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[EuchreJack]

Can we grow our own spirit dew? I'm trying to grew normal grass using a field on a patch of spirit soil, but no luck so far.

One of the DLC crops seems to basically replace Spirit Dew as just plainly better.

[lemon10]

Can we grow our own spirit dew? I'm trying to grew normal grass using a field on a patch of spirit soil, but no luck so far.

My (very limited and possibly wrong) understanding is that regular grass being grown on spirit soil has a very small chance per day to turn into spirit dew. So you basically just have to designate a large chunk of spirit soil as grass then cut individual tiles when it turns into spirit grass and you want to consume it. This of course takes ages so you can't just try growing some the day/week/season you actually need a good amount.

Note that although spirit dew rots within hours (and still rots eventually even if you stick it in a -273 celcius room) you can just stick it (and any other object in the game) on a stand to stop it rotting till the moment you need it.
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From what Euchre just said though it seems like spirit dew is now largely irrelevant.

[EuchreJack]

Can we grow our own spirit dew? I'm trying to grew normal grass using a field on a patch of spirit soil, but no luck so far.

One of the DLC crops seems to basically replace Spirit Dew as just plainly better.

New Items:
Soil Essence:
A sweet and refreshing herb that can not only reduce hunger but also replenish nutrients. Thought to be Ganoderma by immortals, the herb is known as Soil Essence because it absorbs the essence of the earth.

The item that I thought of as a better replacement of Spirit Dew.  Dunno if accurate, I haven't gotten far into Spirit Dew harvesting.

[sephiroth]

My Prism Lotus isn't splitting, even though it's been at 100% maturity for around 300+ days. Meanwhile, my fire tree has split twice in that time. The lotus is surrounded on all sides by spirit water, around 10x10, and the temperature is below -120, all conditions for the lotus to grow is set. I even recently added several light sources in the corners in case dim light/darkness is an issue. The plant IS heavily cursed, so I can't keep enough qi in it 24/7, which I think may be the culprit, but I've also tried feeding it a bunch of soul pearls one after another, and that didn't seem to do anything either, though the qi did tend to vanish pretty fast.

Is there something I'm missing? Or do Prism Lotus not split right? Maybe I should harvest the lotus and just wait for the next batch, in case there's some sort of bug? Any insight would be helpful.

[lemon10]

This guide on spirit trees by Kurt goes over a bunch of stuff for spirit trees, including the requirements for them to split.

I uh... can't copy from the document directly cause it's disabled, but you are probably missing the fact that a split tree needs to go on water.

The split range is anywhere in range randomly from 2-16 tiles. If anything besides water is in that tile (for prism lotus) it fails.
Thus you would want to have water all the way out to 16 tiles(!) in every direction just to make sure splitting doesn't fail. If it does fail presumably you just have to wait ages for it to try again.
Since all the other trees just require normal land tiles without a plant or floor its much easier to split them without doing anything.

Note that even if it fails the timer restarts from the beginning (with the timer being half of the maturity time of the plant), so its entirely possible that your tree *has* tried to split like 3 times and just failed over and over.

[Micro102]

I recall the only method of getting info from a withdrawn person being a specific skill from the dog. I was wondering if that has changed as it really turned me off this game.

[sephiroth]

How do I start the phoenix battle? I've found the Dragon Platform location at the top left of the map, I even have a Phoenix Fire Jade, but there doesn't seem to be any information on how to actually find the phoenix itself or start a fight with it.

[Folly]

According to Wiki, you need to have your cultivator interact with the Jade, which will start 10 days of fun time. After those 10 days you can invoke a Rain Dance miracle to summon the Phoenix.

[axiomsofdominion]

...

[Folly]

Now that ACS2 has been announced, I think it is unlikely that we will see any more major updates to ACS1. So the time is not going to get much more optimal than now.

As for criticisms, the biggest would be that some game mechanics are unintuitive. Simply surviving without foreknowledge of the game is fairly difficult, and thriving is almost impossible.
I'm not saying that you have to follow an external step-by-step guide...but at least browsing a 'Tips for Beginners' is strongly recommended. Or ask here or in Discord when you run into something you're uncertain about.

Beyond that, one major criticism I have is that descriptions are often vague. You might by looking at investing in a buff that says it 'slightly increases power', which could mean a 2% or 20% increase, and you have no way to know. There is a mod called Numeric Descriptions which explicitly tells you what these things will do, and I strongly recommend this mod.

[EuchreJack]

Really looking for the optimal time to get into this game. Can I get a strong and detailed criticism to see if any of the major problems would put me off?

Do you have 2+weeks to figure it out, then 2+weeks to actually play it?  If not, might want to pass on this one.  It's a slow grind all the way.
Optimal time is when you've got a LOT of free time.

[nenjin]

Yeah. I feel like this game has DF levels of starting and failing multiple times until you know what you're doing.

[axiomsofdominion]

A lot of the indie games, even the less complex ones with tutorials, seem to have this issue. Wonder what the most major common causes are.

[EuchreJack]

ACS is a systems game, in that as you proceed you gradually add new systems onto the existing game, and your previous choices make the current game play easier/harder.  Eventually, you reach the point where its quicker to start over "properly" than wait for the next system to complete inefficiently/suboptimally.
Or at least it can feel like that, although there are (marginal) rewards for going the long route as well.

The lack of information comes from the lack of people that have gone through all the systems.  So like everyone has made a Golden Core.  But only some have created a Primordial Spirit.  And so forth, until its Undiscovered Territory where few have gone before and its different because they all got there in different ways.

DF has an advantage in its Wiki and its lack of an end state.  You can play DF as a game inspired by the systems, and there is less of a direct progression between them.  Don't care about learning to make soap?  Eh, some dwarves will die, but your fortress can go on.

[nenjin]

Half agree. If you don't figure out how fortress defense and combat work eventually, you're gonna die on a vanilla world. And simply learning to feed a growing fortress is in itself a learning process. Dwarves may not care about washing by and large, but if you don't figure out the processing train of plump farming --> booze, your fortress will go down.

Like if digging a well was an actual requirement to survival...shit I think I flooded at least 3 fortresses before I really figured out what I was doing.