Use this farming guide to become a gourmet farmer in Elin who gains permanent traits by eating good food!
Elin Gourmet Farmer Guide
This guide is a compilation of research on Elin’s farming mechanics. Following this guide will teach you a lot about farming. It is recommended that you choose a Farmer class to play this way, but you can adapt any character to a Farmer.
The life of a Gourmet Farmer is filled with a constant search for tastier and more delicious food.
By eating high-quality food, we will increase our attributes! Yes, every time we are hungry, there is an opportunity to eat something delicious that will permanently improve our attributes.
Table of Contents
The Beginner Gourmet
So you wish to be a gourmet? Good.
To start, be mindful of what you eat, as food may increase or decrease your attributes each time you eat.
If you are starving, you must eat food regardless of its effects. But if you are not currently starving, you should eat something good. When you are “Hungry”, nutrient absorption is improved, but it’s best to keep ‘Filled’ if you have lots of food.
”You begin to feel good when being hit hard. Delicious! You smack your lips.”
The above text shows what can happen when you eat something that increases Endurance.
You have probably noticed that killing powerful monsters drops corpses, which can have various effects. A true gourmet will also seek out bigger and more powerful monsters to eat!
Consider buying quality food from fruit vendors and bakers. But of course, our goal is to make these foods ourselves.
Attributes & Skills
Let’s take a look at the ‘roots’ of the Farmer class. Even if you have chosen a different class, the quintessential Farmer shows us what matters most.
Farmer: Attributes
The first thing to notice is that our highest attribute is Learning, followed by Strength, Endurance, Will, and Dexterity.
With these attributes, the Farmer has fair HP and good MP amounts.
They are best with a two-handed melee weapon. You can wield any one-handed weapon as a two-handed weapon by by equipping a one-handed weapon and no shield).
Be sure to actually put the weapon in the ‘Right hand’ slot to use it as a weapon, if you’re just grabbing your weapon then you will still be using your fists.
Farmer: Feats
Farmers also get two unique feats:
Feat: Farming Legs (2)
- Adds a chance to negate stamina loss. This affects anything that consumes stamina, and means that your stamina lost per work-day can vary randomly.
Feat: Gourmet (1)
- Enables nutritional information to be shown when hovering over food items.
Skill: Farming (5)
It’s important to distinguish Farming and Gathering.
Farming relates to using the sickle on plants, and raises the chance to gather improved seeds.
Gathering relates to using the axe. and raises the speed of collection.
Farming is the skill that matters to us because it is the one that affects seed quality. Farming skill affects the maximum level that a seed can be improved to, as well as the success rate of using the sickle.
With a very high Farming level, we can grow crops that have very large bonuses.
Skill: Cooking (4)
A higher Cooking level enables us to enrich the quality of our meals upon cooking, adding an extra bit of ‘oomph’ onto what should already be delicious and nutritious ingredients.
Higher level recipes require higher level cooking in order to add Cooking skill bonuses, so keep that in mind when deciding upon what meals to make. Rather than cook something above your level, try cooking things that are within your level of cooking.
Also, Cooking skill reduces the chance of failure when cooking. It’s a catastrophe for our dish to be ruined just before we get to eat it!
Skill: Riding (3)
A higher Riding level increases the maximum speed when riding a mount.
You can buy horses in Yowyn for 7000 orens, which is expensive. Or, you can try your luck with a Monster Ball on a wild horse.
That being said, a horse is a major priority, primarily because we can start feeding it too. Yes, that’s right! We’ll be also increasing the attributes of our allies by farming great food for them.
Before you have a horse, consider travelling far only in winter, because otherwise you will be losing out on precious farming time.
Skill: Regeneration (3)
A higher Regeneration affects health regained over time, both naturally and when applying bandages.
Make no mistake, this is a combat skill. The point of Regeneration is to heal faster than enemies can hurt. Combined with good PV and DV values given from your armour, your Regeneration sets the speed at which you can take damage.
