A Simple Guide to Cultivation in Warhammer Online

click to enlarge

Cultivation is one of the four harvesting skills that your character can choose from – the other three are Salvaging, Scavenging and Butchery. This particular skill works hand in hand with the Apothecary crafting skill, and so both are usually chosen (though not always). Players should be warned, however, that Cultivation is a slow-growing skill. It will take hours of game play and dedication for this skill to produce fruitful results.

Cultivation also requires a large amount of space. It is often joked that the Cultivator’s greatest battle in Warhammer is with his bag slots. It will take some clever juggling to increase this skill with the room you’ve got. Despite the hurdles, if you choose to develop this skill, Cultivation will prove itself to be powerfully useful to you and to your guild.

click to enlarge

When you start out with Cultivation in Warhammer, you are only given one plot on which to grow a seed. As you increase your skill level, you will gain additional plots of land, up to four total. You’ll gain a new plot for every 25 levels you gain until you’ve maxed out. You can only grow one seed per plot, which is precisely the reason that the Cultivation skill takes so long to develop.

On your little plot of land, there is a spot for your seed and three spots for “additives” – water, soil and nutrients. While these additives are not necessary to make your seeds grow, it can facilitate a faster growing time and improve the finished product.

The only thing that you actually need to grow a plant is the seed and a plot to cultivate it in. However, using additives will decrease the amount of time it takes for your plant to reach maturity (allowing you to harvest sooner and put a new plant in its place, inevitably lessening the time it takes you to level) and increases the likelihood that you’ll get a “bonus” or “Special Moment” from your crop. You can buy these additives from merchants in any town – you can usually pick up the lower quality additives (like a Rusted Tin Watering Can or Arid Soil) for 15 copper or less.

Seasoned cultivators have different approaches to the use of these additives. Some choose not to use them at all, some use them only when they have a crop to push and others use them every time they plant a seed. There are also disagreements as to whether a “high end” additive is worth the price – many cultivators feel that any additive, even those that are cheap as dirt (pardon the pun) will get the job done.

click to enlarge

Once your plant is fully grown, two buttons will appear on your screen – Uproot and Harvest. Uproot cancels the process and yields you no results, so chances are you’ll never use that button. The Harvest button does exactly what you’d expect that it would – it harvests your plant. Depending on your skill level (and the use of the above mentioned additives during the growing process), the result of your harvest may be:

• Critical failure -- you receive one Wilted Wild Weed which is worth very little.

• Success -- You receive 2 plants whose level equal the level of your original seed.

• Critical Success -- Same as Success, only you receive 3 plants instead of 2.

• Special Moment -- Along with collecting 3 plants of the skill level of the seed you planted, you also receive 1 plant at a skill level 25 points higher and the main ingredient used to create a dye. Obviously, a harvest resulting in a Special Moment is quite rare, though certain additives can be used to increase its likelihood.

click to enlarge

Once you’ve harvested your plants, whatever you received automatically goes into your backpack. While Cultivation can quickly snag a lot of the space that you’ve got in your backpack, keep in mind that seeds and plants can stack 50 deep per slot and that Wilted Wild Weeds as well as dye ingredients will only stack 20 deep. Use these stacks to your best advantage, and consider buying more storage if the need so arises.

For anyone used to working with a trade skill, you figure out quickly that it’s easy to rise in skill when you first start working but that by the time you start to rise high enough to move up to a new level, you start to stall. This is where the use of additives becomes quite handy. Use higher-level seeds if your skill allows you to, and even if you can’t, you may find that additives and a little luck will push you right over the hump and into the next level. As with most skills in Warhammer, Cultivation requires patience and determination.