Wood Sign
| Wood Sign | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Crafted Item |
| Recipe | Starter |
The Wood Sign is a label, and a surprisingly useful one on a busy farm. Twenty-five Wood and the starter recipe make a plank on a post that shows a picture of whatever item is held against it, and the item itself stays in the inventory. A sign on the front of a chest says what is inside without opening it. A sign outside a shed says what the shed is for. Placed on a Fish Pond it does something different and rather clever, turning the pond into a running count of the fish swimming in it. For a farm with twenty chests and five sheds, a row of signs is the difference between knowing where things are and hunting for them.
Recipe
The recipe is known from the first morning, and each sign takes twenty-five Wood. That is a dozen trees' worth for a full set of labels, so most farmers put signs up gradually as the farm fills out rather than all at once. Robin sells Wood at the Carpenter's Shop for anyone in a hurry.
These are the ingredients one batch needs.
| Name | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | 
|
25 |
Use
Holding an item and right-clicking the sign puts that item's picture on the board. The item is not used up, so the picture can be set with the last Blueberry in a stack and the Blueberry kept. Choosing a different item later replaces the picture.
Signs go anywhere in the valley, inside or out. The obvious job is labelling storage. A chest full of ores gets an Iridium Bar on its sign, a chest of seeds gets a packet, and the morning sort-out stops being guesswork. A shed full of Kegs is marked with a bottle of Wine, and a shed full of Crystalariums with a gem. Signs beside a long row of machines show what each row is loaded with, which saves walking down the line to check.
The Fish Pond use is the one worth knowing. Setting a sign on a pond turns it into a counter: the species appears on the board and the number of fish sits in the lower right corner. Ponds reproduce slowly and ask for an item every time they fill, so having the population on display outside saves a click into every pond each morning.
One thing to watch is where the sign stands. A sign in a villager's walking route gets knocked down, so signs placed in town or along a path that people use need to sit a tile clear of the traffic.
Notes
Three signs do the picture job. The Wood Sign is the plain one and the first available. A Stone Sign is the same idea in stone, and the Dark Sign comes from Krobus, which gives it a suitably gloomy look for a shed full of Void Mayonnaise. The Sign of the Vessel, another of Krobus's oddities, also counts fish when stood on a pond.
For words rather than pictures there is the Text Sign, which takes the same twenty-five Wood and holds any message the farmer types. The text can be edited afterwards by clicking the sign, and it shows up as a speech bubble when anyone walks past. Farmers use those for planting dates, reminders about Casks that are nearly ready and notes to co-op partners, while the picture signs handle the chests and the ponds.
All Crafting
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
