What is Automatic Farming?

Western Courtyard farmland components have been added to the game as of the 07/31/2019. Aside from looking really green and attractive, you can enable automatic watering, nourishment, weeding, or pest-removal for your plants, automatic ore excavation, automatic feeding of live animals.

How to get these components?

During the Romantic Qixi event period (Aug 1 to Aug 14, 2019), you can purchase the Natural Courtyard grids from the event Market using Qixi Letters (event-exclusive currency). You can trade the Fountain Ore Machine, Livestock Garden, and Poultry Garden via the Exchange Center in your Formula Research Station using gold bars and Formula R&D. Their availability will depend on your manor level.

Once you have purchased them, you need to put them in your farmland on the open farm space that they require. They have the same required farm space as their ordinary counterparts so you can just demolish or replace the old ones if you want.

How to Enable Automation

After placing them, you can use them normally or enable automation. However, to enable these new farmland component’s automatic features, you still need to buy their respective “auto” consumables. They all come with 100 durability which will degrade over time as your automated system does its job. Take note that the automated system is only applicable on the farmland component you used it on. So if you have a single farmland component and several “normal” plants in the same farmland, your automated system will only take care of the plants on the component.

You can buy these add-ons from the Mall > Plants category as listed below. Take note that the descriptions of the Auto-Sprinkler and Auto-Feeder could be inaccurate or swapped between each other.

* Auto-Sprinkler: Install on Natural or Rocky Courtyard to automatically cultivate plants.

* Auto-Feeder: Install on Livestock Garden and Poultry Garden to automatically rear animals.

* Auto-Miner Light: Install on Fountain Ore Machine to automatically excavate ore.

How to Enable Automation

Your automation will still use the necessary resources such as pest-control, plant nourishment, food, engine oil, etc so make sure you have enough stocked in your storage. To do this, interact with any of the Western Courtyard farmland component you placed in your farmland, then select the automated module you installed.

In the example below, we selected the Street Lamp (Auto-Miner Light) in the Fountain Ore Machine. To enable automation, tap the checkbox on the right as shown below.

Next, tap on the Resource Tab. This will allow you to control which resources your automated system will use. In this example, since I only have the Fountain Ore Machine, I can still set the resources for the other WC (Western Courtyard) farmland components, if ever I buy them in the future. If you tap Quick Fill in the bottom-right, the system will automatically allocate ALL valid resources to the automated system.

To set which resources your automated system will use, tap the automatic task to display the resources it will use. It this example, we will select auto-fertilizer. This will display all fertilizers I have in storage. Since I used Quick Fill earlier, all my fertilizers are allotted to the automated system. If I only want to use the cheap Feces fertilizer only, I’ll tap the normal fertilizers and toggle the number. I can set it to 0 so the system doesn’t use them. Tap Complete and the counter on the right will be updated as well.

Automatic Tasks

Here are the list of automatic tasks that the new automated system can do, as well as the resources they need. These are not the official names of the system’s tasks but it’s the closest we can give based on their icons and what they do.

Auto Cultivation

* Auto-Fertilize: Any kind of fertilizers

* Auto-Irrigation: Hot Water (craft from stove or grill using Ice Cube x4)

* Auto-Weeding: No resource needed; enabled by default.

* Auto-Nourish: Uses up Basic Plant Food (craft using Farm Goods Maker)

* Auto-Pest Control: Uses up Pest-Control (craft using Farm Goods Maker)

* Auto-Crop Heating: Uses up Antifreeze (craft using Farm Goods Maker)

Auto Mining

* Auto-Refuel: Uses Engine Oil

* Auto-Cooling: Uses Ice Cubes (mine from ores in Snow Highlands and Mount Snow)

* Automatic Rust Removal: No resource needed; enabled by default.

* Auto-Ore Heating: Uses up Antifreeze (craft using Farm Goods Maker)

Auto-Animal Rearing

* Auto-Feeding: Various vegetables, mushrooms, and blueberries

* Auto-Petting/Playing: Berries

* Auto-Massage: No resource needed; enabled by default.

* Auto-Nourishment: Uses up Basic Plant Food (craft using Farm Goods Maker)

* Auto-Deworming: Uses up Pest-Control (craft using Farm Goods Maker)

Also, take note that the system will not be able to distinguish low-quality crops such as wheat or berries so make sure to reserve some farmland space so you can plant them and take care of them the traditional way, especially if you’re not planning on using your valuable fertilizer on them.

Once the crops you planted become fertile, animals grown, and ores fully extracted, you still have to harvest them manually. Weather effects and technology bonuses will be applied and may affect your wield as normal.