Farming mechanics in the game

# 🌱 Devlog: How the Crop System Works in "The Withering Fields"

Hey everyone!  

Today I want to talk about the crop system in "The Withering Fields" — a mechanic that starts as a fight for survival and slowly transforms into a fully automated, world-healing process.

If you're expecting a traditional farming sim like "Stardew Valley", you're in for a surprise. In our game, **plants aren’t just a way to make money — they’re a key to survival, exploration, and restoring a dying world.

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## 🌾 It All Starts with Wild Crops

Early in the game, you find yourself in a broken, infected world. Most life is gone or corrupted. But deep in the ash and rust, "wild plants still grow" — strange, glowing, mutated, but alive. And that’s your first step.

You can discover wild crop variants in different biomes — usually after clearing out an infected area. It might be a lone fruit-bearing bush, a glowing stalk, or tangled vines hiding precious seeds.

But these wild crops "aren’t ready for farming". They’re fragile, inconsistent, and yield very little. That’s why the first stage of the system is **domestication**.

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## 🧪 Domestication & Experimentation

Once you find a wild crop, you can try growing it on "special research plots" near your base. These controlled plots let you:

- observe how the crop grows,

- test its resistance to infection or weather,

- and most importantly — attempt to create a stable, domesticated variant.

Each planting has a chance to stabilize, producing normal crop seeds suitable for regular farming. It’s not guaranteed — sometimes you’ll need to try multiple times or add resources to increase your chances.

These experiments may require fertilizers, essence, purified crystals, or other special materials. You’ll make tactical choices: which crops are worth the investment, and which can wait?

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## 🌿 Cultivating Fields: The First Step to Scaling

Once you finally get a stable seed type, you can plant it on regular crop fields. At first, everything is manual: preparing the soil, planting, watering, and harvesting. But these fields allow much larger yields.

From a single harvest, you might get:

- Food,  

- Alchemical ingredients,  

- Crafting components,  

- Fuel for your machines.

Each crop has unique traits — some are only good for eating, others are key to powering your future tech or brewing vital concoctions.

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## 🤖 Automation: Golem-Run Farmlands

Now here comes the fun part. In The Withering Fields, you’re not meant to be stuck in farming chores forever.

**At mid-to-late game, you can build fully automated farms run by golems.

Each automated farm is a small farming unit: a golem house and a field (e.g., 5×5 tiles). A farm golem assigned to this unit will:

- plant crops (if supplied with seeds),

- water them,

- harvest the yield,

- and send it to a storage or drop-off platform.

You’ll place these farms across different biomes, tailoring each one to the environment and soil. Some crops only grow in specific areas, so **spreading your farming network becomes part of your world strategy.

> ⚠️ Golems don’t make you obsolete — they reduce routine. You’re still the one choosing what, where, and how to grow.

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## 🌍 Crops as a Force of Restoration

We didn’t want farming to be "just a cozy side activity." In The Withering Fields, it’s woven into the game’s lore and systems.

- Some crops only grow in cleansed, formerly-infected lands.

- Certain plants are required to unlock technologies, research upgrades, or craft rare items.

- Restoring plant life literally changes the biome: bringing back birds, bees, color, and even unlocking traversal options or hidden events.

In other words: plants are agents of change. They’re not just resources — they’re living proof that the world can recover.

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## 📘 Final Thoughts

We’ve spent a long time designing the crop system to be interesting, meaningful, and fully tied into the world of The Withering Fields. We hope you’ll enjoy the progression — from scavenging wild sprouts to commanding entire golem-run fields.

And if farming’s not your thing — that’s okay! You can focus on combat, exploration, building, and cleansing.  

But who knows — maybe one tiny green seedling will be what saves humanity in the end.

Thanks for reading! 💚  

If you’re interested in our game, follow the project to get devlog updates.  

Next time: combat systems, corrupted zones, boss mechanics, and more. Big things are coming.  

**See you in the fields!** 🌱