PC Farming not very viable even with living off the land 3.

[Viktoriusiii]

See, that's where you are wrong. Because at the early game it IS all about that 1 seed. Statistics work for the macro perspective. Not the micro perspective.

but as far as I can see.. .that is the point.
To make the early harder. You won't be able to infinitely produce crops once oyu have the first seed. At least it is not a garantuee. I kinda like this method.



Just for everyone who still hasn't caught up to speed.
Every harvest, you get 4 plants. You need 5 to replant. Net negative, right?
Well if it would never drop a seed, that would be correct. But every 2nd time (on average) you do not need to spend 5 to replant, since you gain a seed.
1 seed costs 5 to craft. Therefor it costs 2.5 to replenish the previous seed.

Meaning you get 4 - 2.5 every harvest which is 1.5 on average.
This isn't a whole lot, BUT it is positive. But it is also not a garantee that your farm will survive if you only start with 1-2 seeds.

Which is, as far as I can tell, exactly their intention.
 

 

[IgnyteZero]

but as far as I can see.. .that is the point.
To make the early harder. You won't be able to infinitely produce crops once oyu have the first seed. At least it is not a garantuee. I kinda like this method.
 

Did you read my previous post of how this makes several early cooking recipes redundant? Who will make baked potatoes when they are no longer plentiful? Too high cost, too little reward.

And that's the issue here. Balance. It's totally fine that the early game is harder. But it's CLEARLY not balanced. Theres an EXTREME abundance of meat (which is super easy to get), but vegetables are now super hard to get until the end of the early game, closing to mid-game. That is NOT balanced.

 

[meganoth]

Did you read my previous post of how this makes several early cooking recipes redundant? Who will make baked potatoes when they are no longer plentiful? Too high cost, too little reward.

Baked Potatoes was always a recipe for desperate times. In A19 I would keep potatoes for the farm instead of making them, this hasn't changed.

But now imagine you found a potato seed but don't plan to invest into LotL or make a big farm. Then you simply plant it,  get 2 potatoes and cook them. Done. Or you intend to farm but get more potatoes than corn through the random factor and have no other use for them (Most recipes need corn and potato as far as I remember?)

And that's the issue here. Balance. It's totally fine that the early game is harder. But it's CLEARLY not balanced. Theres an EXTREME abundance of meat (which is super easy to get), but vegetables are now super hard to get until the end of the early game, closing to mid-game. That is NOT balanced.

This I can agree to. So many bears came to my base and offered their meat. Though I had to pay for the meat with lots of ammunition. Still, if you want the better dishes you need a farm as well. And everyone can get food out of a farm at night, while hunting will be a day activity conflicting with other activities.

 

[Orclover]

This I can agree to. So many bears came to my base and offered their meat. Still, if you want the better dishes you need a farm as well. And everyone can get food out of a farm at night, while hunting will be a day activity conflicting with other activities.

I gotta admit its starting to look like ya'll aren't against easy food, just anti-vegetarian.  Lots of bear and wolf deliveries at our base lately.  Very easy to get food if you are strict carnivore.

 

[meganoth]

See, that's where you are wrong. Because at the early game it IS all about that 1 seed. Statistics work for the macro perspective. Not the micro perspective.

And even in the micro perspective it doesn't matter because you can find the seeds one after another, at different times. If you keep the produce from every seed you multiply your chances to really start a farm with every new seed found. So just keep planting. It may take longer but because you find more seeds in loot that may be debatable

 

[canadianbluebeer]

Does Valheim ever net negative on a harvest?

no.  If you plant too close together, then the plant or seedplant dies and you get nada.

It takes a minute or two after planting to see that effect though, and once planted, tough luck. That seed is gone.

But, you always get the 2 seeds. 

However, if you don't have good walls, something can (and will) break in, and trash your plants.

(here, zeds ignore the plants)

So if it's as bad as ppl are saying, then I'd expect tweaks.  (going to the old way, um, nope!)

