Purchased Crafting Station - Farming Garden not functioning as normal farmland

[Toddlepip]

I recently purchased the full range of the new crafting station housing items from the LOTRO store and installed them in my kin house grounds.

They all seem to function fine with one exception, that the Superior Farmland/ Farming Garden doesn't allow the player to do sow/ harvest the same quantity as on normal farmland; basically the maximum is around 8-9 crops at a time rather than the previous 12 (more if very quick and good latency)

I did some testing at both Hobbiton farmland in the Shire and at my kin house at the Shire Homestead with the installed Farming Garden with the following results.


A single sown crop (Bean Field crop) despawned in the same time being on 2 minutes (120 seconds) therefore it doesn't appear that the crops are despawning any differently at the two locations.


I tried with both the Universal Toolkit (-3 second buff) and also with the basic purchased farm tool. Both were finishing earlier on the purchased Farming Garden. I also tried a different crop with the same result.


My latency was the same for both and I repeated it twice, last night and this afternoon with a normal latency for me of around 125-130ms and 0% packet loss so this doesn't appear to be the reason and the tests were pretty much concurrent so should not have differed that much.


Given that crops despawn after the same period of time on both locations, I can only guess that it the crop selection using Delete is not working in the same way? i.e. On normal farmland (as all is now superior) you sow the 12 crops and the Delete selection is identifying the oldest and therefore allowing them all to be harvested before the despawn (earliest sown crops picked first etc.)

On the installed farmland it seems that it is perhaps not working in the same way which results in not all the crops being harvested before they despawn.

It is not a major issue but an annoyance especially when you are used to following a rotation of 12 crops at a time and now it is reduced by 25% or so meaning more time on micro-managing it all. The item is sold as providing the same functionality.

• Has anyone else noticed this using the purchased Superior Farmland/ Farming Garden ?

I have submitted a ticket and will post when I hear anything but it would be good to hear from any others on this.In the meantime I am posting here so others are aware prior to purchase as to how it works currently.

[gripply]

I suppose I'm not that daring. I might try for 10 crops to harvest, but only if I'm not concerned about definitely getting all the crops (while leveling mostly). In the Shire, I go to only 4 plantings before I pick them all up. It is still the most reliable way to get the harvest. I'm not sure it saves any actual time to do more than that.

But if the farmlands are different, then yeah, I can see how that would be worrisome, regardless of my preference to be below both margins of error.

[Toddlepip]

I suppose I'm not that daring. I might try for 10 crops to harvest, but only if I'm not concerned about definitely getting all the crops (while leveling mostly). In the Shire, I go to only 4 plantings before I pick them all up. It is still the most reliable way to get the harvest. I'm not sure it saves any actual time to do more than that.

But if the farmlands are different, then yeah, I can see how that would be worrisome, regardless of my preference to be below both margins of error.

It is pretty safe even with latency and occasional packet loss from Europe to go for the sow/ harvest 12 crops. The timings changed back with RoR when I first noted it;

Good news is that the beta changes went live with RoR so now you have around 120 seconds (2 minutes) before planted fields de-spawn. The sowing process is faster (approx. 10 seconds) which now allows you to plant 12 fields at a time before harvesting in the same manner without losing any.


Basically you can now plant twice as much as before.


Combine this with a lot higher drop rate for rare 'crit' items in fields, Farming has definitely taken a step forward without trivialising it too much.

The timings appear the same now and with a decent farm tool (especially the Universal Toolkit now available for low level providing -3 second harvesting) it's rare to ever miss a crop as there is a decent margin on normal fields for me. Some go for even more but I find this a sweet spot.

It's basically just about a little less micro management in that setting 12 crops to be sowed is around two minutes which means you can tab out and read something etc. The shorter the rotation the more fiddling is about it. I'm talking purely about efficiency and there is no 'right' way of course and other times I'm happy to amble along and chat etc. But when it's about productivity then I definitely noticed this.

With a bit more testing I noticed that in fact you can sow crops over a wide area around the actual 'farm plot' which is good news for those wishing to use if for more than one at a time. And that it 'appeared' that sowing and harvesting totally outside the wooden edged plot was allowing pretty much what I expected.

It's hard to be certain of course with a comparatively small sample (a few hundred crops planted) and only my experience; being in Europe means 120-180 latency and some smallish packet loss sometimes which will have some impact. But it really hasn't meant lost crops on normal farmland before.

