Guilds/Twisted Thistle/Basics

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Thistles are arguably one of the most complex plants one can cultivate in Egypt. However, once the would be thistle farmer has understood the mechanism behind how they work, they are no harder than any of the other advanced skills in the game. And since they can be macroed, they are probably even less so. This wiki page here is the first part of a guide aiming to cover all aspects of thistles - both the theoretical base and the know-how for putting this knowledge to practical use. In the current session we will

• Read through the small text on the label your garden came with (all Thistle Gardens in game have an option to read this, so if you have already done so, you can skip this part).
• Learn about how the egyptian date and time can affect thistle growing.
• Master the basics of using a garden without any external help (ThistleSim, Talos' Thistle Tool, or Veggietales). These external tools will be discussed in other sections of the guide with particular focus on ThistleSim.

Small text on the back of a thistle garden

Thistle Gardens provide the following information on thistles by selecting "Info: Read about Thistle Gardens" from the menu:

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Thistle is a weed that is impossible to kill: if you plant it, it will grow. Thistle is edible to many insects and animals, and it can contain a surprising variety of vitamins. The amount of vitamins produced depends on how the thistle was cared for.

The readout shows five nutrients. You can adjust these directly by pushing the appropriate button. They are:

• Nit (nitrogen, a nutrient, from dung)
• Pot (potassium, a nutrient, from saltpeter)
• H20 (water, a nutrient, applied directly)
• Oxy (oxygen, a nutrient, from aerating the soil)
• Sun (sunlight, a nutrient, controlled using the canopy)

The readout also shows seven vitamins:

• Asc (ascorbin, a vitamin)
• Bio (biotin, a vitamin)
• Car (carotine, a vitamin)
• Fol (folin, a vitamin)
• Nia (niacin, a vitamin)
• Pyr (pyroxidine, a vitamin)
• Thi (thiamine, a vitamin)

As it grows, the thistle converts nitrogen or potassium into vitamins, and it converts vitamins into other vitamins. For example:

• If H20 is high enough, thistle converts Nit to Asc.
• If Sun is low enough, thistle converts Asc to Car.
• If Oxy is high enough, thistle converts Car to Asc.

It will take experimentation to learn all the things that thistle can convert. Once you know what it can convert, and under what conditions, you can encourage it to produce the vitamins you need.

Thistle is affected by day-to-day weather variation. On certain days, thistle just won't do certain conversions. Each morning, you will have to test the thistle to see which conversions it will do, and make your plans accordingly. Active conversions change at Midnight.

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Aspects of Nature

First let us establish the main forces driving what can be done with the Thistle Garden and why would you want to grow Thistles in the first place.

Flora and Fauna

• Unlike many of the other plants in Egypt, thistle is not threatened by weeds. Truth be told, it can look a lot like a weed itself, and is known as such in the majority of the known world (it is called a weed even on the garden itself). It is quite likely that it is powerful enough to drive all the other weeds away on its own from the garden. Additionally it does not require any plants near it to be able to grow, and the garden can even be built out in the desert.

Like all other plants, thistle requires water, so make sure not to build your gardens too far from the waterfront (best case: you should be able to fill Jugs while standing next to your Gardens).

• The info text on gardens warns that thistle is edible to many insects and animals. Do not fear though, no wild beetles will ever want to eat it. Nor even any of the other exotic animals you might meet on your travels. Wild sheep are also known to blatantly ignore Thistle Gardens while peacefully grazing next to them.

• By utilizng the latest technology and building a Modern Sheep Farm, you will be able to make the ever-so-reluctant sheep WANT to eat thistles. They get picky though, and require two specific vitamins (varies) out of the thistle being fed to them. Otherwise they simply will not accept it, and their smarmy looks can even make a poor egyptian regret building the farm in the first place! After all, sheep can also be grown in a regular Sheep Pen and just fed Onions.

• The only other creature known to feed on thistles are insects known as Silkworms. Silkworms are exotic creatures imported from distant lands and thus are kept confined in a case made of Sheet Glass at all times (Silkworm Farm). Wild silkworms are yet to be seen in Egypt, but the ones we have provide us with the ever so precious Silk. Silk Cloth can be used to create many wonders, including ribbons for Festivals, gliders for the Test of Flight, or even the majestic Airships. All of this makes silk a very desired commodity, however, the worms only eat thistles, and are even pickier than sheep about the requirements. In fact, the thistle output has 7 different vitamins (abbreviated as A, B, C, F, N, P and T), and worms set a requirement for the amounts of 4 out of these 7 in their food. This is the main reason to grow thistles, but it can also make it rather difficult at times! Silk is considered very valuable and is nearly always in demand, thus resulting in many trades involving it as well.

