How to farm like a boss. This guide will go over some of the basic information about farming and why you would want to go farming not to mention how to take care of your animals and helpful tips you will need to know for farming in archeage.
The first very important thing to note is currently in alpha it doesn't cost anything to plant anything so you can plant as much as you want but harvesting things from your farm will cost labor depending on what your farming. Tree's can be anywhere from 15 to 25 labor points per tree so you will find yourself spending quite abit of points per tree. Gathering other things can be 1 to 5 labor depnding on what your gathering. Like for example it only costs 1 point to gather wild crops which are found naturally and contain random seeds for things you might not normally be able to buy from vendors.
The first thing to keep in mind plants have 4 different stages of growth for trees and 3 stages for plants. When they first are planted they are a seedling in which the time counts down until they are ripe to pick. The next stage is when they go from sapling into the young sapling stage this stage is when they evolve into a larger plant for non tree's this process can be speeded up by watering but for tree's it demands a wait period. Plants usually don't have a 4 they are ready to be picked at this stage then they usually are in the mature plant stage meaning they can be harvested. For tree's they go into a young tree phase before going into the fully matured tree phase or fruited stage depending on the type of tree. Tree's or plants left for too long a duration have two other phases either the wilted for plants phase or the dead phase for tree's. For plants you can fix wilted plants by using fertilizer on them as for dead tree's you can only cut them down or gather the fruit and the tree will disappear.
Tree's also have another more special phase which can occur during the first 3 stages of growth this is called thunderstruck. Some things to keep in mind many people will try to tell you thunderstruck trees only happen on islands where thunderstorms happen often but this is not true. Thunderstruck trees are an RNG gamble basicly the more tree's you have the more chance you have that a tree might get thunderstruck. In Korea they do have a cash shop item which increases chances two trees near each other will get thunderstruck but this so far will most likely not be brought to the North American version of the game. Tree's with longer cycles are better to use for thunderstruck tree's this is why many people use pine tree's the cost per labor is much lower to place these tree's and the time for them to get ready is over 2 days long. Fruit tree's cannot get thunderstruck so you would want to avoid planting those type of tree's. You don't want to be standing ontop of a tree as it gets thunderstruck you can get killed by the tree getting thunderstruck.
Planting tree's and plants outside of scarecrow farms and houses will cost you labor points depending on the type of tree or plant but this can be a good alternative if your aiming for thunderstruck tree's so you can plant more then 10 tree's in a spot but this means that other people can also come and steal your trees so looking for places to hide tree's is very important.
How to plant in a space? This can be done by clicking on the seed or sapling this will give you an area highlighted in a light green if you can plant if the plant area is red it means you can't place the plant in that spot either something is blocking you from planting or you are just unable to plant in that spot. Gray dotted lines indicate the space around houses and farms that you can plant in these are protected by you paying taxes and cannot be stolen by other players. Planting outside of safe area's means anyone can take them. When planting on your allied soil other players taking the plants leave footprints which can be reported which give them crime points. When you plant on the enemy faction no footprints will be left when stuff is stolen from you. This is the same when enemy faction steals from your alliance area's.
Rare item drops these currently have no purpose because they haven't been implemented as of yet but when they get released and they release the more specialty trade pack system these rare materials will be used to build more expensive and harder to obtain trade packs which will cost more to create.
Watering plants this helps when you are planting many things with long growth periods. Watering plants reduces the growth time for the plant by 10%. Watering most fast growing plants is more of a waste of time but if a plant has long duration you can reduce the time for it to mature by quite awhile.
Climate variation effects plant growth when you plant in the right area for plants they produce more harvested materials and also grow much faster. There are currently 3 different types of climates they are:
Arid
Temperate
Tropical
Arid climate is desert like conditions plants which are not ment to grow in these conditions will enter the wilted stage much more easily or have little to no produce and also enter dead phase much easier.
Temperate climate most plants fall into this catagory this is more just a normal season type condition.
Tropical this is the warm humid type of climate good for plants like banana trees.
Each type of plant you buy from the vendor will tell you what climate it belongs to this way you will know where it grows the most effectively. Growing things in the right locations will make them grow faster and make it more worth it for you in the long run.
Livestock care having different animals can benefit you with other types of material and much like planting caring for animals works similar to planting. After an animal is placed it goes though a growth time in which they will turn into a fully matured animal like for example cows go from a baby stage into a full dairy cow. You will need to feed them combined feed which they go into a thriving state at this point you get the option to milk the cow which will give you milk materials. When you don't take care of them they go into a hungry state and they can die. Cows that are fed but aren't harvested for milk can get diseased you need livestock suppliment to get them to go back to being healthy again. Cows which have produced for a long period of time will eventually go into the dead phase and die after being milked and you can also choose to butcher animal's for materials like hides and meat as well. Other types of animals can produce male and females and can be breeded to produce more of that animal. Breeding them can be used to train pet versions of different animals. Some animals instead of being milked can be sheered for fur like Yata's, Goat's, Sheep these give various different types of crafting materials.
Seed bundles these are created using vocational badges and a farmers workstation these contain a package of seeds which produce more of the harvested type of plant. Seed bundles also give other materials such as worms used for fishing and other crafting items depending on the type of bundle. Seed bundles take up a larger amount of space then planting individual seeds but with how much material you get you would have to plant more then the 10 seeds it costs to make a bundle to get the same amount of materials from them. These also grow much faster and stay alive longer then normal seed plants. They do however have a lower chance to get the rare items from harvesting.
Hidden farms some locations on the map make for extra special places to plant this is because they are either hard to get too or not easy to find by other players while I won't go and tell you all of the locations or teach everything about these locations being a good detective and thinking about sneaky ways to plant things that people won't notice is a great way to have good hidden farms. The picture above is one of the more harder to get to hidden farms and before you go complain about me showing a picture someone already ruined it by making a video of the location. If you don't want places to be found by others don't stream them or video them because people will only go to steal your stuff when they find it.
Archeage is a very fun game and the farming in the game is very interesting it might seem much more advanced and slightly complicated at first but as you get used to the game you will find yourself enjoying these daily tasks even if they might seem slightly frustrating when you have to gather tree's every 2 hours when they fruit. Farming produces many materials used for the other activities that you enjoy doing like crafting, fishing, treasure hunting, and trade runs.
