An Agricultural Suggestion

So first off, hiya, I’m Dannyrulx. I picked up Stonehearth a while ago and had basically played nothing at all of it until yesterday, when I sat down and ended up rubbing my eyes at half-past twelve in the evening, an entire day wasted building a city that ended up in flames as about a million golems cackled over the ruins.

Ahem

Onto the suggestion.

Groves: Allows a settler to plant trees and harvest anything that grows from them. At the start you can only plant random seeds, but the more experienced your Cultivator is, the better the chances of getting trees you want. The forest would include apples, pears, peaches, cherries, etc, and the desert would include dates, bananas, pomegranates, figs, and the like. You could also grow trees simply to cut them down. Cultivators are promoted from level 3 farmers.

So, what do you think? Good idea? Terrible? Decent?

Is the point of this to create a method for accessing more farming options? At the moment, they have quests that can unlock new seed types for farmers. Or do you want to just add a broad variety of diverse foods? At that point we need to start asking, do we want too much diversity just for the sake of diversity? While having something like apple trees may be a nice touch, I fail to see the point of having apples, pears, peaches, cherries and etc. if they all just end up as crated food stuff. After a certain point, it just becomes noise.

Really, the idea would be to have variety similar to the farms. Since hearthlings eat different food types, this would be better than just one thing, whilst also potentially allowing you to get wood in a pinch.

I could see fruit trees being high-yield, low-recharge options - longer than anything currently available, as long as a month or more. That way, if you’re really fed up with waiting for the tree to recharge, you can just cut it down. Conversely, if you decide to plant an orchard, you’ll have a source of huge burst food production.

You could also tie fruit tree foods into festival recipes as a side-goal.

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