Agriculture Skill

Agriculture

Class	Skills
Type	Skill
Skill Group	Farming
Max Level	10
Total XP	32,775
Skill Books	Agriculture Skill Books
Best Occupation	Farmer (+4)

The Agriculture Skill governs growing crops. It shows more information about each crop and helps a farmer raise healthier plants with bigger harvests. It belongs to the Farming group.

Once the power fails, most fresh food rots. Canned and dry food can still be scavenged, but those stores run out in time. Farming turns a patch of land into a lasting food supply. It works best alongside other ways of getting food, such as animal care, butchering, fishing, foraging and trapping. A skilled farmer reads a crop's needs at a glance and catches disease and thirst early. The Farmer starts with the most Agriculture skill, and the Gardener trait adds one level.

How to Level Agriculture

Agriculture experience comes from harvesting crops the character planted. Plowing, sowing, weeding, watering and fertilising all help the crop, but only the harvest pays out.

A healthy crop gives more experience at harvest. A well-tended plant earns a bonus, while a neglected one gives less. Keeping crops watered, weeded and free of disease pays off in skill as well as food.

The Exposure Survival show on Life and Living TV gives Agriculture experience. Several tapes help too, including Growing Fruit and Veg at Home, Growing Herbs at Home, Tree Planting Guide and Exposure Survival Episode 3: Farming. Watching only pays off in the first three levels, unless experience spills over from a level-up.

Magazines teach growing seasons and farm recipes to characters who do not start as farmers. Seed packets also explain the growing season of their crop.

The Fast Learner trait raises the experience rate to 130 percent. The Slow Learner trait lowers it to 70 percent.

Healthy crops are the key to fast training. Each harvest pays out according to the plant's health, so care during growth turns straight into experience. Keep the soil watered, pull weeds on a regular schedule and treat disease early. A neglected field gives less food and less skill.

Timing matters as much as care. Every crop has good months and bad months for planting. A crop sown in a poor month risks being cursed and growing badly. Seed packets list the right season, and farming magazines teach the rest. Planting on time gives healthier plants and therefore more experience.

Read the matching skill book before a big harvest. The boost applies to the experience from that harvest, so the timing pays off.

Seeds can be kept from each harvest. A crop harvested while blooming gives seeds along with its food. Some vegetables also give seeds through extraction with tweezers or a knife. Saving part of each harvest keeps the next season going.

The XP each Agriculture level asks for, with the running total from level 0.

Level	XP Needed	Total XP
1	75	75
2	150	225
3	300	525
4	750	1,275
5	1,500	2,775
6	3,000	5,775
7	4,500	10,275
8	6,000	16,275
9	7,500	23,775
10	9,000	32,775

Agriculture Level Effects

Each level adds detail to the crop information. A new farmer must rely on how a plant looks. At level 0, the info window shows the growth phase, compost status and water level.

Level 3 adds a tooltip when hovering over a crop. It shows the growth phase, the water level and any disease with its severity. Level 4 shows the water level as a bar in the info window. Level 6 shows how long until the next growth phase.

Each level also helps the crops themselves. New plants start a little healthier, and diseases are easier to reduce. Harvests grow larger with skill. Bad planting months cause fewer problems, and fertilizer and good timing are more likely to bring a bonus yield.

These small gains add up across a field. A high-level farmer plants healthier crops that fight off disease more easily. Each plant gives a little more at harvest. Over a full season, the difference fills a pantry.

Compost and fertilizer work best in the early growth phases. Compost made from rotten food gives a repeatable way to feed the soil. The bonus yield chance rises with each level, so a skilled farmer gets the most from every bag of fertilizer.

Water matters once the taps run dry. Rain collector barrels and crates from Carpentry gather water for the fields. A farm with several collectors keeps its crops alive through dry spells.

Agriculture Skill Books

The Agriculture Skill Books come in five volumes. Each volume speeds up experience for two levels. Agriculture I: "Better Gardening" covers the first two levels. Agriculture V: "USDA Guide to Agricultural Output Maximization" covers the last two. Reading each volume just before its levels gives the most benefit.

The five volumes, the levels each one speeds up, the XP bonus while those levels are trained, and how long each takes to read. Reading times are game time at the default two minutes a page. Sitting down and wearing Reading Glasses each cut the time by a tenth, the Fast Reader trait cuts it by about a third, and Slow Reader adds a third.

Volume	Levels	XP Bonus	Pages	Read Time	Spawn ID
Agriculture I: "Better Gardening"	1 to 2	x3	220	7 h 20 min	`/additem Base.BookFarming1`
Agriculture II: "Growing Food at Home"	3 to 4	x5	260	8 h 40 min	`/additem Base.BookFarming2`
Agriculture III: "Liam Keating's Subsistence Farming"	5 to 6	x8	300	10 h	`/additem Base.BookFarming3`
Agriculture IV: "The Science of Crop Genetics and Yields"	7 to 8	x12	340	11 h 20 min	`/additem Base.BookFarming4`
Agriculture V: "USDA Guide to Agricultural Output Maximization"	9 to 10	x16	380	12 h 40 min	`/additem Base.BookFarming5`

Set of Farming Books bundles all five volumes in one item and unpacks into them.

Item	Image	Spawn ID
Set of Farming Books		`/additem Base.BookFarmingSet`

Agriculture Starting Levels

The Farmer begins with four levels of Agriculture. That start shows crop tooltips and water bars from the first day. The Farmer also knows the growing seasons without reading magazines. The Gardener trait adds one level at character creation.

A head start means healthier crops and larger harvests from the first season.

Seed packets turn up in barns, gardening shops and farm sheds. Foraging with a crop or vegetable focus sometimes gives seeds as well. A Farmer who gathers seeds in the first week can have a field growing before the power fails.

These occupations and traits start a character with levels in Agriculture.