Guide To Botany ErisEn
Basic Botany
| Machine | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
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Soil Patch | You plant seeds here |
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Seed Extractor | Convert crops into seeds |
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Mega Seed Servitor | Seed vendor |
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Nutrimax | Botany vendor |
To grow plants you will need the following:
- Seeds
- A container for liquids
- A minihoe or shovel
- E-Z-Nutrient
- A patch of soil
To grow the plants you will need to use a packet of seeds on an empty patch of soil. As the plant grows you may need to add water, fertilizer or remove weeds from the soil patch. You can find out what your plant needs to grow by examining it. Seeds, Fertilizers and tools can be found either in the public garden crates or from the Super Seed Servitor/Nutrimax Vending machines.
If there is a plant growing in a plot you don't want it in, you can kill the plant by attacking it with a cutting tool like a knife.
When the plant finally matures, the plant icon should look like it has the crops on it. You can pick the fruits of your labors with you hands, or with a produce bag. Note that harvesting certain plants removes them from the tray. Luckily, the Seed Extractor machine can extract seeds from the gathered fruit so you can plant a new generation of crops.
Advanced Botany
| Machine | Name | Description |
|---|---|---|
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Hydroponics Tray | A more precise way to grow plants |
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Lysis-Isolation Centrifuge | Extracts traits from a seed and saves to disk |
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Bioballistic Delivery System | Applies donor seed trait from buffer |
Moebius and Neotheology both have access to more advanced equipment to maximize the yields of their plants.
- Hydroponics Trays
- Lysis-Isolation Centrifuge
- Bioballistic Delivery System
- Plant Analyzer
These tools, when properly used, can improve your crop yields by a noticeable margin.
Hydroponics
The hydroponics trays and the plant analyzer tool allow for a more fine-tuned approach to growing plants. By using a plant analyzer on a planted plot or tray, you can find out:
- What plant species is growing in the plot
- Ideal growing light
- Ideal temperature
- Relative Nutrient consumption
- Relative Water consumption
| Indicator Light | Plant status |
|---|---|
| Red | Needs weeding or pest removal |
| Yellow | Needs additional nutrients |
| Blue | Needs additional water |
| Green | Can be harvested |
| Red bars | In poor health and may die soon |
The hydroponics trays allow you to modify the plant's local environment by setting the tray's light level and sealing the tray with a lid to pump in air of a different temperature or composition.
Hydroponics trays also have a set of indicator lights to allow the grower an at-a-glance update as to what the plant needs to thrive.
Gene Splicing Plants
Each species of plant has attributes that can be spliced onto other species. Traits from the donor plant, when applied to the recipient plant, are either appended to or overwrite the recipient plant's traits depending on the trait. Traits like Biochemistry which is non-exclusive appends, while traits such as Appearance replaces since a plant can only have one appearance.
If you have a plant that you want to splice a particular attribute from, it can be placed into the Lysis-Isolation Centrifuge and processed. Processing the seed consumes it but allows you to select a specific trait and save it to a blank data disk, up until the genetic structure is too damaged to be used.
This disk can then be ejected and loaded into the Bio-Ballistic Delivery System, where the attribute data is loaded into the buffer. Applying traits damages the receiving seed which limits how many traits can be added in a generation. Higher Biology skills reduces the damage adding a trait deals to the receiving seed.
Plant Traits
| Plant Characteristic | Effect |
|---|---|
| Vigour | How long the plant takes to mature and produce fruit. How much fruit it produces. Whether it can spread out of its tray (ie, vines). |
| Biochemistry | Which reagents the fruit contains; which gases the plant generates. |
| Fruit | Whether the fruit is juicy and will splatter when thrown; whether the plant has stinging spines and will inject its reagents into anyone coming in contact with it. |
| Diet | Whether the plant consumes gases in its environment; whether the plant is carnivorous (eats pests) or eats tray weeds; how much water and fertilizer it consumes. |
| Metabolism | Whether the plant requires water or fertilizer. Whether it alters the ambient temperature. |
| Environment | Plant's preferred temperature and light levels, and how much tolerance it has for changes in light level. |
| Atmosphere | The plant's tolerance for changes in temperature and pressure away from its preferred levels. |
| Output | Whether the plant produces electrical power or bioluminescent light. |
| Appearance | The "shape" of the plant. Also affects whether it can be harvested only once or multiple times. |
| Pigment | The color of the plant and its fruit; the color of any bioluminescence. |
| Special | The ability to teleport the thrower or target when thrown. |
Plant Evolution
Some plants when examine might say they show a high degree of genetic shift. This means that the plant can be evolved into a new species with the right inputs and a bit of luck. To evolve a plant, you must expose it to mutating radiation. There are three sources of radiation that can mutate a plant.
