Farming & Crops Guide

Plant seeds, work the climate bonus, and harvest the raw produce that feeds Cooking, Tailoring, Alchemy, and Husbandry, with the real, server-confirmed grow times for Rookery Isles' ArcheAge 3.0 (Revelation) build.

Requirements

You must be Character Level 52 to gather in the open world on Rookery Isles. Mining, Logging, Gathering, Farming, Husbandry, and Fishing are all gated at character Level 52 (the client enforces this), so you cannot mine, chop, harvest, farm, raise livestock, or fish until you reach Level 52. Bench crafting and processing have no level requirement, but their materials come from gathering. The Anya Vein adds a further gate of 50,000 Mining proficiency on top of Level 52.

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• What Farming Is
• How a Crop Grows
• The Climate-Match Bonus
• Growth Stages and Decay
• Where to Plant: Farm Structures
• Open-World vs Private vs Housing Planting
• Buying Seeds
• Single-Seed Catalog and Grow Times
• Seed Bundles, Greenhouses, and Saplings
• What Each Crop Feeds
• A Practical Farming Routine
• On Rookery Isles

What Farming Is

Farming is one of the six Harvesting vocations on Rookery Isles, sitting alongside Husbandry, Fishing, Logging, Gathering, and Mining. Where the Gathering vocation is about plucking wild plants that already exist in the world, Farming is about planting your own seeds and saplings, tending them, and harvesting the crop you grew. Every harvest you take from a crop you planted builds your Farming proficiency.

Farming proficiency climbs the same shared rank ladder as every other vocation. The two skills that grant Farming proficiency are Harvest (the skill that pulls the finished crop) and Fertilize; both belong to the Farming vocation. Watering and uprooting do not grant proficiency.

Level 52 gate. Farming, like every world-gathering vocation on Rookery Isles, requires character Level 52. Planting and harvesting in the open world are blocked until you reach Level 52, and the client enforces this, so you cannot work around it. There is no Farming-specific rank gate on top of that, proficiency simply rises as you harvest, and higher rank makes Labor cheaper. (Bench crafting and processing carry no level requirement, but the raw produce they consume comes from Farming, which is Level 52.)

How a Crop Grows

The loop is the same for nearly every crop:

• Step 1. Plant the seed. A Seed item carries a "use" action that triggers the Plant herbs skill. Each seed is mapped to a specific crop, so a Barley Seed always grows barley. (Saplings work the same way via a Plant large object skill, see the trees section below.)
• Step 2. Pick the spot. Crops must be planted on plantable ground: the garden radius of a farm structure, the land around a house, or, at risk, open ground. Climate matters here (next section).
• Step 3. Tend it. While it grows you can Water Plant it (helps growth, no proficiency gained) and Fertilize it (grants Farming proficiency and can rescue a plant that is about to wilt).
• Step 4. Harvest. When the crop reaches its mature phase, Harvest it to collect the produce and earn Farming proficiency.

Grow time is real on this server. The server's growth-rate multiplier is 1.0, there is no global acceleration and no Rookery override. Every minute figure in the catalog below is the genuine, full-time grow duration at 1.0x. The only thing that speeds a crop up mechanically is planting it in the matching climate.

Tip: the grow times below are wall-clock real time, and they keep ticking whether or not you are logged in. Plant the slow, valuable crops before you log off; save the 5-minute crops for when you are actively farming.

The Climate-Match Bonus

This is the single most important optimization in farming, and it is server-confirmed in the live code.

Most crops have a climate. When you plant a crop in a zone whose climate matches the crop's climate, the total grow time is multiplied by 0.73, roughly 27% faster. Plant it in the wrong climate and you pay the full time. Only four climates can ever trigger the bonus, Temperate, Tropical, Subarctic, and Arid, because in the live data only those four are actually assigned to zones:

Two categories never get the bonus. Crops with the "All" climate and crops with no climate both grow at full time no matter where you plant them, the server only applies the ×0.73 when a crop's specific climate (Temperate / Tropical / Subarctic / Arid) is one the zone actually carries. (In the live code, the "All" climate is explicitly excluded from the bonus, and no zone is tagged with the "All", "none", or "Auroria" climate.) So for those crops, plant them anywhere convenient.

Worked example. A Cornflower (Temperate) takes 171.5 minutes at full time. Planted in a Temperate zone it matures in 171.5 × 0.73 ≈ 125 minutes, saving roughly three-quarters of an hour. The longer the crop, the bigger the real-time savings, so the climate match matters most on your slow, high-value crops.

Caveat, where exactly each climate falls: the per-zone climate map (which specific zones are Temperate vs Arid vs Tropical) is not cleanly reconstructable from the static server data, so treat in-zone climate as something to confirm in-game from the crop tooltip and the zone's environment. The mechanic and the 0.73 multiplier are confirmed; the exact zone list is community knowledge, not server-confirmed here.