Be sure to use bandages for the greatest effect.
Skill: Faith (2)
A higher Faith sets the maximum religious favour attainable through prayer.
I recommend Kumiromi, due to their compatibility with Farmer. Check out the Religion section for my thoughts on other gods.
Other Starting Skills
We also begin with these skills, which are quite useful.
Lumberjacking
Works the same way as Farming, but for trees and uses the axe. The higher your lumberjacking, the more likely you are to both collect seeds and improve those seeds upon harvest.
Carpentry
Highly valuable, as you’ll be crafting much of your own furniture, walls and floors. Affects the quality of furniture.
What other skills should I learn first?
You can buy new Trained skills using Platinum Coins, which will allow you to gain experience in the new skill. You need to pay 5 coins to unlock a skill.
Our first priority is to get the skills we’re obviously missing, which includes a weapon skill, and the remaining Farming-adjacent skills.
Learn: Weapon Skills
For weapons, you will want to pick according to your religion, as each religion eventually gives a very powerful weapon of a certain type. If you’ve chosen Kumiromi, consider Scythes. If you’ve chosen Jure, consider Polearms. (See the Religions section for more details.)
Otherwise, pick a weapon that is under Strength or Endurance.
Learn: Other Farming Skills
There are some other farming skills that are highly useful to have. As you accumulate Platinum Coins to spend on training, start to pick these up.
Taming
Enables you to gain more friendship with animals when shearing and milking, and improves the quality of products.
For actually recruiting livestock, that is done either through finding eggs, or by using Monster Balls.
Fishing
If you’re a Ehekatl worshipper, this is a must. Otherwise, it is optional. Fish provide both Dexterity and sometimes Strength due to their fattiness. Fishing is another thing you can easily do from your land, and you can cook the fish!
Weaving
Quite useful, especially for Yumiromi worshippers. If you intend to shear animals, certainly pick this up.
Tools
For all tools, it is important to be mindful of weight. You’ll likely make your first set of tools using granite, but that is a heavy stone. Other stones, or even metals, are much lighter.
The Hardness of a tool affects the speed it can work at. You want to re-make your tools in a higher hardness when you have access to better materials.
Sickle
The sickle is used to create seeds from harvestable plants.
Hoe
The hoe is used to till land, making it into fertile ridges.
I’m not sure if this has any effect, aside from making the tile valid for watering.
If you’re not actively hoeing, there’s not much reason to carry this around into a Nefia. Make yourself a toolbox and put it in there.
Shovel
The shovel is used to remove the layer of grass, revealing dirt which can then be plowed by a hoe.
Like the hoe, there’s not much reason to lug this around. Put it in a box when not using.
Watering Can
Fill it from the pond. Right-click a plant and your character will walk to every plant that needs watering on the land.
Bottomless Pot
Use this to move your pond tiles elsewhere.
Starter Seeds: Bushes, Trees, and Veggies
Let’s farm! But wait, we need seeds!
The easiest way to find seeds is by foraging, but that will only give us fruits, nuts and wood. For your first few months, this may be fine.
Later, we can do harvest jobs for proper vegetable seeds.
Foraging: Grasslands
The most common biome, which is a great place to find fruiting bushes.
- Crim
- Berry
- Api nut
- Mushroom
- Bamboo shoot
Foraging: Forest
A less common biome which has many trees and blue flowers.
Depending on your Lumberjacking skill, you will have a higher chance to find tree seeds upon harvest. Consider chopping fruit trees after using your sickle on them for an extra seed.
Otherwise, seek and chop Withered trees for tree seeds.
The best feature of forests are birds nests, which provide eggs.
Everything from the Grasslands biome, PLUS:
- Blue Flower
- Eggs*
Fruit trees, if you are lucky you may find one that is withered.
- Apple
- Orange
- Pear
- Eggs are a great source of Vitamin, which improves Learning Potential. Also, they can be found fertilized which is how you can grow livestock. If you find a fertilized egg, place it on a bed and wait for it to hatch.
