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

[CatfishCassie]

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 ?

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.

[Phantasmage]

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

[LukeStuz]

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

[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 ^^

[Callback]

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 ^^

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.

[-BlueGreen-]

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.

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.

[Callback]

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.

...

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.

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.

[Ashkendor]

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.

This was pretty much my thought too.

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 ^^

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