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Ekcin

Why Hay was a Failure and how to improve it

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The idea of hay was good (though it is sad that the pitchfork is just a rake and not a weapon in addition 😎), and starting with hay, its seasonality etc. was interesting and a good addition. But in fact, hay is nearly completely unused.

 

There are 2 kinds of hay to use: hay stack to drop in a pen, and bundles of hay created from bunch of hay plus string of cloth using thatching skill. That one is the interesting one, because stored in saddle bags it allows a horse to feed during overland rides, nice to keep speed.

 

Sadly, the creation is a mess, at least if your thatching is not at master levels. Below a test, creation of 20 hay bundles. Strings of cloth already present, yet creating 20 therefrom in good quality takes some time  as well *)

 

Combining 1280 bunches of hay ql 94.03 into 20 bunches: 11 minutes

Creating 20 hay bundles from hay bunches ql 94.03 and strings of cloth ql 81.71: 27 minutes
 "You almost made it .." : 24
 "This could very well work .." 12
 "Too many problems .." 9
 "You fail miserably .." 1
 "You realize this was a meaningless effort .." 1
Failures 47 success 20 (creation chance 35%)
 Thatching skill 26.34 skill gain 0.20

 

*) in a test, I needed 6 minutes to create 50 strings from 5 kg cotton ql93.08 at tailoring skill 43.22, 22 thereof of ql >80, avg ql 82.64, the rest between ql 26 ..72 avg 57.11

 

In summary, it takes 45 minutes to create 20 bundles. Even worse is the quality variance:

 

XVspFMB.jpg

 

While the quality of the product does not seem to impact nutritional value, it is just frustrating and demotivating. No wonder that most gave up on hay. Hay stacks are easier to create with a pitchfork, where a high ql one gives better creation chance, and is faster with WoA. The utility is that they do not, or extremely slowly, decay in the open. Quality variance seemed to be less gruesome too. But their use above vegs/grass in a pet bowl or trough is not exciting. And they cannot be stored in bulk containers.

 

 

A way to improve usage would be lowering creation difficulty, and boost creation speed. Also it should be considered to let the hay "self combine" when processed with string of cloth and pitchfork, as the combination takes nearly half as much time as creation, and more than successful creation. Also, hay stacks should be bsb'able, edit: with a volume > cotton bale but < support beam so that storing in crates would make sense.

Edited by Ekcin
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can we add to this the change that never got fixed or explained why it dropped.. cutting grass action takes 1 minute+.. at some point somebody silently buffed the action 3x, hq woa scythe used to do it at roughly 15sec.. after random patch changes.. 45sec.. with hw woa tool...

 

what made hay completely stupid to bother with.. was the tending amount and reward from it..

takes daily tending, cant be like crops plant today and harvest in 4-6days with or without tending for extra yield, etc

 

cutting grass directly gave some fodder to use and dump in hitching post feeder, on ground as pile to be food source or pet bowls to keep things civilized...

 

comparing utility of mixed grass vs hay... -> hay takes a lot of effort, time, skill, lower the yield, OP mentioned rng nonsense.. ql99 hay turning into ql1 haybundles... how does that work.. it's still hay.. even if the player is a derp and puts 40kg cloth-string to wrap each hay stem.. I guess it's fine if it feeds all the same.. but ql matters vs decay, which recently got buffed and tickles a lot of things constantly

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Hay has been a disappointment.  

 

1 hour ago, Ekcin said:

Also, hay stacks should be bsb'able, edit: with a volume > cotton bale but < support beam so that storing in crates would make sense.

Agree +1

 

1 hour ago, Finnn said:

can we add to this the change that never got fixed or explained why it dropped.. cutting grass action takes 1 minute+.. at some point somebody silently buffed the action 3x, hq woa scythe used to do it at roughly 15sec.. after random patch changes.. 45sec.. with hw woa tool...

Agree +1

 

Also, I think it needs to give better benefits for feeding animals or nerf other crops for feeding.  As long as pumpkins can be used as the primary feeding crop, hay will never have it's proper place as feed.  Hay bundles are cute and useful in a small way, whereas the ability to store hay stacks would create a whole new trading area for farming.  