Growth Stages and Decay

A crop is not a flat three-stage seed-grow-ripe plant. It passes through several named phases on its growth timer. Barley, for example, runs through:

• Barley Seedling → Small Barley → Barley → Mature Barley → Wilted Barley

Each phase exposes its own interactions (water, fertilize, uproot, harvest). The phase you care about is the Mature phase, that is when Harvest returns the produce.

The Wilted stage is real. Once a crop matures, it enters a timer phase. If you do not harvest it in time, it transitions to a Wilted state and the crop is degraded. Fertilize can recover a plant that is heading toward wilting, which is part of why Fertilize grants Farming proficiency. The exact wilt-timer length per crop is not tabulated in the static data, so harvest promptly once a crop is mature rather than counting on a precise grace window.

Tip: the simplified "seeded → growing → ripe" mental model is fine for planning, but remember the fourth state, wilted/decayed, exists and will cost you the crop if you ignore a mature plant for too long.

Where to Plant: Farm Structures

Crops go on garden land, and garden land comes from a farm structure you place on owned, taxed property. Each structure provides a garden radius, the plantable circle around it. A bigger radius means more crop slots. These are the four core farm structures, with values straight from the server housing data:

There is no "8×8" or "16×16" tile plot. Farm size is a radius, not an N×N grid. The progression is small Garden (radius 4) → standard Farm (radius 8) → largest Farmhouse (radius 11). The Aquafarm matches the Farm's radius but is placed in water for aquatic plantings. All four are subject to property tax.

Other farm-related placeables exist in the world too, a Farm Wagon (a mobile farm cart), Farm Fence, themed scarecrows, and the Farmer's Workstation (item 26550), which is where you craft Husbandry feed. See Housing & Land for how to acquire and tax the land these structures sit on.

Open-World vs Private vs Housing Planting

There are three places you can put a crop, and the difference is who can take the harvest.

• Private farm structure (Scarecrow Garden / Farm / Aquafarm / Thatched Farmhouse). Crops in your structure's garden radius are protected, only you and players you have permitted can harvest them. This is the safe, default way to farm. It requires owned, taxed land.
• Housing land. You can plant within the garden radius around a placed house. Same protection model as a farm structure: it is your land, your crop.
• Open-world planting. Some crops can be planted directly on open ground, with no structure. This is not protected, the crop is exposed, and any other player can harvest (steal) it. Stealing another player's open-world crop grants the thief Larceny proficiency, not Farming.

Tip: open-world planting trades safety for not needing land. If you grow something slow and valuable (Wild Ginseng, Saffron, Poppy) in the open, assume a passing player may walk off with it. Keep high-value, long-timer crops behind a private structure; open-world planting is best for fast, cheap crops you can babysit.

Buying Seeds

Single seeds and saplings are sold by General Merchant NPCs scattered across the world, over 200 distinct vendors stock them, including merchants in the starter zones and arid-zone vendors for the desert crops. Specialty and rare seeds (refined seed bundles, gem-shrubs, event plants) are not on general merchants and tend to come from quests, events, or Mirage Isle.

Prices in the catalog below are the raw vendor cost in copper. The in-game vendor and Auction House UIs show prices as gold / silver / copper (1 gold = 100 silver = 10,000 copper), so a 150-copper seed shows as 1 silver 50 copper, and a 3,000-copper seed shows as 30 silver.

Single-Seed Catalog and Grow Times

These are the real grow times the server uses, at the global 1.0x rate. "Full" is the time in a non-matching climate; "Matched" is the time in the crop's own climate (×0.73). Crops whose climate is All, none (", "), or otherwise never carried by a zone show ", " in the Matched column, they always grow at full time.

Fastest cash crops (single seeds):

There is no "Salaman Eggplant" crop on this server, if you have seen that name in an older guide, it is not real. The genuine fast crops are the ones above: Cucumber and Potato (5 min), Azalea (14.5 min), and the Barley/Carrot/Onion trio (21.5 min). Likewise, Cornflower is a real Temperate crop, but it takes 171.5 minutes full / about 125 minutes matched, not "1 hour."

Seed Bundles, Greenhouses, and Saplings

Seed Bundles ("X Seed Bundle") are a pack-planting variant of a single seed: one bundle plants a whole cluster of that crop at once instead of a single plant. They exist for most common crops, for example Barley Seed Bundle (26452), Carrot Seed Bundle (26449), and Cotton Seed Bundle (26462). Each bundle grows its own bundle-crop with its own timer. Whether bundles require a higher Farming rank to plant is not confirmed in the server data (community-reported, not server-confirmed), treat them as available and verify in-game.

