Thread: Wasting my game time

I have crafting of all professions, so I am quite often running around on an alt getting wood, ore, hides or texts, and on occasion farming, but the big difference is when I`m gathering materials, I am also doing quests, or deeds, maybe helping a kinnie out doing his quests, but with farming the whole process is done standing still.

Now I understand you cant plant fields whilst moving through the landscape, but what I would really, really like is the ability to plant 50 Fields, then farm them with 1 click, rather than spending hours staring at my Monitor planting 3-4 fields at a time, then harvesting them.

At least if I could plant the fields in massive numbers I could go and do the hoovering and keep the wife happy, as I do when turning Texts into scrolls

It seems to me that farming wastes a lot of game time, there must be some way this can be improved.

PS, why dont Sigils drop in Westfold fields, are we the only gathere that cant get them.

Hello,

This issue has been raised before...

I agree with you 100%, I too do dishes and other "manly" stuff while smelting ingots or waxing wood or reading texts... But Farming, it makes me want to quit!

Maybe our Skirmish soldier could have another purpose, another class trait that would make his a craft slave...

Cheers

I think everyone that have done farming will agree. Farming is the only crafting that is, for the most part, active. At least the transformation part can be done in batch.

I work out while I farm. Start planting - do a set of reps. Rest while harvesting. Repeat.

sigils should NOT drop from any fields ever imo, it would be far too easy to get them.

on everything else, /signed 100%. honestly i wouldnt care if you doubled the time to plant a field(which should then be shortened by the tools in liue of harvest time) if i didnt have to stand around to manually harvest every single one. the only way ive found to shorten it is to do 5 fields at once and spin so they are all around me, then queue all of them up and i get a few seconds before im ready to lay down the next set

Originally Posted by MonoLoco

sigils should NOT drop from any fields ever imo, it would be far too easy to get them.

on everything else, /signed 100%. honestly i wouldnt care if you doubled the time to plant a field(which should then be shortened by the tools in liue of harvest time) if i didnt have to stand around to manually harvest every single one. the only way ive found to shorten it is to do 5 fields at once and spin so they are all around me, then queue all of them up and i get a few seconds before im ready to lay down the next set

Least bothersome way I've found to do farming:

1. Bind 2 buttons to some unused, adjacent keys, personally I use "z" and "x".
   Selection > Select Nearest Item ("z")
   Miscellaneous > Use Selection ("x")
2. Plant 5 fields at a time, no need to spin around or anything, just plant them where you stand.
3. Reap the fields using the bound keys.

Planting 5 fields at a time should give you enough time to reap all fields without having to worry about them disappearing.

Originally Posted by MonoLoco

sigils should NOT drop from any fields ever imo, it would be far too easy to get them.

Why would it be far too easy?

It would only be as easy as the drop rate determined by the RNG. The drop rate for fields would have to be set less than the drop rate for wood/metal/scholar nodes because you can farm faster than you can node gather AND you can guarantee there will be no competition for said nodes from other players in an area. On the other hand farming costs money whereas wood/metal/scholar node collecting doesn't other than nominal tool wear.

As the system stands it's heavily loaded against the yeoman. Put sigils in treasure nodes too and throw in a few heavy landscape mobs that drop them. This needn't mean that the market will be flooded with sigils, you can adjust the total drop rate to keep the quantity coming into the game about the same, but as it stands sigil availability is heavily skewed too much for certain professions over others.

Farming is the worst part of the game as far as I am concerned. It really peeves me that I have to waste so much of my playing time to do a boring activity like sowing and harvesting. Who ever thought it up needs their heads examined if they think it adds to the enjoyment of the game in any way rather than being an exercise in frustration. I have characters covering every crafting option except farming as ALL other resource gathering can be done while playing the game, so why does farming have to be the one that STOPS you playing the game.

At least I can still provide fruits and vegetables for my cook to use by finding them growing wild while I am questing, because I have deleted my farming alt as I had reached the point of falling asleep at the keyboard from boredom using it!

Originally Posted by podgie_bear

waste so much of my playing time to do a boring activity like sowing and harvesting.

Originally Posted by podgie_bear

ALL other resource gathering can be done while playing the game, so why does farming have to be the one that STOPS you playing the game.

That's just it. Everything else requires you to go out in the world and gather your materials; farming can only happen in the comfort and safety of specific towns. It still has to be some kind of a hassle to make up for the fact that we don't need to risk our necks while gathering materials. I think farming is more about spending time than spending effort.

Originally Posted by podgie_bear

I have characters covering every crafting option except farming as ALL other resource gathering can be done while playing the game, so why does farming have to be the one that STOPS you playing the game.

The other gathering professions are much more time intensive. You do not notice the time because you pay for it in little segments as you are doing something else. You want to have time wastage. All you have to do is go to some region where everything is grey. You have no other activities on you list. You ride around some place like Forochel looking for ore nodes. Count out how many pieces of ore you have at the end of an hour.

Some cases, you can not make any progress on gathering materials as you are questing and deeding. Ever take a forester to Forochel? There are no wood nodes in Forochel.

I agree it would be nice if there were real farming nodes in the wild. You get bushels of crops. You need farming to gather the bushels. Unfortunately, Turbine did not do it that way. Given the age of the game, I doubt has the resources to change the entire landscape assuming you could get any traction from Turbine. There are no tier 6 or 7 crop nodes in Middle Earth.

