Home Instance Garden Plots

For those who are wondering, it's 4 plants a plot, with two plots maximum at the moment. However, there's a clear spot for a third plot in every home instance.

In the Rata Sum and Black Citadel home instances, the garden is right near the entry point of the instance. In the other three home instances, you also get an item near the entry point that sends you directly to the garden.

You start with a good selection of seeds, and have to get the rest by harvesting them out in the wild. Seeds are NOT a sure drop when you harvest the correct kind of plant, so you may find yourself going nuts wondering how all the raspberries in Tyria suddenly became seedless.

Plant the seeds before the daily reset, and you can harvest them after. You only need to change anything after that when you want different plants, otherwise the nodes will stay as you've set them and be harvest-able every day.

And yes, others can harvest from your garden. I don't know if you can harvest from multiple gardens per day, or if it's limited like most resource nodes in the home instance are.

Also note there are four new types of plants. No idea what they do, but I've planted them. So we'll see.You get them after you gain the achievement for finding all the seeds . . . I think.

Edit: Ascalonian Royal Iris, Shing Jea Orchid, Koda's Blossom, and Krytan Spiderwort.

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:Also note there are four new types of plants. No idea what they do, but I've planted them. So we'll see.You get them after you gain the achievement for finding all the seeds . . . I think.

Edit: Ascalonian Royal Iris, Shing Jea Orchid, Koda's Blossom, and Krytan Spiderwort.

Those are for the guaranteed dye unlocks.

• Iris x24 → Guaranteed Blue-Green Dye Unlock
• Orchid x24 → Purple-Gray
• Blossom x24 → Red-Brown
• Spiderwort → Yellow-Orange

I don't recommend any of these recipes for anyone. Dyes are still pretty cheap now. Instead, buy up any common and uncommon colors you can afford (many common ones can be bought for under a silver). On the whole, you're better off buying specific colors you want up until the price is a couple of gold. (I'll have to check the math on specific recipes, but these don't look like good deals because of the amount of veggies needed, plus not being able to harvest anything else for 24 times, either 24 days at one node or 6 days on all 4.)

UpdateI spoke almost too soon. You can also craft metabolic and utility primers with these items. The recipes are

• Metabolic: 8 Blossoms, 8 Spiderwort, plus just one water and one dust
• Utility: 8 irises, 8 orchids, and same water, dust

These each last two hours (the first extends duration of food, the second oils & other utilities). So it's basically four days of lost opportunity for other items, to make your buffs last longer.

So these are worth crafting if you use foods/utilities that cost you more than half a gold (per half hour) or so.

I invited someone in my home instance AFTER I collected my plot plants. They couldn't harvest them. Do you have to wait for friends to harvest the nodes before you do?

I invited someone before I had harvested and they were able to harvest them. I harvested after. Then when inviting another person they were unable to harvest.

I do hope that this is just a bug and that they are intended to be harvested by more than just the home instance owner. I regretted buying the bounty board after I learned it was only for me and I couldn't let my friends use it as well as I could the rest of the nodes.

@"Jaq.6829" said:I invited someone before I had harvested and they were able to harvest them. I harvested after. Then when inviting another person they were unable to harvest.

I do hope that this is just a bug and that they are intended to be harvested by more than just the home instance owner. I regretted buying the bounty board after I learned it was only for me and I couldn't let my friends use it as well as I could the rest of the nodes.

I don't think they intent it to be used by multiple people, it would reduce their sales. They probably are supposed to be a more "fun" type of node

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Ardenwolfe.8590 said:Also note there are four new types of plants. No idea what they do, but I've planted them. So we'll see.You get them after you gain the achievement for finding all the seeds . . . I think.

Edit: Ascalonian Royal Iris, Shing Jea Orchid, Koda's Blossom, and Krytan Spiderwort.

