Can We Upgrade Old Seeds/Soil To The Heavensward Standard?

I'm still leveling my gatherers, so I just for the first time went to attempt old world fig seeds. I was ecstatic to find out how they worked. No "RARE" limit, no restrictions against bountiful harvest, and tho I didn't meet it yet, a Nymeia's Ward requirement for even more random yield increase. This is how seeds and soil should be done.

Can we upgrade the old nodes to do this? Remove the RARE tag from seeds and soil? Keep it hidden on the non-unspoiled nodes, but allow multiple gathers when they do show up.

I support this. As it is now, it takes incredible dedication and lot of time to gather enough seeds and soils to maintain 5+ Gardens even with the help of FC members due to the RNG aspect of seeds and time constraint of soils (once every hour). I find myself having no choice but to buy the bulk of my seeds and soils needs from the MB, despite hitting the nodes regularly every day.

I currently need at least 72 Grade 3 Thanalan topsoils every 5 days to not waste any slot in my 9 gardens, that's hitting a node 72 times in 5 days when I can't afford to buy from MB or get help from FC members (I don't have BTN/MIN retainers). It's already pretty tough to take care of 9 gardens and fertilize them diligently, I'd love not having to worry about soils anymore.

I had this same thought this past weekend when I was gathering soils and seeds and red scips... It was all a little much. As it stands now an average player (no alt and no added retainers) can get max 3 soils an hour (gathering it and 2 retainers both 50+ miner).

I would propose the old gathering nodes get one or both of the changes made for the 3.0+ nodes, the no "rare" limit as mentioned above and/or a spawn time on the AM and PM of the Eorzean clock (every 30ish real life minutes).

Both may cause a market crash on grade 3 soils, but will help out the smaller groups and individuals who do not have a lot of Gil but want to garden effectively.

Yes please one hundred times over. I just got into gardening (ifrit too cute) and all I do is gather soil on main and alt with miners ventures going endlessly. Why is this the case. ;-; multiple gardens and many friends make this little lala breath soil. D:

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Originally Posted by Phantasmage

I currently need at least 72 Grade 3 Thanalan topsoils every 5 days to not waste any slot in my 9 gardens

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Wow, nine? Quite an impressive array you guys have collected.

More on topic, you can ease the requirements on grade 3 Thanalan specifically by using a different type of soil for the first thing you plant. It won't crossbreed anyway since it's not being planted next to anything. I'm still working through a backlog of Shroud topsoil from back when I was gathering antumbral rocks for this purpose. (Though if you're staggering your planting schedule so you're continually replacing the plants 4 at a time, then this advice doesn't apply.)

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Originally Posted by PirateCat

More on topic, you can ease the requirements on grade 3 Thanalan specifically by using a different type of soil for the first thing you plant.

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That's actually a great idea, but seems like would be more helpful for large scale gardening like Phantasmage is doing (that's a whole extra plot's worth of soil saving right there!).

But the issue still stands, for solo gatherers like Phantasmage (with no FC/friend help, and no retainer as mentioned above), one would have to gather 7-8 times (7-8 hours) every 5 days to get enough soil for 9 gardens. If you add on the fact many people have full time jobs, gathering that amount would be like working a second job in game and not doing any other content unless its your day off.

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Originally Posted by iiroro

That's actually a great idea, but seems like would be more helpful for large scale gardening like Phantasmage is doing (that's a whole extra plot's worth of soil saving right there!).

But the issue still stands, for solo gatherers like Phantasmage (with no FC/friend help, and no retainer as mentioned above), one would have to gather 7-8 times (7-8 hours) every 5 days to get enough soil for 9 gardens. If you add on the fact many people have full time jobs, gathering that amount would be like working a second job in game and not doing any other content unless its your day off.

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The thing is 9 gardens isn't exactly within the intended scope for a solo gardener to handle; to even have access to that many you'd multiple homes involved, there should be at least two other people involved in the process.

I agree with that, which is why I didn't complain about it. I just thought it'd be nice if I could save some time and gil by reducing the soil grind :)

As for the tip mentioned PirateCat, I'm already doing that to reduce my expenses but I end up digging up the first plant to plant it again after I'm done putting the whole set. It's always nice to have a chance to get seeds from the first plant.

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Originally Posted by PirateCat

Wow, nine? Quite an impressive array you guys have collected.

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I just couldn't resist the idea of cross-breeding dozens of blood peppers :P

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Originally Posted by PirateCat

Wow, nine? Quite an impressive array you guys have collected.

More on topic, you can ease the requirements on grade 3 Thanalan specifically by using a different type of soil for the first thing you plant. It won't crossbreed anyway since it's not being planted next to anything. I'm still working through a backlog of Shroud topsoil from back when I was gathering antumbral rocks for this purpose. (Though if you're staggering your planting schedule so you're continually replacing the plants 4 at a time, then this advice doesn't apply.)

