Better info for plants in vault (similar to potions)
Keybounce
Posts: 474 ✭✭✭
We need better info about plant seeds in our vaults.
If you look at potion ingredients, you see a list that is really not easy to work with. But, you can go to the potion recipes, and see almost everything you need to work with. (You can't see your vault limit, so you don't know how much you need to delete -- ... grr, the @ list only shows a tiny bit, not sure which of the @hpwu names is the right one and there is no "moderator" or "admin" tag. Who do you tag for idea suggestions?)
The only serious lack is information about what seeds you have.
In comparison, the seeds page is missing just about EVERYTHING about the seeds. The seed info does not indicate growing time, and while it lists the potions you can make, it doesn't let you see those potions or your inventory, or really any info at all other than seed count.
If you go to a greenhouse, and look at the growth page, you see almost everything you need. But if you are not near a greenhouse, you cannot see the information you need to decide what to keep and what to toss.
Even in the growing screen, some information isn't there. You can see how much of the plant you have, and which potions it makes, but you can't see how much of the plant the potion consumes nor how much of the other ingredients you have (it does no good to make 9-18 of something that consumes 3 per, if you only have 1-2 potion's worth of the other ingredients).
Comments
Hm, from what I've gathered from your post, this is a complaint about the current situation but not how it could be improved. So what would you do differently?
Would you create an entirely new "Vault-Management"-Screen entirely dedicated to recycling?
If so, how would you design it, what Information would you show and in which format?
Would you add more informations to the existing "Recycling"-Subsections of the Vault-Screen?
And if so, which Information would you add where?
I’m upset we don’t have pumpkin seeds or sunflower seeds. I don’t have a good reason for that. I just wish they were a thing.
After a while, you’ll begin to memorize how much of each ingredient is needed to brew different potions. Until then, I understand the frustration.
Generally, I have no need to grow any ingredients, so I only keep one of each type of seed in my vault with two exceptions: leaping toadstool and wormwood.
I’ll grow toadstools occasionally and throw a bunch of energy at it to max out the harvest. That’s the only ingredient I can’t find enough of to keep up with demand. You’ll experience dry spells on other ingredients, but just when you’re starting to get upset about it, you’ll find some.
Wormood is my throw away. I plant it because it requires the least amount of water and only takes an hour to grow. In my mind, it exists only to work toward the “seeds planted” achievement.
I have almost nothing but toadstools and wormwood as well, and a packet of Baneberry and Angel’s Trumpet only because I wanted them when they finally came out as seeds in the game, not much else is worth growing anymore. You'll have to find your rhythm and make do.
Wormwood is really rare in my area and is not often found without planting, so I tend to keep some wormwood as well.
@Keybounce you recently started playing the game as in within the past 30 days and you will eventually learn what all the seed packets are for and their grow time. I can tell you that in my vault I only have one type of seed packet and that is the leaping toadstools. 🍄🍄🍄. Where I live there is an abundance of all of the basic ingredients and my vault is large enough that I rarely ever have to search for anything. I usually plant between 4-6 🍄 a day as to me that is the most rare of our potion ingredients. I personally don’t ever brew any healing potions as we get them in daily gifts and also in the essential runestone gifts so I don’t keep anything for healing potion recipes. Currently my ingredient vault is 570 and I already achieved the pick up 20k ingredients of the map achievement so I just have stocked in my vault to brew all exstimulo potions, dawdle draught, TTD, and Baruffio. I am a magizoo so that is all I need to plant. But everyone has a different profession so you may not need to keep ingredients for all the potions. You will start developing plans and what works best for you. You will get there.
>Hm, from what I've gathered from your post, this is a complaint about the current situation but not how it could be improved. So what would you do differently?
Would you create an entirely new "Vault-Management"-Screen entirely dedicated to recycling?
If so, how would you design it, what Information would you show and in which format?
Well, for starters, compare potions to growing plants.
#1. If I am looking at potions vs potion ingredients, I have two screens to use. One -- vault -- shows me ingredients that I have, and class of potions that use them (exstimulo, and invigoration are the two repeat families). But it doesn't show the quantities per potions (how many potions will 14 snowdrop make?).
The other screen -- potion brewing or potion recipes, shows me what ingredient I'm looking at, quantity on hand, quantity needed, and lets me delete stuff I don't need. But there's no indication as to how much my total (inventory/capacity) is, so I have to exit that screen and go to the vault screen before I can tell how much I have/have to get rid of.
Just adding inventory totals to the potion recipe/brewing screen would do wonders for making that part of inventory management much easier.
#2. If I'm looking at plants, however: my only choice is vault -> Seeds, *unless I am near a greenhouse*.
Vault-> seeds is as useful as vault -> ingredients -- that is, not very. I can see my totals (inventory / capacity), as well as how much of each seed/water I have. And, I get the same generic "any of the invigoration draughts", without:
Any indication of how much of a plant is needed for each potion
Any indication of how much of the plant I have
If I am near a greenhouse, then I get more information. I get to see how long a plant takes to grow, and how many of the complete plant I have. I can even see which potions the plant makes, but I cannot see the quantity of plant per potion.
