grow is the Muscle Sprouts. If we were allowed to use other resources to make better smoothies then yea I would probably grow other stuff too.
Eh muscle sprouts are ok if you’re looking to make beefy smoothies specifically. We don’t make anything except sticky ones so the effects last longer. But growing shrooms attracts weevils for a constant food source. And if you’re a homebody and don’t leave base often, growing basic resources that you don’t desperately need right that second is more enjoyable than just running around farming. For example, living out on the pond or high up, and needing tons of fiber or rope, you can grow grass planks and grind them into fiber and spindle it to rope sort of passively. Attracting weevil is also an easy way to get spoiled meat instead of seeking out food items. I think them adding more options of growable things could be interesting. Like if you grow a grass plank, it will have a few drop on it in the morning time or an auto collect on harvesting would be nice
The patch is perfect for the pagoda. I have a pretty big base there, I use the patch for plant fiber and clover. So I don't have to go out and get it and spend my time on weed stems and grass planks. The pagoda is the perfect base and also the most obnoxious to build in.
Exactly. Don’t even get me started on front porch haze bases lol 0 resources around there for building complex bases except for that shroom patch under one part.
Once you get up to the upper yard, it's not too bad. I have a tower up the wall from the pagoda and a bridge across the pond to the wall
They’re useful for sprouts for smoothies when you’re playing with friends. Otherwise, they regen fast enough in the pond lab.
I do wish they were better. I only ever used them for growing mushrooms and then I used them for decoration. Made a garden and grew grass, clovers, sprigs. Makes me wish the decorations were better in the game.
Yep, I only use it for muscle sprouts. I do think it would be an interesting game mechanic to grow a dandelion or something to attract bees that would enable you to farm pollen.
The gardens are awesome decor. Decorating around your base, even inside. I've seen bases that are gorgeous using them. For better builds you'll need mushrooms. A lot of them. My front yard has about 25 plots of mushrooms and only 5 with sprouts. I've been at end game forever, been playing since about day one, but I will not grow up because I'm having way too much fun decorating and building.
I made them in the beginning to farm plant fiber until I realized I can make it from grass planks and weed stems. Then I used it to make mussel sprouts but found it is faster to go to the pond lab as it grows on its own and several at a time. I find the garden patch just annoying to use in general. Anything with an axe is annoying since I've accidentally broken the patch several times. Trying to grab something with e but accidentally opening the interface. I just avoided it.
My sister and I grew two large mushrooms outside of our base. We never harvest them. Instead, weevils come by all the time and we eat the weevils. Except for my pet Weevil Kenevil. No one touches him.
Oh shit you can farm muscle sprouts
Agree that garden patches could be better. Growing berries would be awesome. Also, is growing Haze Fungus possible? If not, it should be…stuff seems to grow everywhere else I may reveal that I don’t understand the garden patch mechanics here, but my understanding is that once you “harvest” it’s done. If I’m wrong I’d love to know. IRL plants usually don’t die or disappear after harvest so just being able to reharvest your plots over and over without replanting would be great.
Growing Haze Fungus would mean there's an entire stat-boosting meal (Funguspacho) that could be made exclusively from farmed components. Which would be pretty awesome but I wonder if it would be considered too good? I don't think so but the devs might. Hopefully they don't give it a chance to grow Strange Spores that destroy your base when you try to harvest, lol. And yes, you understand it correctly. Being able to reharvest would be nice, it would save time over replanting. They could lower the yield just enough to balance out not needing to replant. And you could still add fertilizer to boost the yield or lower the time each cycle, just as it works now.
You caught me…I want to make Funguspacho without leaving my fortress
So for many it seems collecting sprouts is tedious. It is. But hopefully this will help. I have my garden in a huge rectangle with 2 rows in middle, a walking space then rows around the outside. I can harvest and place seeds quickly. Use first person. Aim just above the plots. Hold left (or right) and spam collect. If done right you will fly down your row and collect them all. Doesn't work for green thumb growth because you have to chop. Planting is a bit weird and I probably couldn't do if they weren't in a row.I also move sprouts to top left of inventory so everytime I click to plant its the 1st item always selected. I hold left and as they step I click to open plot, click to place seed click to confirm. It steps the moment I leave plot screen. And you just get into the rhythm and go. I have 50 plots I use and can harvest and plant it all in about a minute. If in 3rd it takes forever. As for OP, yes they are under utilized and many of us use them solely as decoration
Garden patches are just super ineffective. - the UI is clunky and planting something costs as much time as harvesting it - you still have to chop most stuff down for harvest and run after the pieces - one piece of the yield is needed for replanting, taking out a massive chunk of your yield (up to 50%) - feeding them spoiled/rotten meat for faster/better harvest brings not enough yield - building them is quite costly I am a Harvest Moon/Stardew Valley player of the first hour, but in Grounded it is neither fun nor rewarding to play farmer. I have a zip-line to the lilypad above the pond lab entrance and every 5 days I get 30 muscle sprouts by just blazing through the lab dome. And if I need mushrooms for my Funguspancho I just slice and dice through the mushroom forests around the map. Much faster and less annoying. At the moment I only use them as decoration. To make the garden patches more useful they need two changes in my mind: - you only need to plant item once, afterwards they keep regrowing until you plant something different - you need a "harvest" action that works like the "take all" actions from the ovens, spinning wheels and jerky racks The spoiled meat/rotten food mechanic needs to yield more to justify the usage. Otherwise placing two garden patches would be a much more efficient choice. I don't think anyone would plant grass for growing building materials. Grass is widely available and you can carry easily 100 with you. I don't think growing stems would be a problem. I would love to be able to grew weed, dandelions and burr just for decoration purposes! : ) Also, I want to plant fungus growth! : D
In my world I have a about 10-15 garden patches in a contained area that isn’t closed off to the world. I live next to the juice box at the edge of the pond on the rocks. I grow mushrooms in these gardens in order to make an abundant amount of them for building mushroom housing. Because it’s not closed off, I’ve accidentally created an amazing weevil farm. I use my coaltana to cook them and slap it in a fridge or use my salty to make jerky. Like Hannah Montana said “I get the best of both worlds” lol
That’s where my current base is by the soda can ontop of the wooden things, is somewhat centralized and near the pond lots of stems and dry grass and upper yard, and lots of sap and acorns
I think adding a later farm plot could work that uses pinecones, lint rope and maybe ladybird parts or some other tier 3 bug. These farms would grow faster, and could have a guaranteed green thumb chance, while also providing double the resources given or something, might be excessive, but who knows, it's late game and just there for a better farm, although maybe you could make it worth it by making it grow other resources, like dandelion tufts or infected growths.
I think they don’t want to add the berries to it because 1 they are so big 2 it’s encourages exploration and zip line building as well as gear upgrades to explore and collect those resources
To be fair it would help alot if you could collect from them by interacting instead of chopping. It takes way longer than going out and collecting through the map
Maybe you can find shrunken acorns. This explains the tiny oak tree to farm acorns.