Foraging: Beach
The beach has fruiting trees, which are safe to grow on your plains.
Find withered versions of these trees and cut them down for seeds.
- Cactus
- Palulu
- Banana
Well, that’s all good for fruit… but what if we want vegetables? Well, in that case we must do harvest jobs.
Foraging: Mountains
You can find Mahogany trees here, which are the highest-value tree. Certainly worth grabbing some Mahogany seeds!
Foraging: Swamps
You can find pink flower here.
Harvest Jobs
Doing harvest jobs is the way to get vegetable seeds.
You have a small chance to gain an extra seed whenever you collect any harvest.
Plus, after completing the mission, if you have a few moments of time remaining you can use your sickle to get free seeds. The faster you complete the objective, the more time you’ll have to gather seeds.
My advice? If you have Karma to spare, just ignore the mission and get the seeds you want. It will fail, but you will get enough seeds to start your own farm.
You can reliably find these in harvest missions:
Vegetables:
- Corn
- Omi
- Carrot
- Cabbage
- Radish
Fruit:
- Tomato
- Grape
I have seeds, now what?
Plant them at your home. Once they have grown, use your sickle on them to improve their quality to +1, +2, and beyond.
What should I grow?
You’ll want to plant a variety of crops.
Personally, I believe Farmers are best at cultivating vegetables, then bushes, then fruiting trees. Why this order? Because that is the amount of Fertility consumed by each type.
★★★★★ Best Crops
Carrots are a vegetable that builds Charisma, Learning, Will Potential, and Endurance Potential.
★★★★☆ Great Crops
Radishes are a vegetable that builds Dexterity, Endurance Potential, and Willpower Potential
Corn is a fruiting bush that builds Magic, Charisma, and Endurance Potential.
- Wheat is a vegetable grain that builds Perception and Learning Potential. Grind it in a Millstone with itself to make Flour.
- Rice is a vegetable grain that builds Willpower and Perception. Grind it in a Millstone with itself to make rice.
- (Both of the vegetable grain types can alternatively be milled with yeast, sugar, chili/olive oil, or salt to make various dough. They also regrow similarly to bushes. You can even plant these in water so that it is always watered!)
★★★☆☆ Good Cops
Berries are a fruiting bush that builds Magic, Charisma, and Charisma Potential.
Banana is a fruit tree that builds Magic and Learning Potential
Mushrooms are a special plant that can be grown even during winter! When harvested, they randomly select a type, from brown/white/red/truffle. Only brown and truffle mushrooms are truly edible, reds cause poisoning and whites cause hallucinations.
★★☆☆☆ Mediocre Crops
Palulu (also known as coconut) is a Fruit Tree that builds Strength, Endurance, and Magic. However, palulu reduces Dexterity potential.
★☆☆☆☆ Bad Crops
The only bad crop is the one harvested at negative Fertility.
Farm Life
Watering
At the beginning, you won’t have a watering can. You do not need one for plants to grow, although you do need to get a sickle.
Watering plants is a good way to make them grow faster, meaning you can lean on your farm more to produce both attributes and money.
It’s not necessary to keep plants watered, and you can regularly leave your farm for a few days.
Watering plants costs no stamina, and so you can always water your plants before sleeping, no matter how tired you are.
Thankfully, path-finding for watering is automatic so it doesn’t really matter where you decide to plant your fields. But for convenience sake, put your farm plots at the southwest corner, where the water spawns.
Nutrition & Hunger
All food has a nutrition rating, which is also improved through higher quality crops.
This is a multiplier for how a food’s traits are applied to your character. +1 nutrition means +1 chance that the trait will be applied upon eating.
When cooking, you are adding nutritional amounts together. This is advantageous especially when you have a range of traits to multiply.
There is a 10% advantage to eating food when you are hungry. Ideally, you will eat high-nutrition food whenever you notice that you are in Hungry status.
