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[Niddhoger]

I'd just like to share this with everyone.  Up until now, "plant gathering" has been either a novelty (something for your legendary cheesemaker migrants to do) or a move of desperation (oh shit magma flooded my farming/kitchen levels! I need food NOW!).  However, with multi-hauling, an herbalist will carry upwards of 90 plants before returning! I'll need to test some more, but I stopped my herbalist at 96 so he would actually leave the field and deposit them in my food stockpile! How long did it take him to do all this, you say? It was the first day of mid-spring when he finished dropping off his ~96 plants in my stockpile! This was a skilled plant-gatherer (rank 5, highest you can embark with), but the biome wasn't even at "thick" vegetation (and over half of my initial caravan spot was completely lacking in shrubs, plant-less biome).   

My point is, that bringing a skill herbalist on embark and then stripping the immediate area bare while your miner(s) work is the way to go   At the very least, this means ditching your store of plump helmets on embark and skimping on booze.  You can bring no/7-14 booze and just harvest->brew a batch quickly (so long as you don't designate ~100 plants worth of shrubs XD).  I'm particularly thinking of mountain embarks that typically require you to fence in a part of the caverns/engineer some stone irrigation to get a proper farm set up inside your fort.  While you can't farm outside, the mountainside tends to have plant ripe for the gathering.

My next embark will actually settle without any seeds, brew-able plants, or booze.  I'm going to quickly gather a batch and brew that up.  When I get my indoor farm set up where I want it, I'll send my gatherer into hte caverns to pluck up several of each crop.  I'll guard the entrance with traps, ofc.  This might not seem like it saves much, but 60 units of booze is 120 points, 15 plump helmets is 60, and 30 seeds is 30.  I'd much rather embark with 210 more points in something harder to obtain (like metal ores or coal). 

No, I don't think plant gathering can fully replace farming.  Early-mid forts? Definitely, but the main draw back is safety and lack of control.  Getting a However, it can save some trouble early game/mid game- especially when you can save farm space for only pig tails/dimple dye (for textiles) or will need to engineer a muddy-stone patch.  While that is getting set up, your herbalist can spend a couple seasons stripping the surface for a few hundred plants which will tide you over for at least a year (with migrants). 

[Dwarf4Explosives]

I'd be interested in seeing how your new fort turns out.

[Niddhoger]

I didn't realize the tavern update would take so long, so I kept waiting to try my "no-farming" fort until it rolled out.  Seeing as the kinks STILL aren't all worked out, I'll at least do some test runs!

So, I brought one herbalist at embark.  I've embarked into a region with both "thick" vegetation and "heavily forested" as far as trees go.  I didn't bring any food or seeds (but I did butcher pack animals since those are "free").  Watching my herbalist, he would always bring back 100+ units of food in about 2 weeks worth of game time.  Eventually he got "tired" and returned with "only" 166 units... slacker.  By the time the fruit trees were blooming I had roughly 600 or so units on stock (I did set up a bookeeper).  This is after I brewed up about 200 units of booze and minus w/e my bums ate.  Deciding to take this into silly territory, I made 11 step-ladders (I got 4 migrants), put out 5 max sized "plant gathering" zones, and enabled said labor on EVERYONE.  By the time autumn wrapped up, I had a total of 2400 units of food on top of the few hundred booze I had made up.  Basically, I used 11 dwarves to gather more than enough food to supply an entire 200 strong fortress (640 brewable plants= 3200 booze @ 4 per season and 4 seasons/ 1600 "food" at 2 per season over 4 seasons)  in about 2 seasons.  Granted, I hadn't begun processing the material that couldn't be eaten raw (rice, rye, alfalfa, etc) nor had I brewed up enough yet... but the raw materials were there and I still had nearly 2 seasons to work with my 11 dorfs! Since I am not farming, I also get to cook up the seeds.  Again, at 640 units of plant matter brewed up per year, you can then cook those seeds into roasts vastly supplementing your food stores.  Only ever brewing plants that return cookable seeds (sadly we can't seam to eat them all) would drop your yearly needs down to just that 1600 mark! Better yet, alfalfa/rye seeds seem to be cookable.  So brewing those and then cooking your seeds gets you both booze AND food out of them without needing to grind them into flour! Some fruit-tree seeds (like Rambutan) seem to be cookable as well.  To make matters even sillier, once I breach the caverns I can begin harvesting subterranean crops that can be stretched even further.  Each quarry bush can be processed into 5 sets of leaves and have the "seed" stretched into two more units of food (press cake and oil), thus generating 7 units of food out of 1 units of quarry bush harvested.  One final tactic will be to construct platforms allowing my dwarfs to reach higher into the tree tops.  As it stands, stepladders only let dwarves pick two levels of a tree's canopy.  Some trees can have 2-3 more full canopies ripe for the picking!