There is a trade off.

Go out and kill 300 monsters to get ingredients for all the other crafts or buy all your craft stuff from the vendor but you have to put the time in during crafting.

Some of the earlier post are spot on and enjoy the humor in them too.
But in all seriousness....... Yesterday I spent 3 1/2 hours farming for mats to make enough pie crust and bilberries and black pudding by the time I got done,I literally spent another 4 hours cooking.

In that time my other crafters would have got most of that done in 2 hours tops.I could have leveled a alt 2 or 3 levels with all the time spent.I don't mind farming to get the best out of my fields only 7 or 8 at a time- micromanaging is insane.

It should be like treating wood or processing ore (make the fields then go back and harvest), this was once upgraded to crops lasting longer way back but not much as far as I can remember.

As in every area of the game, there needs to be diversity. Every single facet of the game should NOT cater to the masses. The suggestion to make farming similar to "all professions" is, IMHO a suggestion to remove any uniqueness that it has.

Requesting that our game characters, inventory, or wealth be something that auto-advances while we AFK is something that I hope the devs or powers that be don't take very seriously. They need to find ways to keep us in the chairs, not push us away.

I'm not arguing that farming is for everyone... but it shouldn't be either.

I'm not arguing that farming isn't slower... but it should be different from other professions.

Each one should be unique not only in end reward, but in how you get there as well. Everyone has a different opinion and viewpoint on every single gameplay aspect. If done correctly, some people should NOT love, or even like every part of the game... that would mean they actually made something others could enjoy as well. While it may be the minority, some people enjoy a slower game pace and a more semi-realistic crafting progression.

IMHO, farming needs 2 changes. First, the teal tools should allow you to go through the actual mats faster. (for example turning the crit mats into the usable component). Second, all food ingredients found on landscape (such as onions, strawberries, etc.) should be made so that ONLY farmers can harvest them and their tables should drop crit ingredients and flakes/sigils. Farms themselves should still need to be tended and NOT drop the flakes/sigils... again, IMHO.

Originally Posted by hucklebarry

IMHO, farming needs 2 changes. First, the teal tools should allow you to go through the actual mats faster. (for example turning the crit mats into the usable component). Second, all food ingredients found on landscape (such as onions, strawberries, etc.) should be made so that ONLY farmers can harvest them and their tables should drop crit ingredients and flakes/sigils. Farms themselves should still need to be tended and NOT drop the flakes/sigils... again, IMHO.

This actually make sense. I also think that the farming nodes out in the wilderness should drop a larger or greater reward than they currently do. (I'm a cook and I don't waste my time picking them up because 90% of the time it's useless)
If those nodes were for farmers only and had a chance to drop something worthwhile many people stop and use their profession more often. As mentioned, flakes/sigils should not be obtained from farming crops in fields, but should be placed in random farming nodes while exploring.

Originally Posted by Spordo

Least bothersome way I've found to do farming:

1. Bind 2 buttons to some unused, adjacent keys, personally I use "z" and "x".
   Selection > Select Nearest Item ("z")
   Miscellaneous > Use Selection ("x")
2. Plant 5 fields at a time, no need to spin around or anything, just plant them where you stand.
3. Reap the fields using the bound keys.

Planting 5 fields at a time should give you enough time to reap all fields without having to worry about them disappearing.

The "Delete" and "U" keys do this by default. You don't need to setup keybindings.

"Delete" key targets nearest and "U" key Uses the item you have targeted (in this case it harvests the selected field).

I love the idea to make landscape food/cooking items harvestable only if you have the matching Craft Profession.
That would be a way to allow Farmer/Cook to get sigils from landscape harvests.

I would also like to see them shorten induction times for a lot of the Farming and Cooking processes.
Don't remove the inductions just shorten them from what they are now.
My opinion is that ALL Farming/Cooking inductions should be cut in half.

We would still have to actively Farm/Cook but this one change would do a LOT to alleviate the tedious amount of time it takes to make consumables for just ONE character let alone the time it takes to supply an entire Kinship.

http://forums.lotro.com/showthread.p...ter-plant-time.

Here is a recent suggestion thread on the subject.

If I were Turbine reading this I would think the majority of players enjoy farming and the minority complain about it.

The suggestions in this thread seem far more positive and productive.

Why are the farming workbenches NOT near the fields at your higher levels. The last one I saw was in Galtrev. Now, when I farm or need to turn crops into something, I have to run into the town and find a workbench. For instance, sometimes when I pick what I've grown, I get something that allows me to create peat (which gives me a better crop). So, (using Snowbourne as an example) I run to look for the workbench to make my peat and there's nothing around the fields at all. Where is it? Way up in the crafting area of the town, of course. I finally get to farm in Hytbold. The fields are way out of town, the workbench is up past the Mead Hall and I'm running my fool &&&& off and wasting more time. Farming and cooking are a pain at the very best and we waste hours and hours to make the stuff...give us just a little break and give us the same workbench where our craft is that you give to the other crafters in the crafting areas. OH, and don't let me get started on the 'crafting' instances in Hytbold. Crafting for whom? Surely not the cooks and farmers because there isn't squat there for them. Why? Maybe it's just me, maybe I'm having a bad day, but where the heck is the incentive for the Farmer or Cook to keep doing things in Hytbold, too?