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#### Herbs - how to make them more appealing/useful

I really love my bog house, although I still hope that there will be more attractive ones coming soon. But part of the appeal is that it's the only place for Herbalism.
There is just one problem though: the herbs suck.
Gandlevery: a +3 energy boost once every 15 seconds for 2 minutes (+24 total energy gain). Seriously? Growing it takes 1 hour 30 minutes. The boost should be bigger, or even better, relative to the user's total energy.
Hairball Flower: a speed boost. Barely noticable, in my humble opinion. 1.5 to 2 times the base speed would be cool. Maybe make the energy loss more painful, but that could be really useful!
Purple Flower: cool one-time experience, useless otherwise. Grows way too fast IMHO. Make it grow the slowest, make the others faster.
Rookswort: no mood loss for a bit. THAT one is useful. Keep it. Growing time is adequate, IMHO.
Rubeweed: improved chance for drops. Well, that one is dubious, I have not tested it extensively, but from my mining experience I notice next to no increase in gem drops. But perhaps it does not work for mining. My information on the effect is limited.
Silvertongue: useful. Bonus on next quest or achievement. Takes 7 hours to grow, which is a bit on the longish side for that measly 5% bonus.
Yellow Crumb Flower: grows the slowest at 9 hours, and gives a short "fast learning" buff. Much like the Pungent Sunrise Drink. I understand that speeding up learning too much is not intended, but like all other speedup things like donations, I don't see the appeal of doing that. It's very time consuming to grow a sufficient amount of YCF to notice a significant time reduction.
There also need to be bog houses with more space to grow herbs, the 9 plots are not enough to grow enough of the slower growing ones.
Herbs that give equivalent buffs like the Earthshaker or Flaming Humbaba would be nice, but perhaps for other professions.
Maybe a herb that reduces energy loss by 50% when cooking (including transmogifications)?

