CropsNH

CropsNH is a feature added for Version 2.9.0. It is a custom crop system that takes inspiration from and replaces IC2 Crops, which was previously used in GTNH Version 2.8.4 and earlier.

CropsNH is first available starting in the Stone Age, and becomes rapidly more powerful and versatile, most notably in MV with the unlock of the Industrial Farm. Crop outputs can be used to 4x most ores in the game, and passively generate nearly every major resource up to LuV. Similar to Bees, crops have both stats and mutations. Lower tier crops combined via breeding to create more exotic, higher tier species.

Crops from CropsNH must be planted on crop sticks in order to function and grow. Crop sticks can only be placed on blocks that are registered as valid soils; each crop then has its own additional required soil type(s) in order to be planted. Certain crops may also require a secondary block beneath their soil block. Crop sticks can be doubled by placing another crop stick onto an existing empty one; this is required in order for crops to breed or propagate.

Crops can spread and breed by utilizing doubled crop sticks placed around the crops. Every growth cycle, whenever a mature crop is next to a double crop stick, it will attempt to either propagate, or, if there is another mature crop also next to the double crop stick, attempt to breed. If there is only one mature crop next to a double crop stick, then it will always attempt to propagate. If there are two or more mature crops next to a double crop stick, then it will roll a 50/50 coin flip to determine whether it will propagate or breed.

When propagation occurs, the double crop stick chooses one of the nearby mature crops, and replicates an immature version of that crop, starting at 0% maturity. Even if there are multiple valid crops to propagate from, it will always only take stats from one of the crops.

When breeding occurs, a few processes are done. First, all crops are checked and referenced to see if there are any deterministic mutations. If there are multiple deterministic mutations, it picks one at random. Then, the crop stick is checked to see if the selected crop is valid (e.g. correct light level, valid soil, etc.). If the chosen crop fails this check, then other possible deterministic mutations are ignored, and the crop does not plant, and no breeding occurs. However, if no deterministic mutation is initially found, then it moves on to mutation pools.

All crops possess multiple mutation pools, generally correlating with the crop's attributes (e.g. fruits, reeds, nether crops, end crops, ore berries, gems, etc.) If multiple valid pools are found, it picks one at random. When a pool is selected, the game picks a crop from that pool randomly, and attempts to plant it. If the planting fails, then no breeding occurs for that growth cycle, and the crop will remain empty, even if there are other possible crops that could have been planted. This can make breeding for a specific crop that has many possible mutations relatively time-consuming.

When either propagation or breeding successfully occurs, new stats are calculated for the resulting crop, based on how much fertilizer the parent crop(s) contain. To add fertilizer to a crop, a player can use bonemeal, which will add 5 points of fertilizer up to 30, or the fertilizer item, which will add 100 points of fertilizer, capping out at 100. By default, the fertilizer thresholds for both propagating and breeding crops are the same, with the medium threshold at 50 fertilizer and the high threshold at the manual fertilizer storage limit (default 100) plus one. The effect of this is that it is not possible to achieve the high fertilizer threshold without a crop manager.

The stat change of a new crop is shown in the table below. When a breeding or propagation event occurs, for each stat of the new plant, the game randomly selects one of the bracketed values based on the amount of fertilizer in the parent with the least fertilizer.

All crops have four base stats, listed below. The first three range from 1-31 while tier ranges from 1-16. These stats and any environmental factors first determine the nutrient score of the crop which then determines its overall growth speed and production. Crops update once every 256 ticks (12.8 seconds) unless boosted with a World Accelerator and a lot of power. It is highly recommended to switch to the Industrial Farm as soon as possible because it automatically maxes a few of the environmental bonuses and offers upgrades to further enhance the speed and production of crops.

• Growth: Determines the growth speed of the crop.
• Gain: Determines the amount of outputs when harvesting a crop.
• Resistance: Reduces the likelihood of crops becoming sick. Renders crops immune to sickness at the maximum 31 resistance.
• Tier: Reduces the growth speed of the crop and demands better stats/conditions as it gets higher to prevent sickness.