Harvesting Crops: Sickle vs. Axe
We want to use either the sickle or axe, depending on whether we have enough seeds to keep the farm going.
The sickle produces seeds, while the axe harvests crops. You can’t rely on getting lucky with the axe, even though you will sometimes get a seed from harvesting. It’s best to create enough seeds to continue, then harvest the remainder.
Heading into Winter, we can afford to squeeze out a few extra crops and reduce our seeds.
Fertility
There is somewhat of a strict limit on how many crops you can grow. This limit is raised by expanding your land.
I recommend expanding your land, rather than trying to manage multiple farms. However, once you get deeper into the farming automation (having Residents do farming for you) then multiple farms become possible to manage.
Fertility is a crucial, but hard-to-understand mechanic, so read this section carefully.
Low Fertility is a Death Sentence
Low fertility adds an additional chance of failure when harvesting seeds. Check your land’s fertility level before using a sickle. If it’s below 0, there will be an additional chance of failure.
Sure, you can plant many more seeds, expecting a certain amount to fail. But you are far better-off adapting to the mechanic and reducing your farm to just what you can support with your current fertility. You can also expand your land to increase your maximum fertility.
If you are negative fertility, get chopping and remove your lowest quality plants until you are positive again. Having negative fertility is like driving with the brakes on. By planting too much, you’re working against yourself.
Fruit trees are the easiest to get rid of, as you can chop mature ones anytime for a chance of an improved seed.
Next, fruit bushes require multiple fertility, so they are expensive. Mushrooms also require additional fertility (and are not really worthwhile).
Vegetables take less fertility, and are generally worth keeping around. You’d need to plant a lot of crops to max our your fertility, which is why vegetables are a farmer’s favourite.
Lastly, regular trees consume only 0.5 fertility each. You can have plenty of trees without much of an impact on fertility.
Expanding Land
You’ll need to promote a resident to a maid at the resident board. Select whoever you want to talk to when discussing matters of your land, and then go to them.
The first expansion costs 10 gold bars.
To generate additional gold bars, speak to your maid about ‘additional tax payment’. You can add an extra amount onto next month’s taxes, and in return you will receive gold bars when you pay that tax.
Travel and Taxes
My Kingdom for a Horse!
Travel can be time-consuming. It can take multiple days to walk to Mysilia for taxes, and a round trip can set you back nearly a week.
As a farmer, we want to be at our home as much as possible, and so travel presents a major problem for us. By the time we return, our plants may be withered!
It’s OK to leave for a couple days, and a trip to Tinker Camp usually takes just 20 hours.
We have a few choices to solve the travel problem:
- Save up 7,000 orens for a horse
- Obtain a Monster Ball, find a wild horse, and capture it
Both of those are beyond what we can do in our first few days. Instead, I propose something much simpler: Get the tax chest and bring it back!
To get a tax chest, we need to gain 3 furniture tickets through Mysilia quest influence to exchange for Mysilia’s tax chest.
Getting Mysilia’s Tax Chest
We need to earn just 3 Mysilia influence to buy the tax chest. This can be done by completing requests.
Then, speak to the Secretary who is in the same government building as the tax chest, to convert the influence into 3 furniture tickets. Grab the tickets, right-click on the tax chest, and exchange!
Now we can say good-bye to Mysilia taxes, and hello to taxes from the comfort of home.
Riding
Riding is one of the specialities of the Farmer, and for good reason! We need to be able to return to our land frequently, and a high Riding skill will enable us to travel faster.
When you first start Riding, you will be slower than you are on foot. But the only way to learn is to train.
Your horse has a carry weight limit, and you can see it by Trading with your horse. By feeding your horse things that improve Strength or Endurance, you’ll increase their carry limit.
To see how much you weigh, check your Character’s weight and add your inventory weight.
Training Riding
You can improve your Riding skill (as well as your horse’s weightlifting skill, and attributes) simply by doing things while riding.