The Day-Night Cycle

While thistles are not really affected by the Egyptian flora and fauna, they do get affected by nature a lot. In the figure below (Figure 1) you will see the same garden showing 3 different sun values ( The sunlight available for thistle growing is measured in values ranging from 0 to 99). Note the time of day lighting. On the first two gardens, the Sun is up high (it's around 1 pm) and with the canopy open, it's at its maximum value of 99. When the canopy is closed, it limits the available sunlight to 1/3 of 99 = 33. And at night, when there is no sun around to light our path, the sun will always be 0, no matter what.

Figure 1. Sun and Thistles.

• When growing thistles it is important to know what time of day it is, since thistle recipes for the given thistle type tend to work either during daytime, or during night hours, but not both.
• You can see the time of day from a small window on top of your screen. The time that the garden follows is Egypt time, not the one your clock is showing. If you don't have the small window showing the date, time, and your current coordinates, you can make it appear by using the following command (type it in chat and hit enter):
  

/clockloc
On the following figure (Figure 2) you will find an approximate sketch showing when you can safely use which recipes.

Figure 2. The Egyptian Sun.

• During dusk and dawn the Sun value is constantly changing, making it insanely difficult to get any working recipes with predictable results.
• On the figure (Figure 2), the growing times for night are provided with the assumption that the canopy is closed. With canopy open, night recipes work from around 6 pm to 6 am. The reason for this large difference is that "night time" requires very low sun values, and they come by much faster when the sun is limited to 1/3.
• Hint: you might want to start your garden an egypt-minute later than the time indicated on the figure, just to be sure.

The Egyptian Weather

• The label on your garden warns against changes in the egyptian weather. Apparently thistles are extremely sensitive to changes not noticable by anyone else (with the possible exception of godly beings such as the almighty Pharaoh). Do not bother looking for these changes yourself, as in the egyptian (generally) dry and arid climate they are really difficult to detect. Intriguingly snowstorms, while known to happen once every 3 egypt years or so, do not have any apparent effect on thistles.
• In the process of growing, thistles convert vitamins around between seven types. Every time the weather changes, it is highly likely that some of them will not work until the next weather change. Because "conversions that do not work this time around" is too long to type, a new term has been invented for these. And this terms is:
  
  VOIDS
  
  
• The stress inflicted by changes in the weather appears to accumulate over time so that in reality, thistles change their voids once a week. Each week lasts 7 Egypt days, and every week on Monday morning at 00:00 the thistle voids change. This is the same time Ants change their leaf preferences (probably also due to weather), so it's a more or less safe bet than when someone announces the new leaf type, thistle voids will have changed as well.
• Practically speaking, all Thistle recipes need to be remade every Egypt week since the old ones will highly likely stop producing the required thistles.

Using the garden

What materials do I need for growing thistles?

To make use of a Thistle Garden, you might want to have the following items in your inventory:

• Thistle Seeds - one required per garden run. No way around it, but unless you specifically tell the garden to abort the run, you will get back 2 seeds out of the 1 you spent. Note that when using batch mode on an upgraded thistle garden, you will need more seeds than one.
  • 1 Seed = 5 Thistles, 2 Seed yield (Same as a garden that has not been upgraded)
  • 5 Seeds = 25 Thistles, 10 Seed yield
  • 10 Seeds = 50 Thistles, 20 Seed yield
• Water in Jugs - optional, but strongly suggested to have plenty. Even if you have a water source next to the garden, make sure you have at least 20 jugs per garden, for convenience.
• Dung - optional. When starting out, you might use this a lot, but with some practice, nearly any type of thistle can be grown without it.
• Saltpeter - optional. When starting out, you might use this a lot, but with some practice, nearly any type of thistle can be grown without it.

OK, I planted a seed. What now?

