Planting System

[Conan The Conqueror]

Gardening

What is gardening?
"Gardening is the practice of growing plants for their attractive flowers or foliage, and vegetables or fruits for consumption. Gardening is a human activity used to produce edible foods and use plants to beautify their local environmental conditions. Its scale ranges: from fruit orchards, to long boulevards plantings with one or more different types of shrubs, trees and herbaceous plants, to residential yards including lawns and foundation plantings, to large or small containers grown inside or outside. Gardening may often be very specific, with only one type of plant grown, or involve a large number of different plants in mixed plantings. It involves an active participatation in the growing of plants and tends to be labor intensive, which differentiates it from farming or forestry."

-- Wikipedia, on Gardening
Arkov's gardening system, which has been in the module in beta form for a little while, is now officially going live. The system allows players to find and grow seeds, and subsequently harvest components from the resulting plants. These components can be used in conjunction with Arkov's recipe crafting system, which is now also live, to produce a range of things such as bags of medicinal herbs and throwing weapons, and even just cooking!

How does gardening work on EFU?

There are a number of plants currently in the module (and likely more to come), such as Theriacal Liverwort, Bluecap Fungus, and Nightshade. These plants all produce "components" that can be harvested as seeds or, in some cases, produce (like liverwort leaves). Seeds can be used to grow new plants, produce can be used with the new crafting system.

Planting

You can only plant seeds in areas suitable for planting, and only a certain minimum distance away from other placeables (like other plants). When you plant a seed, a small patch of dirt appears. After twelve real-time hours, the seed matures into a true plant placeable. The system is fully persistent, so you don't have to worry about resets.

Harvesting

Over time, the plant accumulates above mentioned components. Harvesting a seed grants you one new seed item that can be used to plant a new plant of the same species, decreasing the total component count of the harvested plant. Harvesting produce works in the same way. When the component count reaches zero, the plant dies. The higher the component count, the faster it will increase (up to a maximum, which varies for each plant).

To harvest from a plant, use the plant to initiate conversation. Druids will be informed about how many components the plant currently has; rangers will be informed if only one component remains; and ordinary characters will not be informed at all. There is no limit to how many components can be harvested from a given plant at any one time, aside from that plant's total components (i.e. if you find a plant with 12 components, you can harvest all 12 components -- and kill the plant -- in one go).

Attacking and destroying a plant placeable will kill it without leaving neither seeds nor produce.


Recipe Crafting

The recipe crafting system comprises alchemy (allows arcanists to combine reagents to form grenadelike weapons, powders and elixirs, traps, and material components for spells); herbalism (allows wilderness characters to produce medicinal herb bags, salves, antitoxins, and salutary tonics); consecration (allows holy and unholy characters to infuse the power of their deity into minor religious trinkets and holy water); and cooking (allows creating of simple food items from harvested produce and animal meat). The amount of recipes at the moment is very limited, but this will increase in time.

Each system is fueled by ingredients collected either from harvested plants, dead animals and monsters, treasure, or merchants. These ingredients must be collected and combined with recipes.

Crafting

To use a recipe, you need all of the ingredients as well as two crafting items: the container and the crafting equipment. The container is usually a portable container (like a box or bag), but some placeables have been rigged to work with the system as well.

When you use the crafting equipment on the crafting container when the proper ingredients are in it, you roll a check. If you pass the check, the ingredients disappear and the final product appears. Presto! If you fail the check, the final product doesn't appear. If you fail the check badly, you may lose some of the ingredients.

Checks

The checks are where the systems differ significantly. All of the systems can be used by any PC, except for consecration, which must be done by a faith character: a blackguard, cleric, divine champion, or paladin. On the other hand, certain classes -- and certain types of characters -- are clearly going to have more affinity with certain recipe crafting skills than with others. The checks reflect this by factoring in class levels. Arcane characters should be better with alchemy; nature characters should be better with herbalism; faith characters should be better with consecration; and handy characters should be decent at cooking. All skills used are base ranks only.
Cooking Check: Lore + Concentration + DEX modifier + INT modifier + d20 vs DC.

Alchemy Check: Lore + Spellcraft + INT modifier + Wizard levels + Sorcerer levels + d20 vs DC.

Herbalism Check: Lore + Animal Empathy + WIS modifier + Druid levels + Ranger levels + d20 vs DC.

Consecration Check: Lore + Heal + CHA modifier + Cleric levels + d20 vs DC.

Of course, the real difference lies with the recipes available to each of the four systems. Needless to say, these must be discovered in-game. On that note, please do not spoil the recipes. We may in the future alter the system so that it requires actually learning a recipe, but for now, be nice.

Thank you, Snoteye