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### Topic

#### [known issue] Seed to Scythe quest not working

Repro Steps
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Start the Seed to Scythe quest
Tend patches and plant beans in the garden of the house *you already own*
Water, pet and harvest. Use Fertilidust to enhance growth if desired.
Expected Behavior
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Trees grow to full height and the 0/5 counter in the quest goes up
Actual Behavior
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The counter does not change despite repeated watering and petting.
Having no way to detect that the tree is fully grown doesn't help but the trees in my backyard definitely looked big enough. Others have also hit this problem and some suggested moving house was the answer but I'm not keen to do that.

Posted 24 months ago by bluto | Permalink

### Replies

- So just to chime in my experiences with this quest (which I finally competed!)
  I have spots for only three threes in my yard.
  1. I planted three threes, and grew 'em up. Two of them counted.
  2. Repeat.
  3. Planted only two trees, hoping to pursue the question of whether it was "the third tree" that was a problem or whether it was "one less" that was counted. This, of course, was a flawed pursuit, since I had already finished four of the five trees. However, neither of these trees counted, and both died with game downtime... As bluto says, it's hard to know what "fully grown" means, so maybe they didn't actually make it to that threshold. (And also hard to tell because the rates of tree growth is something that's been tinkered with in recent times.)
  4. Planted three more trees and finished quest.
  I think that corresponds to four different times of the game being open, FWIW.
  Posted 24 months ago by clare | Permalink
- This has been reported in past weeks/tests I am sure. but I will add my status here.
  A few weeks back I planted 5 trees in my large home at the same time and when they all grew together I got to 4/5 in the quest.
  In this last long test I planted an number of additional trees (at least 6 over the course of the test) and fertildust-ed and tended so some of them for sure hit that last stage but I am still at 4/5.
  Posted 24 months ago by Another Chris | Permalink
- None of them counted in mine and they were fully grown
  Posted 24 months ago by Ani Laurel | Permalink
- I planted 3 in my yard, and none counted. I believe they were fully grown.
  Posted 24 months ago by Amy Pond | Permalink
- So there's two things here:
  1) Fertilidust seems to be screwing with whether they register properly for the quest.
  2) Between the quest copy and the maturity mechanic it's kind of hard to tell when a tree is in fact fully-grown because it may look like it but it may not actually be.
  We're aware of both issues and we're working on them, but for now, avoid using fertilidust if you want to get quest credit before it's fixed, and your tree isn't full maturity until you get a little growl on your screen saying it has reached full maturity, so keep an eye out for that.
  Posted 24 months ago by Beefcake | Permalink
- Assuming my trees will be dead by the time I get back to my backyard, will new trees be OK, Beefcake? I used Fertilidust on the last lot (several times).
  Posted 24 months ago by bluto | Permalink
- I'm in the same boat at Bluto. Happy to start over with trees but I sure spent a lot of time making and using Fertilidust last test.
  Posted 24 months ago by tiff | Permalink
- I devs!
  Posted 24 months ago by Plurp | Permalink
- didn't get close to growing up my fruit trees today to test if that last one registered without fertildust. watered and petted a bunch though.
  Tried enough to finish Super Duper Soaker, Masterful Fruit Tree Petter, and H2Oh! Award badges.
  hrmph!
  Posted 24 months ago by Another Chris | Permalink
- I ran out of time on this, too. Starting from nearly the beginning of the test wasn't enough time to raise my trees despite having my second character gardening for me while I completed a separate quest. I'll bet my trees are dead by next test, requiring starting over.
  I understand the skill-expression this test is going for but it sure sucks a lot. With the fertilidust bug and a short test this time, I've spend almost my entire time directly focusing on one quest. That's demoralizing, to some extent.
  Posted 24 months ago by tiff | Permalink
- I was slow to get into the test this time and wasted time creating and wondering why I couldn't plant spice or bubble beans in my backyard. By the time I had found out that only fruit or bean trees now grow in forests, I had no hope to finish this quest. Frustrating to say the least. So still 0/5 for me.
  Posted 24 months ago by bluto | Permalink
- tree, then ten dustings made me believe the trees were at level 10; he confirmed they were at 10 but there was no quest acknowledgement of that).
  So, this test, I started out knowing not to use the dust. Wow - what a drag this became. In order to do that, I would have to sit in my house through the entire life cycle, because in venturing out I'd miss a watering chance (and did - I was in the game the entire test and never got the trees past I'd say level 3, because I was out and about too long).
  I'm not sure how the tree logic works, but my guess is that it is something like this:
  - seedling != tree and takes x pets before petting does nothing (3?) and some time to turn into a tree
  - when it becomes a tree, it asks for water every n minutes (where n is short - 10 min?)
  - it takes x waterings for a tree to move to the next level
  - it will stay at a level if you miss y waterings and then drops a level (or enters a death cycle) - if you miss z waterings (where y and z are small)
  So, that growing logic may work very well on public streets, where there a large number of players that pass by to keep a tree alive, but it doesn't work well in your yard where it's likely only you keeping the tree alive and growing. That's the natural tension of the game.
  Unfortunately, that short growing/death cycle in the public streets really seems very long in one's private yard in terms of the quest and too too too short in terms of the game! For the quest, either I bore easily or am too impatient to hang out for 10 10-15 minute cycles to complete a quest (that's over a hour, right?). For the game, it annoys me that if I'm out of game for a day, the trees in my yard are dead.
  So, back to the tension. If you shorten up that time or kill some of the death cycle in a private space to allow players to complete the quest, after the quest that logic becomes worse for a homeowner - trees in one's yard already die off far too quickly. Without this quest, I would argue for either private yard logic on a longer cycle than public streets or a new gardening skill that allows you to install a watering system (like the pig/butterfly feeding systems). But with this quest, perhaps allow the fertlidust to register with the quest logic rather than counting whatever it being counted and stored in a table. So, the quest should be based on "what level is the tree?" rather than "how many cycles did the player water for?" (again - this is me making assumptions based on in-game experience as to what is happening in the code).
  Posted 24 months ago by zeeberk | Permalink
- I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I would suggest bringing this specific issue up in the general forum, as you're not really describing a bug here but general gameplay suggestions, and suggestions like that tend to do best in a place where discussion can stem forth.
  Posted 24 months ago by Beefcake | Permalink
- I'd also like to point out that not all quests are meant to be something you can just sit down and focus on and finish right away, and this is definitely one of those.
  Posted 24 months ago by Beefcake | Permalink
- :) oops! You're right - more of a discussion than bug report - so noted and a general post is up now.
  Posted 24 months ago by zeeberk | Permalink
- Taking my thoughts on to the general forum topic, too. Other Seed-to-Scythe questees, join us over there if you want to discuss the difficulties of this one (with or without fertilidust).
  Posted 24 months ago by tiff | Permalink
- I can confirm this appears to be fixed. I was informed while away from home that one tree had reached maturity and another did so while at home.
  My counter now says 2/5.
  Posted 23 months ago by bluto | Permalink
- Confirmed. Mine jumped to 4/5 when I reentered the world, and completed with little effort. Yay! thanks, devs.
  Posted 23 months ago by tiff | Permalink
- Mine is completed. Yay! :)
  I now have no quests :(
  Posted 23 months ago by bluto | Permalink
- another confirmation...
  now if i can these trees to die i'll have my lump of earth factory back :P
  Posted 23 months ago by Another Chris | Permalink
- Mine finished, it took two days
  Posted 23 months ago by Ani Laurel | Permalink
- YAY thanks for fixing this one. :)
  Posted 23 months ago by zeeberk | Permalink