 

[seagas]

I planted 4 mushrooms, zero LOTL, my first three harvests returned 1 seed, finally on my fourth harvest, I got three seeds in return. So out of 4 mushroom harvests of 4 plants, total of 16 plants, I got a return of 6 seeds. I'm no math professor, but that is less than 50%. I realize that the law of large numbers will eventually reach 50% but if you're unlucky in the beginning, you're best of waiting until you have more seeds and a high LOTL level.

 

[Orclover]

However, if you don't have good walls, something can (and will) break in, and trash your plants.

(here, zeds ignore the plants)

Honestly it would be hilarious if wandering fat zombies would eat your crops if they come into contact with it. Force us to put up protective measures.  Deer and Pigs too, those things should honestly be a threat to crops.  Pigs can dig under walls and deer can hop a decent size fence, kiss a few plants goodbye.

 

[meganoth]

I planted 4 mushrooms, zero LOTL, my first three harvests returned 1 seed, finally on my fourth harvest, I got three seeds in return. So out of 4 mushroom harvests of 4 plants, total of 16 plants, I got a return of 6 seeds. I'm no math professor, but that is less than 50%. I realize that the law of large numbers will eventually reach 50% but if you're unlucky in the beginning, you're best of waiting until you have more seeds and a high LOTL level.

With zero LotL one should never convert mushrooms to mushroom seeds, you can't really win in the long run. Just use the produce.

But waiting for seeds is not neccessary, that was what I was speaking about in my last post. It doesn't matter if you plant 5 seeds at the same time or 5 seeds one after the other whenever you find them.  You only can observe the seed return ratio much easier in the first case.

 

[ElCabong]

I just planted 11 mushrooms. I'll harvest them tomorrow and post back here about my results. One data point doesn't tell us anything but if I keep coming back over, say 5 days, if we have 5 days before the next update. Lol.

We'll get an idea about how big you need to make your farm before it's going to work.

 

[hiemfire]

no.  If you plant too close together, then the plant or seedplant dies and you get nada.

It takes a minute or two after planting to see that effect though, and once planted, tough luck. That seed is gone.

But, you always get the 2 seeds. 

Okay thanks.

However, if you don't have good walls, something can (and will) break in, and trash your plants.

(here, zeds ignore the plants)

Makes sense and I wouldn't mind having to put up fences or walls around a farm to keep zombies out of the crops. Usually I build my farm on top of my base because I've seen zombies bash plants at random while they were just wandering around. Grass, twig bush, world gen crops, etc. didn't matter, every so often one would stop and take a swing at random breaking the plant.

So if it's as bad as ppl are saying, then I'd expect tweaks.  (going to the old way, um, nope!)

Ya, the old way was too easy. I despise the rng slap in the face that 50% of not getting back a seed though. Okay, food was too easy with farms and I can live with it being toned back, but why in the hell does TFP always go with the "kick the player in the head repeatedly" approach to fixing things?

 

[theFlu]

meganoth's math is fine, but I'd like to point out to people an additional feature of such random events. I mentally call it "collapsing", I'm sure it has a real name too, somewhere, don't think I've heard it. Basically, as long as there's a decent chance of bad luck "taking you out", it will happen surprisingly quickly.

In this case, the bad luck is the seeds. Assuming 50% chance and 1.5 net plants from LotL 1.

Normal case: Ten plants. You'll get 5 seeds, 40 plants. You use 25 seeds to re-plant, get to keep 15.

Bad case: those 15 plants are your "backup." You can use those to create 3 more seeds if needed, you will need to get at least 2 seeds to keep the size of your farm.

Terrible case: You get no seeds. And now your farm only gets replanted to 8. Which will yield 4 seeds. This may then fail yet again, at least before you get back to 10.

How likely is that? With 10 plants, not that likely. However, if you keep farming a 10 plot garden long enough, you WILL run into it eventually. If you're not keeping spares/gathering the surplus, you run a decent risk of flatlining. It's kinda like crit streaks in games, they happen surprisingly often; it's surprising mostly because the single crits aren't even an event, but you really feel the 5% of a 5% chance, even though it happens once after every 20th crit. And crit happens...

With those numbers I wouldn't worry too much about a total loss, but I couldn't realistically rely on Any income from the farm.