To recap, you need to selectively brew plants/fruits that can have their seeds cooked up.  Bonus points if the plant in question would need extra processing (like flour) to be edible originally.  Done perfectly, this will reduce the amount of harvested plant matter down to just 1600 a year (double duty out of brewed plants) without need for booze cooking.  Custard-apple roasts cut with rambutan and rye seeds washed down with rambutan wine! All quarry bushes will also be split into 5 leaves and have their nuts split between rock nut press cake/rock nut oil further reducing plant need. 

I'm actually starting to think a farm-less fort might be entirely doable now.  I'm envisioning an underground "herb farm" created from hallowing out a layer of dirt on top of enclosing in ~20 trees with walls and overhang to protect against all but flyers.  Then you can send out herbalists to scour the ground in between any sieges.  You'd likely need to have at least war dogs accompany them to allow them to escape.  I'm likely going to have to just grow textiles, but I might can keep enough sheep/collect enough silk to supplement what I pick up normally.  If I get something like jute/cotton/kanef, I might just be good. 

I'm not actually going to keep going on that fortress, instead I'm going to crank the stupid up to 11! I'm talking about embarking with 7 herbalists into the thick vegetation of a jungle.  My goal will be 0 farming tiles.  Other than butchering my pack animals, I'll see how far I can get without butchering any crundles or elk birds. 

On the first day of summer, I had already gathered 2114 units of plant matter.  This is BEFORE tree harvesting and diverting a little dorf-power to get a dining room set up and build containers (imported leather for bags and found a layer of jet for pots).  I also set up a bookeeper who told me I had already collected 321 units of cotton.  While I didn't have a tailor, my smartest dorf told me that would make "a shit ton of clothes"  (300 cotton a year will cloth 200 dorfs, right?)  Now, that 2114 included the cotton, but even so I have enough brewable plants with cookable seeds to have already hit the required amount of raw materials needed to feed/inebriate/cloth 200 dorfs for a year.  With just 7.  Without farming.  Without picking trees.  I've even seen some herbs already growing back around the wagon (which was already picked). 

[Sadrice]

I've been doing no farming forts as my default since well before 40.x  (though I would usually eventually put in a small booze farm if my population got large in previous versions, livestock covered the food).  Since the plantsplosion, herbalism has become by far the easiest and most practical food source.  It's invasion sensitive, but so productive that you will have quite a buffer period to build farms or secure the caverns for gathering.  I haven't brought plump helmets on embark for years.  I usually bring 10-20 booze, 10-20 food, 5 plump helmet and sweet pod seeds (in case of emergency), a few dogs, pigs, and birds, no farmer, a proficient herbalist, maybe a cook and brewer, and that's all you need to get all of the food you'll ever need, if you aren't on a glacier or something.

[Uzu Bash]

In my embark, plant gathering does replace food farming. From the beginning there was never any impetus to set up farms because there was always a surplus of food and boozables, even after sawing down all the trees in reach. I had set my hunter to gathering from 0 skill, and she reached legendary within a year. I started farming started much later, only for traditional dwarven booze at first, then started textiles when a moody dwarf died of a lack of cloth string.

[GoblinCookie]

We really need to increase food consumption of creatures.  I would say each meal a dwarf should eat 6 units of food since they are size 60000.  A 6X increase in food consumption would put an end to this kind of nonsense. 

[Niddhoger]

Invasion sensitive is right, the point is to keep your herbalists inside during times of trouble- early on its a great time to have them help processing.  After the goblinite has been harvested you can return to gathering.  Particularly during summer if you fence in a handful of trees, you can easily squeeze an entire year's worth of food out in under a season.  I got 4 proficient herbalists to hit ~2000 plants by the start of summer.  I'll need to experiment a bit more to find roughly how much space is needed to grow that many herbs alone in a year. 

Now, cage-trapping the caverns has always been ridiculous amounts of food- particularly if you use your military to help out the process.  Others have made ample use of a "closet full of pigs" that continually generate bacon (and milk) from dust and wishes.  Herbalism as the SOLE food source has never been that viable.  Sure, quarry bushes and sweet pod food can be stretched rather thin, but you'd still need to gather enough textiles and ohter booze-able plants to cover your entire fort.  Between dimple cups, sweet pods, quarry bushes, and pig tails being used for food/textiles, you'd have to gather 640 plump helmets/dwarven wheat a year (and 300 pig tails at least).  This was entirely doable, but for hte most part you were using livestock/hunting/cage traps as your "main" food source and allowing herbalism to be the supplemental.  The remainder (mostly cloth) was picked up from caravans. 

