Ethereal Farm: no spores? Feed the mushroom
Put a growing berry beside your champignon, then improve that berry's supply. Our isolated mature mushroom made no spores despite 819K stored seeds. An adjacent blueberry started production; a flower beside that berry raised it. Read actual production, not the larger potential figure.
Tested November 3 on the developer's browser host, v0.18.4d, continuing our first run. This route reaches the first spores and tree level 1. It does not cover transcension, later fields, an optimal layout or offline earnings. Start with the watercress, first berry and first flower route if those are still your current goals.
1. Keep a seed income while reaching blueberry
Our earlier checkpoint had unlocked blueberry for 40K seeds. That did not plant one: the first blueberry's separate planting quote was another 40K. A player discussion about the early blueberry budget already describes this two-payment hurdle. It is not a new mechanic discovered here.
We continued from two blackberries and a flower, added a third blackberry and used temporary watercress to help build the planting balance. Once affordable, upgrading one existing blackberry to blueberry cost a net 39.3K after its refund; the displayed full planting price was 40K. Its grow time was 2 minutes. The first mature blueberry exposed the champignon unlock in our run.
We eventually kept three grown blueberries around the older flower as the seed-producing part of the field. They were away from the mushroom used below. This was a workable bridge, not the cheapest or fastest layout. Fern rewards were variable in our run and are not a fixed part of this budget.
2. Budget for a champignon twice, then choose its neighbor
Unlock champignon cost 1.98M seeds; planting the first champignon was a separate 1.98M. Its grow time was 1 minute. We did not buy the blueberry or champignon level-I upgrades for the comparisons below. Do not spend the full planting balance on an unlock and assume a mushroom is already working.
Choose an edge-sharing berry position next to the mushroom. Our test mushroom was at (0,0) and its feeding blueberry at (1,0), counting from zero at the upper-left. Keep some other berries away from mushrooms so that they still add seeds to the bank. The game's crop information explicitly describes neighboring berries as the mushroom's supply.
3. A large seed bank did not feed our isolated mushroom
We deliberately let the isolated champignon mature before adding its berry. The field still earned 7,648 seeds/s and held 819K seeds, but the mushroom panel said Production per second: none, Satisfied: no (0%). Its potential was 1.04 spores/s. Waiting for its growth had not solved the missing-neighbor problem.
We then planted the adjacent blueberry. The growing berry began supplying a small amount before maturity. Once fully grown, its panel showed 1,457 seeds/s and After consumption: none. The mushroom consumed those 1,457 seeds/s and actually produced 0.00149 spores/s. Its potential still said 1.04 spores/s; satisfaction was only 0.143%.
4. Boost the feeding berry before copying an underfed mushroom
We planted an anemone at (2,0): it touched the feeding blueberry, but did not touch the mushroom. After its displayed 1 minute 30 second growth completed, the same mushroom consumed 2,549 seeds/s and produced 0.00261 spores/s. Potential remained 1.04 spores/s. The separate seed-producing area still supplied 7,648 seeds/s.
Both mature comparison readings were in spring, tree level 0, eight achievements, with the berry, mushroom and flower at level 0. We bought no crop upgrade between them. This isolates a useful supply intervention in this layout: the new flower helped the mushroom through its feeding berry. It does not prove that flowers should never touch mushrooms or that this is the best arrangement.
5. Why one more watercress did not speed up this setup
We added one level-7 watercress at (0,1), sharing an edge with the mushroom and only a diagonal with the feeding berry. Whole-field actual production stayed at 0.00261 spores/s, while the potential figure doubled from 1.04 to 2.08 spores/s. The mushroom and watercress each displayed about 0.00131 spores/s. Those rounded component figures should not be added as if they were exact.
Deleting that same watercress returned the mushroom's own displayed rate to 0.00261 spores/s; the field total still stayed 0.00261. In this underfed layout the copier did not create more feeding supply. This is a paired add/remove check, not a rule that watercress never helps mushrooms.
Earlier player/developer discussion of mushroom copying already raises consumption and display confusion, including a diagonal placement report. Our orthogonal, current-version readings are a separate conditional test, not proof that the old reported bug persists.
6. Let the first spores advance the tree—and recognize the new baseline
With the feeding layout running, our tree eventually rejuvenated to level 1. Its event log recorded 6.67 spores consumed, and the tree information showed a 5% boost. Later actual production was 0.00274 spores/s. That later rate belongs to the level-1 state; do not mix it into the level-0 flower or copying comparison.
We did not record a controlled time-to-level trial. The game ran between checks, and we did not capture the precise level-up transition as live footage. Resin shown as ready for a later reset was not resin already collected. We stopped before any transcension, paused, and manually saved; this continuation did not include a fresh reload round trip.
If progress still looks stuck
- Unlock succeeded but no crop appeared: check the separate planting quote and remaining balance.
- Clicks do not plant anything: check whether the game is paused. We encountered that exact case, resumed, then confirmed the real purchase receipt.
- Actual spores are zero: let the mushroom grow, confirm an edge-sharing berry, and open both crop panels.
- Actual spores are small: inspect the feeding berry's growth and supply. Adding mushroom potential alone did not fix our bottleneck.
- Seeds stop reaching the bank: retain berries that are not feeding mushrooms. Check after-consumption production rather than treating every berry's gross rate as bank income.
Who this route suits, sources and limits
The opening suits players who enjoy diagnosing a small resource network: the same seed total can hide a missing local supply connection. If you want progress without checking crop placement or temporary plants, this stage may be a poor fit. A community discussion contains both enthusiasm and concern about placement and slow automation. Those are player opinions, not a measured completion time or a promise of hands-off play.
Method: one continued v0.18.4d first run on the developer host, normal UI only. No injected resources, altered clock, imported advanced save or borrowed gameplay. The three comparisons above used actual crop panels and field totals. Costs and outputs are displayed, rounded checkpoint values, not universal formulas. The initial blueberry unlock was recorded November 1; the mushroom, supply, copying and tree outcomes were recorded November 3.
General berry-to-mushroom progression is established advice, also covered by a separate beginner walkthrough. Its edition and later/offline claims were not imported into this developer-host test. We have not tested later fields, other seasons, phone controls, idle/offline income, a full playthrough or an optimal arrangement.
Need the earlier crop controls? Return to the first-flower placement test. Prefer another resource-management opening? Try the Kittens Game worker and research route, or compare session styles in our best incremental games guide.