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What I'd like to be able to do: From one group of screens, examine the full seed to potion inventory cycle. From a list of seeds, see the capacity, grown plants, time to grow, and the potions they make. Be able to click on either the grown plants to see the plant details, or the potions to see the potion details. From plant/ingredient details, see the capacity, amount of plants and seeds for those plants, and list of potions. Etc.
In other words:
#1. From making potions, I can delete unneeded inventory, but I can't see how much my capacity is, nor what my seed situation is -- I want those added.
#2. From ingredients, I can't see what my seed situation is, nor what my potion recipe has/lacks situation is. And if I can delete unwanted ingredients from potions, why not delete unwanted seeds from ingredients?
#3. From growing seeds, I can't see the potion ingredients / shortages, nor any real indication of how much of the plant I want/need to grow.
#4. From seed list, I can't see anything of value :-).
That's what I'd like to see added.
I'm surprised at how many toadstools you seem to be planting. As far as I can tell, the maximum consumption is 6 per day, and that requires using the rental cauldron. Realistically, I think 4 per day is more likely (please tell me if I'm way off -- how many BBE's do you brew a day?), and usage for me seems to be limited to two BBE's a day (and that's an hour of playtime) -- one per day / 2 toadstool per day is more common. How many are you actually using?
@Keybounce i plant so many 🍄 a day because it is a pay it forward type thing if I can’t get back to collect them based on my schedule. But some days I am able to collect 4-6 and some days zero. I brew a BBE about every 48 hours though based on brewing a lot of portents and dawdle draughts. But I do have quite a nice inventory of 🍄 them right now. Which over the holidays I was down to 3 of them.
@Acumen I don't grow much either though lately I can't seem to get enough Baneberry now that tonics are a thing.
Ah, thanks for reminding me, @ZookiTabooki. I should probably get started on brewing some more tonics before the Crazy in Love event begins.
Not everyone is a Game Developer; there is still value in someone pointing out that something can be done better without having the skillset to provide a solution.
I think there's value in the Vault being made better. For both Ingredients and Seeds. Making it somehow similar to how potions are listed with their ingredients in our Cauldron. Yes, as we get experienced with the game we learn which potions we care about and thus which seeds to bother keeping and in which quantities. But the game should be accessible to new players as well as experienced players, otherwise new players will stop playing.
As it stands, I rarely go to the Ingredients tab in my Vault. Instead, I go to my cauldron and I delete ingredients from the potions list. So the fact that I do this says that both the Ingredients tab and the seeds tab in the Vault could be better. Good suggestion Keybounce. 👍
In the meantime, my advice to @Keybounce is this:
• Keep three Wormwoods and plant them whenever you can to get your achievement. If you can find a Magizoologist to do Fortress Challenges with, you won't need Healing Potions at all
• Delete Lovage. It's useless. Why brew a potion that only gives +1 Focus rather than 3?
• Keep one of each of the other Seeds. If you run out of anything in your Ingredients and you need it, you can plant it and boost it to give you x9
• Upgrading your Seeds Vault space once or twice can be useful - but admittedly I only did it by accident
I only plant Wormwood to advance getting the achievement for planting things as it doesn't tie up a Greenhouse for an obnoxious amount of time.
I delete Lovage. Who the ____ plants Lovage?! Someone that isn't a "Team Player", that's who. 😜
Not everyone is a Game Developer; there is still value in someone pointing out that something can be done better without having the skillset to provide a solution.
"Descructive Criticism" vs "Constructive Criticism"
You're right, not everyone is a Game Developer. But a Game Developer isn't even necessarily a good writer of Feature Requests. What's required to write good feature requests is NOT to be annoyed by the current state. Instead the requirement is to have a VISION of how it could be done instead.
What I've learned in my Career as a Product Owner (a type of Project Manager in Agile Projects), a Developer and a Testautomation Engineer is that good Feature Requests require a certain approach:
No more than 1 sentence.(eg. "As a person with red-green colorblindness I want an option to switch the color-setting of the game" OR "As a parent I want more options to restrict / supervise the gameplay of my child" OR "As a business-owner I want the sponsored POI-Program changed").TL;DR:
Lovage: If you start with 2 focus, and have a max of 3, then the strong version is useless to you.
Seriously. Even now, with a max of 6, I still use the faster to brew version because "3" is the magic number at the start of the battle, and I'll get enough from fighting things to cast deterioration as I go.
Professor. Only 2 spells worth using: 3 cost armor for the whole challenge, and 3 cost damage over time per opponent.
Before I increased my starting Focus I thought the +1 Focus Potions were a waste of inventory space.
Now that I'm playing the other Professions and am yet to increase my maximum Focus, I still think the +1 Potion is a waste of inventory space.
I'm glad you're able to find a use for it, but I st.ill think people that plant Lovage aren't Team Players.
😜
With a +1 potion, I can put armor on myself for the entire battle.
And then, I generally get +3 from each opponent, so everything after the first has a DOT on it.
As for team players? Can't find any other players.
I know they exist. I've seen stuff planted in green houses. Today, frustratingly, I saw the fortress I was playing nearby glow at some point, so someone had to visit it. But they only did a single pass-by, and did not stop in the park.
I realize that this is an older thread but I would like to add my 2 cents in case Niantic views new posts. It would be very beneficial if, when you view a seed type on the SEEDS AND WATER page in the VAULT, that it showed 1) the length of time required to grow the seed and 2) the quantity of WATER required to plant the seed.