The nutrient score of a crop depends on five unique bonuses, as seen in the following equations. The absolute minimum value is 5 and the maximum value is 55. View the current water and fertilizer storage values through WAILA when looking at the crop, or by using a portable scanner on it. Use a watering can to increase the water storage manually, or a crop manager to increase both the water and fertilizer storage automatically. Crops can still see the sky if there is a transparent or partial block above it, such as glass or a fence post. The current humidity of the biome is visible in the XML info overlay and the biome preferences are listed in NEI. The humidity bonus only applies if no biome preferences are met. Easily change biomes with Witchery's brew of shifting seasons, Thaumcraft's arcane terrestrial reformer, or Bloodmagic's ritual of gaia's transformation.

Next, use the following equation to calculate the total amount of growth points added to the crop at the end of the current cycle. Growth speed increases with the crop's Growth stat (${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Gr}}}}$) and nutrient score, but decreases with the crop's Tier (${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{T}}}}$). If the growth speed is ever less than or equal to zero, then the crop cannot grow and has a chance to become sick. Crops with the maximum 31 resistance are at least immune to the sickness debuff but they are still useless in that case.

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle +{\text{Growth Points / Cycle}}={\begin{cases}\lfloor (6+{\text{Gr}})\times (1+0.05{\text{Nutrients}}-0.1{\text{T}})\rfloor ,&{\text{if Nutrients}}\geq 2{\text{T}}\\\lfloor {\text{Max(0, }}(6+{\text{Gr}})\times (1+0.2{\text{Nutrients}}-0.4{\text{T}}))\rfloor ,&{\text{if Nutrients}}<2{\text{T}}\end{cases}}}}$

The following table provides some example calculations for various growth stats, nutrient values, and crop tiers. Notice that only T1-T4 crops can grow with the minimum nutrient score of 5 but all crops can grow with a nutrient score of 41. Also notice that the difference between growth 1 and growth 31 is approximately 540% which makes it a very important stat to increase. See the table in the last section for the total growth points of each crop.

Each crop has an assigned tier, generally correlating with the complexity of the crop's breeding requirements. Given that tier affects nutrient demand, this results in a few breakpoints:

Tier 4 is the last tier that crops can be planted anywhere and grow, without any extra nutrient influences.

Tier 5 is the last tier that crops can be planted anywhere and grow if they can see the sky (7 Nutrient score), without any extra nutrient influences.

Tier 11 is the last tier that crops can be planted anywhere and grow if they are in a biome with at least 80% humidity (19 Nutrient score), without any extra nutrient influences.

Tier 12 is the last tier that crops can be planted anywhere and grow if they can see the sky and they are in a biome with at least 80% humidity (21 Nutrient score), without any extra nutrient influences.

The growth stat is the first of the three seed-based stats that can be increased by proliferation and breeding. It, alongside Gain and Resistance, have a stat range of 1-31.

Growth affects the baseline growth rate of crops according to this formula:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Base Speed}}=6+{\text{Growth Stat}}}}$

This is then multiplied by the nutrient-dependent growth multiplier:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Actual Speed}}={\text{Base Speed}}\times {\text{Growth Multiplier}}}}$

This speed value is what contributes to the crop's Growth Points requirement. Once the growth point number is cumulatively reached, the crop becomes mature and harvestable.

The Gain stat determines the yield of a crop if it is successfully harvested.

When a crop is harvested, the game calculates how many "rounds" of drops it processes, according to this formula:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Drop Rounds}}={\text{Crop Base Drop Chance}}\times 1.03^{\text{Gain Stat}}}}$

The number of drop rounds indicates how many times the game will give out drops. For any remainder, it is calculated as a percentage (e.g. a drop round count of 3.4 will give three rounds with a 40% chance of a fourth). Once the number of rounds is determined, the game loops through a drop formula:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Successful Drops}}=\sum _{i=1}^{R_{\text{amount}}}S}}$

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Where }}R_{\text{amount}}={\text{Drop Count and }}S={\begin{cases}1,&{\text{if }}{\text{Random}}(0\dots 9999)<({\text{Item Drop Chance}}\times 10000)\\0,&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}}}$

