Wood Fence
| Wood Fence | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Crafted Item |
| Recipe | Starter |
| Sell Price | 1g |
The Wood Fence is the first fence a farmer ever builds and the one that rots away fastest. Two pieces of Wood make a post, the recipe is known from the opening morning, and a line of them is the cheapest way to pen animals in and keep grass from creeping across the fields. The trade-off is upkeep: a wooden post gives up after roughly a season and a half, which means walking the line and patching it rather than forgetting about it. Stone, iron and hardwood versions arrive with Farming levels and last far longer, so the wooden one is usually a stopgap. It still earns its place early, when wood is the only material in plentiful supply.
Recipe
The recipe is available from the start of the game, and every post takes two Wood. Chopping trees supplies more than enough, and Robin sells Wood at the Carpenter's Shop for anyone who would rather buy a long run of fencing in one go.
A fence also needs a way through. The Gate shares the same starter recipe and takes ten Wood, which is five posts' worth for one square. It only swings open when it is joined to a fence on both sides, and it takes up its own tile, so the simplest approach is to plan the gap before laying the posts rather than tearing one out afterwards.
These are the ingredients one batch needs.
| Name | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | 
|
2 |
Use
Each post sits on one tile and links up with the posts beside it, north to south or east to west. Diagonal lines block movement all the same, but the posts stand apart instead of joining into a rail.
Penning animals is the usual reason to build. A barn or coop lets its animals out through a small door, and they graze the grass nearest that door first, so the enclosure works best centred on it. A tight pen makes the morning round of petting and milking quick. A roomy pen lets the grass grow back faster than the herd can eat it, which saves on Hay in Summer. Ponds, buildings and anything else solid count as walls for this purpose.
Fences also hold the grass in. Left alone, grass spreads over open ground and across paths, and a fenced block keeps it where the animals need it rather than all over the crop rows. Fences block the farmer and the horse too, which is exactly why the gate matters.
Wood posts show visible damage before they collapse, and that is the moment to act. Crafting a fresh post and using it on a damaged one repairs the whole section and consumes the new post. A spouse helps as well: repairing fences is one of the chores a happy partner takes on in the morning. Striking a post with an axe or pickaxe takes it away, and a post put down within the last day comes back to the inventory rather than disappearing.
Variants
The other fences in the game, with what each one takes and where the recipe comes from.
| Name | Image | Ingredients | Recipe |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gate | 
|
Wood (10) | Starter |
| Hardwood Fence | 
|
Hardwood (1) | Farming (Level 6) |
| Iron Fence | 
|
Iron Bar (1) | Farming (Level 4) |
| Stone Fence | 
|
Stone (2) | Farming (Level 2) |
Notes
The other fences are the same idea in harder materials. A Stone Fence comes at Farming level 2 and stands for roughly twice as long. An Iron Fence at Farming level 4 lasts about four times as long as wood. A Hardwood Fence at Farming level 6 outlasts the wooden one many times over, and a farm with hardwood to spare rarely goes back. Since the recipes all cost a single unit of their material, the cheap option is only cheap in the short term.
Decay can be stopped outright. The Gold Clock, the Wizard's ten-million-gold ornament, keeps fences from degrading at all alongside clearing debris from the farm, which turns any fence into a permanent one.
Villagers are hard on fencing. Anything standing in an NPC's walking route gets knocked down, so a fence run beside a path through town or along the farm's entrance needs checking against where people actually walk.
All Crafting
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