If your riding skill is too low, you’ll be able to tell by looking at the Movement number on the bottom of your screen. If it reduces when you mount up, then you need to train riding more.
I like to train by riding my horse while fighting a training dummy. You can also do other activities such as Fishing, Crafting, or anything else to pass the time. So long as you are mounted, you’ll gain experience.
Cooking
What does Cooking do?
Cooking recipes adds the trait that belongs to that recipe, on top of whatever traits the raw food has.
Depending on our Cooking skill, we will add stronger buffs by cooking, and fail less at meals.
Be mindful of the level of a cooking recipe, as the level effects your success at adding the trait.
Borrowing a Kitchen
It is possible to use the kitchens in towns, so long as you fuel the facility first.
Bring your ingredients, and some logs, to somewhere that has a Cooker. There are recipes available for Cooker that can’t be made on Bonfires.
Obtaining your Kitchen
You can either craft your own equipment, or perform quests to gain influence. I prefer the quest route, as some of the cooking equipment has quite challenging requirements to craft.
It’s fastest to acquire the furniture items using the Furniture Tickets given by the town’s secretary.
Simply do some quests at a town like Olvina or Mysilia to gain favour. Check to ensure they have a town secretary, that will let you know you’re at the right place. Do quests here to gain influence, then trade it for furniture tickets.
The Bonfire
We start out with one! Consider also crafting one to carry around, so you can cook in dungeons.
This is where you’ll cook a lot of your food, until you can find a way to get other equipment.
Notable bonfire recipes:
Meat on the bone
- Whenever you kill a big enemy, be sure to cook them and eat them. Usually, the fattiness of the meat will give you Strength, and the largeness will give you Endurance.
Roasted Fruit
- If you get some fruit seeds by foraging, or even just forage from the wilderness, you can cook the fruit to add on Charisma.
Skewer of grilled fish
- Not all farmers fish, but if you are an Ehekatl worshipper you’ll likely become familiar with these! Cooking fish provides a bit of Dexterity.
Weed stew
- Even if you don’t care about the Perception bonus of cooking this, you will want to make a lot of weed stew in order to train Cooking skill. It’s super cheap to make.
Boiled egg
- Eggs are already highly nutritious, and this recipe adds on additional Learning. My favoured bonfire meal, although not a starting recipe.
Stone roasted sweet imo
- A very intriguing recipe, this uses pebbles as an ingredient, plus imo. Once you obtain the materials, this is a fantastic alternative to boiled egg to boost Learning.
Cooker
Ah, the cooker! This is where gourmet cooking truly begins. Many of the recipes from here onwards combine ingredients. This is where the gourmet starts to grow twice as fast!
As a gourmet, our largest problem is that we get full. If not for getting full, we could eat as much food as we want, and increase our attributes instantaneously. However, with cooker recipes that combine multiple ingredients, we can eat two meals in one!
The cooker provides us with some excellent recipes throughout all Cooking levels.
Lvl. 1 Cooked rice
Rice boosts Will, and cooking it into this recipe boosts Endurance. This is a great basic meal for a Farmer who uses defensive spells.
Lvl 12. Spicy stir fry
A great way to improve upon a nice big corpse! By adding a vegetable and optional seasoning, we can combine the effects of multiple ingredients. It’s like eating multiple meals in one.
Lvl 35. Kids lunch
Of course, this adds Learning. With egg, fruit, and rice, this meal combines three major ingredients, with optional seasoning plus cheese too!
Oven
Used for baking all sorts of nut and dough recipes.
Dough is created at the millstone, and some unconventional doughs can be used. However, actual ‘bread dough’ and ‘cake dough’ are created by combining rice or wheat with yeast or sugar. To get yeast and sugar, you’ll have to explore dungeons.
For this reason, it is possible that you’ll make a lot of baked goods from unconventional doughs, including bone powder, crim powder, and powder made from herbs.