- Unstable Mutagen
- Left-4-Zed fertilizer
- Floral Somatoray
- Liquid Biomatter
None of these methods however are guaranteed to evolve a plant and may instead change a trait to a new random value. Don't worry! Take a clipping of the plant and restart the process. You will know a plant has evolved into a new form if it resets it's growth stage.
Beekeeping
Enterprising botanists will also notice that it is possible to create bee hives to generate honey. Honey can be used in certain recipes while Beeswax can be used to craft candles. Further information can be found in this guide to beekeeping.
List of Common Plants
This section contains a selected list of plant species available from the MegaSeed Servitor and possible mutations. Additional exotic variants and xenospecies may be found in the Moebius Xenobotany lab or bought from the MTV 'Faith' through the Aster's trading guild.
| Seed Packet | Plant Species | Chemicals | Mutates To | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Apple | Nutriment | Golden Apple, Poison Apple | |
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Ambrosia Vulgaris | Nutriment, Space Drugs, Kelotane, Bicardine, Toxin | Ambrosia Deus | |
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Banana | Banana Juice | - | Eating a banana gives you a banana peel |
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Berry | Nutriment, Berry Juice | Glowberry, Poison Berry, Atroberry | |
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Cabbage | Nutriment | - | |
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Cocao | Nutriment, Coco | - | Yes, it is misspelled in game |
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Carrot | Nutriment, Carrot Juice, Imidazoline | - | |
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Chanterelle | Nutriment | Plump Helmet, Reshi, Fly Amanita | |
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Cherry | Nutriment, Sugar, Cherry Jelly | - | |
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Chili | Nutriment, Capsaicin | Ice Chili | |
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Corn | Nutriment, Corn Oil | - | Eating corn leaves you a corn cob |
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Eggplant | Nutriment | Egg Plant | |
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Grape | Nutriment, Sugar, Grape Juice | Green Grape | |
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Grass | Nutriment | - | |
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Lemon | Nutriment, Lemon Juice | - | |
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Lime | Nutriment, Lime Juice | - | |
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Orange | Nutriment, Orange Juice | - | |
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Peanut | Nutriment | - | |
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Plastellium | Plasticide | - | |
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Plump Helmets | Nutriment | Walking Mushroom | |
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Poppy | Nutriment, Bicardine | - | |
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Potato | Nutriment, Potato Juice | - | Roaches like potato |
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Pumpkin | Nutriment | - | |
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Rice | Nutriment, Rice | - | |
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Soybean | Nutriment, Soymilk | - | |
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Sugarcane | Sugar | - | |
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Sunflower | - | - | |
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Tobacco | Nicotine | - | Can be dried for use in smoking pipes |
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Tomato | Nutriment, Tomato Juice | Blue Tomato, Blood Tomato | |
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Tower Cap | Wood Pulp | - | Tower Cap fruit may be cut up into wood |
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Watermelon | Nutriment, Watermelon Juice | - | |
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Wheat | Nutriment, Flour | - | Can be fed to Cows and Chickens |
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White Beet | Nutriment, Sugar | - |
Tips
- One of the biggest boosts to plant productivity is a Farming Robot: it can water, weed, fertilize and harvest plants.
- Farmbots have terrible pathing AI: Agrolytes are recommended to have multiple bots or rearrange the trays to be more accessible.
- Buckets (and all containers) can have the transfer amount set via the dropdown menu. Setting the transfer amount to the full 200u will allow for you to 1-click refill a soil plot or hydroponics tray.
- Not satisfied with the options available in the Mega Seed Servitor? You can hack it to give you a wider range of seeds for planting. Do so at your own risk!
- Be careful when working with tunnel fungus. It may contain anything from potent healing chemicals to transformation toxins.
- Run out of fertilizer? Additional E-Z-Nutrient can be created from chemistry or from the Church Bioprinter. Certain other chemicals can also be used to feed your crops.
- Want to grow a modified crop in the public garden? Ask the Agrolyte or Moebius Science to modify seeds for you.
- Plant attributes require 10GQ of data storage, plan your disk purchases accordingly
- Each generation of plants can have one additional trait grafted to it.
