Beginner’s Guide to Cultivation
With the flood of new Trial Accounts in WAR due to the new “Endless Trial”, there has also come a flood of questions in Region and Advice about all aspects of WAR.
Now, while basic information for just about every aspect of WAR can be found online if one goes and looks for it, it is very rarely all found in one spot.
I hate that. I love one-stop-shopping.
Soooo…here is the first of a series of “Beginner’s Guides” for WAR: Cultivation.
Enjoy!
~Gaar
Quick Explanation of Crafting in WAR
WAR has a two-stage crafting system. The first stage is handled through a “gathering” profession and the second stage is the actual “crafting” profession.
Here’s the rundown:
Apothecary – Crafting Profession – Makes potions with various temporary effects.
- Butchering – Gathering Profession – Harvests monsters for items to use in making potions.
- Cultivation – Gathering Profession – Grows plants and fungi to use in making potions.
Talisman Making – Crafting Profession – Makes talismans that can be added to worn items to boost stats.
- Magical Salvaging – Gathering Profession – Deconstructs items for the parts to use in making talismans.
- Scavenging – Gathering Profession – Harvests players/NPCs for items to use in making talismans.
At the time this guide was created, all Gathering professions were viable for use in each of their respective Crafting professions. However, each Crafting profession has its own pros and cons, as does each gathering profession. It is best to understand those pros/cons before selecting your professions, however you are able to change both your Crafting and Gathering profession at any time (however at the loss of all progress).
Crafting Storage
Most of the items you will use in your crafting will be tradeable, thus can be stored not just in your own inventory, but also your Personal Bank Vault and your Guild Bank Vault. The exception to this rule currently are the Hybrid Seeds that are looted in Tier 4.
You have two options now for storing them in your personal inventory though. Crafting items will automatically (upon purchase/loot) go to your Crafting Item Inventory. This is the third tab of your Backpack as shown in the picture below.
This special inventory space starts with only one bag, but you gain more bags by leveling your crafting professions. You gain a new bag for each 100 points you earn in each profession, giving you a total of five bags when you’re done.
If you run out of space here, items will start to automatically go into your regular inventory. Items can be moved back and forth between the two types of personal storage areas by right-clicking on them.
Finally, no discussion of Crafting Storage would be complete without mentioning the Mail System. :p
All tradeable items can be sent back and forth between alts (alternate characters on your account) and friends, then left in your mailbox unopened for a good deal of time. Proper mailbox use can extend your personal storage space for tradeable items infinitely.
Selecting your Crafting and Gathering Professions
As a new player, your first exposure to Crafting trainers comes in Chapter 2 of the WAR Story. (The PvE towns in WAR are designated as Chapters and the PvE road moves you through these Chapters in sequential order.) If you are on a Trial Account, this is the only place you can learn these professions.
Those players with subscriptions to WAR can also train in their Capital City (Altdorf or the Inevitible City).
It costs no money to train or re-train a Crafting profession. You can change your profession at any time, however you will lose all progress you have made in that profession.
The Apothecary, Cultivator and Hedge Wizard (Talisman Making) trainers also are Merchants selling items for their respective craft.
Once you’ve made your choice, it’s time to level your profession(s). For the sake of this guide, let’s assume you’ve made Cultivation your Gathering profession and Apothecary your Crafting profession.
Cultivation Overview
Cultivation is just what it sounds like: the growing of plants/fungi to produce ingredients for making potions.
Despite being classified as a “Gathering” profession, Cultivation is very much like a “Crafting” profession. You start with one type of item, add things to it, and end up with an entirely new item. However, because the item you create is a sub-component used in an actual “Crafting” profession, it remains just a unique form of “Gathering” profession.
Cultivation is a very popular Gathering profession because it can be done anywhere and at any time. You can even do it while in the middle of RvR or while completing a Dungeon. Despite Cultivating taking “time” to do, it’s ability to be done constantly makes it the most time-efficient of the Gathering professions.