Posted 13 months ago by H-nes | Permalink

### Replies

- I forgot one important thing: even with Herbalism II, there is no significant increase in yield. Croppery gives huge amounts at high level, but Herbalism seems not to increase it, just decrease the chance of failure, with the occasional SuperHarvest thrown in. Double yield sounds nice, but 2x1 = 2. Crops give more at base skill, so there is more with Croppery 2 or 3.
  Posted 13 months ago by H-nes | Permalink
- The one glaring problem I see in the herbs is their lack of visibility. I would think that those invested in herbs would want to increase their visibility, rather than to keep it a quiet secret, which in practice is what I've found. Very little in the way of player promotion of its use. *Especially for items such as rookswort, which for the crafter who produces items for auction is a godsend, what with the suspension of mood loss, which normally causes a big slow down in production on the crafter's end, due to the need to replenish that lost TP.
  For instance, I didn't really learn what ANY herb did until I attained level 30. That's a bit far into the game to not have more than a vague suggestions of what the herbs are for or what they help to achieve. I would like to note that there were a few gracious players that have been very helpful in teaching me what they actually do, and I'm grateful for their help. But in general? mum seems to be the word, whether by design or simply a practical reality of the low yields and near invisibility of herbs within the player community. (Ie, I mean no disrespect to the herbal growers)
  I do agree that yields are a bit low, and stack sizes might be a bit low as well. IRL, herbs produce pretty large yields. My two parsely plants produced almost a pound of parsley this season, as well as a small jar of parsley root... Oregano produced 7 commercial sized jars of herb. Lemon Thyme produced 5 jars. That ain't chump change folks. And it all grew in a deciduous forest of 100 foot oaks in NE Ohio, under only partial sun (~6 hours at season peak of direct sun), not in California or Florida or the Mediterranean where it actually grows well. (Of course this IS a game, so the rules are different, but still)
  Posted 13 months ago by Woochi | Permalink
- Herb gardens in other house types would open them up a bit.
  It's no draw to get a bog house just for herbs because of the limitations listed above, so as things stand they'll stay a bit of a mystery to many I expect.
  Posted 13 months ago by Nobbin | Permalink
- One big change I would love - please can we get random kindnness as a bonus with cultivating herbs as we do with gardening. I have no other way to get them except to keep redoing the tower quest and that is at a cost. I feel so stingy that I can't keep bestowing kindness randomly as others do and as I used to do previously when I had a garden plot. Especially during projects and in the mines.
  Posted 13 months ago by Twoodle | Permalink
- Woochi has some good points, better yields would be the "minimum" requirement for me to consider this idea fulfilled.
  Posted 13 months ago by H-nes | Permalink
- I would love to have bigger stacks of herbs! The herbs take up all too much space since they cab be so very few per stack :( And Herbalism really should be a bit better...lots of good ideas here!
  Posted 13 months ago by Tsuki | Permalink
- 2 or 3 herb plots for northern houses and 2 or 3 produce for the southern houses.
  Would be enough that people would be able to at least try everything out even if it is at a reduced amount. I don't bother with herbs because the only place I could plant them is the community gardens. Maybe sell pots at the garden vendors and each house could have 2 pot locations, you can plant anything in them....maybe add flowers !
  Posted 13 months ago by BlackWolf | Permalink
- Right now, herb-growing is really only for the IDEA of it. There just isn't a practical payoff.
  I keep hoping that there will be some recipes (cocktails, food, alchemy) that make the herbs truly useful. The current buffs as described by the OP are only marginally valuable.
  And +1 to the miserable crop yields and restricted bog garden sizes. Bog dwellers really are treated like second-class citizens currently.
  Posted 13 months ago by Pascale | Permalink
- On Rubeweed, I've tried using it while tree-farming and crop-growing. However, unfortunately, I really do not know if it really helps the drop rate.
  Posted 13 months ago by Pming | Permalink
- Rubeweed seems to help a bit, but not a significant amount. I've mostly noticed it coughing up more game tickets when donating or such. It really needs to be more noticeable to be worth it, or increase chances of super harvests and such.
  Hairball Flowers really do get shafted, since spinach ALSO boosts speed and much more than hairballs do, without the energy loss, for much cheaper and faster to grow. You can harvest many at once, or even buy them, and they also allow you to high jump. To be worth it, a hairball rally would have to at least be as fast or faster than the high jump buff makes you move.
  Gandelevery is really useless. 3 meat is better than 1 gandelevery, and is in every way easier to obtain. If it were at least 3% energy gain for 2 minutes then you could gain (at 1000 energy total) 30 energy every 15 seconds, for a total of 240 energy. Which would be more useful, since you can stack 5 and get about 1200 energy compared to a full stack of meat at 600.
  The duration on yellow crumb really is far too short for, in my experience, no noticeable difference (Though the same can be said of the pungent sunrise). You at least get 3 a yield, but without knowing how much time you're taking off of your learning it seems like a large investment for no benefit.
  Rookswart really is the best of the lot, having a clear function and time period that isn't replicated with other means.
  Silvertongue is the second best, for the same reasons. You get a yield of three per harvest, even if the growing time is a bit long for only a 5% bonus.
  Purple flowers are fun, but it's only fun once or twice before the novelty wears off. You get a little exp during the experience, but the short growing times and high yields mean it generally chokes community gardens for an herb that isn't all that practical.
  Besides the herbs themselves being useless, the lack of herb plots comparative to crop plots combined with low yields and long growing times makes them unattractive to farm, and means you aren't likely to be exposed to ones that would be useful in early levels like silvertongue or gandelevery. The skills themselves are hard to access comparative to crop growing and other alternatives, so a new player probably has no real reason to even think about herbs until they're long past being of any real use. And nothing really directs players towards Shimla March and Chakra until much later.
  I'd really like to see the herbs, besides being useful on their own, at least be able to be used in drinks or cooking for added benefits or energy/mood gain or something.
  Posted 13 months ago by Spigot | Permalink
- @Spigot, I would not call any of the herbs "useless".
  I do agree though that using herbs in combined, enhanced food and/or drink recipes would be cool and probably should be considered, though it might be good to require high level skill in a combination of "trades" to utilize them in that manner, to avoid a glut of use without any real effort.
  Posted 13 months ago by Woochi | Permalink
- I agree...to a point. they are not useless, its jut the work/reward isn't balanced.
  Posted 13 months ago by ugli | Permalink
- Agreed ugli. I think the harvest yields are a bit raw, especially considering that herb growers can't grow veggies, and that unlike veggie gardening, some of the harvest has to go back to making seed for new crops. A bit of guano does help with production speed though, fwiw...
  Posted 13 months ago by Woochi | Permalink
- I actually think gandelevery would be better off if it halted normal energy loss for 5 minutes or 10 minutes!
  Posted 13 months ago by Kirnan | Permalink
- @Kirnan that's an interesting idea. Similar to Rookswart then.
  Posted 13 months ago by H-nes | Permalink
- I've heard rumors of potion making being added to the game, and am hoping that the logical thing would be that potions require herbs.
  Posted 13 months ago by WalruZ | Permalink
- Potion Making would still require increased herb yield, or the potions would be even more rare and expensive than the ingredients...
  Posted 13 months ago by H-nes | Permalink
- So, Potion Making is here.
  It makes herbs more interesting, and the essences and potions are really interesting.
  So most of my complaints are gone now, but I still find it frustrating that I have Herbalism 2, yet only get usually (except rare super harvests) double back of what I have to put in - with a horrifyingly high chance of destroying a flower/herb while shucking it, which can be a setback of 1 to 9 hours.
  The only workaround is using LOADS of guano, which is easy, but strangely annoying to "produce"
  Posted 12 months ago by H-nes | Permalink
- Plot for plot, the profit (going by published prices, not auction or vendor) is comparable (see figures). Some herbs are higher than vegetable crops, some lower. We will always need a higher supply of food and, so, it makes sense to have a great yield per crop plot. However, dedicated herb growers will never be able to make as much from their garden as crop growers due to the garden size -- the largest herb garden is less than half the size of the largest vegetable garden. (though, with the upcoming housing changes, this may be a moot point).
  As for croppery giving crop yield bonuses, it appears to give bonuses to herb yield as well. If you have croppery and herbalism two you get 3 flowers from those plants that give more than one flower. If you do not have croppery you only get 2.
  Posted 12 months ago by Vera Strange | Permalink
- Interesting observation Vera, and thank you. I wasn't aware of a correlation between croppery and herbal gardening, but it's good to see that there is some overlapping and augmentation at work in the background.
  Posted 12 months ago by Woochi | Permalink
- Thanks Vera, had not known that. Now I'll have to learn croppery too :( I thought I could save that until I switch away from herbs.
  Posted 12 months ago by H-nes | Permalink