Hammerwiki:Cultivating

Cultivators grow plants and fungi for Apothecaries. Plants and fungi are grown from seeds and spores, respectively. The quality and quantity of plants a cultivator can grow depends on their skill and the additives used. The products are then used by Apothecaries to create potions and dyes.

Plants have a designated growth cycle separated into three phases. During each of these phases the cultivator has a chance to assist the growth by adding an additive. Additives reduce the time it takes for a plant to grow and increase the chance for a favorable outcome when a plant is harvested.

As the cultivator gains skill, they will gain access to more plots to grow plants in. A cultivator can have up to 4 plots. They start with one and gain access to a new one every 50 skill points, culminating in 4 plots.

Plants
Seeds and plants can essentially be broken down according to the key part of their name (ignoring "seed" and the description before the name). This key part of their name indicates its use in apothecary potions. The prefix varies by rank of seed and combined with the key part of the name shows what herb will be grown.

Most seeds are cultivated from basic Rank 1 seeds buyable from merchant vendors. The exception to this rule are hybrid seeds. These seeds are always Cultivation Rank 200, are bind on pickup and will always return the seed when cultivated (even if cultivation fails). The plants grown from them cannot be reaped.

There are many plants and each has a specific effect when used by an apothecary. Plants also have different base growth times and special results.

Cultivation Time
The amount of time required to cultivate a plant is strictly governed by the rank of the plant. The minimum time is 20 seconds per phase (for a total of 1 minute).

Additives
There are three phases to plant growth. During each phase a specific type of additive can be added to the plot for certain effects. The additives reduce the amount of time it takes to grow a plant and increase the chance of more and/or better products. They will reduce the time of a phase by either a percentage of the time left or a fixed amount of time, whichever is smaller.

You can obtain 4 outcomes when planting: success, critical success, special moment and critical failure.


 * 1) A critical failure will return only a wilted weed. The chance of this occurring can be reduced, but not completely eliminated.
 * 2) Success gives you 2 Plants/Fungi. The chance of this occurring can be increased by using Nutrients to reduce the chance of critical failures.
 * 3) Critical success gives you 3 Plants/Fungus. The chance of this occurring can be increased by using Soil.
 * 4) A special moment gives you 3 Plants, plus an extra plant of a higher rank (or the same rank if rank 200 already), plus a dye pigment (varies by seed). The chance of this occurring can be increased by using Watering Cans and/or Rhya's Fertile Loam.

Pigments & Dyes
Pigments come from special moments in cultivating seeds. The chance of special moment is the sum of the special moment modifiers on the soil, watering can and nutrient used during growth (as seen in the tables above). A pigment can be turned into a Dye by an Apothecary. The specific pigment you receive is based on the level of the cultivated seed. For example: Honeycomb Extract can be cultivated from any level 1 or level 25 seed.

Reaping
With patch 1.2, plants and fungi grown from cultivating may be reaped. You do not need to be a cultivator to do this. Reaping is done by ctrl-right-clicking the plant or fungi to be reaped in your inventory bags. Reaping will return a single seed/fungi of the same type and rank and an Arboreal Resin of the same rank as well. Reaping allows the Cultivator to increase their stock: in general one seed generates two plants, which generates two seeds and two resin. This multiplication is particularly useful for financing apothecaries.

By getting a special moment on a cultivation and then reaping the higher level plant, a cultivator can begin to produce higher rank plants. Reaping is also useful for increasing the number of the same type and rank of seed. Each successful cultivation will return at least 2 plants and these can be reaped to return at least 2 seeds total. The only thing that can get in the way of this are critical cultivation failures, which will destroy your seed.

Note that you cannot reap (ctrl-right-click) a plant while visiting a vendor.

Cultivating Addons
Cultivating addons are available from Curse.com.