The Ultimate Cooking & Plant Farming Guide

[Cant See]

Introduction!

Hey guys! My name is Can't See and I decided to make a guide on how to effectively cook food and start your own produce farm. The first section will deal with how to cook food without burning your food and the second/last section will be a farming tutorial on hemp/pumpkins/corn. *Info relevant as of 12/10/17.

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The Basics

Cooking raw meat should be done with a barbeque rather than a campfire. You can use as many barbeques as needed but I prefer using three when cooking large amounts of meat, especially after killing multiple bears.

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General Statistics

When cooking any type of meat in a barbeque, it takes exactly 30 seconds for it to become fully cooked. When the meat becomes cooked, it takes an additional 60 seconds for it to become burnt. This means that cooking raw meat for longer than 1:30 minutes will result in it burning. Because it takes 30 seconds to cook raw meat, this means that you only need exactly 3 pieces of wood to cook a batch of food. These statistics have been tested across for every type of raw meat in the game so chicken, deer, human, wolf, pork, and bear meat can be used in the context of this guide.

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Cooking Method #1 (The AFK Method)

This method allows for a max of 9 pieces of raw meat to be cooked at once. After doing the proper following setup, you do not need to stick around the barbeque to see if the food will burn since this method will automatically cook the food and stop before burning happens.

You will need: Three pieces of wood and any amount/type of meat (Up to a maximum of 9 pieces)

1. Place exactly 3 pieces of wood into the barbeque.

2. Place the meat you want to cook into the barbeque. (Any amount is fine as long as it is <9 pieces)

3. It is important to leave at least 2 empty slots for the charcoal and cooked product.

4. Press "Turn On" and that's all you need to do! Your setup should look like the image below.

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Cooking "Method" #2 (The Lazy Method)

Do you just not want to go through the trouble and exactly divide your wood into 3 pieces? Maybe you just want to toss all of the materials into the barbeque and still want to afk and not burn the food. This second method is a very slight variation of the first one and it is more of a trick you can do rather than an actual method.

You will need: Wood (Any sufficient amount is fine) and raw meat (You NEED at least 10 pieces for this to work)

1. Place the wood into the barbeque.

2. Place the meat you want to cook into the barbeque. (Any amount is fine as long as you take up at least 10 slots in the barbeque)

3. There will only be one empty slot left for the charcoal. The lack of an empty space for the cooked product is the most important part

4. Press "Turn On" and do whatever you need to do but don't be gone for too long.

5. When the meat is done, the cooked product will automatically drop to the ground. You may need to stick around for this part before the meat despawns. Only one cooked piece will drop. This uses the same principle as a furnace when there are no more available slots for the smelted product to go. When the barbeque stops cooking, just keep spamming the "Turn On" button and the cooked meat will keep dropping to the ground.

So that concludes the cooking tutorial. The most important lesson from this is that it takes 30 seconds and 3 pieces of wood to cook food in a barbeque and that it takes an additional 60 seconds for it to burn.

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The Plant Basics

To start a farm, you will need a planter box, a quick and reliable source of fresh water, plant seeds, and ceiling lights. I prefer using large planter boxes because you get more seed slots (9 in total) with only 2 tarps while small planter boxes require 1 tarp but only give a measily 3 seed slots. Ceiling lights are somewhat "optional" but they do signficantly boost the growth speed of a plant.

There are two categories of plants: Pumpkins/Corn and Hemp. Pumpkins/Corn are slightly different from hemp because you are able to harvest their goods up to 3 times while Hemp only has one harvest.

The quality of a plant is determined by two things: Seed number and product yield. The "seed number" is a randomly generated value that determines how fast something grows. There is no way to get a higher plant number other than planting seeds and "Taking a Cutting" (More info in the next section). The only thing that is in your control is the product yield. Plants, like Corn/Pumpkin, have their product yield measured in the quality of the product. This is seen in the "durability" of the food item. The durability of a food item determines how much saturation/hydration/healing you get from eating it. Plants that spawn in the wild will always yield a 100% quality or perfect plant item. The durability of a plant is also important because it also determines the chance of you getting a seed when consuming the plant (For hemp, seeds only spawn at the time of harvesting a wild hemp plant).

An important thing to remember during this guide is to remember the difference between the Growing Stage and Harvesting/Ripening Stage

The rest of the guide will show you how to control the product yield of a plant and getting a seed number.

*Notice how the pumpkin at the top has a 100% durability. This is a pumpkin gained by harvesting a wild pumpkin. The highlighted pumpkin is a badly harvested pumpkin in a manmade farm.

 

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Plant Stems and Cutting

When a manmade plant is fully grown, there is an option (When holding E) that says "Take Cutting" when the plant reaches its Harvesting Stage. Taking a cutting will give 4 identical plant stems that you can use for future planting. These plant stems have a randomly generated value that will say something like "G-3456". This value varies from 1 to 10,000. The higher the value, the faster that plant will grow. Usually, this value will only go up to 9,000 and go down to 1,000. Any value outside of this range is very hard to get. *Refer to the picture in the above section "The Plant Basics" and you can see a pumpkin stem that reads "G-5644" in my inventory.

So to get these plant stems, you need to plant seeds you get from harvesting wild plants and wait for it to grow.