So, maybe there is some physical issue with the physical structure, or some other game mechanic in play. Or just pure coincidence. I made a support ticket and they responded very fast and offered a refund which was pretty impressive. I also submitted a bug report so maybe something will be sorted, so may hold out and see.

But I noticed it so maybe others will too. Anyone can try it out and the other stations if they are on Laurelin EU at 4 Brookbank, Leafpool in Shire Homestead as I set it all for open access.

Thanks for your feedback.

[gripply]

Yes I agree it's less fiddly. The first thing I farmed was pipeweed a long time ago and I was so excited to see what seeds I'd get that I must have got into a habit of harvesting fewer. That was before you could just buy the seeds.

So you're saying if you walk further away from the center of the housing farmland, it works as normal? That's a cool observation. I love the idea of farming at home because the more options I have for scenery the better. Sometimes I'm in the "mood" for the Thorin's Gate greenhouse, other times the bustling city view... etc.. Now if we could just buy multiple houses...

[Toddlepip]

Yes I agree it's less fiddly. The first thing I farmed was pipeweed a long time ago and I was so excited to see what seeds I'd get that I must have got into a habit of harvesting fewer. That was before you could just buy the seeds.

So you're saying if you walk further away from the center of the housing farmland, it works as normal? That's a cool observation. I love the idea of farming at home because the more options I have for scenery the better. Sometimes I'm in the "mood" for the Thorin's Gate greenhouse, other times the bustling city view... etc.. Now if we could just buy multiple houses...

Don't get me wrong. I love just bimbling around and regret that they changed the more complex nature of pipeweed cross-breeding which looked really interesting. Not always about efficiency but sometimes.

Also, it's cool to have the 'feel' of a working homestead which you can share with anyone else also. I do feel it;s a shame they don;t make it an option to install close the the homestead properties where it would feel more communal and offer a service to the whole Homestead. In the end if there is one in the homestead others can use it anyhow.

On farming on the actual Farming Garden. It is hard to be certain but from quite a bit of testing simply moving from sowing and harvesting directly on the earth patch of the item which gave around 8-9 occasionally 10 rotations maximum. Simply turning around and moving just off it so the crop was totally off it but within the buff zone, it was producing the 12 sown crops rotation as I get on normal farmland.

I sent the details as a bug report so maybe they can work out why (maybe something to do with the animation or slight difference in height of the raised Farmland garden) or just circumstantial. But it seems to work like that each time I try.

Typical examples;

Inside the Farming Garden (maximum possible rotation was 10, normally 8-9 out of 12 sown)


Outside the Farming Garden but inside the (large) buff zone (12 crops sown and gathered)


Note that there was normal latency (for me from EU late evening) and n packet loss.

Would be interesting if anyone else noticed this or could test too.

[Stormrider39]

I never do more than FIVE crops at a time. Even then I might lose one due to my server capabilities. I think that is the issue not the new farmland vs old farmland.

[Toddlepip]

I never do more than FIVE crops at a time. Even then I might lose one due to my server capabilities. I think that is the issue not the new farmland vs old farmland.

It's been possible to do 12 crops in rotation since the change back around 2012 (see link above) And still remains so on normal farmland.

Sowing is fixed at 10 secs duration.
Despawn time of crops once sown is 2 minutes or 120 secs.
Harvest time is 7 seconds default minus any harvest reduction buff from the equipped tool.

120 secs / 10 secs sow = 12 crops

Using the U for 'Use' and the fast select works by selecting the first sown crops first even when planted on top of each other, which makes this way work (if it was randomly selecting crops then a lot would despawn)

I tested with hundreds of crops as I wanted to confirm mechanics on returning to the game. This is remaining stationary and using the Delete and U key shortcuts to select then 'Use' the crops which speeds things up a lot. Along with a decent tool with -3 seconds harvest time (makes it 4 secs not 7 secs harvest time for example)

The difference between normal farmland and the Farming garden are noticeable and why I posted with details and submitted a bug report etc. And the observation that I can almost always harvest the 12 crops just by turning around and planting just off the actual bare earth patch.

I tend to use this method when doing a lot of crops and other times more casually when it's more RP; it's just one (fairly common) way to farm.