The point of my post, though, is to highlight how broken plant gathering is atm.  I've always kept an herbalist on deck, its free food just laying there! If nothing else it was always a good idea to dump the plump helmets and skimp on booze.  While you have one guy chopping trees and another 1-2 mining out rooms, the rest of your four dwarves could spend at least a couple of weeks harvesting from 0 skill.  Later on a legendary herbalist could bring in hundreds of plants a year... but my point is that now a non-legendary herbalist can bring in several hundred plants a season. 

Before multi-hauling, they'd waste insane amounts of time picking a plant, running back to pick up a barrel, lugging that (heavy) barrel all the way across the map, and then finally bringing the plant all the way back to your stockpile.  Even with feeder stockpiles, you'd still see the herbalist return to base for each harvest job.  Now, I see dwarves picking 30-40+ plants in a row before returning with 100-150 easily after a couple of weeks. 

From what I've gathered on hte forums, many people have just gotten into the habit of ignoring herbalism entirely.  At most they'd turn their 5th legendary cheesemaker into an herbalist for something to do, but mostly I've just kept coming across people that don't even consider it. Not at the beginning when your dorfs are just milling around the wagon, not at the end when you have 20 free dorfs doing nothing in your dining room.  I keep reading over and over about how you need to rush and get that first farm set up for a spring harvest... how many farming plots do you need to work to feed your dorfs, etc. Most of it has just revovled around farming as the main food source.  Every now and then you'd come across someone that set up live-stock as a main food source, but never have we been able to use HERBALISM as a main source.  Its gone from being a niche (like bee-keeping) to the easiest and most powerful food source to exploit.

I just wanted to point this out for all the people that have been ignoring herbalism entirely.  Even if you don't bring an herbalist you can still see huge gains sending your idle dorfs off to clear the area around the wagon for some large gains.  And if you really want to be silly...  If nothing else, people can safely ditch all their food/seeds/booze on embark to save ~250 points.  Just butcher your pack animals and quickly harvest/brew up a batch of booze.  You can bring 7-14 units of booze as a "buffer" as well.  It helps to disable barrels in your first food stockpile to ensure your brewers have something to work with. 

Yes though, this is redonkulous.  ~5 non legendary gatherers brought in 2000 plants in under a season, without using fruit trees.  By the end of summer, I had well over 4000 harvested plants.  So, two seasons, 4k plants.  If you have been ignoring herbalism up till now, don't! Stop being a dummy and bring one on embark.  A single herbalist/cook/brewer/processor can supply your entire early fort, freeing your other dorfs to set up the infrastructure or even military.

[Naryar]

Herbalism is definitely five times better that it was beforehand.

Also any decently forested area with fruit trees is OP now for food/drink production. ESPECIALLY with good herbalists.

[Sanctume]

I've been playing / testing a "non-1 pick challenge" on a terrifying freezing embark. 
Instead of just 1 pick, I add 1 anvil, and use up my embark points on skills.
So yeah, no food, seed, booze to dig down through aquifer (or lucky bypass on stony parts), and find a cavern soonest. 

I had fun micro-picking to gather plump helmets and cave wheat initially.
Miner - 1 pick
Herbalist - ready to gather once we breach the cavern
Farmer - useless for the most part, so I gave him the Brewer / Cook job initially.
Woodcutter - wooden training axe from the broken wagon
Mason - gets to wall us in using ice if in a glacier embark, otherwise, makes a hatch soonest for defense.
Carpenter - got to be ready to make buckets, and beds, but other wise, this is my first choice as butcher / tanner if I want to risk killing the animals on a terrifying biome.
Stone Crafter - I find that I have more stone available, so I make rock pots in preparation to make booze and meals.

But yeah, I find that Herbalist is super useful initially to get food fast since I need to brew something first to get seeds in order to farm.

[Niddhoger]

Herbalism is definitely five times better that it was beforehand.

Also any decently forested area with fruit trees is OP now for food/drink production. ESPECIALLY with good herbalists.

