Melvor Idle is one of the few idle games I’ve played that forces you to switch the tasks you are working on at any given time, meaning if you intend to progress in any field, you need to measure what you put your effort into.
Farming is one of the few tasks that doesn’t require you to actively take care of it. You’re not actively chopping wood, mining ore, or trying to stab enemies to death. Your only real task is to get seeds, plant the seeds, and let nature do the work.
Why Bother with Farming in Melvor Idle?
If you’ve been cooking a bit, you may notice you can’t cook vegetables since they’re not available from the drop-down menu. That’s because you don’t need to cook your home-grown crops to eat them for health.
At the time of writing, you have two primary options for healing:
- Catch and cook fish
- Farm and harvest crops
Fishing requires you take your attention away from another task to both catch the fish and to cook them, not to mention the investments in cooking fires for more efficient cooking.
Since you can set and forget farming vegetables, it seems like the more appealing option. However, it takes a long time to get your farming level high enough to plant and harvest vegetables that heal you a worthwhile amount, and cooked fish does a better job of it overall.
The big draw to farming in Melvor Idle is herbs used to make potions under the herblore craft.
How to Get Started Farming
As with all things in this game, you’re going to have to claw your way up to get to the real good stuff. Unfortunately, that takes a bit longer when farming than with most other tasks.
You need two things to be a successful farmer: seeds and compost. Seeds are easier to get than compost, but compost is required for a successful harvest.
How to Get Seeds
There are three primary ways to get seeds, two of which are combat-based. The easiest, though, is your good friend, woodcutting.
- Woodcutting — When you chop wood, there’s a chance you will obtain a bird’s nest for your efforts. You can open bird’s nests to receive a slew of random seeds.
- Fighting farmers — Head to the Farmlands combat area and check out what the three farmers may drop. The junior drops beginner seeds, adult drops mid-tier seeds, and master drops higher level seeds.
- Some other enemies do have seeds on their drop lists, but farmers are your best bet.
- Stealing from the farmer — Once your thieving level reaches 30, you’ll be able to steal from a farmer. This can grant a random seed on a successful steal.
- Harvest crops you have a mastery of 11 or above with — There’s a chance you will get a seed when harvesting plants you’re familiar with. Mastery 11, to be exact. The chance increases with mastery level.
How to Keep Your Plants from Dying: Compost
Naturally, farming couldn’t be as easy as slapping a bunch of seeds in the ground and letting them do their thing. Nope! Instead, you need to give the ground some tender love and care using compost before you plant seeds.
You’ll notice before you plant a seed that there is a compost level, which allows you to place up to five composts in the ground before planting.
At five composts, your seeds will be guaranteed to grow to full plants. Using compost is the only way to guarantee your crops will come to fruition until you reach mastery 50 with a crop.
Also, surprise: You don’t get any farming XP if your crops die. So you definitely want to slap some compost on there.
There are three ways to get compost:
- Bought from the shop for 500 coins each
- Dropped by adult and master farmers at the Farmlands
- Pickpocketed from the farmer once you’re at thievery level 30
At the start, you will probably have to rely on buying compost from the shop. It seems pricey, but if you’ve got a good economy going via woodcutting or what have you, it’s not a big deal to buy a slew of compost all at once.
Make sure to place your compost before planting a seed. You will not be able to apply compost after you have already planted. Be careful when planting.
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That’s it for Melvor Idle‘s farming mechanics, which are more simple than they first appear. It’s a bit of a run around to get started farming, but it’s easy as pie once you’re chopping wood all night to get the seeds and money that come with it.
