Crops

From Lotro-Wiki.com

Crops are crafting ingredients that can be found growing in the wild or cultivated by Farmers. The Track Crops skill can be used to locate wild crops, which is especially useful for finding dye ingredients such as Yarrow Root.

Farmers can plant crops in a field by seeding a patch of ground. To plant you will need:

• 5 Seeds
• 1 Fertilizer (Earth of Erebor at Artisan & Master tiers)
• 1 Water for Farming (Purified Farming Water at Artisan & Master tiers)

In addition, you must be within a field of the appropriate type (vegetable, grain, or pipe-weed). Fields of all sorts can be found in each of the three starting areas.

Seeding produces a Field (on a critical success, seeding produces a Well-tended Field). The Field is a region on the ground (within the field Facility). After your seeding is done you can harvest your crops. Note that both seeding and harvesting are actions with long induction times, so using better farming tools will reduce the time your farming takes considerably.

Using the field (the Harvesting action) yields one or more each of Poor and Fair bushels and occasionally special crops. Fair bushels are used to create the final result, such as various tobacco pouches or vegetables for cooks. Poor bushels are used to create seeds to continue farming. Skill mastery allows Well-tended fields. The mastery item for Apprentice level is sold at the vendor and gives you a 100% critical success chance. Once you have achieved mastery in a proficiency, you will have access to the mastery options tab on the crafts menu. For farming, this will allow you to use an additional component to increase your chance of producing a Well-tended field. Well-tended fields produce crops with a greater ratio of fair plants to poor plants.

As an example, 10 Green Onion Fields (none Well-tended) produced 12 Fair bushels (each worth 4 Green Onions) and 33 Poor bushels (each worth one seed). 10 Well-tended Carrot Fields produce 37 Fair bushels (each worth 4 Carrots) and 21 Poor bushels. Crops with vendor sold seeds produce 1 seed per poor plant. Crops with seeds that must be found via questing, loot, or crossbreeding produce 3 seeds per poor plant. Special crops include the Juicy Blackberries and Onion Skins used for creating dye.

Seeding a field is usually worth 6 crafting skill points. Harvesting is worth none. Converting a poor bushel to seed is usually worth 2 points. Converting a fair bushel to usable product is usually worth 8 points. In the example above, 10 Green Onion Fields were worth (6x10 + 2x33 + 8x12) 222 skill. The Well-Tended fields were worth nothing, since the tier was already mastered.

Seeding, harvesting, converting poor bushels to seed, and converting fair bushels to produce are all actions with induction times. Farming can be quite time-consuming.