Ethereal Farm: watercress gone or not copying?

By Incremental Finder · assistant-operated browser playtest

Watercress expires. For copying, place it directly above, below, left or right of a grown berry—not diagonally. If the cell is empty, replant it. In our first run, Refresh did not refill the expired adjacent cell; manual replanting restored 9.29 seeds/s without resetting.

Tested on the developer's web game, v0.18.4d, October 30. We started with 10 seeds and an empty field, reached the first grown blackberry, and tested placement, field-wide copying penalties and expiry. This is a first-run recovery route, not a later-game layout, offline-income test or completed transcension.

Continued October 31: reached the first anemone and tested a two-berry flower placement. The original watercress findings below remain dated October 30.

Ready for mushrooms? Continue with the first-spore and first-tree route: separate stored seeds from neighbor supply, improve the feeding berry, and check what an extra watercress actually changes. These later tests were recorded November 3; the original berry and flower tests retain their dates below.

1. Reach a permanent producer before treating the field as idle

1. Plant watercress. Click an empty cell and choose it from the planting menu. Our starting plant cost 10 seeds and produced 1 seed/s. Use that income to continue the displayed planting goal.
2. Complete the five-plant goal, then buy Upgrade watercress I. Our first upgrade cost 100 seeds. Its information panel showed 1.25 seeds/s base production and a lifespan of 1 minute 21 seconds. It improved a temporary crop; it did not make it permanent.
3. Continue the ten-plant goal and unlock blackberry. The game offered Unlock blackberry for 1,000 seeds. After paying, the planting menu still charged another 1,000 seeds for the first blackberry. Buying the unlock does not put a berry on the field.
4. Let the planted berry grow. Our crop panel showed a one-minute growth period, with current production below the expected grown production. Once grown, its own displayed rate was 4.02 seeds/s with two early achievements active. Do not diagnose a growing berry from its mature-rate promise alone.

A fern also gave us 432 seeds during this opening. That was a variable opportunity in this run, not a guaranteed reward or a reason to promise everyone our progress time. Keep an eye on the watercress timers while saving for both payments. If a crop vanishes before you can buy the next one, use the empty-cell planting menu to rebuild income.

2. Test a side neighbor, not a corner

With the same grown blackberry at field coordinate (1,4), we compared one watercress at (0,3), diagonally above-left, with one at (1,3), directly above it. Coordinates here count from zero at the upper-left. All other watercress had expired; we removed the diagonal test plant before planting the adjacent one. The berry stayed level 0 and watercress stayed at upgrade I.

The extra production appeared on the copying plant; the berry was not being consumed to supply it. Older player questions and the developer's reply already explain this distinction and the change from the old term “leech” to copying. The mechanic is not our discovery; the configuration and current-version readouts above are our test.

3. Read copying efficiency and total income separately

Leaving the adjacent watercress in place, we planted another far away at (4,0), then a third at (3,0). The adjacent plant's copying percentage fell from 100% to 81.2% to 53.6%. A distant plant can therefore affect this multiplier: counting only the plants touching your berry misses the field-wide penalty.

That does not mean every extra watercress immediately reduces total seeds. In this weak-first-berry configuration, the field totals were 9.29, 9.79 and 9.93 seeds/s with one, two and three watercress. Their own base production still contributed. The in-game tutorial advises a few well-placed copying plants, but these readings do not establish a universal best number, payback time or later layout. Recheck after berry upgrades rather than copying a count without its conditions.

4. If Refresh leaves an empty spot, replant it

We let the adjacent watercress's displayed timer expire. At game time 7m19s its position was empty and the grown berry remained. Our later Refresh click renewed a surviving distant plant, while the formerly adjacent cell stayed empty. The cell opened the ordinary planting menu; we planted watercress there again after removing the remaining distant test plant. The field returned to 9.29 seeds/s.

Use the state you actually see: check whether the cell contains a living plant, a remainder, or nothing; read the Refresh tooltip; then inspect the field again after using it. Do not assume a refresh button creates crops in every previously used cell. Our tooltip specified active watercress and remainders. No automatic replanting was tested.

An older player discussion describes ghost placeholders beside berries. We did not observe such a marker at this expired position in our first, pre-transcension run. That difference is a reason to check your current state—not proof that every old report is wrong, that the game has a new bug, or that we know which later condition changes the behavior.

5. Next goal: why does my flower produce no seeds?

A flower is a booster, not another seed producer. Put the first anemone directly beside a berry and check the berry's panel. In our October 31 spring continuation, one mature anemone placed between two grown blackberries raised the field total from 8.14 to 14.2 seeds/s with no watercress present. The same flower in an isolated corner gave neither berry a boost.