Cultivation has the possiblity to be a very, very space intensive profession. There are sixteen “basic” seeds and twelve Hybrid seeds. The basic seeds have different versions for levels 1, 25, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, 175 and 200. If you choose to just keep the level 200 seeds, you’ll need 28 slots just for stacks of seeds. If you choose to keep all levels, you’ll need 156 slots for stacks of seeds. That’s where good space-management comes in. If you don’t craft for your entire Guild, the Auction House, and/or alts, just keep the level 200s and you’ll be fine. Additionally, you can just keep the seeds for the potions you use and get rid of the rest as well. (I suggest mail storage or using an alt, but that’s just me.)
As an added bonus, Cultivation has a chance to also produce Pigments used to create certain Dyes for your armor. At this time though, Butchering has access to Pigments that produce the harder-to-find Dyes whereas Cultivation’s Pigments aren’t as sought after.
Plots and Stages
To start Cultivating, go to your Abilities menu, click the General tab on the far right and drag the Cultivating icon to your toolbar. Once there, press it to open the Cultivating window.
As a brand-new Cultivator, you will have access to two of your four available plots. As you level, you will unlock more plots to use which not only provides you with more resources, but also speeds up your leveling!
Each plot has four spots for adding items. The main one is for your seed/spore. The other three are for your Additives. There are three kinds of Additives: Soil, Watering Can, and Nutrient. The Additives are adding during specific Stages of the cultivation process.
The first Stage is Germination where Soil can be added. Soil both reduces the time it takes to grow your seed/spore as well as giving you a bonus to your Critical Chance when cultivating.
The second Stage is Seedling where Watering Can can be added. Watering Cans reduce both the time it takes to grow your seed/spore as well as giving you a bonus to your Special Chance when cultivating.
The third Stage is Flowering where Nutrient can be added. Nutrients reduce both the time it takes to grow your seed/spore as well as reducing your chance to fail.
Once all those stages are done, you can now Harvest your grown plant/fungus.
Note: The Uproot button. Yes, it’s there. No, you have no reason to ever use it. So don’t.
Second Note: You really don’t need to use Additives at all. Sure, they can speed up your growth and leveling, but ultimately they’re not needed. If you’re in a hurry and have excess money, go for it. If not, just pop the seed in and go back to whatever you were doing.
Must-Have Addons for Cultivation
There are two must-have Addons as a cultivator: Crafting Info Tooltip and Miracle Grow Remix.
These two Addons will not only make your life easier, they’ll make you love Cultivating since it will become so very, very easy.
I’ll explain why you want Miracle Grow Remix in a later section, but I’ll pause here for a moment to talk about Crafting Info Tooltip.
To be honest, it’s a must-have for all Crafting/Gathering professions. It’s just that good.
Why? Because it shows you the “hidden” crafting information for each item when you hover over them in your inventory. This is invaluable information for all crafters, especially when you want to make very specific things and at maximum potency. Understanding the information it provides is the key to being a great crafter.
Go to Curse.com and do a search for both of these and download them. I prefer to manually install all my Addons. It’s not difficult. However, if you’d rather not, you can use the Curse Client instead. (I’m not a fan as it’s always had issues on Patch Day when the new versions of addons come out and the old ones don’t always work.)
I’m going to assume you downloaded them for the rest of the guide because, frankly, you should. Consider it a requirement. They’re THAT good.
Stocking up on Seeds
Hands down the easiest way to get the full stock of your sixteen basic seeds is to just buy them from the guy that just trained you. They sell for between 1-2 silver a piece. Usually buying 3-4 of each is more than enough as you’ll make more during the cultivation process.
Alternately, you can buy them from other Tier 1 Merchants. Same price, same idea.
If you really don’t want to buy the seeds, you may be in the wrong profession. hehe. However, there is one route left to you. In each Tier there is a wandering quest-giver that will give you a repeatable quest for one type of seed. You won’t get your full spectrum of seeds this way, but it’s free and you can level this way and then beg/buy the level 200s you want later.
Leveling Cultivation
Once you have at least one Seed/Spore (and your Addons!), you’re ready to level Cultivation.
