Year 4 complete. It was a pretty funny run. Early on I got the “Eggs sometimes hatch” perk. And the “Pumpkins grow around scarecrows” perk. I managed to get 4 Scarecrows planted. When mixed with several pigs keeping the soil super fertile, I almost couldn’t harvest pumpkins fast enough. Meanwhile, by summer I had dozens of chickens running around, eating all the weeds in the entire area, laying eggs, and hatching more chickens. The whole thing was pretty absurd. Made short work of the final boss.
No. The after fight planting frenzy is a potentially massive source of cornucopias (100+ on a pretty good one).
No and no.
Cats start cosemtic, at least the tier 1- to ier, uh, 5 maybe cats. Whatever the next to last is, maybe it’s four. But you can find plushies out in the wild. Each one corresponds to one of those cats and causes those cats to give a bonus of some sort, per cat. But these are super small, and is not the point of cats really.
The last tier of cats are special. They give you special statues you can activate that give bonuses to runs in exchange for making them harder. I still only have three of them unlocked (of 5 or 6, can’t recall).
Are you saying crops you harvest while the lost boss is dying count as Conucopias?
Ok, so cats are cosmetic unless you get some RNG which gives a tiny bonus to something for that run, or the final tier which I believe you’ve said are super grindy.
Overall the game does not seem to rely on metaprogression at all, unlike most action roguelites.
No. What I am talking about unlocks after year 3 apparently, and is called “Surplus”. But it is a big source of cornucopias.
To be clear, all the cat bonuses are “forever”. It’s just that if you have 200 (the max # of cats) t1 cats and each gives .003% of whatever it is. . . you don’t got much. And that’s assuming you have found the plushie (a “plushie stature garden” unlocks at some point, IDK when because I was year 10 before this part got added).
Cats “cost” cornucopia, cost money to upgrade to the next tier (3 cats of Tierx => One random cat of TierX+1), or cost even more to reroll within a tier (and I don’t thinj you can even reroll on the final tier). Also you get a cat after every win but this might be locked behind something I can’t recall. It’s very expensive; a batch of 200 cats won’t yield a single max tier cats if you go through and do it all perfect and will cost many hundreds of cornucopia. I don’t mind doing it - I look forward to one day filling the home area with next to max tier cats to taste. But it’s probably too grindy. And this is very much intended to be the last thing you spend cornucopias on.
Sort of.
So some of the upgrades are modest but not to be underestimated. Even the +1 stat upgrades and starting gun upgrades. . . you are talking about literally reducing the # of hits it takes to kill a monster in most years and this can lead to “I got one or two camps more cleared before end of day 1” and that can matter a good deal.
The tractor upgrades are quite good. Tractors coming charged is actually amazing. You might get a tractor you like early, and even choose upgrades around that. e.g. the weeder so you skip weed clearing upgrades and prioritize other friends heavily over chickens. Well, in the next field maybe the fertilizerer tractor shows up. You van pick it up and because your tractors start charged - and because tractors track their charges individually - you can swap to it, use it to clear a camp, and then pick your other tractor back up. A charged day one weed whacker means no tears weeding once you return from the field. If you have a day one cow and bee, the energizer tractor will help you get stuff done even through the night and boost resources. Etc. And the other upgrades tend to improve the tractors, making them even stronger. Sure, there’s still a ton of RNG here - who knows when the first tractor will show up, and what it will be. But this is a strong upgrade line. Smart tractor management is super important.
Likewise, the mushroom upgrades are actually really strong. In addition to making mushrooms stronger/last longer, one of the upgrades makes a mushroom spawn by every bridge. So as soon as you cross into the field, you have a gauranteed mushroom. It may not help you. But getting a damage/fertilizer/time saver mushroom (once you get them all unlocked) to start a day is pretty awesome. It will absolutely help you snowball that’ days clears. And the tractor charge mushrooms. . . well you can get into some fun with those since they work differently than they used to (they now store as “bonus charges”). Speed is the worst but it has value too (and is occasionally amazing). Again, this is RNG gated since you don’t know what mushrooms will roll at each bridge (and what mushrooms will randomly spawn in each field, nor how many). So you can have days/runs where they don’t do a lot for you. But more often than not they’ll be a pretty big factor on a couple of days in each run, at least.
And whichever ant governs the “bonus stuff” rewards is also amazing. They’re all based on the previous run, but I start my run with 2 bonus picks, a handful of seeds on top of the four potatoes, enough fertilizer to plant two mega plants (and sometimes you get the seeds to do it but you ought’nt), and two bonus upgrades. This is massively helpful. The starting bonus upgrades can occasionally be “I basically won this run already” (starting with wings or participation trophy is always a real treat; cows produce milk and pigs find truffles are also amazing but occasionally you’ll get screwed and not find animals for a few days). You don’t really need that stuff for early years, but they are critical later. I would probably win 99/100 year 3 runs without them.