This means that each successful drop roll is run against its drop chance in the loot table, and added as a successful drop if it succeeds. For each successful roll, a bonus is given based on the gain stat:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Bonus Total}}=\sum _{i=1}^{D_{s}}G}}$

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Where }}D_{s}={\text{Successful Drop Count and }}G={\begin{cases}1,&{\text{if }}{\text{Random}}(0\dots 99)\leq {\text{Gain Stat}}\\0,&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}}}$

The total yield of a harvest is thus calculated:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Total Yield}}=({\text{Successful Drops}}\times {\text{Base Stack Size}})+{\text{Bonus Crop Yield}}}}$

The maximum harvest bonus translates out to ~2.5x per harvest, at 31 gain.

Resistance determines a crop's resilience against weeds, sickness, trampling, and the chance to recover a seed when the crop is destroyed.

If a crop's growth speed multiplier (determined by Growth and Nutrients) hits or drops to 0, the crop rolls a resistance check each growth cycle:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Resistance Check}}={\begin{cases}{\text{Pass}},&{\text{if }}{\text{Random}}[0\dots 30]<{\text{Resistance Stat}}\\{\text{Fail}},&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}}}$

If the crop fails this check, it becomes sick. A sick crop stops growing and attempts to infect neighboring crops every growth cycle; those neighbors also roll resistance checks to avoid becoming sick. This can cascade and grind an entire field to a halt if not treated with Weed-Ex.

A crop with Resistance 31 will always pass all resistance checks. Sick crops will have their cropsticks tinted a dark green color, and can be healed with Plant Cure or destroyed by removing the diseased plant. Sick plants can also spread weeds/grass to nearby dirt or empty cropsticks.

Crop sticks can be taken over by weeds. If a weed attempts to spawn on an occupied crop stick, the crop rolls a resistance check. A crop with Resistance 31 cannot be overtaken by weeds.

Weed spreading (weeds spreading to adjacent crop sticks) is additionally suppressed by a non-weed crop when its Resistance stat is greater than or equal to its Growth stat. This means that keeping Resistance at or above Growth on your crops actively reduces weed spread into adjacent sticks. Weed-Ex stored in a crop also burns 5 units per attempted spread to block it.

Sick crops automatically fail all weed resistance checks.

Crops can be trampled by entities. Whether a crop can be trampled at all depends on two things: the soil type beneath it (some soils are trample-immune) and the crop having a Resistance below 31. A crop with Resistance 31 cannot be trampled.

If a crop is trampleable, two trampling triggers exist:

• Sprinting through crop sticks: triggers a per-tick roll with a base chance of ${\displaystyle {\displaystyle 1/(100\times 0.95^{\text{Tier}})}}$. If this roll succeeds, a resistance check is rolled — the crop is trampled if ${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Random}}(0\dots 30)\geq {\text{Resistance}}}}$.

• Falling onto crop sticks from above 0.75 blocks: the chance of trampling is ${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Fall Distance}}-0.75}}$ as a flat probability. This check is not affected by Resistance, only fall distance matters.

When trampled, the crop stick breaks and drops its contents (including a seed drop roll). If the soil beneath was farmland, it is converted to dirt.

When a crop stick containing a crop is broken (left-click without a tool, or with any non-spade tool), the game rolls a resistance check to determine if the seed is returned:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle P({\text{seed drop}})={\frac {\text{Resistance}}{31}}}}$

This means a Resistance of 1 gives a ~3.2% chance, and Resistance 31 guarantees the seed always drops.

When using a Spade, this roll is also granted when harvesting (right-click) the crop as well.

When harvesting or breaking a crop with a Reinforced Spade, the seed drop check is replaced entirely with a different formula:

${\displaystyle {\displaystyle {\text{Seeds Dropped}}=\left\lfloor {\frac {\text{Resistance}}{10}}\right\rfloor +{\begin{cases}1,&{\text{if }}{\text{Random}}(0\dots 9)<({\text{Resistance}}{\bmod {1}}0)\\0,&{\text{otherwise}}\end{cases}}}}$

This gives one guaranteed seed per 10 Resistance, with a fractional chance of one extra. At Resistance 31 this yields 3 seeds with a 10% chance of a fourth.