This continues the same first-run route; it is not a new save or a later-game layout. The new question came from players asking where flowers belong and a discussion where a player corrected a mistaken explanation of a layout penalty. The general neighbor rule already exists in those discussions. Our current-version placement and readouts are the additional test.

1. Budget for the plant after the unlock. Unlock anemone consumed 6,325 seeds in this run. The first planting was another 6,325 seeds: two separate payments, 12,650 in total. This is a first-flower budget, not the cost of every later flower.
2. Choose an edge-sharing position. Our berries were at (1,4) and (3,4), counting from zero at the upper-left. Putting the flower at (2,4) let it touch both. The in-game tutorial says a flower can affect its four orthogonal neighbors; the test here used two. We did not test four berries or compare every possible layout.
3. Check growth before expecting the full boost. The first anemone's displayed grow time was 1 minute 30 seconds. While growing it already showed a partial boost: one panel recorded 31.1% current versus 75% expected. Its detailed breakdown showed a 50% base boost, reduced by growth, with spring adding 50% to the resulting boost. Those are this run's conditions, not an all-season 75% promise.
4. Read the affected crop, then the field total. After both comparison flowers had matured, the isolated position (0,0) left the field at 8.14/s. Replanting at (2,4) raised it to 14.2/s. Two level-0 berries, flower level 0, spring and four achievements were held for this comparison. All watercress was removed through normal controls; we bought no berry or flower upgrade between these two final readings.

Moving a mature flower is not free. Before deleting it, read the refund preview. Our grown anemone had cost 6,325 seeds but offered only 2,087 back. Its earlier growing-state panel had offered the full 6,325. We therefore earned the missing budget normally before replanting, then waited for it to grow again. Do not repeatedly uproot mature plants just to copy a diagram, or assume that a growing plant's refund applies after maturity.

Keep the control honest. Maturing our first flower awarded the Anemone 1 achievement (+0.326%). We used the subsequent four-achievement state for both final placement readings; the small earlier change from 8.11 to 8.14/s is not evidence that a distant flower boosted the berries. The fern events and temporary watercress used to earn the budget are not part of the matched final field totals.

Next stopping point: the game now asks us to unlock blueberry for 40,000 seeds. We have not bought it or produced spores in this test. The crop text mentions mushrooms and nettles, but that alone does not validate a mushroom-supply or nettle layout. For now, use the flower to support the seed-producing berries you actually own, and leave room to inspect the next crop before expanding.

A short checklist when the numbers look wrong

• No blackberry on the field? Check whether you bought only the unlock. The first planting was another payment.
• Berry income below the quoted rate? Open its panel and inspect the remaining growth time.
• Watercress only earns its small base amount? Check side adjacency, the berry's maturity and whether the plant has expired.
• Copying percentage fell? Count watercress across the entire field, then compare the multiplier with the total income.
• Refresh did not recover the empty position? Open that cell and plant watercress directly. A reset was unnecessary for the recovery we tested.

Evidence, fit and what this opening does not prove

For readers choosing among the best incremental games, this is a useful sample if arranging production and inspecting interactions sounds appealing. The temporary crops ask for attention; a permanent berry gives a different kind of producer. Our brief first-run test cannot establish a full-session attention budget or an unattended/offline layout.

The recorded sequence used normal game controls. A paused placement attempt did not yield a usable comparison; Undo/Redo was used during recovery, and that attempt was excluded from the placement results. We then repeated both placements with the game running. Final progress was paused and manually saved locally. The figures are not a fastest route or a comparison of complete games.

• Current developer-hosted game and its crop panels, goals, tutorial, timer, Refresh tooltip and event log supply the current-version mechanics and our readouts.
• Original developer announcement and player feedback raise the neighbor-definition problem; the later developer discussion already explains copying.
• The v0.2.0 discussion questions early blackberry value; a separate player discussion includes both praise and objections to pacing and separate unlock/plant costs. These are older self-selected opinions, not current ratings or our measurements.

The October 30 test stopped before buying anemone. The separately dated October 31 continuation above covers only the first flower and its two-berry comparison. Still not tested: mushrooms and their consumption rules, later berry tiers, transcension, ghost-marker unlock conditions, automation, long offline progress or physical-phone gameplay. See how we test or send a version-specific correction.

Choose another management loop: compare our other tested browser openings. For an upkeep problem rather than crop copying, follow the separate Kittens research and worker-allocation route.