The % stat upgrades don’t all amount to much, it’s true. It’s great when they trigger but you absolutely cannot count on them. I think the game does take a deliberately different approach on meta progression. I am sure there are people who power run year 10 with as few starting bonuses as possible and they’re awesome at the game, but it’s not something most people would want to do. The game is more forgiving in moving you along the years, though, without having to do some amount of meta upgrading.
Tractors seem pretty worthless to me so I’ve avoided all tractor upgrades so far. Maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy? Hmmm. The only tractor I found useful sometimes is the one that cuts the weeds for you. The sprinkler one doesn’t seem to do much. My plants still need to be watered afterwards for some reason. The one that chops up enemies is useful once, but again, the gain there seems very small. And the one that lets you go home any time seems the most worthless since there’s usually shortcut home not too far away. It might save you a few seconds at most. The one that makes you invincible I’ve never timed correctly.
Stop being bad at the game.
Haha.
I like the fertilizer one, and of course the atomic one is awesome.
You got it. It’s aka the resource sink for no-lifers who complain about having “too many gosh durn cornucopias, you lazy devs”.
The devs are like “Whatever, here, have some fucking cats”.
I feel like they changed the game a bit since I was away. I’m on Year 8, and instead of having flying skulls everywhere, there are special cursed enemies that summon floaty ones. Nice little bit of balance.
Dude! The weed tractor kind of makes up the core of a successful run.
It has a chance to give you silver seeds, which may give you sunflowers, which means you can turn your fertilizer into copious amounts of cashews.
Also, lots of free pickaxes.
Are there are any places beyond the second levels in each direction? So 2 to the left, 2 to the right, 2 up, 2 down, 8 total levels where you can go?
I had one run where I almost got to all 8. (Year 1, of course).
Nah, only two. If you manage to clear out most of the camps, you should be really stacked on animals and items.
The last character Thyme gives you a lot more time (geddit?) every day to clear, but you lose time when she gets hit.
Oh, speaking of Characters, I finally unlocked a 3rd character last night. Looks like there’s the opening character, then Rye, then a missing character, and then a Lion character that I unlocked last night.
Fertilizer is very good although it’s more an early to mid game tractor I think. It’s a guaranteed camp clear in the near fields (and will do most of the work in the far, but some enemies might not get finished off, but you get partial fertilizer credit!) per day, minimum. That’s nothing to sniff at. Once you have mushrooms growing in the fields it’s possible to score more charges that way, and help snowball a clearout big time. And you’ll typically get 2-3+ mega plants worth of fertilizer, which is pretty good. I find fertilizer less of a problem late game, so I usually swap it at some point.
As @Rock8man has failed to read in game descriptions, he’s missing the upside of some of the other tractors.
Drill can dig squares at your farm, which is what it’s better for. I tend to think in terms of 2x2 plots (and getting to the next one), so a minimum extra square a day (and usually 2+ if you use it on returning home, and then again before dawn breaks) helps in the early going. Before I knew there was an in game map (lol) I liked it for preventing me from getting caught out as sometimes I lost track of where the tunnels were. But once I got better at the game it became less compelling for that reason (also I found the map, lol).
Sprinkler is definitely an early game tractor, probably the weakest overall. But it does produce extra seeds (based on what is planted) and can produce tree saplings, and this is no small thing. But I usually (although not always!) hold off on tree planting, gambling for mega trees. Although that strategy predated the last expansion, I find farms tend to be bigger on average now than they used to be so there’s more room to gamble on saplings.
The carrot tractor has 3 effects. The invincibility is the least important. But it will cause monsters in a sizable radious to drop fertilizer and seeds, which is nice. It also energizes friends and they can do some serious work. This is one of those upsides that really gets stronger at scale. The more friends you have, the larger your actual farm, the more stuff you are prepared to grow, the stronger this aspect is. It’s my second favorite late game tractor other things equal (nuke is #1).
I have lost runs where I forgot I had the “tractors don’t have charges but have a chance to damage on use” upgrade and was going nuke happy. It’s not a bad way to go out, TBH.
LOL. Guilty as charged. I’m usually surrounded by enemies, so I only read the first couple of lines before picking things up. So it’s possible I miss a lot in the longer descriptions.
You can read things in the menu, too.
I just played with the new character I unlocked last night (the one that looks like a lion). Oh my god this is fun. This completely changes up the feel of the game. It’s just the freshness I needed in this game. I didn’t make it to the Summer boss even in Year 1 this time, but that’s to be expected with a new character. I’ll get used to it.
Inspired by your enthusiastic posting I fired it up again and actually during a Robusta year 1 speedrun I unlocked the same character! This movement is not…easy.
I figured out where the description of the powerups is. And the mini-map too! It’s a button that only works during the regular play, not in town. (Back button).
I feel like year 3 might be the limit of my patience if nothing else. I just cannot make any headway. What a huge difficulty spike after year 2.
I’m back-sliding. I can’t even win Year 1 anymore.