Before starting, if you can’t see your Miracle Grow window, type /mg show. Once you see it, right-click on it and choose Configure. Slide down the first page to the “Automatic Reaping” heading, check the box to reserve seeds and set it to how many you have. (When leveling, I tend to keep mine at 4. Just make sure it’s more than 2 as you can fail and lose your seeds easily.) Once done, hit Apply and close the window.
Using your Miracle Grow window, click the left box and select the seed/spore you want and then do it again for your second plot.
Once the plant is grown, Miracle Grow will flash for you to let you know to restart it. Click the far-right buttons for each plot to just re-grow your last type of seed.
As you level, you’ll get different items from the Harvest process based on what happens.
- A regular Harvest will get you two of the plant/fungus you were trying to grow.
- A Critical Success upon Harvest will get you three of the plant/fungus you were trying to grow.
- A Critical Failure upon Harvest will get you a Wilted Weed which is junk.
- A Special Moment upon Harvest will get you three of the plant/fungus you were trying to grow, 1 of the plant/fungus a level above it and one Pigment for making Dyes.
Now, what’s happening behind the scenes here needs to be understood. Miracle Grow is doing multiple things for you automatically. It’s managing the Stages of growth, Harvesting your items, Reaping your items to maintain your seed/spore count, and then re-planting to continue your leveling. Of these things, Reaping is what we haven’t discussed but is incredibly important.
Reaping is normally done by Control-Right-Clicking the plant/fungus. What it does is it breaks that item down into a seed/spore of that type while also producing a Resin. This is important for three reasons. First, it’s an almost limitless source of seeds of the same level for you. Second, Resins are used in the Apothecary process as a Stabilizer. Third, and most important for leveling, it allows you to Reap the plants of the next higher level that you receive from Special moments. This is how you get your higher level seeds to continue the leveling process.
As you obtain the next level of plants/fungi, Reap them for the seeds/spores you need to keep leveling and just keep repeating this process until you hit 200 skill in Cultivation.
Advanced Cultivation
Once you’ve leveled your Cultivation skill to 200, you’re ready to learn more!
The best thing to do is to go to the following web sites and read up on the information they have to offer. They are also places you can ask for more information on things that you aren’t sure about.
Also, don’t forget to use your in-game Advice channel as well!
Gaarawarr Gabs 
Fantastic guide! Ever since I rerolled to a “trial” server this has indeed come up on an hourly basis. Great to have something to point people to in order to avoid repeating myself.
A few things I hope prospective cultivators keep in mind:
– When Gaar mentions configuring Miracle Grow Remix to auto reap seeds, it’s not a suggestion–it’s a must. I can’t count the number of times I’ve told people to do that, yet they come back with “my auto repeat button won’t work!” (it’s because they don’t have any more seeds)
– Gaar is correct that there is no reason to use the “uproot” button, but it’s worth noting the detrimental nature of doing so: it does not give you back the seed. Rather, it destroys it. Many don’t realize this, and I’ve seen players accidentally start cultivate a different BoP blue seed than they wanted (the very, very rare ones you get later in game to make liniments) and think that uprooting it will give the seed back. It does not. It will even destroy blue BoP seeds. Nobody wants that.
– If you’re not a lowbie and/or intend on only producing high-level pots, try to level cultivation and Apothecary at the same time. Bag management is difficult enough without stowing away countless low-lev mats for later use (or, even worse, simply destroying your lower level materials and having to purchase or regrow ones later when you do decide to level apothecary.) Cultivation gives you everything you’ll need with the exception of vials, and level 1 vials (the only ones you’ll need to use for leveling) are very cheap.
– If you choose not to level apothecary in tandem, or if you find space management a problem later, use the mail system by sending mats to an alt as Gaar suggests. However, know that once you open a mail the time before it expires is drastically reduced. To avoid this, properly segment things into various mails and add detailed subject lines. Having a mail with a subject line that says “5 stacks of lv 200 resin” or “2 stacks lv 200 resto mat” makes life much easier and much less of a mystery hunt.
– Seed names seem complex, but you’ll be able to tell a “type” of seed immediately regardless of level by looking at the secondary part of the name. All heal seeds have “Spumepetal” in the title, resto are “Elvish Parsley”, extenders are “Gobswort”, etc… the only thing that changes by level is the first, descriptive word.