A crop with Resistance 31 will always pass all resistance checks, cannot be trampled, and cannot be overwritten by weeds.

Several tools interact specifically with CropsNH crops beyond standard left/right-click.

The Spade combines the functions of a hoe, trowel, and shovel together, allowing you to clear weeds, till soil, and gain bonus chance for seed drops when harvesting using right-click. See Seed Recovery for details.

The Reinforced Spade replaces the standard seed drop roll with the formula described in the Seed Recovery section, yielding significantly more seeds at higher resistance values. It is the recommended tool for recovering seeds from crops before statting them up, especially for rare or slow-growing crops where seed loss is costly. At resistance 10 or higher, at least one seed drop is guaranteed, two at 20 resistance, and three seeds at 30+ resistance.

Weed-Ex can be applied to crop sticks to suppress weed spawning and spreading. Each weed event drains 5 units from the crop's Weed-Ex storage. Weed-Ex does not interact with sickness spread.

While not primarily a CropsNH tool, World Accelerators (WAs) affect crop sticks while on TileEntity mode, dramatically speeding up all processes done on crops sticks at the cost of power. They are especially useful when trying to brute forcing mutations while breeding, or for growing crops with high growth values like the Primordial Berry.

Many CropsNH crop products can be processed in GT machines for various resources. Many non-material crops such as Sticky Cane have machine recipes to extract their output or to process their drops, while other have recipes to create various materials and metals. Among these, two particular types of recipes stand out:

Many crops, mainly ones that have a material equivalent but do not directly produce the material, like Ferrofern and Iron, or Coppon Fiber and Copper, have chemical reactor recipes that take the crop output and crushed ore, and output 4x purified crushed ore or 4x impure dust, depending on circuit usage, as well as a single ingot worth of a related material in molten form. All 4x recipes are unlocked in LV with the exception of the Space Flower, meaning you can dramatically increase your ore processing yields as early as LV.

Many material crops also have ore synthesis recipes, which are processed in the forge hammer. Each recipe generally consists 4x of the respective crop and an acid, and outputs 4x of the respective crop's purified ore. This is an extremely effective way of passiving many important early and mid-game resources before machines like the Void Miner are available, as many resources obtained this way are typically either only from ore veins or Bees.

Unlike the 4x ore recipes, these recipes are not generally unlocked at LV. Many of the recipes scale according to the power tier you would typically unlock them (e.g. Bauxia for aluminum unlocks at MV, Scheelite for tungsten unlocks at EV, Stargatium for naquadah unlocks at IV, etc). Many of them are also relatively power and acid hungry, making them a significant drain on power supply if unprepared for the amount that crops generate.

A common question is whether the Industrial Farm is worth building at all, when you could simply build more Crop Managers and stack more crop layers across multiple fields. While both machines automate crop harvesting, they are not quite equivalent in practice.

The first major distinction is infrastructure requirements. A Crop Manager harvests crops that are physically growing in the world; it cannot inherently boost the crops planted, and cannot inherently manipulate the crops it maintains; the physical field, water (if not using fertilized dirt with crops that require farmland), crop sticks, and biome requirements are all outside of its control. The Industrial Farm replaces each of these factors, instead simulating growth internally from a single multiblock with water and enriched fertilizer piped in, and can further manipulate factors such as biomes. This also means certain crops, namely those flagged as IF-only (such as Platina and Magical Nightshade), simply cannot be grown with Crop Managers at all.

The second major distinction is the scalability methods. The Crop Manager scales horizontally and physically, with more machines covering more crop sticks, while the Industrial Farm scales vertically, through tier upgrades and a dedicated upgrade system that stacks multiplicative output bonuses impossible to replicate with Crop Managers. A Crop Manager's harvest bonus grows linearly at +5% per tier; the IF gains both a larger seed bed bonus (+20% per tier) and an additional upgrade slot per tier, each compounding on top of the last.