Greenhouses ("X Greenhouse", e.g. Barley Greenhouse 35195, Carrot Greenhouse 35187, Mushroom Greenhouse 35221) are indoor-planting variants tied to housing interiors and cost more than loose seeds. Improved/Refined seed bundles (e.g. Improved Grain Seed Bundle 34925) are higher-tier packs in the ~500 to 3,000 copper range.

Saplings are the tree side of farming. They use a Plant large object skill instead of Plant herbs, and they grow on the order of hours, not minutes. A selection:

Trees feed the logging-and-lumber chain, see the Logging & Lumber Guide for what logs become. Woodlots (multi-tree clusters) and Coral Polyps (underwater, for the Aquafarm) are also planted through the farming system.

What Each Crop Feeds

Farming is the bottom of several long production chains. Here is where the major crops go, all confirmed against the recipe data:

The pattern, summarized:

• Grains and vegetables (Barley, Carrot, Rice, Wheat, Corn, Millet…) feed Cooking for food, Farming for processing into Ground Grain and Chopped Produce, and Commerce for regional trade packs.
• Cotton is the base of Tailoring, it becomes Fabric, the foundation material for cloth armor and for crafted Fishing Line.
• Herbs and flowers (Lavender, Rose, Lotus, Sunflower, Mint…) feed Alchemy and Artistry.
• Grains feed Husbandry indirectly: ten of the farming grains (Barley, Rice, Millet, Corn, Wheat, Oats, Rye, Peanut, Bean, Quinoa) each grind into Ground Grain, the fodder for poultry, chicks, geese, and turkeys. So your grain field literally feeds your henhouse.

One thing crops do not do: the produce items themselves do not feed Husbandry recipes directly other than through the grain-to-Ground-Grain step above. The animal side of the farm (milk, wool, eggs, meat) comes from livestock, covered in the Husbandry & Livestock Guide.

See the Crafting Guide for how Fabric, food, and reagents climb their respective gear and consumable ladders.

A Practical Farming Routine

A simple, reliable way to level Farming and turn a profit once you have reached the Level 52 gathering gate:

• Step 1. Place a Scarecrow Farm (radius 8) on taxed land, or a Scarecrow Garden (radius 4) if you are just starting. Use a Thatched Farmhouse (radius 11) once you want maximum slots.
• Step 2. Match the climate. Put Temperate crops in a Temperate zone, Arid crops in the desert, and so on, to bank the 0.73x (≈27% faster) bonus. Only Temperate, Tropical, Subarctic, and Arid crops can earn it, "All"-climate and no-climate crops grow at full time everywhere.
• Step 3. Fill empty slots with the fastest crops you can watch, Cucumber/Potato (5 min) or Barley/Carrot/Onion (21.5 min), while you are actively at the farm. Each harvest and each Fertilize adds Farming proficiency.
• Step 4. Plant the slow earners before you log off. Wild Ginseng, Saffron, Poppy, and the fruit/log saplings grow for hours; let them mature while you are away, and keep them behind a private structure so no one steals them.
• Step 5. Harvest promptly. A mature crop will eventually wilt if ignored. Harvest on time, or Fertilize to buy a plant some recovery if it is close to wilting.
• Step 6. Feed your chains. Route grains into Cooking and Ground Grain, Cotton into Tailoring, and flowers/herbs into Alchemy. Farming is most profitable when it feeds something you also craft.

For how labor, proficiency, and rank-up costs work across all vocations, see the Proficiency & Labor Guide.

On Rookery Isles

A few places this server differs from off-the-shelf ArcheAge 3.0 lore and from older community guides:

• World gathering requires Level 52. Farming, like every world-gathering vocation (Mining, Logging, Gathering, Husbandry, Fishing), requires character Level 52, and the client enforces it. You cannot plant or harvest in the open world until Level 52. Bench crafting and processing have no level requirement, but their materials come from gathering.
• Grow times are the real, full numbers. The server runs at a 1.0x growth rate with no acceleration, so the catalog above is accurate. The only legitimate speed-up is the climate match (×0.73).
• Farm size is a radius, not a tile grid. There is no "8×8" or "16×16" plot. The structures scale by garden radius: Scarecrow Garden 4.0 → Scarecrow Farm / Aquafarm 8.0 → Thatched Farmhouse 11.0.
• "Salaman Eggplant" is not a real crop, and Cornflower takes ~171.5 min (≈125 matched), not 1 hour. Older guides got both wrong.
• Crops pass through more than three stages, including a real Wilted decay state. The "seed → grow → ripe" model is a simplification; do not forget the wilt timer.
• This is ArcheAge 3.0 (Revelation), not Erenor (that was 3.5, a later patch).

See also

Husbandry & Livestock Guide · Gathering & Herbs Guide · Crafting & Gathering Overview · Labor Points & Proficiency · Cooking Guide · Alchemy Guide · Trade Packs & Commerce · Housing & Land · Gearing Supply Chain