Palia - Farming for new players

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In this guide, we'll talk about farming in the new cozy life sim Palia (as of Open Beta 0.168).
This guide is aimed at NEW PLAYERS.

There are of course no shortage of farming guides, but most of them are for established players with the maximum allowable nine farming plots, and access to all the seeds and farming machinery. They often use complicated farming layouts to take advantage of Palia's curious crop bonus system.

What we're going to do instead is a step-by-step for newer players, providing guidance as you get different seeds and machines, and more and more farming plots. As we do so, we'll refer to various slides showing the 3x3 farming plots as different colour shades.


Stage 1 - Your first farming plots

You start with two farming plots ("Soil"), and you can buy the remainder from Badruu at increasing cost. In the early game, money will probably be tight but we recommend you focus on getting all nine plots as gardening is a good and fairly passive money maker. Plus it provides a lot of materials for Cooking to keep your Focus filled.

(slide 1) This is your basic farming plot for the early game. Until things get established, you can keep this basic layout for a lot of things we need to do. To reduce reconfiguring your farm, we'll reuse this until you are able to plant fruits.

  • IMPORTANT: You cannot correct planting mistakes.
    • If you plant something in the wrong place, you basically have to wait for the crop to mature and harvest to get rid of it. For things like Tomatoes, Blueberries, and Apples, this can take a very long time.
    • You cannot put away farming plots in your Storage.

  • Using this simple layout you can place your plots any way you like, linked or not. However once you can grow Blueberries and Apples, you'll probably want to have your nine Soils in a 3x3 square grid, so plan ahead if you are going to decorate your housing plot.
  • In the 3x3 farming plot pictured in slide 1, we have a center column of Rice - Wheat - Rice so all tiles will have Increased Yield.
    • Each plant generally gives you two units on harvest. Increased Yield gets you 50% more.
      • Blueberry plants give 6 units, so Increased Yield should result in 9 units per harvest.
      • Apple Trees give 16 units, so Increased Yield should result in 24 per harvest.
    • If you used Quality Seeds, the Increased Yield will not necessarily give you Quality crop, just one extra normal Crop. Which is actually a good thing since Cooking with only Star Quality crops can be an issue (see below).
  • The bonus from one crop type cannot affect crops of the same type, so we need Rice and Wheat to buff each other.
    • Corn also provides Increased Yield but has the longest grow time. You can mix this in if you like, for example Rice - Wheat - Corn
  • In the other tiles, grow whatever you want.
  • Don't worry too much about avoiding Weeding because there's actually an achievement for removing weeds. Also, sometimes weeds (Knapgrass) are requested as gifts by NPCs.
  • A new farm day starts at 6AM.
    • That is when updates happen so be sure to finish your farming tasks before then to tick a day of crop growth.
    • During the day, the farm status will not change. E.g., You won't get weeds growing during the day forcing you to check.
    • To stretch out your away-from-farm time, you could tend your crops in the morning then come back the evening of the following day to tend them again (as long as you finish before 6am).
    • That gives you almost 48 hours of game-time to tend crops, travel, the come back and tend crops again. 24 hours of game time is 1 hour of real time.
Example:
Day A 0600h - tend crops
Day B 0600h - remember it's a new day but you can tend crops any time during the day
Day C 0559h - you must finish everything by this time!
Day C 0600h - tend crops again

So Days A, B, and C you tended your crops three times in three days, which is correct. Except you spent most of Day A and B away from your farm safely.


Badruu starts you off with some crops and a quest to gather those crops, so you might want to do that first. Afterwards, we recommend growing Carrots.
  • Carrots have a very short grow time of 3 days, so you can quickly get some cash to buy more seeds if necessary, or do some cooking with the excellent Hearty Vegetable Soup recipe that has a very high efficiency of Focus to cost which makes it a very good food item to mass produce for Focus in the early game.
  • Once you get the Seed Collector you'll also notice Carrot seeds are produced much more quickly than others.
It won't be very long before you reach Gardening level 2 and unlock the very important Seed Collector.
Meanwhile, keep up with the following:
  • Fishing: You need to get to Fishing level 4 to get the Worm Farm, which gives you Fertilizer and Worms for fishing.
    • There's ongoing research on what you get when you feed a Worm Farm different things.
    • You can actually just ignore using Fertilizer, so this isn't really critical. Fertilizer can be useful however when you can't arrange your crops for the bonuses you want.
  • Foraging: You will eventually need Flow-Infused Wood to make the more advanced Glow Worm Farm to get other types of Fertilizer including SpeedyGro.
  • Badruu, Na'io, and Zeki: Their Relationship level 3 quests award Apple Seeds (Na'io, Zeki) or Blueberry Seeds (Badruu), which are otherwise gotten from the Gardening level 10 guild store (and Apple Seeds are very expensive there).

Special Case - Spicy Peppers

Spicy Peppers take up a 2x2 space and can be tricky to insert later in the game if you focus on Blueberries and Apples, which go together because each improves the growing speed of the other.

