Welcome to the guide on optimizing your farming experience in SoulMask, tailored especially for newcomers. While farming may not be everyone's cup of tea, I've found it captivating, particularly in SoulMask. This guide aims to ease the frustrations new players may encounter, especially when grappling with plot placements and mechanics upon unlocking Crop Planting. Fear not, as mastering farming is crucial for late-game recipes and overall progression.

Important Author Note: All testing sample sizes are done on original - normal difficulty, if you change game coefficients, this will affect crop growth, speed, harvest amounts etc.

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First and foremost, before delving into the intricacies of the farming skill tree, it's essential to gather seeds and items necessary for preparing your first farm through regular gameplay. Engage in activities such as battling outcasts, exploring ruins, and looting chests to amass the resources needed for this endeavor. However, before you embark on laying down your first farm, here are some quick tips to consider.

Visit the Barbarian Barracks in Western Rainforest

• The Flint Tribe Barracks is a prime spot, boasting multiple farms yielding various crops like corn, pumpkins, cotton, and tomatoes.
  
• Equip your scythe and gather early for a head start. NPCs are also a reliable source of compost, an initial fertilizer.
  
• These Plots refresh daily and are great to visit if your needing certain crops early game

Utilize Grinders

• Crafting a Grinder for your camp ensures a steady seed supply, provided you have the requisite ingredients.

Rush "Medium Building" Tech Tree "Outhouse" or Build Animal Pens

• While exciting to acquire wood building materials, prioritize unlocking furniture under Medium Build tech for the Outhouse.
  
• Poop is crucial for fertilizer; tribe size affects its accumulation rate.
  
• NPCs passively use the outhouse, contributing to feces supply.
  
• Capybara Pen and Turkey Coop offer additional feces sources, but care and animal traps are required.
  
• The outhouse provides a convenient, effort-free method for obtaining poop.
  
• Collect poop early to streamline fertilizer production.

MORE POOP = MORE CROPS

Wait! I got my first farm but it says I need a Granary?
Okay you just laid down the first farmland now it says you need a granary. "WTF, I'm not in the Bronze age yet" I thought the same thing. Worry not you can manually plant seeds on this plot, just put the intended seed on your hot bar and start planting. You will need to manually water and fertilize as well.

Here's Some Tips About Manual Farming

• Watering with only a water skin is a madness just let the rain come and fill the farmland naturally. I recommend you get water tanks from Potting Technique to run water till water buckets are unlocked in Bronze Age-Advanced Carpentry.
  
• Plants wont grow without fertilizers. Depending on which plant your growing you need the correct fertilizer. (See Fertilizer Below.)
  
• Focus on one farmland and just plant what you need till granary is obtained.

As you transition from manual farming to automation and multiple plots, it's imperative to have prioritized fertilizer production. By this stage, most players also consider upgrading from their thatch hut to establish their first early mid-game main base, signaling the imminent entry into the Bronze Age.

You should have the following items Unlocked:

• Farmland
  
• Fertilizer Bucket
  
• Well / Rain Collector (if not near water)
  
• The Granary.

Access to flat land and water is undeniably crucial for optimal farming conditions, but it's not always readily available. However, fret not, as you can still establish farmland even in less favorable terrain by utilizing foundations. Aligning farmland with the edges of foundations ensures uniformity, with plots neatly fitting into a 2x2 foundation square. The snapping feature on farmland simplifies this process, making it effortless to line everything up precisely. Personally, I've found that placing farmland on regular ground can often lead to unevenness and difficulty, highlighting the convenience and efficiency of utilizing foundations for farming setups.


Rain Water Collectors (Premium Potting) can be used but Wells are also unlocked under (Crop Planting). I'd stick with wells and save the tech points.

When establishing farm plots, it's crucial to note that they can only be placed within the radius of a bonfire. If necessary, consider constructing additional bonfires to expand your farming area. Additionally, the level of your bonfire directly impacts the maximum number of plots you can have, so upgrading it becomes essential for scaling up your farming operations.



A tribesman with proficiency exceeding 120 offers invaluable benefits, unlocking four effects within their respective skill. However this is super rare and requires a lot of taming barbarians 90 is more likely, but you never know. I found taking "crop fertilizer cost" or "crop collection" to be the most effective. Crop Collection increases harvest amounts but fertilizer cost reduces your bottleneck on poop.

One remarkable aspect is that specialized tribesmen can efficiently manage both planting and fertilizer tasks, providing full automation for your farming buildings. Ensure that you load all your seeds and fertilizer materials as required, then set up automated tasks accordingly. This streamlined process maximizes efficiency and minimizes manual intervention in your farming operations.

• Compost: Potatoes, Cotton, Aloe, Agave
  
• Ash: Pumpkin, Tobacco, Cocoa
  
• Bone Powder: Corn, Cashew, Peanut, Tomato, Papaya, Quinoa
  
• Stone Powder: Chili, Guava, Papaya
  
• Compound: All crops benefit. Boosts Crop Speed 10%

Depending on your farm set up you'll know exactly which fertilizer you need to use most.

Both of these treat two separate issues, I recommend you load these directly on your dedicated farmer tribesman, they often didn't work being put into boxes or the granary.

Here's a cheat sheet on all the crops in game, we'll go into how to address temperature issues if your running into those issues on your farms.


