What's the point of the apiary?

[Suxar]

You can also get beeswax also in lootbags from rancher zombies (desert). In my current playthrough, I have an apirary already crafted by Day 14, default settings except for storms (200%).

Yes, I missed that. But the bag is quite rare. I also saw wax for sale at a merchant in the wasteland, though I don't know if he got it when he updated his inventory or if another player sold it to him (I play on a dedicated server).

But during the 12 days I spent celebrating the holidays and playing, one thing surprised me. In the winter biome, stumps contain much more wax and honey than in the forest. In the middle of five stumps, two had honey and one had wax. In real life, the last place I'd look for bees is in the snow, but in the game, things are different.

 

[AMG5TAG]

I'm all for more workstations and more variety.

 

[Suxar]

Personally, I don't mind it. It takes practically no time to harvest and plant crops since I don't make a 100 plot farm like some people. Mine is usually 10 or less and works fine for two people.

In reality, a large farm doesn't require much more time overall. I have a plot of 140 tiles. After I accumulate 3 cups of potatoes and corn, as well as 2 cups of yuca and blueberries, I stop tending the garden until the ingredients are gone.

For food, I usually made smoothies and rotten meat stew. Now I'll probably start making sham with honey; it cooks relatively quickly.

 

[kevikev]

As long as you have 6 blocks of clearance above the apiary, can you place the apiary indoors or underground?

 

[Blue mame]

I mean, getting honey without having to chop stumps is nice and all, but stumps are everywhere and the apiary is so slow to produce. Furthermore, the apiary is unlocked so late and accesories even later. In my current game, I had plenty of honey and antibiotics by the time I could construct the apiary. I still put one up but I have little incentive to pay attention to it.

If the apiary, with accesories, came earlier in the game, and honey was harder to get from stumps, it would make more sense.

I totally get your point — looting honey from stumps is easy, the apiary unlocks late, produces slowly, and by the time you can build it you already have plenty of honey and antibiotics, so it feels unnecessary to invest in.

But the apiary isn’t really meant to be just an easier way to farm honey resources. Its bigger purpose is adding extra gameplay options and late-game content variety. It gives players another base-building and passive production choice, a full small progression system with accessories to upgrade production speed, yield, and avoid bee swarms. It also opens up new crafting recipes centered around honey, letting you build a self-sustaining late-game farm playstyle instead of only looting stumps forever.

It’s less about being a mandatory resource source, and more about giving players alternative playstyles, base customization, and extra endgame things to work on — even if you don’t strictly need its resources to survive.

 

[Riamus]

As long as you have 6 blocks of clearance above the apiary, can you place the apiary indoors or underground?

I haven't tested it, but I am almost positive that it requires the same sky "visibility" as a solar panel or farm plot.

 

[Uncle Al]

Better food should give advantages over stuff like a raw egg or shamwich. When I say better I don’t mean make them more filling. We should get an energy rush, or maybe temporarily jump higher or run faster. Similar to what mega crush does but make it unique for each high quality food type.

I totally agree that it would be nice if high end foods did something meaningful. Even stamina bonuses seem pointless because a) As far as I can tell they don't affect stamina regen, which is what actually matters b) By the time you get high end foods you've almost always got a 'refill stamina on kill' book or skill.

Even having the top 5 foods add 1 to each attribute for a decent time, and allowing attributes to go above 10 by buffing would make high end cooking pretty good, but there are loads of buffs that would be meaningful: speed, stamina regen, damage, damage resistance, crit resistance etc.