• Once you plant the seed(s), you will first see a row of numbers appear showing that you have 50 Nit, 50 Pot, 50 H2O, 50 Oxy, and an amount of Sun in the garden.
  • New rows of numbers start appearing one by one. These rows are labeled 0-40. When the last row (40) gets displayed, the thistles are ready to harvest.
  • It takes the garden 10 TeppySeconds to display a new row in the garden, and to complete the batch (40 Ticks), it takes around 8 minutes.
  • We call the time from the displaying of one row to another a TICK.
  • Each tick the numbers on the left side of the garden all decrease by 10.
  • Each tick the numbers on the right side of the garden will change depending on what amounts of nutrients were present on the last displayed row.
  • Each tick you can click on buttons that are located on top of the rows getting displayed. The first four buttons are for adding items to the garden, the last button is for opening and closing the canopy. Refer to the info text on the garden for more details on the readout.
• Things to keep in mind when adding things to garden:
  • These materials get used when clicking on buttons:
    1. When you click on a button to add Nit or Pot, the garden will take 1 deben of Dung or Saltpeter from your inventory, respectively (more when using batch mode of the garden)
    2. When you click to add H2O, one Water in Jugs is emptied in your inventory (more when using batch mode).
    3. When you click to add Oxy, nothing is taken from your inventory, it is free.
    4. When you click on the Sun button, nothing is added, but the canopy is either opened or closed, switching between two different Sun values.
       • Sun value with canopy closed is ALWAYS 1/3 of the value with canopy open.
  • When you ADD Nit, Pot, oxygen or water, their amount in the garden is increased by 20. This gets shown on the last row that was displayed before you clicked. Same goes for changes in the Sun value - the changes get reflected on the last row already shown in the garden.
  • The maximum amount of ANYTHING in the garden is capped at 99. This means the following:
    1. IF the garden has 79 or less of a nutrient, adding it once will increase the value in garden by 20
    2. IF the garden has MORE than 79 of a nutrient, adding it once will increase the value in garden to 99. You will still lose the item from your inventory.
    3. IF the garden has 99 of a nutrient already inside it, clicking the button will simply make your inventory lighter...

• Once the garden reaches Tick 40, no further changes occur in the garden until you harvest the thistle, at which point you can plant a new one.

So I just made 5 thistle. How do I know it matches what the silkworms want?

• View the thistle you just made in your inventory. Note that it has an odd-looking code after it's name. Something like Thistle:A-B~C-F+N-P~T+
• This code is the 7 properties of the thistle you just made. Each of the letters corresponds to one of the vitamins on the readout of the right side of the garden at Tick 40 (When you harvested the thistle). So the aforementioned A-B~C-F+N-P~T+ would translate as:
  • A low amount of Ascorbin (Asc)
  • An average amount of Biotin (Bio)
  • A low amount of Carotine (Car)
  • A high amount of Folin (Fol)
  • A low amount of Niacin (Nia)
  • An average amount of Pyroxidine (Pyr)
  • A high amount of Thiamine (Thi)

• Silkworms always require 4 of these 7 vitamins in specific ranges, either low, average, or high. When feeding the worms, only these 4 will matter, the worms won't care about what values the other 3 vitamins have. So if they ask for "Thistle that is low in Ascorbin, Average in Biotin, Low in Carotine and High in Folin" then A-B~C-F+ is the requirement, and they don't particularly care whether the thistle is A-B~C-F+N-P~T+ or A-B~C-F+N~P-T-

• The ranges are defined based on the output as follows:

-	Low	≤ 20
~	Average	> 20, < 80
+	High	≥ 80

This means that if you have for an example 0 Asc, 50 Bio, 10 Car, and 89 Fol in the garden by Tick 40, you will have a thistle that matches the requirement A-B~C-F+

Growing Tips

• You might want to note down what you do in garden, or take screenshots. When you run the garden in the exact same way at similar time of day (day/night) you will likely get the same results, at least for the next day or two.
  
  
• The garden converts Nit and Pot into vitamins, and vitamins into other vitamins. In fact, Nit and Pot are not used for anything else, they are pure inputs and as such, basically simply materials.
  
  
• Water, Oxygen, and Sun are not used up to produce anything (H2O and oxy still decrease by 10 each tick though). What they do is determine what can be done in the garden - the conversions happening in the garden tend to require them to be in a certain range in order to work. So if you see something useful happen at 80 water and it disappears at 60 water, it might be a good idea to add more water to the garden to see this again.
  
  
• No Asc at night... most of the time. It is very rare to get anything other than A- for Asc at night time.
  
  
• No way to get rid of Bio! This means that there is nothing in the garden that would be able to reduce it's amount if it's already there. If you want low Bio, better avoid making it in the first place (often difficult).

Checklist

...or what you should do for practice while/after reading the guide

• Have access to a thistle garden, preferrably near water.
• Have some thistle seeds, Water in Jugs, Dung and Saltpeter in your inventory
• Read the info text on the garden
• Plant a seed and watch the numbers change.
• Plant a seed again, click some buttons, and see the numbers progress differently than before.
• Practice growing the thistles to make yourself comfortable with the garden.
• Visit Cegaiel's Thistle Calendar at http://atitd.sharpnetwork.net/calendar.asp
• Optional: Sign up for the Twisted Thistle guild in River Plains
• Optional: Get confused over why things in the garden get converted into other things the way they do.
  
  • Come back to the wiki and look for more guides about thistles. These will have the conversions and mechanisms explained more in detail, while this guide here was to familiarize you with the garden itself. It is fun to play with on it's own, but if you want to really finetune a recipe, more indepth knowledge will be required. Note that the whole process can be macroed with VeggieTales using Hanid's guide.

Thank you for reading and come back soon for more guides!