• Iris x24 → Guaranteed Blue-Green Dye Unlock
• Orchid x24 → Purple-Gray
• Blossom x24 → Red-Brown
• Spiderwort → Yellow-Orange

• Metabolic: 8 Blossoms, 8 Spiderwort, plus just one water and one dust
• Utility: 8 irises, 8 orchids, and same water, dust

These are useful when raiding

@Mewcifer.5198 said:These are useful when raiding

Sure, if you tend to forget to update food when there's a change in scenery. Some foods & 'oils' are too expensive to refresh before they expire, but many are going to end up being cheaper to refresh 'too often' rather than devoting 1000 gems + a week's worth of seedlings.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:These are useful when raiding

Yeah, I agree with you there. The stuff I use is actually relatively cheap so refreshing them every 30 minutes isn't a loss. But some foods are a lot :#

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:These are useful when raiding

Definitely. The cutoff for me would be at least half a gold per half hour, otherwise (for me) it's not worth all the extra effort.

The alternatives are:

• Spend 4 days to get 8 of each mat needed for the relevant primer (after the initial 1000 gem cost) or
• Get onions or garlic or something with a higher price from those same 32 opportunities.

Onion & Garlic can be sold on the TP for over 3s each, so that's a lot of missed opportunity. About a gold if you only get 1 drop per soil, but I'd guess the average is going to be around 2g. So the coin outlay is about the same whether you get e.g. garlic and sell it to fund 2 hours of food (or oil/etc) or get the primer mats and make those twice a week.

my current biggest problem with it is, that there is no spot in your material storage for the 4 new ingredients (iris, orchid, spiderwort, blossom) - please anet i dont want to use up 4 spot in my bank for those...

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:These are useful when raiding

Basically if you're running a build that uses some of those more expensive foods/utilities, this gives you a two hour boost every two days if you have both plots. Some of these foods are WELL worth having the plots available for that purpose, and based on some calculations already posted on Reddit, you will pay off the cost of the garden plots in roughly six months from the savings on the more expensive foods. Again of course this is only if you use the kind of build that needs these foods. This is also of course not able to account for the fact that some of these foods will actually lower in cost because of the access to these primers, in the long term... so it may take much longer to pay for itself depending on how quickly those foods drop in price.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:These are useful when raiding

• Spend 4 days to get 8 of each mat needed for the relevant primer (after the initial 1000 gem cost)
  or
• Get onions or garlic or something with a higher price from those same 32 opportunities.

Two boxes and each node yields two mats... so it's actually two days. Or you could only go for one primer or the other and it's make one each day, or you can alternate your plantings and make a metabolic one day and a utility the next, then back again. Also Onions and garlic are going to drop in price, no question.

Can you get rares from these plants? eg. if you plant the casanova plant, it gives you a chance to get a lily?

I noticed when I got a starter seed from the vendor, as long as I didn't unequip the seed sack, I could use it to plant everything, and then unequip it when I was done. I don't know if that was mentioned or not. I figured I'd have to get one seed for each planting, even if I wanted 4 of the same thing.

as i said in another post here yet again another bad idea from anet . and more gem shop junk . also the best way to buy these if you buy them at all . is use in game gold and never real world money as well these are not worth buying at all given the fact you can get them in the open world .

@Jaq.6829 said:I invited someone before I had harvested and they were able to harvest them. I harvested after. Then when inviting another person they were unable to harvest.

I do hope that this is just a bug and that they are intended to be harvested by more than just the home instance owner. I regretted buying the bounty board after I learned it was only for me and I couldn't let my friends use it as well as I could the rest of the nodes.

It would be a nice change if they adjusted the board to be something that was gathered from versus something that was mailed. Its nice to be able to share your home instance with others and in my experience its convinced others to acquire things for their own instance so it was also good for sales too.

@Sojourner.4621 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:These are useful when raiding

• Spend 4 days to get 8 of each mat needed for the relevant primer (after the initial 1000 gem cost)
  or
• Get onions or garlic or something with a higher price from those same 32 opportunities.

Primers need eight each of two different mats, i.e. sixteen opportunities. Owning a single deed means you have four opportunities per day, so it's a minimum of four days. And sure, when onions and garlic drop in price, we can adjust the rule of thumb (since the prices of some of the foods|utilities will also change over time).

The point is: there is an opportunity cost to produce the required mats for the primer. It also requires a different sort of micromanagement. Thus, for me, I wouldn't bother unless the cost of the food|utility is more than half a gold per half hour. I have no problem with someone deciding on a different rule of thumb, based on what's convenient to them (mileage does vary, of course). But let's not pretend that it's "free" to choose to make Irises instead of something else.

