If I had one change I could make to Gardening it would be to make Seeds "stack" like Reagents or Pet Snacks. My backpack and bank are overflowing with Seeds. Just imagine if Reagents or Pet Snacks had to be kept and managed individually!! I think they actually started that way, but it was before my time in the Spiral.
Seeds take up so much space! I have taken to not even Harvesting my plants at Elder until I am ready to replant since the Elder Plant acts like a "Seed Bank". My actual bank has become stuffed way past capacity and 90% of it is with Seeds! At least with the increase in Max Gold and the Pet Feeding I can get rid of more of them, but I don't really want to. I would rather save them for when I next want to "Get Gardening" or to pass on to a new Wizard.
Changing it so Seeds "stack" would seem to have advantages for both Players and Kings Isle and no disadvantages I can think of.
1) For KI it would mean a lot fewer data objects (which given the recent push towards keeping your bank less full and the "Pet Feeding" woudl seem to be an issue) since instead of 93 separate Fickle Pickle seeds on one of my Wizards there would instead just be a single Fickle Pickle object with a quantity of 93.
2) Currently selling or transferring Seeds is quite time consuming as you have to do it one at a time. The "Buy More..." and "Sell More..." functionality available for Reagents and Pet Snacks woudl make this much easier. (And while they were at it they might consider adding it for TC's as well...)
3) I grow a set of 70 Fickle Pickles at a time. When they are all ready to Harvest (or heaven help me if they are Elder) I can more than half fill my Backpack with seeds. It gets to the point where I actually fill my Backpack up with other stuff before I start Harvesting so all of the Seeds will overflow into my Bank. That means my Bank is only semi-functional though since I can only take things out not put things in since it is "over capacity".
The hard part might well be in the code to do the actual Planting since it may need an individual Object to interact with the Plot or Pot. That could be taken care of by having a "Gardening Station" which turned "Bulk Seeds" into "Plantable Seeds". All of the Seed "drops" etc... would be stackable "Bulk Seeds".
HOLY COW!!! I just solved how to do this without any serious coding needs by Kings Isle! Create a new types of Reagent: Bulk Seeds or Gardening. Whatever. Add a "Gardening Station" to allow you to "craft" a "Plantable Seed" (what seeds are now) from a "Bulk Seed" Reagent. This way all the current Gardening Code (except the drop lists) would stay the same, but Players would only have the individual Seeds type objects immediately before Planting them. They could even "go nuts" with "Gardening Reagents" and add "fertilizers" or the like which could hace effects on how the Plant grew. Faster/Slower... Perhaps eliminating certain needs... Who knows! multiple quantities allowed
I wholeheartedly agree that seeds should be handled like pet snacks or reagents. It's crazy that they count as backpack/bank items individually. I feed a lot of them to my pet these days, but I'd prefer to keep them. I don't know why KI hasn't changed this. With all the new Zafaria gear, gold limits, and Hoard packs--which require a bunch of backpack spaces--you'd think they would address this simple problem.
Not sure I get how your gardening/crafting idea would work, but it sounds intriguing. I especially like the part about crafting fertilizers and the like. I get tired of zapping bugs--maybe we could craft ourselves gardening treasure cards, as well.
I wholeheartedly agree that seeds should be handled like pet snacks or reagents. It's crazy that they count as backpack/bank items individually. I feed a lot of them to my pet these days, but I'd prefer to keep them. I don't know why KI hasn't changed this. With all the new Zafaria gear, gold limits, and Hoard packs--which require a bunch of backpack spaces--you'd think they would address this simple problem.
They limit you, because you will never need 999 seeds of anything. Seeds, once planted, becomes a housing item and you are usually limited to 250 items in your house. Even if you planted 250 seeds, that is a lot of energy to expend in upkeep. So, I assume KI hasn't changed them for that reason.
That same argument can be applied to pet snacks, but pet snacks don't serve a dual function as a housing item and therefore isn't subjected to the same classification in your backpack/bank.
With my theory above, it begs the question why no one asks to carry 999 bookshelves for their house (but can see someone asking for that many Long Blue Runners :D ).
I won't disagree with you on the "total" amount of backpack/bank space. Since, I agree that Zafaria introduced (requires?) us to the need to carry multiple gear sets around for specific situations. Especially if future crafting quests are going to require even more pre-crafted items for quest completion.
