Thread: cost analysis of hearty -vs- regular

I may update this thread as new data is gathered, but I am curious as to other folk's experiences. I just did a little RoI farming and with a small sample size (20 regular and 30 Hearty) found that the Hearty fields yield 1.9 times the raw produce and 3.8 times the rare items (peat and spices). Also, note that the raw ingredients cost 4.58 times more for hearty, so you are paying a little more but getting much more produce for the real-time investment.

Anyone else willing to share their initial findings for the new farming system?

My sample size is also small (I'm going broke from farming - I bought stacks of heavy seeds without looking at the price first.... I decided to do this after I realized how expensive it was!)

So, I got up to master Westfold farmer and did a little experiment.

I bought 20 Heavy Westfold Crop Seeds (12s each; total cost for fields = 245s 60c)
I did not crit at all. With these fields, I averaged 6.45 crops per field. I had Westfold herbs drop 35% of the time. I had special soil drop 15% of the time.

I bought 20 regular Westfold Crop Seeds (2s40c each; total cost for fields = 53s 60c) and again I did not crit at all. With these fields, I averaged 3.35 crops per field. I had Westfold herbs drop 25% of the time. I had special soil drop 10% of the time.

Also important to realize: the Westfold, tier 7, crops give a 1:1 product ratio (that is, the crop you harvest turns into a single final product, unlike lower levels where, for example, one "fair raspberry" crop turns into four usable "raspberries")

That comes out to 1.9 silver per crop produced using the heavy crop seeds, and 80 copper per crop produced using the standard crop seeds. Put another way, using the heavy crop seeds, it costs 2 1/2 times as much to make the same amount of stuff.

In my experience, the drop percentages were barely different for the rare items (herbs and soil) but the sample size was so small, I don't know whether it accurately reflects the drop rates of the two.

My suggestion is that, when trying to level up, you may want to spend the extra on the Heavy crops, because you'll accrue more crops faster, and can then set your farmer up at the workbench to finish off the leveling, without sitting there and clicking on fields as much.

Also, if you are in a hurry to get a quick stack of materials for a cook, Heavy crops could be useful.

Otherwise, though it's a drag, you will save a LOT of money on the regular crops.

I'll post back here when I have a larger sample size and redo my calculations on the rare item drops.

I can say I am about farmed out, but I managed to get enough peat to do a 20 field run critted.

results:
20 Well tended hearty black barley fields

gave 166 Fair crops at an average of 8.3 per field.
Lowest field yield was 5
Highest field yield was 12
only 7 fields yielded 10 crops or more.

However it did give more crit tiems than a normal Hearty field.
12 piles of soil
20 herbs (cooking crit)
only 3 fields gave no crit item at all.

A normal hearty field averages 7.93 (on the several I have done now averaged out) crops but much less on the crit side. Consistantly the hearty fields were giving me between 130 and 140 end product per 20 fields farmed the standard fileds consistantly gave 70 to 75ish. Cost wise, once you include hearty seeds and barels of water, that is 288 silver for 20 fields and then add a small allowace for repairs you are looking at over 290 silver per 20 fields farmed. Standard fields cost 96 silver plus repairs but yield much less.

I personally find that the farming takes a lot longer now because we have to farm so many more fields to get the same number of crops you get from lower level farming Tiers. (my cook just soaked up the Black barley, so much used for guild repasts and levelling) The fact we have the ability to sort 5 at a time cannot offset the sheer number of fields we now need to do.

I'm not sure if anyone finds all this useful or not but there it is

Wanted to add that a kinmate of mine did this with 104 hearty fields. She didn't use peat, although some fields critted by random chance, and overall she got a yield of 6.6 products per field, with 25% chance of herbs and 15% chance of soil.
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Cimerone, it was nice to know what the well-tended fields came out to. That extra 40ish silver that you accounted for -- is that calculating the repair cost plus the "cost" (value) of the peat you used to make it well-tended?

[That is to say, the supplies alone for 20 fields of regular, as I mentioned above, cost 54s, and 20 hearty fields you'll pay 246 for the supplies. So that's an extra 41s that you counted for your regular fields, and an extra 44 silver for the hearties].

Just want to point out though -- if 20 seeds of regular gives about 75 product, and costs ~96s, that's 1.28s per product. If hearty gives ~140 product, and costs 290+ silver, that's ~2.07s per product. So although the regular fields yield less, it is still SIGNIFICANTLY cheaper to just use regular seeds, even taking into account the cost of repairs and so on.

It's interesting to see your results on the rare items - the herb drop rate was 100% and the soil was 60%.
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If anyone else is inspired to do this experiment, I'd love to have more comparisons between the rare item drop rate on well-tended vs. non-crit fields, for both regular and hearty seeds.

So I'd love to see each of the following:

*A set of hearty vs. a set of regular seeds, but ALL being well-tended fields using peat.
*A set of hearty vs. a set of regular seeds, NOT using peat.

*A set of well-tended hearty using peat vs. a set of hearty fields NOT using peat.
*A set of well-tended regular using peat vs. a set of regular fields NOT using peat.

