You can make your own hoe, with the proper tools (of which there’s a lot of them, but you can make them all with relatively common items).
I just said that, in case you missed it; the problem is that there’s quite a lot of tools and resources you need to gather in order to do that. As of 0.8, the proper tools needed to forge a hoe are a complete set of blacksmithing equipment: hammer, steel tongs, metalworking chisel, anvil, crucible, and either the electrical forge or the charcoal forge. Some of those components are ubiquitous, but not all of them; your own forge setup is pretty much a bunch of things you’ll have to make yourself, out of various odds and ends that may not conveniently spawn. Also, even with all the appropriate tools, making a hoe requires Fabrication 5.
So, yeah; you need to get your infrastructure rolling before you can get a hoe, which makes farming a midgame thing. That would be the entirety of my point, really.
By the time I found my home base, I managed to have enough fabrication to make all the different equipments. If you don’t want to waste resources, then hope to find skill books in libraries. Also keep those armor/sword making books at any cost. A nodachi is a great thing to have.
I forget what I made myself, but I do remember that most of the tools for a proper forge was made out of pretty common materials. Also remember that scrap metal is not an issue; With a welder/integrated toolset, you can disassemble steel frames and platings into smaller bits, unless you prefer to use a compactor found behind most hardware stores. Really the biggest challenge is time; all the mid to high level fabrication recipes take upwards of 6-10 hours to make.
I don’t deny it. If you’ve survived to midgame, you shouldn’t have any problems getting together your toolset. At the same time, though, if you’ve survived to midgame, it’s probably too late to start planting.
Again, that’s the entirety of the point. Forging is doable, but not during the first spring. Hoes don’t drop anywhere yet. Therefore, planting doesn’t get done the first spring. Kevin just mentioned that he saw this as a problem, so I suggested a partial solution (which will probably make more sense once the tool quality system is fully implemented).
As a sidenote, an answer to the ‘crops take too long to grow’ problem might be mutant plants. Mutant poppies are already growing everywhere… by the same token, perhaps anything you plant, forced to subsist on contaminated water and acid rain, might similarly mutate. Let the growth cycle start off unusually fast, and then allow it to be overclocked by certain fertilizers… possibly including some unsavory ones, made from tainted meat and other rotting organics. The faster the growth cycle, the more likely to mutate, and crops exposed to certain tainted substances are also more likely to come out bad. Mutant crops might come out just fine, or even better than fine… but they might also be blighted in unappetizing ways, rot on the vine, or be obviously tainted and poisonous (tainted veggy)… or even become plant monsters.
It’s possible that you might be able to find a nice sealed greenhouse somewhere which can quickly grow pure crops without exposing them to local conditions, but it’d be a pretty huge find, and would require power to keep the plants nice and warm throughout the harsh winters… not to mention that it’s a big fragile glass house, easily wrecked by the uncaring hordes.
Hmm… I’ve never really though about farming. This is all good info to try it. I’ve only found weed seeds, though.
Strawberry and blueberry seeds are the easiest to find; just pick any blueberry/strawberry bush and you’ll find seeds guaranteed. I think grocery stores might have wheat seeds; I forget where exactly I found mine, but they do seem to be the hardest to find. Hemp seeds can be found in a few random encounters like traps or I believe dead soldiers and drug dealers.
[quote=“Endovior, post:24, topic:3366”]I don’t deny it. If you’ve survived to midgame, you shouldn’t have any problems getting together your toolset. At the same time, though, if you’ve survived to midgame, it’s probably too late to start planting.
Again, that’s the entirety of the point. Forging is doable, but not during the first spring. Hoes don’t drop anywhere yet. Therefore, planting doesn’t get done the first spring. Kevin just mentioned that he saw this as a problem, so I suggested a partial solution (which will probably make more sense once the tool quality system is fully implemented).
As a sidenote, an answer to the ‘crops take too long to grow’ problem might be mutant plants. Mutant poppies are already growing everywhere… by the same token, perhaps anything you plant, forced to subsist on contaminated water and acid rain, might similarly mutate. Let the growth cycle start off unusually fast, and then allow it to be overclocked by certain fertilizers… possibly including some unsavory ones, made from tainted meat and other rotting organics. The faster the growth cycle, the more likely to mutate, and crops exposed to certain tainted substances are also more likely to come out bad. Mutant crops might come out just fine, or even better than fine… but they might also be blighted in unappetizing ways, rot on the vine, or be obviously tainted and poisonous (tainted veggy)… or even become plant monsters.
It’s possible that you might be able to find a nice sealed greenhouse somewhere which can quickly grow pure crops without exposing them to local conditions, but it’d be a pretty huge find, and would require power to keep the plants nice and warm throughout the harsh winters… not to mention that it’s a big fragile glass house, easily wrecked by the uncaring hordes.[/quote]
I like the mutant plants and greenhouse idea.
I agree there should be easier to get tilling tools, the fact that a hoe is so hard to find is really an accident, not intentional. Allowing the digging stick and shovel to do it would be fine by me, also a scrap hoe wouldn’t be a problem.
Re: long-lived plants. I don’t see any reason to specifically accelerate growth, you can’t plant an orchard from scratch and expect to get anywhere with it, that’s entirely sensible. Otoh jump-starting it with saplings is a reasonable thing to do, and the payoff per-tree is pretty sizeable.
Also I fully expect pre-cataclysm orchards to be a thing in game, so it’d be a matter of finding one. Possibly an entire hobby farm, which would be the most OP location in the game 
Expect farms to ALWAYS be populated, one way or another…
It’s a great automatic balance, if a location is super-desireable, of course other survivors will want to take and hold those locations too, if nothng else. If they’re desirable by more than one faction, you might have one or the other.
Less desireable places on the other hand, have a decent chance of being unpopulated.
Yeah, I’d much rather simply provide reasons to keep longer games more interesting so people play them rather then making plants/other things happen more quickly.
No I mean like saplings that won’t die to the first acid rain or whatever, because just finding the damned things would be a challenge. No reason for anyone to go ‘lol they should die to acid rain since they are small’.
My saplings haven’t died from acid rain, and I get an average of one acid rain a day.
Just a few things I have found out.
You don’t need to go into forging to get a hoe, go to a farm. I get one most of the times, in the outer shed (usually has 2-6 zombies in it)
I don’t think any of us are sure how they grow, I think it will be proximity like everything else.
The mutant veg sounds good, perhaps genetic engineering if you have a high enough cooking skill and electronics.
It just needs fleshing out a bit before it can be used sustainably, you would need a huge amount of land to sustain your self, or have very short season lengths.