Dropping down to 5 plots, I wouldn't even bother; a "zero seed harvest" will happen within the first 5 harvests. That's nowhere near the exact odds for it, but it isn't too far fetched. The only off-normal event you care about is the collapse, if you get extras, woo, you make an extra stew. Once you take a hit and go down, the recovery may require small miracles.

 

[hiemfire]

I mentally call it "collapsing"

Flipping a coin and on a "heads" kicking the player in the head for poking a hole in the ground after telling them to poke the hole in the ground.

Repackaging food poisoning with the intent to make it remain painful to experience (the farming adjustment is meant to fill the same role, it pegs that and still bullies the player for bothering, they probably think we forgot the gut wrenching sound and the emptying of what ever supplies we had saved up, often multiple times in short sequence if we weren't trying to stave of the sudden onset of impending starvation death with canned goods).

Effectively predetermined failure with additional penalties for failing so that madmole doesn't have to see pics of chests full of food from playthroughs that have lasted 100+ hrs and to give us another time sink tearing us away from getting ready for 7th days as we tear through trash and poi's further and further away from base...

 

[ElCabong]

 

[meganoth]

meganoth's math is fine, but I'd like to point out to people an additional feature of such random events. I mentally call it "collapsing", I'm sure it has a real name too, somewhere, don't think I've heard it. Basically, as long as there's a decent chance of bad luck "taking you out", it will happen surprisingly quickly.

In this case, the bad luck is the seeds. Assuming 50% chance and 1.5 net plants from LotL 1.

Normal case: Ten plants. You'll get 5 seeds, 40 plants. You use 25 seeds to re-plant, get to keep 15.

Bad case: those 15 plants are your "backup." You can use those to create 3 more seeds if needed, you will need to get at least 2 seeds to keep the size of your farm.

Terrible case: You get no seeds. And now your farm only gets replanted to 8. Which will yield 4 seeds. This may then fail yet again, at least before you get back to 10.

How likely is that? With 10 plants, not that likely. However, if you keep farming a 10 plot garden long enough, you WILL run into it eventually. If you're not keeping spares/gathering the surplus, you run a decent risk of flatlining. It's kinda like crit streaks in games, they happen surprisingly often; it's surprising mostly because the single crits aren't even an event, but you really feel the 5% of a 5% chance, even though it happens once after every 20th crit. And crit happens...

With those numbers I wouldn't worry too much about a total loss, but I couldn't realistically rely on Any income from the farm.

Dropping down to 5 plots, I wouldn't even bother; a "zero seed harvest" will happen within the first 5 harvests. That's nowhere near the exact odds for it, but it isn't too far fetched. The only off-normal event you care about is the collapse, if you get extras, woo, you make an extra stew. Once you take a hit and go down, the recovery may require small miracles.

Great analysis, but let me mention 2 things:

1) Even when a series of bad harvests drops you down from 10 to 8, 6, 4..., the likelier outcome of the next harvest is always that you will regain seeds. Eventually the bust will happen, sure (this is why the "double when you lose" strategy only works with unlimited funds). But in a typical game you have 20 seasons, the chance for a total bust is really low in such a short series. To 1 in 100 players it will actually happen, the rest will just cower needlessly in fear .

Also while you are recovering you need to get your food other ways as you can't use the produce for food production. Is this a crisis? You might need to hunt a little more, buy food from the trader or use a mushroom recipe instead of the potato and steak recipe. So you need to adapt, but I don't see any serious danger here.

2) While your farming is working boringly normal you will probably find more seeds that you either put into farm plots 11 and 12 or just keep them in case you have a bad harvest. Now when you get that ultimate bad harvest you either go down from 12 to 10 plots or you look into your seed chest and notice those spares. 

 

[theFlu]

To 1 in 100 players it will actually happen, the rest will just cower needlessly in fear .

Can't see anything wrong with your additions, but, from game design perspective:

This is the dude we'll hear from, terrible press. The guy happily staying within the expected yields, he's bored, at worst. And at best .. well, bored.

If it happens to be one of us, we'll never farm again. Well, maybe we will, after crunching the numbers, but sheesh would it suck.

There's no "win" in it, ever. Only a small chance of a ridiculous loss. Even if you get 100% seeds, you'll spend them all instantly and won't really feel a thing.