So for Spicy Peppers, I recommend not regularly growing them. Keep a stock of star quality crop and seeds and grow them only if you have to.

In the early game you can simply use a layout of one of our plot designs above, arranging two plots side by side to make the space. This lets you grow some with less disruption to the rest of your farm.
If you are in the late game and already growing Blueberries and Apples, swap out Blueberries one time with Peppers, and use SpeedyGro Fertilizer on your Apple Trees.
If you are using our simpler Apple and Blueberry layout with HarvestBoost Fertilizer on the Apple Trees (slide 4), you can swap out one entire row of Blueberries and replace them with Spicy Peppers.

Stage 2 - Seed Collector and Fertilizer

The Seed Collector is important not primarily because it saves you money from having to spend on seeds, but because it creates Star Quality seeds (with the gold star) from Star Quality crops.
  • When you grow crops with Star Quality seeds, you mostly get Star Quality crops, which are worth 50% more.
  • Having Star Quality on the seeds means you don't need some other way of getting that bonus, such as with crop bonuses or fertilizer.
In the early game you may not have a lot of money to place a lot of Seed Collectors, but in the late game when you have access to more money, you might want to invest in being able to have more because you can make more money converting some crops into Seeds and selling the Seeds, compared to simply selling the crop -- this primarily works with Rice, Wheat, and Potatoes.

(slide 2) Shows a modification of the basic farming plot. We use Cotton to get the Increased Star Quality change bonus on the blank tiles. On those tiles, you can grow whatever you want to try to get Star Quality crops.

Alternatively, stick with the basic plot in (slide 1) if you have the Worm Farm and are churning out piles of QualityUp Fertilizer.
  • Good things to feed the Worm Farm include Chapaa Meat and Sernuk Meat since you will probably have a lot and they are easy to source.
  • You only need to use that fertilizer the first time you plant the crop because you will make Star Quality Seeds.
Use of fertilizer is not clear (I've been getting conflicting answers) but you may need to use it every day to ensure that at harvest time the buff is active. You can apply multiples of it on the same time and each day the plant will use one unit per tile (so Apple Trees being nine tiles will need nine units per day).
  • IMPORTANT:
    • If you make a mistake, get fertilizer of another type and apply it. You'll swap out all the stacks of what was in that spot.
      • This is useful for the weekly Gardening challenge to use 20 fertilizer: Drop 20 HarvestBoost (for example) to get the challenge done, then drop 1 QualityUp to pick up all that HarvestBoost.
    • It appears that if the crop already has the same bonus as the fertilizer from being adjacent to another crop, the fertilizer will not be used and just sit on the crop tile. (?)
Save the Star Quality crops once you've harvested them and put them in the Seed Collector. From now on, use the Seed Collector to make all the Star Quality seeds you need. Your goal now is to start building a stockpile of various types of seeds of Star Quality.
  • Note that Star Quality means nothing for Cotton except sale value. When you produce Fabric, there is no Star Quality Fabric.
Meanwhile, keep Fishing and also improving your Foraging skill/tree chopping.
  • You'll need Fishing level 7 for the Glow Worm Farm and you will need Flow-Infused Wood to craft it.
  • If you are having trouble acquiring Flow-Infused Wood, you can buy it from the Foraging guild store once you've reached Foraging level 10.

Stage 3 - Nine plots and Preserves

You will likely get your nine farming plots before you get any fruits. Once you do so you can start looking online for some of the more advanced layouts that try to maximize the use of crop bonuses. If you don't mind jigsawing crops together, you can try this one which gives all crop bonuses on all crops except Increased Quality Chance, which you can get from using Star Quality Seeds or Fertilizer.

At Gardening level 8, you also unlock the Preserves Jar, which is a very important Quality of Life item especially if you do not have a lot of time to play.
  • They are slow to make, but you can queue them and the Preserves Jar will work will you are offline. Further, you can have several Preserves Jars working simultaneously.
  • Even if you don't end up eating all of them, converting crops to Pickles or Jams increases their value by 50%.
  • They require only one ingredient and no minigame to "cook".
    • But they don't count as Cooking and you don't get any progress in any skill.
    • You cannot cook in a group to multiply the output among all your party members.
  • Star Quality crop guarantees Star Quality preserves.
    • But normal quality has no chance of making Star Quality preserves, unlike Cooking where normal ingredients can produce a Star Quality dish.
    • For the weekly Cooking Challenges (something that is unlocked at Cooking level 10), make easy one-ingredient or two-ingredient recipes at the Campfire, such as Fisherman's Brew instead of recipes that need lots of ingredients.
If you decide to switch to Preserves to passively make food instead of actively Cooking, then save some crops in case you need to cook something, but otherwise convert them all to Preserves or Seeds. In the late game you may want to keep some in Storage (especially high-value Apple Jam) instead of selling them and pushing your gold toward the cap of 300,000.

You will also be headed for Gardening level 10, when you will be able to buy Blueberry Seeds and Apple Seeds from the guild store, but it is much better if you get them from Relationship Quests with Badruu, Na'io, and Zeki.

