Wild Plants
Three types of wild plants grow in and around your forest. Each has its own season and spawn behaviour. Citizens can see and walk to them — they're physical entities in the world, not abstract yield calculations.
| Plant | When it appears | Yield per pick | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berries | Spring and summer | 4 berries | Spawn near trees, 18% per eligible cell. Die off at winter. Take a few days to mature from sprout. |
| Herbs | Spring and summer | 3 herbs | Slower spawning (7% per cell) but a steadier supply through the growing season. Also die at winter. |
| Mushrooms | After rain, any season | 4 mushrooms | Spawn only after a rain event ends (up to 200 per rain). Instant-mature. Last 5 days then naturally despawn — they survive winter if they appeared before it started. |
Plants go through growth stages — sprout, growing, mature — before they can be picked. Foragers skip immature plants and come back once they're ready. Mushrooms are the exception: they spawn fully mature.
Wild plants and trees compete for the same forest cells. A cell with a plant won't sprout a new tree, and a tree cell won't grow a plant. This creates a natural balance — a dense forest gradually fills with plants; a well-managed forest with open cells creates more space for both.
The Forager Building
The Forager's Hut employs workers whose job is to walk to nearby wild plants, harvest them, and leave the yield as a ground item for haulers to collect. The forager's work radius determines how far they'll travel to find plants — the Forager Trails upgrade increases this radius.
Foragers work best when the forest is dense and well-seeded. A settlement that has clear-cut all nearby trees will find foragers returning empty-handed. Maintain a healthy forest and foragers remain a reliable food source throughout the game.
The Wild Harvesting upgrade at the Forager's Hut increases yield per pick by 30%.
The Mark Wild Foods Tool
The Mark Wild Foods tool lets you drag-paint any wild plants you want gathered quickly. When a plant is marked:
- Any idle citizen — not just foragers — will go collect it in their free time
- The marked plant shows a small amber disc above it on the ground
- The marking persists across seasons and saves with your game
This is useful when you want a specific patch gathered urgently (such as a cluster of herbs before winter), or when you don't have a Forager building yet but want to use idle workers to collect food.
Seasonal Overview
| Season | What's available |
|---|---|
| Spring | Berries and herbs begin spawning. Plants start as sprouts and mature over several days. |
| Summer | Peak foraging season. Berries and herbs at maximum density. Mushrooms appear after summer rains. |
| Autumn | Berries and herbs begin dying off; any remaining are lost when winter starts. |
| Winter | No new berries or herbs. Mushrooms spawned before winter survive their natural 5-day lifespan. |
Tips
- Protect your forest. Wild plant spawn rate depends on having trees nearby. Cutting every tree in the vicinity eliminates foraging in that area.
- Mushrooms are seasonal windfalls. A heavy rain in summer can spawn up to 200 mushrooms at once. Keep your forager busy to collect them before they despawn after 5 days.
- Use the Mark tool for herbs. Herbs from the forest feed the herbalist chain. Marking a herb patch means any available citizen collects it, not just foragers.
- Foraging works alongside farming. In the early game before farms are established, foraging provides the vegetable food group that helps with the food variety bonus.