Most "seeds" leftover from fruit trees are worthless, however I have found some edible ones! As I mentioned earlier, rambutans are brewable and leave behind an edible seed.  Thus, when you can get double duty out of them.  Regardless of your fort, no one can plant the tree seeds anyway.  Brewing up 200 rambutans will also leave 200 edible seeds behind.  It's like getting two-for-one! Olives can be directly eaten or pressed into oil+pomace.  I'm not sure about the other fruit "seeds," I'll need to experiment more.  The same goes for most of the new textiles: cotton, kenaf, flax, hemp.  All of them, once processed to thread (or flour) will leave behind a pressable seed.  So each unit is both cloth and 2 units of food (from the seed).  However, not all plants leave behind an edible seed.  Selectively brewing/milling/processing only the foods that leave behind edible seeds while straight up cooking the rest can go a long way into stretching your food supplies.  Properly stretching your stockpiles can vastly reduce your need of ~2540 plants (1600 "food" 640 to brew into 3200 booze, 300 textiles a year) down to 1000! (all 640 brewable plants will have their edible seeds cooked, sweet pods will be split into 5 dwarven syrup each, quarry bushes will become 5 leaves 1 press cake 1 oil, ~300 textiles will have seeds pressed into 2 units of food each). 

Now, a  glacier embark will naturally be unable to support itself with herbalism alone (or at least, it will take massive effort).  You'd need to secure a large section of hte cavern to use as a "garden" unless you engineer a flood on a cleared out rock-layer to harvest.  Even so, don't forget that sweet pods and quarry bushes can be split into additional units of food.  Brew the plump helmets and wheat while splitting those sweet pods and bushes into 5-6 additional food each!

[Skullsploder]

Herbalists can carry A LOT. And the invasion sensitivity has caused issues for me. My herbalists often just barely make it in on time because they're so weighed down by the plants. I mean, I had herbalists walking adjacent to dwarves hand-hauling platinum statues, both on their way to the kitchens/dining room. The hauler was moving faster.

[krenshala]

I tend to go the Seven Peasants with No Tools embark (bring the anvil and food, but ditch the rest in favor of the raw ore for metals and granite to make blocks for a small surface structure).  My go-to setup for that is one smith/jeweler, two mason/miners, two craftsdwarves (includes carpentry and woodcutting) and two farmers.

I set the farmers to gathering plants right at embark, then again right after summer hits.  This usually gives me sufficient plants and/or seeds to set up a self sustaining farm by the end of summer (a dozen or so 1x4 surface farm plots, and an equal number of subsurface plots).  On some embarks it has worked well enough that I didn't need to butcher the livestock, and for my last two forts I haven't bothered bringing more than dogs and cats because of this.  Whether I need to butcher the livestock or not, I almost always have at least two sources of cloth (pigtails and at least one surface plant), which means I could be exporting cloth by the first caravan if I didn't use it (and I usually haven't).

[wierd]

Herbalism has always been sexy, once the herbalists become skilled.  I've used them to bootstrap embarks for years now.

With the new surface crop variety, and then with tree fruits--- and now with multi carry--  Herbalism is actually more than just sexy, it's downright exploity.

IRL, a forest is not made up of that many fruit trees, nor do wild peas and the like grow the way the game currently generates them.  That's the problem.

I would actually like to see surface crops get nerfed a little, by introducing "Theoretically edible, but nasty and not domesticable" plants with a higher percentage.

Things like wine cup poppy mallows, black eyed susans, sheep sorrel, lambs quarters, redroot pigweed, elderberry, poke weed, dandelion, etc.

A wild plot of grassland should have absurd botanical biodiversity, with all kinds of things growing-- some of which should not be edible, and even be problematic (Like stickers and burrs).  Forests should have a decided dirth of low lying vegetation from the low light that gets through the canopy-- Things like ferns, mosses, and wood sorrels.

[Thisfox]

I've been reading this with increasing amusement - I haven't bothered with farms (except for cosmetic or experimental reasons) since the plantsplosion. Fruit trees and berry bushes ftw.

A wild plot of grassland should have absurd botanical biodiversity, with all kinds of things growing-- some of which should not be edible, and even be problematic (Like stickers and burrs).  Forests should have a decided dirth of low lying vegetation from the low light that gets through the canopy-- Things like ferns, mosses, and wood sorrels.

I always assume that those detrimental things ARE there, but that the dwarves are strong little bastards who just plow on through the nettlefields regardless. Someone had to get occasionally stung for remie fibre to be produced.

...Imagine if bindi eyes or spanish grass or sheep burrs were a thing... I can imagine hating one of my dwarfs for tracking the seeds in to a burrless area, and infecting my wool manufacturing fields, killing my sheep or lowering the quality of my wool.

[Baffler]

I generally don't even embark with food or drink, I just look around at the wild plants and have a dwarf pick some interesting ones to farm. I might just start pulling them out of the ground now though, that sounds hilariously OP. And I haven't even bothered with fruit trees outside of harvesting olives for their oil.