Lvl. 1 Bread
Bread boosts Willpower.
Magic
Magic is something that Farmers are potentially quite good at, due to their high mana reserves from Learning and Will. However, they do not start with Spellcasting trained, nor do they start with any Magic attribute, which means their offensive magic is quite poor at the beginning.
Their starting magical impotency can be improved over time by growing and eating crops such as corn or carrot.
If you do choose to develop your Magic, I highly recommend taking the feat ‘Dream Waker’ which ensures that every time you sleep, you will regain some spells. Over a week, you can accumulate plenty of spells to train with.
The types of spells you will recover from dreams are based on your domain. Farmer’s domains are Fire, Cold, and Lightning, meaning that your character will be likely to have dreams relating to these domains. These three domains, interestingly, all rely on the Magic attribute to be powerful.
Hover over a spell to see what Attribute it uses, as you’ll be better at ones that use Learning or Will at first. These are generally healing spells, which is a great benefit to us as well.
Religion
There are certain religions which play well into Farmer.
Kumiromi of Harvest
The obvious choice, and the default that I expect the reader to take!
Kumiromi passively improves our Farming, Weaving, and Alchemy.
Offerings are made of crops, which means the high-quality crops we are producing are perfect for this god.
Its special weapon “Kumiromi Scythe” is a perfect farmer’s weapon.
Jure of Healing
A choice which emphasizes Farmer’s bonuses to defensive magic. I could see this working out well for somebody who wants to play into Farmer’s health.
Offerings are made of baked goods such as cookie, bread, and cake. Jure-worshipping Farmers are likely to grow wheat and rice, as these are the main ingredients to these offerings.
Jure passively increases our Will, Endurance, Regeneration, and Cooking.
The increased Cooking skill is nice, as this will enable you to meet higher level Cooking requirements and make recipes.
Ehekatl of Luck
The choice of Farmers who want to fish!
Luck is a unique attribute, as it provides free re-rolls that can improve results and negate failed rolls. It affects all dice checks, including those for whether a seed quality improves upon harvest.
Mathematically, an extra re-roll will cause your resulting roll to gravitate towards the higher end of its range. Notably, it does not increase your dice range, it simply lets you roll again.
Compared to a Kumiromi farner, an Ehekatl farmer will have more consistent and high quality gains.
As well, adding Fishing onto our learned skills can be extremely appealing due to the many cooking recipes which require fish.
Quality and Traits
The main way to raise crop quality is by harvesting it with a sickle. This will turn a mature plant into one or more seeds.
+1, +2, +3 and so on refer to the sum of its increased traits.
In the above images we can see the traits of these +2 cherryblossom logs. The traits are both improved by 2.
Winter
During the winter, snow will eventually fall which will ruin all summer crops and freeze your pond, making Farming impossible.
The snow persists til around 3/1 (March 1st).
There are very few crops which can be farmed during snow. Mushrooms are the main one, but due to the mechanics of mushrooms I don’t recommend trying to farm them.
Mushrooms are not great harvests because they are highly random. It is random whether you will harvest a brown, red, or white mushroom. Since 2/3 are hallucinogenic, a mushroom harvest is mostly useless.
Winter Travel
Due to the low potential harvest during winter, it is a great time to finally break free from your farm and travel across the map.
Where to go? I suggest Palmia due to the crafting trainer there, or Port Kapul for the combat trainer.
Once you get a horse, making it out to these places during normal seasons will become possible. But until then, it’s unusual that we can leave our land for so long.
Make the most of your Winter, and focus on progressing through Nefia dungeons.
If you want to advance time, consider training at your training dummy. This will spend stamina while also improving your combat skills.
Go Forth and Farm!
You’ve made it to the end! As a true gourmet, it’s time to sit back and digest what you’ve learned.
With consistent practice, you can improve your farm to god-like heights. Vegetables that exist only in dreams are yours to create!
You can reach the author’s profile from the link. This guide was created by TwinCrows.