I basically ended up making a farm in the Plains with a couple Workbenches to keep spawns out, raised earthen wall, with some Stone Wall on top of it. Deathsquitos still get in occasionally while planting, but they're easy to deal with. I assume another layer of Stone Wall would stop them entirely, but I've only had like.. two? intrude while planting 200+ crops.

As far as I know, I'm done with Flax now that I've crafted the Padded set, upgraded it fully, as well as the Blackmetal items I wanted. (Axe, Porcupine..)

On that note, I tried out the Blackmetal Atgeir for harvesting (secondary attack) and noticed it has a pitiful range compared to the Iron Sledge.. so I tossed it in a chest and still use my Sledge. Wish there was a Blackmetal equivalent to the Iron Sledge; it'd be a worthy upgrade. "Blackmetal War Maul" could be made to be really neat.

But anyway, the left side of my farm is a handful of singular square plots where I put the Flax, since I could use the corner-to-corner-fill-in-the-blanks method just fine. The right side is just one giant long plot that I just walk down now planting Barley as I go. If I manage to keep my angle well enough I can fit over 150 in there, and that's given me almost enough to fill up a Blackmetal Chest with Barley Flour.. which I hope is enough to keep the food supply going for a while.

I was more or less annoyed that the above method that I used for every other crop didn't work too well with Barley due to its large size versus the other crops, and was curious what everyone else did to plant theirs.

Thanks for all the input, everyone!

Now I just have to move out of the Plains I'm in as I've fully plundered it, and find another.. collecting Tar is kind of annoying, but the end result will be a really sweet base if I can find a suitable location. (Plains is actually surprisingly peaceful for the current end-tier biome)

The other Plains I found (quite a large one, too) bumps up on now-empty Mistlands, so.. maybe there if the terrain is forgiving enough when it comes to leveling it out. Or maybe the new Plains itself since it's quite large and I'd need to continue farming at least Barley anyway.

Still gotta take on Yagluth, but.. gotta go back to my Mountains base and fully upgrade the Silver Sword I've got sitting in there and then train my Sword skill to at least the 60s.. gonna take a while, hah.

Originally posted by Requimatic:

-snip-

A good way to train your weapon skills up quickly is to just stay in the plains and raise tamed lox. When they are tamed they dont fight back. Just hack at a lox for a while on high stamina foods with a bronze sword.

Works for every weapon type. They have a large pool of health and when they are almost dead just feed them a piece of barley or cloud berry to regenerate their health and move onto the next lox and train on that one. They're the game's best punching bags.

Just be sure to turn off friendly fire and you'll be able to abuse them to your hearts content.

I plant looking down at a 45*angle lining my left shoulder to a wall,fence,ect.
the plants seem to space themselves with no issues.
works with all plants and I plant large areas 200 plus plants

I've only gotten it to grow in the Plains, and once I have a sturdy stone wall I start planting. Make a rectangular farm plot, then start at one corner. Plop it down, take three steps backwards, and then plop another. And three steps, plop, three steps, all the way to the edge. Two steps over and then repeat the process. Usually works pretty good and I always wait a minute before starting a new line, just in case it's too close. The barley turns dead looking, so you know right away if you did it wrong. Sometimes you need an extra step, or even just a half step.

It doesn't hurt to have a separate farm area with it's own workbench and walls, just to get that little bit extra space. It can be a pain to set up another stonecutter, but if you want the barley in bulk, that's the way to get it done. Just make sure to step up a nice flat area to plant in, cause hills and rocks really mess up your flow.

A good trick to planting is to place down those wood stake walls that you get early on.

Set them up in a straight line and then another 90 degree straight line to the left or right.

Use those stakes to measure your first row of barley/flax and then use the other one you placed to measure your columns of barley/flax. And once you have the measurements just work from there as you know how far apart to place them.

Make it even easier for your self to measure. Use some coal and wood. Place signs along the logs and give them a letter going one direction and a number going another. And use that to figure it out from there. And in doing this you will have built your self a reliable measuring tool. Afiak it is every 2 logs. So plant a flax/barley skip 2 logs and plant another one.

Originally posted by thomas-froehling:

Originally posted by Tharkkun:

They grow really well in the Black Forest. I learned that.

Who is the "they" in that? Barley does only grow in the plains, as far as I know...
And my Lox never ever mated in the Meadows....

I made a lox breeder in meadows and it works fine.

Originally posted by Tharkkun:

They grow really well in the Black Forest. I learned that.

Man , barley ONLY grows in plains biome , why that missinformation ?

Originally posted by Tharkkun:

They grow really well in the Black Forest. I learned that.

Who is the "they" in that? Barley does only grow in the plains, as far as I know...
And my Lox never ever mated in the Meadows....

To your planitng issues: I try to plant them when it's really windy, so that the neighboring plant bents a lot; if the plant to be set would touch its neighbor, it is a bit too close, otherwise it's just fine.

Originally posted by GunsForBucks:

Just plant them normally.
I walk forward looking down at about a 45 angle in front. Plant with a regular pace.

As long as I walk straight lines it all works out fine... I hardly pay attention to each individual plant.

That's basically what I started doing. I haven't had one "need more room" yet, although I did get one too close to a chest so I had to kick it down.

Thankfully, even though the Plains I'm currently in is rather tiny, I got lucky with a Yagluth stone, 4/5 Totems to summon Yagluth, two villages, and like 5 tar pits (3 of which are connected to one another.. haven't tried to get too close to that yet though).

I got lucky enough with Barley and Flax that I no longer need Flax (I think?), and now I'm just farming Barley for taming a Lox and cooking food.

They grow really well in the Black Forest. I learned that.

Personally stagger them. Like a checkerboard.

Just plant them normally.
I walk forward looking down at about a 45 angle in front. Plant with a regular pace.

As long as I walk straight lines it all works out fine... I hardly pay attention to each individual plant.

I usually plant walking backwards. Seems to hold a line better. Turn around sidestep, get it parallel and start walking backwards again. Also using the mouse wheel attack with the atgeir is an efficient method of harvesting (barley and flax) , you probably already knew that though.

Originally posted by Ryzilynt:

I usually plant walking backwards. Seems to hold a line better. Turn around sidestep, get it parallel and start walking backwards again. Also using the mouse wheel attack with the atgeir is an efficient method of harvesting (barley and flax) , you probably already knew that though.

Haha, yeah. I haven't made the Blackmetal Atgeir yet (only one I'm interested in really) as Flax is taking priority for Padded Armor and the Axe first, but I'll be amused when giving that a go.

As far as planting goes, though.. I really wish the developers would improve it a bit. I like it as it is, but there's too much room for error when planting even on cultivated ground to simply lose your crops. Such a thing can be devastating for folks with unlucky biomes that only end up with, say, 9 Turnip or Onion Seeds out of an entire biome.

I know there's a mod for that, but I sincerely hope they can squeeze in a Farming improvement or two in the Mistlands update. A simple "grid" that only showed up on cultivated ground would be enough; or even a crafted item that only fit on top of cultivated ground that provided a visual of where to plant.

Really, though, so far it's only Barley that's super annoying. I know the "center" of it is likely the same size as other crops as far as the game is concerned, but the visual of the plant itself makes it sort of difficult.