 

I would even like to see this expanded to silage using mixed grass or bundled and wrapped mixed grass to create silage stacks.  Even a new silo could be built to store mixed grass as slightly lower ql feed.  A silo could easily have the look similar to an archery tower.  

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i dont really make hay because of the length of time difference between cutting grass with my sickle(less than 6 seconds) and cutting grass with my scythe( 45 seconds +) and if doing multiple actions in a row that timer just gets longer and longer. tending it can be a real pain because i dont always log in at the same times everyday sometimes i am so ill that i dont log in at all. something needs to be done to consider these issues before i use hay as more than a theme item to place around my deed IE a straw bed in the stables or a haystack sitting in a field

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2 hours ago, kordethbludscythe said:

i dont really make hay because of the length of time difference between cutting grass with my sickle(less than 6 seconds) and cutting grass with my scythe( 45 seconds +) and if doing multiple actions in a row that timer just gets longer and longer. tending it can be a real pain because i dont always log in at the same times everyday sometimes i am so ill that i dont log in at all. something needs to be done to consider these issues before i use hay as more than a theme item to place around my deed IE a straw bed in the stables or a haystack sitting in a field

To be fair, cutting grass with a sickle yields 1..3 mixed grass depending on tile status (wild grass most), while yield of sickle depends on farming  (? gardening?) skill. Newbies may yield from 3 grass up with sickle in 10..12s, but on every grass tile > "cut short". I get 51..53 grass in 45s..1.05min (farming 97.9 gardening 91.1), also starting by medium grass. I once collected mixed grass with my sickle, and it took considerably longer to get a satchel full, often running over up to 100 tiles, which recovered to wild grass within a week. But admittedly, the low yield and long duration is demotivating, on beginner levels in particular.

 

But admittedly, I was not aware how relatively low the yield is at lower levels of farming/gardening/nature (whatever rules scythe yield on grass). It is an additional factor abhorring players from making hay, so thanks for the information. Those dependencies should be researched and documented on wiki as well.

Edited by Ekcin

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put a buff to hay food to buff animals with temporary trait effect like eating less, starving slower, etc... only until next time it needs to feed.. that way feeding it hay only.. will be feeding it with less food compared to grass, alternative is to nerf mixed grass and make that completely useless food....

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9 hours ago, Finnn said:

put a buff to hay food to buff animals with temporary trait effect like eating less, starving slower, etc... only until next time it needs to feed.. that way feeding it hay only.. will be feeding it with less food compared to grass, alternative is to nerf mixed grass and make that completely useless food....

I like the boost idea, at least as long as it is not balance breaking. Could also imagine a slight speed boost for horses with hay bundles in saddle sacks, either permanently, or when feeding from. Also, the curve from 3 untedded hay (or grass on slope or harvested) to 53 between skill 1..10 and 90+ (it is gardening btw, according to wiki) is too extreme. Beginner yield should start at 10 or even 20 grass/hay.

But please no nerfs. They tend to backfire at the wrong places.

Edited by Ekcin

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1 thing I never understood .. why we cant cut grass and "tend" the pile of mixed grass🤔

 

sloped tile directly yields harvested mixed grass if I recall right*, that makes any higher slope tile useless to produce hay the way it works at the moment, vs.. irl grass is cut.. bunched in a pile.. and then flipped to dry evenly, etc..

(*been a while since I've cut any, no need past AH skill grind and the long timer discourages the action)

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6 hours ago, Finnn said:

1 thing I never understood .. why we cant cut grass and "tend" the pile of mixed grass🤔

sloped tile directly yields harvested mixed grass if I recall right*, that makes any higher slope tile useless to produce hay the way it works at the moment, vs.. irl grass is cut.. bunched in a pile.. and then flipped to dry evenly, etc..

(*been a while since I've cut any, no need past AH skill grind and the long timer discourages the action)

I think there is first a technical thing of Wurm mechanic: "tedding" is farming, and the process of scything grass on a farmable grass tile turns it into a farm tile from wet grass to dry hay. Just dropping grass would not achieve that, nor would it work on a sloped grass tile. Harvesting the hay, and cutting the grass, are gardening, not farming. For some reason, harvesting hay with a pitchfork active yields more hay than without.