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Actually no. You can leave a "ready to be harvested" plant next to that first slot when planting, and it will crossbreed with THAT. 8 seeds per garden.

Is that true ?

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Originally Posted by Callback

Actually no. You can leave a "ready to be harvested" plant next to that first slot when planting, and it will crossbreed with THAT. 8 seeds per garden.

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Originally Posted by Phantasmage

Is that true ?

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Yep, it's true. I also plant one "dummy" plant of whatever's the cheapest seed to start the crossbreeding chain. Seeds only care about what's adjacent to them when they're planted... doesn't matter what happens after, or what state the seed to be crossbred is in when the new one's planted next to it.

Thanks for the confirmation! I'll be able to take advantage of gardens that have all 8 plants harvestable at the same time \o/

This really does need to be changed cos at this moment, Miner sucks for gathering soils cos you have..

5am - Than soils but at the same timer you have the 5am legendary nodes and the 7am legendary nodes..... sucks to run all the way to near silver bazaar and then rush to the 7am legendary, would like to do a yield gather so i can do the gather every 4-5 days

My miner retainer absolutely loves to bring me Grade 3 Thanalan topsoil every single hour (50 min actually) though ^^
With that, I can easily keep my garden (1x8 plot) full and i can still sell some of them without having to farm them myself ^^

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Originally Posted by Aura_Shurifon

My miner retainer absolutely loves to bring me Grade 3 Thanalan topsoil every single hour (50 min actually) though ^^
With that, I can easily keep my garden (1x8 plot) full and i can still sell some of them without having to farm them myself ^^

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and HOW long did it take you to get a retainer from 1-60? (or at least 50 for the soil) It's not a luxury most of us have.

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Originally Posted by Callback

and HOW long did it take you to get a retainer from 1-60? (or at least 50 for the soil) It's not a luxury most of us have.

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It doesn't take all that long to get a retainer up to 50 no matter which class you choose for it. I finally gave in and paid to have 2 more retainers (total of 4) after heavensward came out. They were level 50 within about a month, and I know I failed to keep up with them from time to time. And if a month sounds too long, it's pretty clear from the exp that I've been seeing from the 1 hourish (hunting, botany, mining, or fishing, but not quick) ventures that if you really wanted to level a retainer even faster you could just spam those while you play and the exploration ventures when you sleep/work. It'll just cost a lot more ventures. However, given that you can easily get about 1000 GC seals from just one gear drop from the EX roulette, that's an easy 5 ventures right there per drop. Even if everyone rolled on everything, you could still expect to come away with 2-3 drops per run, so it's not like it's even that hard to fund ventures.

The problem is you can't make a retainer level beyond or do something that you haven't done yourself. Basically, if you could have a mining retainer without bothering to level miner yourself, then that'd probably help ease the problem as FCs with limited gatherers could just encourage members to have a retainer as miner to help with soil. I'm sure there would be members of our FC who would be willing to help by having their retainers gather soil for us, but to ask them to level up mining just for that purpose? That's certainly not going to happen.

They probably won't change it to allow you to level retainers on classes you haven't unlocked, so as it stands the gathering class retainers are probably quite rare by comparison to the hordes of DoW/DoM retainers.

But yes, I totally agree that seeds and soil pre 3.0 should have the "rare" tag removed along with a few other items like bamboo. Constantly grinding old content like this is kind of annoying, especially given that there's enough new stuff to grind since 3.0.

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Originally Posted by -BlueGreen-

it's pretty clear from the exp that I've been seeing from the 1 hourish (hunting, botany, mining, or fishing, but not quick) ventures that if you really wanted to level a retainer even faster you could just spam those while you play and the exploration ventures when you sleep/work. It'll just cost a lot more ventures. However, given that you can easily get about 1000 GC seals from just one gear drop from the EX roulette, that's an easy 5 ventures right there per drop. Even if everyone rolled on everything, you could still expect to come away with 2-3 drops per run, so it's not like it's even that hard to fund ventures.

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But yes, I totally agree that seeds and soil pre 3.0 should have the "rare" tag removed along with a few other items like bamboo. Constantly grinding old content like this is kind of annoying, especially given that there's enough new stuff to grind since 3.0.

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The hint about spamming the "normal" collection ventures while online is actually really useful. Also it's still pretty cheap, half the cost of spamming quicks, and for more average EXP per pop too.

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Originally Posted by FJerome

The thing is 9 gardens isn't exactly within the intended scope for a solo gardener to handle; to even have access to that many you'd multiple homes involved, there should be at least two other people involved in the process.

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This was pretty much my thought too.

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Originally Posted by Aura_Shurifon

My miner retainer absolutely loves to bring me Grade 3 Thanalan topsoil every single hour (50 min actually) though ^^
With that, I can easily keep my garden (1x8 plot) full and i can still sell some of them without having to farm them myself ^^

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Same. With myself and 2 retainers gathering, I end up with more than enough for my 3 garden plots.