Farming, Husbandry and Bees

First of all, I'd like to say that I'm extremely excited by the prospect of doing some farming on the side! Since the wiki is a little sparse though, I wanted to give some food for thought.

What kind of animals could be used for livestock? Cows and chicken are listed, but could you also breed a magic deer to give you shimmering deer milk?

What can livestock be used for? Is it just milk and eggs, or could livstock also be butchered for meat, feathers, and other useful bits? Can certain livestock be used as work animals to make life a bit easier for the hired farmhands?

Do crops and livestock require specialized areas, like a barn and a field, or do they just get placed around the terrain?

If a node falls, and freeholds become free to loot, what happens to livestock and crops? Can they be detroyed/killed/harvested by attackers, do they count as ressources available for looting upon destruction, or are they saved like complete items?

Is it possible to improve crop yield via items, magic, special buildings or special care? For example, crafting a fertilizer from bones and magic dust could be applied to a field before planting wheat to get a better harvest in fall, or if intense farming requires the land to rest for a rotation, fertilizer could be used to renew the land instead.

Are there specialty farmhands? Doing a quest to enlist a specialist could be another neat way to personalize a freehold.

Lastly, I leave you with this: Imagine a sea of flowers. Petals dance on a soft breeze and you hear a gentle humming as a pudgy little yellow-striped dot flies past you. It joins its kin towards a small, dome-shaped construct that sits in the shade of a tree, collecting the pollen of countless blossoms to create sweet, rich honey in the hive. You sit up and take another sip of the wonderful mead the beekeeper made you.

I want to be that beekeeper. Please, make my dream a reality.
Vote for bees.

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Comments

Astrobinary

Beekeeper wrote: »

Just because things aren't in place yet doesn't mean they won't be. After all, I can't imagine Intrepid to rush freehold farming as their priority target, so it'll probably remain fairly featureless until later on.

I'm sorry if my enthusiasm and imagination hurt you somehow.

I do love your enthusiasm. If they do implement bee keeping, I for sure will be on the look out for your hive! I believe they are not giving us all the details on every profession simply to keep the exploration factor, but I can see many game play benefits for bee keeping.

Beekeeper

Astrobinary wrote: »

I do love your enthusiasm. If they do implement bee keeping, I for sure will be on the look out for your hive! I believe they are not giving us all the details on every profession simply to keep the exploration factor, but I can see many game play benefits for bee keeping.

Thank you

I agree completely.

MrPancake

I enjoy your enthousiastic aproach towards beekeeping and don't see any issue in the fantasy setting you think of. It would be nice to see this implemented and I do hope they keep this information to themselves for the sake of discovery. I would love to wander through a freehold and see some flowers and bees while also knowing they have their uses for crafting and such.

Great thinking!

Okami

I would love to see bees in-game, maybe allocating space for your hives would your crops an 'efficient pollinator' bonus that makes it so plants can yield 25% more materials if they have that bonus applied at the time of harvest. I am concerned about the animal husbandry thing though, I really only see information on mounts but I don't see anything about selective breeding for cows, chickens, sheep, etc. I'm all for mounts (who isn't!?) but I know from experience in other games that the mount market DOES get stagnant after a certain amount of time. I'd much rather have a stable income selling higher quality or a larger volume of materials instead through careful care of my livestock and crops.

SkylarckTheBotanist

I am planning on being a Master Herbalist, with a great big garden freehold, so of course bees would help such endeavors

I'm down to trade queens if we're on the same server ;P

Skylarck The Botanist

Asgerr

They will for sure add more types of livestock be it sheep for wool, bees or fishes, molluscs whatever.

But I would recommend you temper your expectations. I have seen this type of excitement before.

You imagine some crazy magical world so full of depth that it feels like a second life in the world of your dreams. And while AOC while surely be fantastical and full of depth, let's not forget it's just a videogame.

Don't let the potential let down of not seeing all your dreamed of features, have you take it out on the game. So many people build cathedrals in their minds and then get disappointed when presented with an actual small tangible church instead.

Jamation

Oh I like that this thread was brought back, never saw it initially and I like some of these ideas!

Beekeeper wrote: »

Cows and chicken are listed, but could you also breed a magic deer to give you shimmering deer milk?

Except this. This sounds icky

deer milk

that shimmers

eeeewwwww

Beekeeper wrote: »

... or giving them outfits/uniforms as part of customizing the look of your little home...

If there are any freehold NPC's I'd love to be able to give them some clothes/armors in order to change their appearance (maybe even using my own shop skins on them) I liked this in FFXIV when your retainers could wear whatever their class was and it'd actually show. Thought this added such nice flavor/flare and gave me another thing to do with nice looking armor I didn't need!

Beekeeper wrote: »

I want to be that beekeeper. Please, make my dream a reality.
Vote for bees.

Hear! Hear! A vote for bees! Lil bumblin blobs of beautiful mush. Lil bebes flying around. So cute.

Nerror

I like the ideas and questions!

For release I expect a pretty shallow freehold system tbh. Basic functionalities of the stuff they promised. Then a few months of bugfixes. But then I hope they start adding the depth to the systems

Rhuric

I hope it's not too shallow at start, because I see Freeholds being rather important to the economy with farms, taverns, blacksmiths, etc.

I definitely hope there are bees and even shimmering milk! It's a fantasy game, lets put the fantasy back in it!

Chemzilla

Bees would be awesome, pay homage and teach of their importance!! 😁

Sathrago

I can dig some bee-keeping shenanigans.

Beekeeper

Asgerr wrote: »

But I would recommend you temper your expectations. I have seen this type of excitement before.

Not to worry! I am not trying to peddle hype, I'm just trying to imagine some of the more deep mechanics that would make farming fun. And, of course, make people excited about bees. After all, if enough people love bees, maybe one day we'll get them in game, even if it may take a few expansions.

Thank you all for the new influx of replies! I'm so happy that there's more people excited about farming

Vhaeyne

Can I keep wasps instead.

I just think they are neat.

Beekeeper

What would wasps do?

Vhaeyne

Beekeeper wrote: »

What would wasps do?

They are pollinators, they pray on other pests that would eat my plants, and they keep people off my property.

Also they look dynamic AF.

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