Farming XP Gain Tweak

[Luke616]

Not my suggestion, saw a great post on the forums (linked below) and thought I would cross-post it here as it would likely not be too difficult to implement. A proposed tweak designed to discourage multiplayer farming skill grinding and balance farming skill gain between the players: https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/farming-skill-experience-balance-suggestion.143813/

Originally posted by user BlueGreen:

So, here's my suggestion:

Reduce the experience earned from harvesting (probably by about half) and instead give experience for these actions:

• Watering a dry tile that has a growing/productive plant/seed: 1xp
• Planting a seed on tilled, dry ground: 1xp
• Planting a seed on tilled, watered ground: 2xp (this is so that it doesn't matter if you till/water/plant or till/plant/water, you still get 2 total xp)

This will still primarily reward successful harvests, but it would also give these benefits:

In single player, it'd be easily possible to have scarecrows on day 3. With the 15 seeds the mayor gives you and the fact that the starting money can buy 25 more, that's 80xp for the first day (plant + water), then 40xp for the second day (watering all 40 tiles) giving you 120xp minus a few if crows get to some of the crops on day 2. Having the scarecrows a bit earlier means that you'd be able to build them before the first harvest day when you probably want to use the money from the first harvest to buy more profitable seeds.

In multiplayer, all players which help tend to crops now get some boost to their farming skill which helps spend less energy on watering and tilling the more they help with the crops. As for harvesting, it would still give groups the choice to try to split the xp or power level a single player (although the degree of power leveling would be reduced because harvesting would be less xp than before). Similarly, it'd be possible to funnel 100+ xp to a single player to be able to build scarecrows on day 2 with proper teamwork (three players till and water at least 50 tiles and the 4th plants 50 seeds for 100xp, although in truth a group of 4 can plant more than 50 on day 1, so some xp can be shared and still achieve this).

This does have one drawback that I can see: If you choose to water your crops with sprinklers, no one gets xp for watering crops. Granted, I don't think that would be a huge loss given how fast farming levels up currently and that it'd probably still be quite fast with just the planting + reduced harvesting experience.

[spacechase0]

Doesn't do the planting exp, but: https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1426

[ghost]

This mod has watering xp https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/7768