Please change it for a random daily 1/100 "locusts ate all your stuff." At least that would be an instant end and not a week long downhill struggle ...

Or, have horde nights spawn a murder of zombie crows. Now you get to choose if you let them eat your crops, or destroy your farm plots with your shotty yourself...

 

[Cubevision]

Isn't the math a bit off though? 50% chance of getting 4 crops before running out of seeds, 25% chance of getting 8 crops before running out, 12.5% of getting 12 crops and so on (6.25% chance for 16, 3.125% chance for 20, 1.5625% chance for 24) ultimately averaging out to a yield of 8 crops w/one level of living off the land (or 3 crops + 1 replacement seed).

0 levels in the skill would mean 4 average (or a  loss of 1 crop + 1 replacement seed) and 3 levels would mean 12 average crops, or 7 + 1 replacement seed. RNG plays a huge part but I could swear that the weighted average makes it work out better than A19 on average, but with chance instead of certainty.

 

[theFlu]

ultimately averaging out to a yield of 8 crops w/one level of living off the land (or 3 crops + 1 replacement seed).

I'm not entirely sure what math you're comparing to, but you seem to be calculating the "total average yield from one seed." I think most of the math here has been focused on the "average yield from one round of farming." They're slightly different in this case, but do the same calc for A19 and you'll land on infinite, right?

(I haven't watched the vid in case you're referring to that.)

 

[Cubevision]

You're right, I confused myself by calculating total avg yield and comparing it to yield per harvest (and you're right, A19 would be infinite so I'm basically comparing apples and oranges).

 

[meganoth]

Can't see anything wrong with your additions, but, from game design perspective:

This is the dude we'll hear from, terrible press. The guy happily staying within the expected yields, he's bored, at worst. And at best .. well, bored.

If it happens to be one of us, we'll never farm again. Well, maybe we will, after crunching the numbers, but sheesh would it suck.

There's no "win" in it, ever. Only a small chance of a ridiculous loss. Even if you get 100% seeds, you'll spend them all instantly and won't really feel a thing.

Please change it for a random daily 1/100 "locusts ate all your stuff." At least that would be an instant end and not a week long downhill struggle ...

Or, have horde nights spawn a murder of zombie crows. Now you get to choose if you let them eat your crops, or destroy your farm plots with your shotty yourself...

Sure, but even that guy has the events in my second point happening which will prevent the bust. Lets make a quick calc again:

In the worst case the guy goes from 10 to 8 to 6 (and 2 produce) to 5 (and 1 produce) to 4(1) to 3(2) to 2(4) to 2(2) to 2(0) to 1(3) to 1(2) to 1(1) to 1 to bust.

This means it takes 13 seasons of complete failure. 13 season is 39 days in which he does not find more seeds of this type in loot or at a trader. Who is this, Hiob?

And lets check if this is really 1 guy in 100. To get this astounding series takes 46 tails in series starting in any season. Lets assume the average player of 7 days to die plays the game 100 hours aka 33 seasons. That is one person in a group of 2^46/33 = roughly 2,000,000,000,000 people.

One in 2 trillion people would get this event if he also doesn't find a single seed in 39 days! I think we can ignore him

Naturally we get more people if we look at more realistic scenarios like just a loss down to 5. But even down to 5 would need 24 straight tails which means it is 1 in 16777216 seasons. Divided by 33 would be 1 in 500,000 people!

If we assume that 5 million people will play 7d2d starting with A20 then we are looking at 10 people in the history of 7D2D who will ever have their field of 10 reduced to half once. Which might make them doubt farming a little were it not for finding additional seeds in the meantime and all the other plants in their garden that meanwhile produced normally.

Another small calc: To have even that initial loss that you can't produce enought seeds to replace the lost seeds you obviously need to have a 0 or 1 seed return. There are 2^1024 possible results and 11 of them produce a loss so that you end up with a 8 or 9-sized field. This means every player will get this event once in about 100 seasons or every 300 in-game days of playing 7D2D. Less than 5 of these 100 seasons will have you just even out without any profit. And 94 of 100 seasons will see you making a profit from this 10-plot farm.