Codex HOW TO PLAY Farming & Taming

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Farming & Taming

Sooner or later a camp stops chasing its food and starts keeping it: a crop in the ground, a mushroom in a pot, and beasts that answer to you.

THE FARM PLOT

Build a Farm Plot on open ground (BUILD: HOMESTEAD in N). Only Juiceroot grows in it. Aim at the empty plot and hold E to sow: one Juiceroot Seed fills the whole plot with nine plants. Seeds come from wild Juiceroot in flower, now and then from your own ripe crop, and sometimes from a farmer's stores.

  • Water. A new plot is dry. Aim at it with a Full Waterskin in your pack and press Z: each skin pours in a measure and you keep the empty skin, and a plot holds ten. A Water Flask will not do. Rain fills a plot that stands under open sky.
  • Growth. The crop grows in four steps of fifteen minutes, and each growing plant drinks at every step: a whole crop drinks about nine skins. A plant that goes thirsty two steps running withers away, so a sowing left dry is dead within half an hour.
  • Harvest. After three steps a plant can be picked, but it gives a Juiceroot less than half the time and never a seed. Leave it the full hour to flower and it nearly always gives one, sometimes with a seed. Ripe plants never die; they wait for you. Hold E on each plant to pick it.
  • Aim at a plot to see its water and how far the crop has come. Its owner can clear it: aim and press K twice.

THE MUSHROOM POT

A Craftsman can build a Mushroom Pot (BUILD: UTILITY); it comes already sown. Water it with Z — a Water Flask, or a Full Waterskin if you carry no flask — and two or three Earthbread Mushrooms ripen in about fifteen minutes. Hold E to pick them, then hold E again with a mushroom in your pack to sow another. A dry pot just waits; it never withers. Pick it up and carry it with R.

A plot or pot is not locked: anyone may water or pick it. On a people's own land, picking theirs is theft (see CRIME). The Forager skill takes half again as much from your crops.

TAMING

Horses, goats and aurochs can be tamed, and pigs are tame already. Come within a couple of steps and work on it:

  • Calm it (R). A little progress at each word, but a horse or an auroch may bolt for a moment.
  • Feed it Greenleaf Leaves (Z). Twice the progress, it never startles, and it heals the beast; a wild one takes only a leaf every three seconds.

Progress slips away while you stop, so keep at it: about seven leaves will do it alone. Whoever finishes owns the beast, and taming earns experience. The Beastmaster skill doubles what calming does, and makes the beast bolt far less often.

A Dog is another matter. Soothing words mean nothing to it, but Raw Meat (Z) makes it stop and eat instead of biting, for five seconds. Keep the pieces coming before it finishes — about five in all — and it is yours.

KEEPING THEM

  • Lead. With a Rope in your pack, aim at a tamed animal and press G; press it again to let go. The rope is not used up. You cannot sprint while you lead, and a horse you ride while towing keeps to a trot.
  • Tie. Lead a beast to a Wood Post and aim + G at the post to tie it there; aim + G at the animal empty-handed to untie it.
  • Shed (goats and pigs). Lead one up and press E to pen it, up to three. Two of a kind breed a third after an hour. Penned animals roam near the shed and always come home.
  • Stable (one horse or auroch). Ride or lead it up and press E to stable it; E again calls it out. F names it, and K twice lets it go.
  • Kennel (one dog). The same, and a companion dog needs no rope: bring it at your heel and press E. It keeps following you until you send it away. A kennelled dog has three lives: struck down, it comes home to recover.

A tamed beast left loose wanders off once nobody is near — within a minute of everyone leaving it is gone — so house the ones you mean to keep. Owning one is no lock either: any player who finds it loose can lead it or ride it away. Tamed animals need no food or water; Greenleaf (Raw Meat for a dog) only heals them. A tamed auroch gives milk: aim + R with an Empty Flask, once every ten minutes. Livestock traders buy and sell animals, tame and ready.

THE DOG AT YOUR SIDE

Aim + R at your tamed dog to take it along as your follower, and again to send it away. Hold Z for its orders: W makes it bolder or meeker, D switches between following you and guarding the spot, K dismisses it. Heal it with Raw Meat. A dog with no kennel that you send away, or leave behind when you log out, is gone for good.

Taking a people's tame beasts from their own land is theft, and the beast stays marked as stolen (see CRIME).