I generally like the garden plots, I just wish it were possible to plant flax seeds.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Sojourner.4621 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@Mewcifer.5198 said:These are useful when raiding

• Spend 4 days to get 8 of each mat needed for the relevant primer (after the initial 1000 gem cost)
  or
• Get onions or garlic or something with a higher price from those same 32 opportunities.

Two days still, it's four opportunities but each plant yields two of each material, so you get eight of each on your second day... or as stated you can just plant the mats for a single primer and get it in one day. You don't have 4 opportunities per day because AS I STATED in the op you get two plants... two... dos... each shing jea orchid you plant yields two orchids, so if you have two boxes, each with one orchid planted, you get a yield of four. You need eight. Or you can plant two orchids in each and get eight every day. Since utilities (particularly the Writs from Scribe) are the more expensive, you could make a two hour utility primer EVERY DAY if you wanted and have a huge savings as Writs of Masterful Strength give a greater power boost than normal utilities.

@"Sojourner.4621" said:each plant yields two of each material,Ah, that was my mistake. My apologies. I thought the primer/dye mats only dropped one at a time. (Since they can only be used by the owner and only for a narrow set of recipes, I'm surprised that they didn't just make it one drop/plant and reduce the recipe costs.)

Here's a fuller description of the calculus:

Research: Black Lion Garden Profitability

• Koi Cake, ~3s, 20 mins. Daily savings: 3s
• Red-Lentil Saobosa, ~10s, 30 mins. Daily savings: 16s (if you use a Koi Cake to prime the Primer)
• Tuning Icicle, ~4s, 30 mins. Daily savings: none.
• Toxic Focusing Crystal: ~11s + 20 Empyreal Fragments, 30 mins. Daily savings: 10s / 30 fragments
• Bountiful Maintenance Oil: ~20s, 30 mins. Daily savings: 24s
• Tin of Fruitcake: ~10s, 30 mins. Daily savings: 9s.
• Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup: 110s (craft)/135s (buy), 60 mins. Daily savings: 49s (craft) 61s (buy)
• Writ of Masterful Malice or Strength: ~70-90s, 30 mins. Daily savings: ~100-130s

Or in other words, it's a lot of extra trouble for a minor amount of savings, except for two maybe four recipes.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Sojourner.4621" said:each plant yields two of each material,Ah, that was my mistake. My apologies. I thought the primer/dye mats only dropped one at a time. (Since they can only be used by the owner and only for a narrow set of recipes, I'm surprised that they didn't just make it one drop/plant and reduce the recipe costs.)

Research: Black Lion Garden Profitability

• Koi Cake, ~3s, 20 mins. Daily savings: 3s
• Red-Lentil Saobosa, ~10s, 30 mins. Daily savings: 16s (if you use a Koi Cake to prime the Primer)
• Tuning Icicle, ~4s, 30 mins. Daily savings: none.
• Toxic Focusing Crystal: ~11s + 20 Empyreal Fragments, 30 mins. Daily savings: 10s / 30 fragments
• Bountiful Maintenance Oil: ~20s, 30 mins. Daily savings: 24s
• Tin of Fruitcake: ~10s, 30 mins. Daily savings: 9s.
• Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup: 110s (craft)/135s (buy), 60 mins. Daily savings: 49s (craft) 61s (buy)
• Writ of Masterful Malice or Strength: ~70-90s, 30 mins. Daily savings: ~100-130s

Yeah, it might make master writs worthwhile for the folks willing to use them, and for those using BoSaSBSS it could potentially be worth the effort... personally I will probably only plant the mats for the Utility Primer and start crafting Strength writs on my scribe, since I tend to prefer power builds, and them being slightly more usable/cost friendly will certainly be a boon.

Is there anything out there about the dedicated gardener collection? I am not seeing it in the hero panel.

@Menadena.7482 said:Is there anything out there about the dedicated gardener collection? I am not seeing it in the hero panel.

It should be under Black Lion Collections, once unlocked.

It has to be unlocked?