WoW Patch 5.2 Brings New Farm Changes

New Changes Coming To The Player Farms In Patch 5.2

I spend a lot of time on my Sunsong Ranch farms on my various characters, so I am always interested in the newest changes and improvements coming to our individual character farms.  We've seen a few upgrades and changes already and not all of them have been that great, or even worth a damn at all.  Yes, I'm looking at you, worthless portal shards.  Let's look into what is on the way for our Sunsong Ranches.

While the Patch 5.2 PTR isn't up just yet, we do have a glimpse at the Patch 5.2 PTR Patch Notes, which can be found at this source.

Upcoming Changes To Our Farms:

1)  Buy The Farm

"Players that have grown attached to working the land at Sunsong Ranch can now purchase the land from Farmer Yoon.  Once the farm is owned by a player, it becomes a rest point like an inn, where the player can bind and instantly log out.  Work orders will pour into the farm from factions across Pandaria, and completing a work order will earn a reputation boost with the issuing faction."

When I read this I see 2 main changes, A)  We can buy our farm and turn it into an inn.  B)  More ways to raise faction reputation gains.

EDIT: PATCH 5.2 UPDATE:  No longer purchasable.  You can get the farm by completing a quest chain. Must be Exhalted with the Tillers Union and have unlocked all 16 farm plots to start the quest chain.

A) Make your farm an inn.  Really?  This is almost as useless as the Portal Shards addition in Patch 5.1!  Do we really need the farm to be an inn, when the farm is 2 buildings away from an actual inn?  And converting your farm to an inn is going to cost you gold, but for what benefit?  You can log out instantly instead of it taking 20 seconds to log you out, or you can save 30 seconds it takes to ride two doors down to the inn that is free to use.  This is not needed at all.  Unless it is a precursor to getting individual player housing, it is not worth wasting gold on when you have an inn practically right next door!

B)  Work Orders For Rep?  Sounds good, oh wait, does it?  Any other way to increase the rate at which you can grind out the various factions is a nice addition for those of us with multiple alts.  Problem is, by the time this gets implemented into the live game, many of us will already have completed the faction grinds on the reputations that our alt crafters need.  Once I'm done with all of my profession reputation grinds, I will be wanting them to STOP making it easier for competition to catch up to me.  The Grand Commendations have been a nice boost, but this will help to earn reputations faster for those factions that you have yet to unlock a Grand Commendation.

2)  Faster Planting

"Seed bags have been added that allow planting of crops 4 plots at a time."

Finally a way to plant more than one seed at a time!  This is a nice addition that will make managing the daily crop cycle across multiple alts much easier.  Let's hope it applies to all seed types and not just the vegetable seeds.

3)  More Special Crop Production

"The yield from special crops has been improved to make farming them competitive with gathering these items out in the world."

Another welcomed addition!  Getting more crops per plant is always a nice benefit, especially on the special crops, which tend to mainly be used for farming either Herbs & Golden Lotuses or Motes of Harmony.  Although with the crappy proc rate on Potions of Luck and the nerf to limit them to 1 20 minute use per hour, I've actually switched to growing Snakeroot Seeds (Ores) on a couple of my characters.  While the harvest isn't horrible it could be increased to rival the output of some of the other crops.  I do enjoy getting Black & White Trillium Ores from my farm though. 

Pro-Tip Secret about Snakeroot (that I discovered myself) is that you can get Rare Gems out of them too if you are carrying the Ancient Pandaren Mining Pick.  It seems as if the proc rate for the Pick has been increased since Patch 5.1, and I've now been able to get rare gems from my Snakeroot plants on the farm, but don't tell everyone!

4)  Master Plow 2.0 aka Virmen Spanker

"Running the Master Plow across underground Vermin willcause them to pop out of the ground at 30% health and stunned."

Yes, finally something to help with rodents, but still lacking overall.  While I am all for running over Vermin to do 70% instant damage and stun them, what the hell about all these damn disco light loving birds!?!  Of course this will help to decrease the time it takes to complete a full plant and harvest crop cycle, but like I said, this doesn't help with all the damn birds!

5)  Less Wild Crops

"Wild Crops will now occur less often."

I'll believe it when I see it, lol.


Hopefully these changes make it through the PTR with the addition of even better tweaks and changes, like something that helps with the bird attacks.  Hell, the scarecrow could come to life and assist you or the lame vanity scarecrow could become a pet defender for your farm.  Something else to assist with vermin and birds would be nice.  Or Blizzard could add the slave to the farm that Rez always talks about wanting on The Eviscerated Gaming Podcasts.


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