About herbs/plants

[free8082002]

I harvest heather, but game say its useless without flower? I guess use the plant for feed fire?

Also: How I remove withered? Fire?

If both answer are fire, need flamethrower. I spent hours gathering useless plants.

[PALU]

Heather gathered after flowering is useless, and you shouldn't really be able to harvest it (kind of a bug, in my view).
You can get rid of junk by dropping it on the ground and then press 'D'(estroy). I don't know if harvested plants burn or if they contribute to fires.

I don't know if fire will remove withered plants, but given that one of the latest beta changes was that fire should destroy ground cover you might try to drop 3 branches on the tile and setting fire to them.

[free8082002]

After some test:
Heather dont burn. And youre right, they appear completely useless.
Withered plants disappear in the "Dead Month" . And can be burned, but its useless cause you cannot plant anything at that time of year.

[PALU]

Actually, different plants wither and disappear at different times of the year, and plants can be planted before they wither, to wither and die but regrow the next year (autumn planting). This means that you could do away with some early withering plants to sow something that withers later, but note that as withering plants will regrow the next year, you might not actually want to do that.
I originally thought only rye and barley could be planted during the autumn, but as far as I can see it works for all crops (my hemp and broad beans have sprouted, but it's too early for the May crops yet).
The advantage of autumn planting is that those plants will sprout even if the snow cover is thick when they're due, so you might miss out of a couple of months of the growth cycle for April sprouting crops if you're forced to wait until the snow disappears.
The big disadvantage is that you get an additional window for pests to eat your plants (damned badgers...) in the autumn/early winter.

[free8082002]

Regrow without more seeds?
They regrow at the right time or are doomed to wither?

I now understand the presence of badgers around the house. I dont pay attention to them because try dont kill more than necessary. The place is full of birds :p

[PALU]

Yes, the regrow from the plants that withered, so no additional seeds are needed.

Killing heaps of birds is bad for your karma in 3.50betaX...

[shorun]

Yes, the regrow from the plants that withered, so no additional seeds are needed.

Killing heaps of birds is bad for your karma in 3.50betaX...

this is good, i find the game should somehow punish you if you take to much.

after all, one person can't possibly eat all those birds. and one stag will set you for well over a month, that includes feeding 2 dogs with it. so i really dont see why one would catch everything they come across.

[caethan]

> after all, one person can't possibly eat all those birds.

This isn't really true.  I like to live off of small game, and it's much harder now.  Birds only give you a couple of cuts, enough for a day at most.  And trapping a bird a day will get you in trouble.

[PALU]

Like caethan said, sacrificing seems to be capable of "paying" for about one animal per day, regardless of size. If you're hunting actively you can regulate the flow somewhat by stopping when you have enough, but if you use traps you have no control over when animals enter them (and they tend to arrive in groups as well).

There are some things I dislike about the changed sacrificial system:
1. The price seems to be one animal = 1 demerit point (and you seem to get those for chopping trees as well). It would make a lot more sense if bigger animals had a higher "cost", if for no other reason than to avoid punishing a small game hunting life style unfairly.
2. A daily sacrificial chore that is also the maximum sacrifice that has any effect doesn't seem right to me. As far as I know, most cultures performed sacrifices either in anticipation of something (before a sea voyage, etc.), or in gratitude to something (killing an elk, winning over an enemy, a good harvest, etc., or to ward off bad luck (diseases, etc., especially when something was going around).
3. A common sacrificial pool for all sacrifices doesn't seem right either. The spirits of the water ought not to care of whether you've sacrifices to the spirits of the forest and vice versa.

Note that there are rituals my character doesn't know yet, so there may be dedicated sacrificial rituals that are still unknown. However, the spirit of the forest could be invoked with the general sacrificial ritual, and my character was hit with unsteadiness (i.e. the daily sacrifice had already been done in the morning, so additional ones were useless), for it, but the ritual still worked.

Also note that I have no knowledge of Finnish Iron Age spirit relations, so I can be barking up the wrong tree.