It goes without saying that some crops will not grow if your building in a hotter or colder environment. This can be an issue especially if the temperature of your base falls one or two degrees out of the lowest range for crop growth. Air coolers and heaters are available as higher tier techs under the Iron Pit Bonfire. These work on 3 gear settings adjusting temperature intensity and have a large circle of influence on nearby crops.

• Area of influence is roughly 3.5 foundations wide on each side from the center.
  
• Temperature intensity wanes the further away from the center.

Capybaras & Turkeys are great sources of fertilizer and materials this section will talk about taming them how to automate slaughtering: You will need breeding pens unlocked. Currently under editing

Beehives become essential as you start to unlock the potion brewing stand and need to start developing automation for alchemy, certain recipes begin to call for honey and wax which is valuable. Therefore you'll need beehives, This section will talk about how to obtain and streamline beehives. Luckily once set up they require no management and produce endlessly on their resources.

• Increased the output speed of Honey and Bee Wax in Beehives.
  
• Beehive output is now influenced by the Automated Production Base's Output Multiplier.
  
• This has majorly increased the output of beehives on base game settings in my testing.

The TDLR is you need bee drawing syrup to make bees come to beehives and then you can grow wax & honey. Once you have papaya and guava trees growing the need for pineapples and bananas in not necessary for bee drawing syrup recipe

Beehives are expensive to craft and come later in the Bronze Age but are necessary for certain tree crops: play testing confirms trees can grow but not as fast without bees

• Cocoa
  
• Cashew
  
• Guava
  
• Papaya

Bee Drawing Syrup is a difficult craft based on the need for Banana & Pineapples these are usually loot from chests and monkeys. You may consider to catch some monkeys to speed the process up and build a Monkey Storage Nest, before getting serious about farming however once you have papaya and guava trees growing the need for pineapples and bananas in not necessary for this recipe

Bee Drawing Syrup also have low returns on the amount of syrup to bees that come to the hive.

Monkeys are super versatile they can basically collect crops, and niche items you may need for your crafting when you assign it by holding [e] when highlighting them with your cursor. I have mine collect bananas and pineapples exclusively.



You can find monkeys at wild storage nests through out the jungle and will need small traps to catch them, after some testing the bait can be any fruit or nuts and they're extremely easy to catch.



The monkeys you capture will begin filling the chest when you assign them to collect Bananas & Pineapples. Make sure you build a monkey storage area inside the campfire range to collect those sweet fruits.

Okay so you caught some monkeys, we got bananas and pineapples! Now you can craft Bee Drawing Syrup Let me just say your gonna need a ton of it per beehive. It's 140 to be exact, but ive seen less needed in some cases

• Currently the exchange ratio is: 1 bee = 2 syrup
  
• You'll need 70 bees before the hive takes care of itself
  
• Hive will reach max bees after roughly 75 minutes after.

After your hive hit's 70 bees the hive will grow exponentially in a matter of minutes. Just remember if you retrieve the hive to move it you'll have to start the process over.


Short answer: every 45-60 mins. The latest hot fix #4 has allowed for adjusting the coefficients for wax and honey however on base settings i feel its extremely balanced on official and private servers. As for single player offline games additional hives may be necessary since the hives are not working around the clock.

Here are some play testing notes I had related to building farms out.

• Farms can not be stacked on platforms for a multiple floor farm - ceilings prevent sunlight

Below are visual examples of the size of the buildings used in farming, please note fertilizer buckets are required to not be built on a foundation for some odd reason.

This section includes some player testing notes I've found during game play for SoulMask. I'll be adding to this section as needed. It's worth a read just in case it doesn't make it into any other section of the guide.

A list of ideas related to farming.

• Smaller farm plots would be amazing for compact base building and focusing on niche plants.
  
• Pineapples and Bananas not farm-able crops.
  
• Food Consumption is not strong enough to warrant long term farming on 24/hr play cycle. Often you will find your crops will flood boxes and not be utilized in enough resource sinks.
  
• Would like to see an expansion on crop uses in more recipes, for crafting, food, medicine, alcohol.
  
• Glass is available in higher tech tree, greenhouse effects to crops or building materials for a green house design.
  
• Can we have recipes for recycling unused crops into compost, or similar materials.
  
• Mushroom bins for harvesting mushrooms

• Capy and turkey farms
  
• consolidation clean up of overall guide writing

This guide is a living document which will be regularly updated to reflect new information, patches, and player feedback. Here’s a record of the changes and improvements made:

Added heating and cooling crops for environment, added crop speed and temperature table, added building information section.

Updated Notes about Beehives and Honey / Wax from hot fix #4. The amount of resources is generous now on live servers and coefficients do affect the output on single player and private server games. Revised content layout of guide and minor adjustments.
Initial Guide Developed and Written to address farming until Bronze, Beehive Testing Section Added, Field Tests on Capybara, Turkeys Underway. New guide sections under revision and in game testing.

Your feedback and contributions are invaluable for keeping this guide accurate and helpful. If you have suggestions, corrections, or new information, please reach out through our comment section. Let's continue to make this guide the best resource for all Soulmask players!

If you wish to translate this guide into other languages or use any part of the information provided, please ensure to credit me in the guide's introduction and include a link back to the original source.