Stage 4 - Fruits

However you get your first Fruit crop Seeds:
  • Use the strategies above of Cotton or Fertilizer to get Star Quality yields and convert those into Star Quality Seeds.
  • Fruits take up 2x2 or 3x3 space on your plots. If you plant them to sit on tiles on two or more different plots, then you cannot move or rotate any of those plots.
  • Blueberry Plants:
    • Require 2 adjacent crops with the same bonus in order to have that bonus.
      • For example, if you want the Increased Yield bonus from Rice or Wheat, you need any two tiles of your Blueberry plant to be immediately adjacent to any combination of two tiles of Rice or Wheat. As long as it registers that there is two tiles of the same bonus, the bonus will activate on the Blueberry.
    • Each time you apply Fertilizer, it basically uses the same amount of Fertilizer that would have been used on the occupied tiles. In this case, 2x2 or 4 units of Fertilizer.
  • Apple Trees:
    • Require 3 adjacent crops with the same bonus to have that crop bonus.
    • Uses 3x3 or 9 units of Fertilizer on each application.
Because of the size and shape of Fruit plants, you might find it tricky to get some bonuses on some tiles. The two main ones are Increased Yield and Grow Speed Increase.
Even though you can get the same results with Fertilizer, I highly recommend against this because it adds more management and systems. Also, later in the game you probably don't need piles of the other crops so you can get away with growing a little bit at a time.
I recommend focussing on Increased Yield and Grow Speed for your key crops and use fertilizer for other benefits.
  • Increased Yield:
    • Rice and Wheat give this benefit.
    • The Glow Worm Farm primarily makes the HarvestBoost Fertilizer, so you can use that instead if you are not using other Fertilizer.
    • If you don't yet have access to the Glow Worm Farm, you can get a recipe from Badruu at Gardening Level 4.
    • Using HarvestBoost Fertilizer on Apple Trees is still definitely worth it cost-wise as the extra apples are worth more than the Fertilizer.
  • Grow Speed Increase:
    • Apple Trees and Blueberry Plants give this benefit. And because of their long grow times, they generally go together to boost each other but the jigsawing is pretty messy.
    • SpeedyGro Fertilizer is the other option and you can get it in two ways, both quite tedious if you use them frequently:
      • Gardening Guild Store
      • Glow Worm Farm, at a very slow rate and from very few types of ingredients. In particular, Sweet Leaf can be used, so keep collecting those.
Convert your first fruit harvest into seeds to make sure you have enough to replant your fruits. The rest can be sold or processed. We highly recommend a significant farming yield involving Apples and Blueberries because you can make Jam with the Preserves Jar (from Gardening level 8).
  • (Slide 3) shows a sample layout of 5 Apple Trees / 4 Blueberry Plants with four corners where you can plant anything.
  • (Slide 4) has a less complicated layout of 3 Apple Trees / 8 Blueberry Plants, but it also requires HarvestBoost Fertilizer for the Apple Trees. There are eight spots where you can plant anything.
Neither are fancy layouts with all bonuses so you still have to water and weed daily.

Stage 5 - Spending Money after upgrades, before house

Eventually you will come to a situation where you've run out of things to buy with your farming income -- all upgrades and recipes are purchased, and now you're looking at the black hole of spending that is house upgrading or buying furnishings from Events like the Maji Market.

Before you do that, you might want to consider more Crafting Licenses. You can get more than 20, and aside from the convenience of not having to swap your crafting stations in and out to be under your limit, there are some useful things to do to get your money's worth:
  • More Preserves Jars to help you passively stockpile food.
    • You might think you have a lot of food until you start furniture crafting. A single Rare piece of furniture that uses silver and hardwood or even rarer materials can use up several hundred Focus. Harvesting a single Apple Tree can use up several hundred Focus.
    • If you end up with too much Jam or Pickles, you can sell them. Making Jam or Pickles basically increases the value of each unit of food by 50%.
    • Once you start making lots of food, especially fruits, you might find even 10 Preserves Jars aren't enough to keep up with supply.
  • More Seed Collectors
    • You cannot make Preserves from Cotton, Rice, or Wheat, so converting them into Seeds gives you much more sale value.
    • You can make more money converting Potatoes into Seeds and selling the Seeds, than you can selling Potato Pickles. Because this is an odd exception, it may be changed in the future.
  • More Worm Farms
    • Converts some excess materials that have become obsolete, such as Mountain Morels and Meats into more value:
      • 1 Mountain Morel sells for 8 but can produce 3 Worms (15 value) and 8 QualityUp Fertilizer (16 value)
      • In a Glow Worm Farm, that same Mountain Morel produces 1 Glow Worm (25 value) and 3 HarvestBoost Fertilizer (15 value)
    • Overall I wouldn't go too crazy here especially with Glow Worm Farms that require Flow-Wood to make.
  • Extra Smelter
    • Silver and Gold Bars take hours to make. You cannot cancel production once started and you cannot put a crafting station away while it is producing or has items stored in the output queue.


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