 

 

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The Growing Stage

So we learned in the previous section that the growing stage of plants vary wildly based on its G-Value. The speed of the plant's growth can also be affected by other variables such as water and a light source. When making a plant farm, place a ceiling light directly above the planter and use a bucket or water jug to throw water at the plants. You can do this by having a sufficient amount of fresh water in the container and pressing left click. Using salt water will kill the plant. You can see the amount of water needed in the plant seed's description. There are many stages of growth that are not important but you can visually see it by the size of the plant. It takes at least 1-2 hours for a plant to grow

One of the main differences between the Growing Stage and the Harvesting Stage is the lack of an option to interact with the plant when holding E. There is not much to do during this Growing Stage so just stick around and check every few minutes to see if it has progressed to the Harvesting Stage. Hover your mouse to see if there is a harvest option to check on if it progressed to the next stage. This is most important when attempting to get a high yield of Corn/Pumpkin/Hemp.

*Notice how there is no option to harvest and only the HP of the plant is shown. This means that it is in the Growing Stage.

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The Harvesting Stage

Did you just happen to check your plants and see an option to harvest? Well thats good news because it is now in the harvesting stage! Now before you do anything, DO NOT press harvest. You may ask why not? If there's a harvest option, then surely harvesting it must be the most logical step.

Notice how the title of this subsection is called a Harvesting Stage. There is still more work to be done in order to get the best yield. If you harvest a plant prematurely, you will get an extremely low durability corn/pumpkin. This durability can even be as low as 1%. Because of this low-quality produce, you will most likely not get any benefit out of eating the plant. In the case of hemp, you will just get a minimum of 10 cloth when harvesting early.

In the previous stage, the last few steps were to check the plant occasionally to see if it progressed from the Growing Stage to Harvesting Stage. This is important because.... more statistics!

When a plant is done growing and enters the harvesting stage, there is a 60-minute timer that begins. As time slowly progresses toward the one hour mark after a plant is done growing, the better the yield. Theoretically, if you wait for exactly an hour after the point the plant enters the harvesting stage, you will get the maximum yield/durability. You may even end up with a 100% pumpkin or the most perfect pumpkin in all of existence. (Nature does this job better than us so it is unlikely to get a perfect pumpkin by harvesting a plant grown by us humans)

Shortly after hitting this 60-minute mark, the plant's yield/durability will drop off. This is basically the reversal of the progress made. So you cannot harvest a plant too early or too late. The plant's progress can also be seen as a cool little visual of the plant's size. Pumpkins will have actual pumpkins growing and corn will start to have little cobs growing on the side. Hemp is boring so you can only judge by the physical size of the entire plant. (If you don't see actual round pumpkins and corn on the plant, this means that the plant is very early in the harvesting stage.

Corn and pumpkins go through the harvest stage three times (Assuming you tended to your crops and did the proper steps). Plants die after a few hours and you will be left with a sad brown husk as a reminder of your failure and inability to tend to something as simple as a pumpkin. So as a rule of thumb, do not leave your plants alone for more than three hours max.

*Pumpkin #1 has no physical pumpkin growing even though it is in the harvest stage. Pumpkin #2 has a decently sized pumpkin growing while Pumpkin #3 has a smaller pumpkin. If I had no timer, I would guess that Pumpkin #2 would probably need 20 more minutes of growing before becoming ripe.

So just remember that once a plant enters the harvest stage, start a one-hour timer to know when you should harvest. I highly recommend not afking or doing stuff when farming. To get good results, just dedicate 3 hours to tending your crops as a proper harvest of 3 planters full of pumpkins can feed you for a few weeks. You can afk for the first hour after planting a seedling but you have to be there when the plant enters the harvest stage.

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Conclusion

I hope this tutorial was helpful for you guys. Farming may seem boring and time-consuming but it is something nice to do. Challenge yourself by trying to achieve the ultimate plant-stem (I have only reached G-8644 so far). This guide took me quite a bit of time to research and mostly involved staring at a barbeque and planter box with a stopwatch for six hours. This information should be reliable as I have retested and retested and....... for many trials. Take this knowledge and encourage yourself to become a farmer. We have too many traders and loot fanatics while our farmer population is dwindling due to the lack of decent Youtube tutorials. Farmers unite!

*Hey at least you know how to not burn your food anymore. If you have any questions, just send them down below and I'll answer them when I can. There is still some stuff left out of the guide as I was not able to cover them all so don't be afraid to ask.

Edited December 10, 2017 by Cant See
Extra unneeded image

[Elegant Ka0s]

You've done a wonderful job on this @Cant See I am very impressed. Thank you for your wonderful contribution to our community

[ScootDog]

52 minutes ago, Cant See said:

Plants die after a few hours and you will be left with a sad brown husk as a reminder of your failure and inability to tend to something as simple as a pumpkin.

My favorite part lol. @Cant See  amazing guide. Great appreciated by me and I am certain, the rest of the community. 10/10

[Maxx_Forte]

Very helpful!   It addresses many of the frustrating mysteries I've had about farming corn/pumpkins.   Q:   If growth stage is 1-2 hours, and harvest stage is 1 hour, I wonder if just setting a timer for 2   hours after planting should give me a decent "check on it" reminder, giving me time to do other stuff.   I think I'll give it a try and see....

[Cant See]

@Maxx_ForteSorry for the late response. One thing I would do is harvest a certain strain of a crop that is preferably high (Maybe G-8000+) and set a timer on when the crop enters the harvest stage. Similar strains should have the same growth period and to use this information, just set a timer based on the strain. If you happen to build another farm on a different location or after a map wipe, just keep harvesting until you get the same strain number. That way, farming should be a breeze.