The following table compares average calculated Oil Berry output per 5 seconds between a single same-tier Crop Manager and a single same-tier Industrial Farm using optimal upgrade configurations, with fully statted (31/31/31) seeds. Two nutrient scenarios are shown for the Crop Manager, since its output depends entirely on the conditions of the physical crop field. The table assumes the Crop Manager is only harvesting one layer of crop, with each crop having fertilizer, water, sky bonus, and zero/one biome tag respectively.

The IF advantage widens at each tier as its upgrade system stacks multiplicative bonuses. While the Crop Manager's harvest bonus grows linearly at +5% per tier, the IF gains both a larger seed bed bonus and an additional upgrade slot per tier, each compounding on top of the last. The extreme jump at ZPM reflects the Overclocked Growth Acceleration Unit coming online, which has no equivalent for the Crop Manager.

In general, Crop Managers are best thought of as a crop breeding maintainer and early-game harvesting tool, or as a stopgap solution for mass production in cases where you cannot support one or multiple Industrial Farms running. The Industrial Farm becomes viable to take over large-scale production as soon as MV is accessible and the infrastructure to support them exists, and by HV/EV overwhelming outpaces crop managers.

Note that Crop Manager output figures above are theoretical averages. Real-world output varies more than IF output, as it is subject to actual crop growth timing in the world; TileEntity processing lag, chunk loading, and growth tick variance all affect it. IF output is deterministic per cycle.

The following are crops that are particularly impactful or efficient at each stage of progression. Do note that each tier will only include crops that become relevant at said tier, not unlocked; some crops can be obtained and grown earlier than listed. Certain crops are repeated when said crops has new recipes unlocked at higher tiers, or have notable enough changes to be mentioned. Note that this does not take into consideration other methods of passively generating materials, such as Bees, the Extreme Entity Crusher, or Blood Magic Meteors.

While CropsNH does not have many crops that can be effectively used and managed before Crop Managers and the Industrial Farm, there are still a few notable and useful ones that are worth considering.

The following crops are not directly related to any tier or progression, but are notable mentions for their usefulness in other regards, mainly as replacements of vanilla methods:

With the unlock of the Crop Manager, as well as many new machines, a massive amount of crops open up this tier. Note that using crops to directly synthesize ores at this tier is not recommended, as creating and managing the amount of acid you will need is difficult before having access to multiblocks like the Large Chemical Reactor, though doing so anyways can be massively profitable, albeit difficult. Some crops are outright not able to be used for synthesis in this tier, due to either higher tier acid requirements, or being MV+ locked.

With the unlock of the Industrial Farm, as well as the MV Electrolyzer, many crops can now be mass-produced or yield many more resources than in LV. Crop synthesis becomes much more viable, as many new fluid storage and automation options become available.

HV marks the tier you unlock the Large Chemical Reactor, making crop synthesis a breeze. Crops that directly require the Industrial Farm become available this tier.

With the unlock of Applied Energistics, mass-production becomes even easier, and centralized power helps you power the immense power drain of the Industrial Farm. Many nuclear-powered setups become viable early as well.

With the immense resource and infrastructure need in IV and beyond, crops can dramatically improve your quality of life for getting mass amounts of materials. This is also the last tier that new crops become available; all crops can be made with IV-tier Industrial Farms.

The following is the complete list of crops organized by growth points (ticks) and tier. Notice that many require a particular light level and/or the Industrial Farm (IF) to grow, and their outputs are not always guaranteed. The drop multiplier is typically ${\displaystyle {\displaystyle 0.95^{\text{Tier}}}}$ but there are a few exceptions highlighted BLUE. For example, Mandrake root is instead ${\displaystyle {\displaystyle 0.80^{\text{Tier}}}}$, Magical Nightshade is ${\displaystyle {\displaystyle 0.93^{\text{Tier}}}}$, and the rest are hardcoded values such as x1.50 for glowheat and x4.00 for salty root.