In Moonstone Island, fertilizers are valuable tools for enhancing farming. They improve crops grown from seeds, boosting their utility and maximizing output.
Understanding Fertilizer’s Role
Fertilizers enhance crop qualities, providing a 1.5x bonus, rounded up, to a single stat upon consumption. This bonus applies to healing, stamina, spirit taming, power, speed, or experience gain. For example, a healing crop provides more when grown with the appropriate fertilizer. Fertilizers improve these attributes but do not increase the crops’ monetary sell price.
Growth Fertilizer reduces a crop’s growth time by one day. Other fertilizers, such as Stamina, Healing, Tame, Speed, Power, and Experience Fertilizers, boost their namesake stats. These enhancements are beneficial when using crops to replenish character stamina or provide buffs and healing to companion spirits during adventures. Fertilizer amplifies existing crop stats; if a crop lacks a certain stat, applying a fertilizer for that stat will not add it.
How to Acquire Fertilizer
Players can obtain fertilizers through two main methods. The most straightforward is purchasing them directly from the General Store in town, which provides a consistent way to acquire various types.
Fertilizers can also be crafted, typically in batches of ten. Crafting requires unlocking the Compost Bin, a crafting station essential for fertilizer production, which becomes accessible after completing a Journal Quest from your in-game mother involving an abundance potion. Individual crafting recipes are unlocked progressively through the Agriculture section of your Skill tree. For example, Power Fertilizer requires the “Hefty Herbologist Skill,” while Tame Fertilizer needs the “Hospitable Herbologist Skill.” Ingredients are gathered through exploration, foraging, or as creature drops.
Applying Fertilizer for Optimal Growth
Effective fertilizer application enhances crops. Fertilizers must be placed on tilled soil, and they can be applied either before planting a seed or at any point during its growth cycle. Only one type of fertilizer can be active on a single seed at any given time; applying a different fertilizer will replace any previously applied type. Aquatic crops, which grow in water, are not compatible with fertilizers.
For crops that can be reharvested multiple times, the fertilizer’s effect applies only to the initial harvest. To ensure subsequent yields from the same plant also benefit, an additional fertilizer must be applied after each harvest. Strategic application involves matching the fertilizer type to crops that inherently possess the stat you wish to boost, such as using an Experience Fertilizer on crops known to provide experience. Utilizing greenhouses can optimize this process, as they allow crops to grow year-round, including during winter, and prevent wilting with seasonal changes.