Originally Posted by Miz_Sparrow

Cimerone, it was nice to know what the well-tended fields came out to. That extra 40ish silver that you accounted for -- is that calculating the repair cost plus the "cost" (value) of the peat you used to make it well-tended?

Sigh my bad, I forgot to divide the cost of a stack of the barels of water by 5. I obvioulsly need to go back to school to learn basic math again. so when my brain kicks in again I'll recalculate. I also found I was doing more repairs than at lower levels

The Peat cost nothing other than time and repairs as they were all drops off fields farmed.

Today my husband just did 100 standard fields of black barley - no crits other than 2 that happened at random. He got the following:

From 100 standard fields
356 black barley end product.
23 herbs
8 soil

He also did 40 fields of hearty leek (not critted)

264 leeks end product
29 herbs
8 soil

While he did that I did 40 of the critted hearty fields - leeks for me.

40 well tended hearty leek fields:
350 leeks
44 herbs
15 soil

So while it is harder to get the crit mat and more expensive to sow the well tended hearty fields you need less of them. Rounding the standard fields up to 100 silver to cover the repairs he need roughly an outlay of 500 silver for the 100 fields he did. I spent 500 silver (roughly) for the 40 fields and got significantly more crits and nearly the same end crop amount but a lot less time on the ground farming.

So I would have to recommend whenever possible to use crited hearty fields just for the savings in time. It won't be possible all the time but once you have the crit material it is certainly worth it.

Further breakdown in for my fields

first 20 fields
crops - 176
lowest crop per field: 5
highest crop per field: 12
No of fields that gave no crit item: 3
Herbs: 22
Soil: 9

2nd 20 fields
crops - 174
lowest crop per field: 5
highest crop per field: 11
No of fields that gave no crit item: 3
Herbs: 22
Soil: 6

Hopefully this all helps a little

I think there is a slight bug with this. I tried this out. Bought 4 hearty and used 4 crit items. So on 4 well tended hearty feilds a didn't even get a crit item on 2 of them and on one I got 3 crops...I was like how in the heck can I only get 3 from a hwt field...so I sold all my normal and only had heary seeds. Did the same and the results were great. I went and made about 20 more. I almost always get 2 crit and very often get three and always got 1.

My sample sizes aren't great yet, I'll update when I get more. but here are my current results:
HCR=Hearty-Crit
RNC=Regular-Noncrit
and the numbers are how many of each field.

	HCR	33		HNC	29		RCR	24		RNC	25
	Avg	Sig		Avg	Sig		Avg	Sig		Avg	Sig
Fair Crop	8.52	1.87		7.00	1.87		3.79	1.32		3.20	1.38
Cook Crit	1.21	0.70		0.66	0.67		0.54	0.66		0.44	0.65
Farm Crit	0.58	0.50		0.17	0.38		0.33	0.48		0.08	0.28

I haven't done calculations on a /money and /time basis yet, but approximately, hearty gives 2X yields for 5X price in the same amount of time which seems to agree with other peoples' numbers.


And now... I think I can actually finish my T7 cook.


Edit: Also diggy, I'd bet on bad luck in your case. All of my hearty fields here were done with regular seeds in my pocket (but not visa-versa)

I just did 50 Well-Tended Hearty Leek Fields.

I got 442 crops, 35 rich soil, and 45 westfold herbs.

Planted 100 crops of Hearty Black Barley non-crit. Some still critted with the 5% chance.

Ended up with
46 Westfold Herbs
32 Rich Soil
572 Barley Crops

41 Well-Tended Hearty Black Barley:
346 crops
40 Westfold Herbs
16 Piles of Rich Soil

41 Hearty Black Barley:
281 crops
27 Westfold Herbs
7 Piles of Rich Soil

100 Hearty Black Barley Fields without Peat
Start Time 10:10 - End Time 10:55 - Total Time 43 minutes
Total Crops 685 - Total Herbs 42 - Total Soil 20
Crits 3/100 or 3%
Superior Yeoman Tools Dmg 18/60
Cost for Seeds 960s - Cost for Water 24s - Total Cost 984s
Crop Averages per Harvest
3 Crops - 4
4 Crops - 8
5 Crops - 11
6 Crops - 17
7 Crops - 22
8 Crops - 20
9 Crops - 10
10 Crops - 8

The only thing hearty does is save time over normal, its easy to make up the extra cost out adventuring. I prefer to grow wild flowers with my rich soil than worry about well-tended fields.

I haven't done the math but I have farmed hundreds of hearty fields of all the crops including coffee. I think my average yeild would be just under 7 crops/field with a good smattering of all crit articles except those darn special coffee beans. I too use the rich soil for planting wild flowers because it takes a ton of dyes to fully colour a full wardrobe. For me it is a matter of time. I don't have the time to farm 2 or 3 crops per field no matter what the cost saving. Besides I profit well from selling crops so the more I can get and the faster I can get them, the more money I make. Also my farmers and cooks have a lot of characters to feed, time is more important to me than gold.

This thread inspired me to undertake a massive farming experiment and analysis. please see this thread http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...52#post5971452
which should have answers for most people.