 

Generally, I find the mechanic ok. Sometimes, when I need amounts of grass, I use the scythe on slopes because it is faster than the same on 20+ grass tiles with a sickle. And the pitchfork (I have a rare one) is just funny.

Edited by Ekcin
typo

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One interesting observation I had recently is that when I was harvesting hay (fully dry), I rode to put some in a feeding trough nearby. Accidentally, I put a small portion in my horse's saddlebags (they only hold about 5 plain hay) and the horse immediately ate one!

 

That's right, horses will eat regular gathered hay from the saddlebags, it doesn't have to be wrapped into stacks or bundles for them to do this.

Maybe the hay bundles decay less or something, but just saying you don't /have/ to wrap hay into a bundle to let a horse satisfy its hunger from its saddlebags.

 

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I don't mind the long time needed to make a hay tile or even the tending as they give good skill but I don't bother with making bundles because the time/ materials/ and skill needed to make them have no real benefit to the product.  I just put it in a trough or hitching post. 

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On 10/1/2022 at 7:23 PM, Tristanc said:

One interesting observation I had recently is that when I was harvesting hay (fully dry), I rode to put some in a feeding trough nearby. Accidentally, I put a small portion in my horse's saddlebags (they only hold about 5 plain hay) and the horse immediately ate one!

 

That's right, horses will eat regular gathered hay from the saddlebags, it doesn't have to be wrapped into stacks or bundles for them to do this.

Maybe the hay bundles decay less or something, but just saying you don't /have/ to wrap hay into a bundle to let a horse satisfy its hunger from its saddlebags.

 

um...

You need 1 minute to cut grass, few seconds to tend the tile, repeat the tending for 6days... then harvest... and from the yield you only could fit 5 at a time in the saddlebags, but you see nothing wrong with how all that works?

You must have way too much spare time to play like that.

 

imagine driving a car with 1L gas tank

yea, it moves.. but the amount of refilling and thinking about it must be somewhat bothersome, at least for some

Edited by Finnn

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Another component missing to make the hay system a more sensible part of the game is demand. There's just not a whole lot of need for it. Now, if certain livestock animals explicitly required it during winter, like irl, then you'd see much more use, interest in it, and some trade happening perhaps. Otherwise, there's little point to it, especially when it requires the work discussed above in the thread.

Edited by MordosKull

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This is a half implemented feature, it really needs some love.

 

These are the things new players notice, it's in the game and they want to use it but it takes too long and too high skill for not really any effect.

 

Oldbies tell them just feed em mixed grass and crush the weird urges new players join for

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I was researching if I should use hay and I found this. I'm not going to use hay now, that is for sure. 

 

I would use it if it was basically a farm crop that had double the yield of normal farm crops.

1. Wurm you should be consistent!  Farm crops aren't affected by seasons and thus hay shouldn't be either.

2. Hay's yield must be much better than a farm crop because you can choose to farm something more useful instead.

3. Hay should work in large planters and produce much more than other farm crops in said planter.

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As long as people offer grass enchanting services and have path of love alts, hay will never be used. This is just one of those cases where something was added in a game without understanding mechanics, player behaviour and path of least resistance. Enchanted grass offers the best longevity for feeding animals over a long period of time, almost no maintenance needed, enchanted grass rarely is packed and rarely becomes dirt or regular grass.

I experimented a bit with hay and it seemed like one of those things that just are in the game for the sake of being in the game. Usefulness is zero.

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I have plans to use hay bales and possibly bundles as decorative items at some point. But couldn't imagine trying to use it to feed anything, way too much hassle. as Elentari noted, so much easier to enchant some grass under a hitching post

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Please don't nerf enchanted grass! I don't see people specifically asking for a nerf. But, it's clear they are more interested in complaining that it's too OP than providing alternative options.


Better!  Make it so Grazers can eat from hay tiles and not destroy the tile. 

Better!  A placed hay bales will feed animals on its tile for a long time. Do the same rolls as enchanted grass for destroying the bales.

 

I'm sure there are even more solutions that can make this useful without hurting and nerfing everyone.

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Because of this difficulty I never bothered w hay. 

Also, it would be nice to have more uses for hay.

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