– If you’re not interested in growing up all the types of seeds and want to focus on the more “usable” ones initially, then you should consider: Spumepetal (insta-heal), Dandedragon (AP), Elvish Parsley (Resto), Gobswort (extender), Fusk (multiplier), and Goldweed (stabilizer + multiplier). If you really want to fast-track cultivation and apothecary to 200, you can focus solely on Spumepetal and Goldweed, the former giving you the apoth main ingredient, the latter providing double the stabilizers you’ll need when grinding apoth (you’ll get resin as it reaps, and the mat itself is a stabilizer also.)
– If you’re really serious about power leveling cultivation, boost your cultivation by 25 and always use a seed one level higher than you should be able to. This will ensure a 1 point progression on nearly every single grow. To do this, either head to an “artisan’s gift” BO held by your realm in the RvR lake, or use a potion (created from the guild vendor-only “Terrestrial Compound”–it’s pricey at 1 gold each.) It’s important to note that you’ll need to go into Miracle Grow Remix’s configuration and set it to show all seeds (even ones it thinks you can’t use yet) as it doesn’t seem to take the stat bump into account when figuring out what you can and can’t use.
– With the exception of the blue BoP ones, seeds are basically unlimited and free. If you power level to 200 cultivation, it should be relatively easy to ask around for level 200 seeds of various types and simply have them given to you. On Dark Crag, Iron Rock, and Gorfang, I hand them out all the time. I’m sure many others do as well.
– If you can’t find a lv 200 seed you want but are dying to crit it up to level 200 yourself, using the “Rhya’s ” soils will help. They increase the “special moment” chance quite a bit. They can be found in pretty much any PQ bag.
– Stimulants (Mashroot) are worthless for apothecary. Don’t even bother growing them. Any time you use a stimulant, you should be using a fusk (for 5xincreased yield–in essence multiplying your crit chance by 5) or gobswort (if the pot your brewing is duration-dependent.) As long as we’re on the subject of apothecary, if the pot is duration-dependent, use goldweed as the stabilizers to double your yield (it has a low-level multiplication property.) If the pot is not duration-dependent (insta-heal, AP) use a fusk and just regular resin as the goldweed multiplication would be wasted due to the fusk’s being much higher.
– Get the add-on “Motion” for Apothecary.
– Make friends with a butcher. Having someone that can supply you with the few items cultivation can’t provide (namely scales/chitin/etc.. for armor pots, but also new liniment ingredients) is invaluable.
Ugh. Looking back at my comment, I didn’t realize how incredibly lengthy it was when I was typing it. I certainly won’t be offended if you delete it. Again, astounding work on your guide!
hehe, no worries man. You make a lot of good points about what I would call “Advanced Cultivation Techniques” which people will need to know later. Thanks!
As always, awesome work Gaarawarr.
Pigment info:
The pigment you get is based on the level of the seed you’re planting. All seeds give the same pigments at the same seed-level (except 200, explained below), so it doesn’t matter what you’re planting.
Seed rank 1-25: Honeycomb Extract –> Golden Yellow. (Bright yellow)
Seed rank 50-75: Resinous Brown Extract –> Scorched Brown. (Dark brown)
Seed rank 100-125: Verdant Leaf Extract –> Goblin Green. (Light green)
Seed rank 150-175: Blue Bottle Fly Extract –> Seaguard Blue. (Teal)
Seed rank 200: Either Fiery Ant Extract –> Red Gore (brownish-red, like dried blood) or Crushed Violet Petal Extract –> Liche Purple (dark purple).
Which of the two 200 colors you get is entirely dependant upon which seed is being planted. I can’t recall which ones produce what at this time, but I believe the Corporeal Resist seed gives red, while the Spirit Resist seed gives purple.
This was a great guide; cleared up a lot of questions I had about cultivation. Thanks!
Great guide…just what I was looking for, thanks!
Fantastic Guide friend…….I’ve really enjoyed reading your articles. You obviously know what you are talking about! Can`t wait to read more
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