Gardening

In a dying world like Filgaia, one can expect that it is hard to find good places to grow life-sustaining crops. The situation is in fact so bad that the game's healing item (the Heal Berry) is not sold anywhere in the game aside from the Black Market. This requires the player to be very careful and very stingy with his supply of Berries, using them only when absolutely necessary.

But what if there was a place where we could grow these berries, along with the other curative vegetables and plants found throughout the game?

Fairly early into the game, you will be able to meet up with Florina at The Secret Garden. Take your horses to the area north of Midland Station and leap the chasm, then search around for The Secret Garden. Florina tells you that the soil here is dying due to an evil presence nearby (she also gives you 10 Heal Berries). Head to the Decaying Labyrinth dungeon and complete it (click HERE for a walkthrough of the dungeon), then talk to Florina again. You will now be able to garden; meaning, you will be able to plant various healing items here, and eventually harvest more.

Gardening is a little tricky to get the hang of, so let's start from the top. You can garden the following 8 items: Heal Berry, Potion Berry, Mega Berry, Revive Fruit, Holy Root, Tiny Flower, Mini Carrot, Full Carrot.

To begin, talk to Florina and choose "Gardening". You will see a screen with 8 boxes and some options. The boxes are flower beds; one for each item. To begin gardening with a specific item, first you must do the following:

Once you have completed this, you have basically began a "breeding ground" for that item that will stay for the entire game. Now that you have "sowed" the item, you can select "Breeding" from the options. Here, you can select an item from the 8 available types and sacrifice one of the ones currently in your possession to "breed" with the seedling of the same type. This increases the harvesting ratio of that particular seedling by 1%. The ratio will be explained later.

To actually obtain more items, select Harvest. However, you will need to let some time pass first to allow the plants to grow. The plants grow by a hidden in-game timer called the Counter Point System. Basically, that means each plant type has a certain amount of Counter Points that it must accumulate before you will obtain one of that item. Here are the amounts of Counter Points needed to grow one of each item:

Item Name:	Points Needed:
Heal Berry:	25 Points
Tiny Flower:	25 Points
Revive Fruit:	25 Points
Potion Berry:	50 Points
Holy Root:	50 Points
Mini Carrot:	50 Points
Full Carrot:	100 Points
Mega Berry:	100 Points

And here is how Counter Points are accumulated.

Event:	Points Added:
Each minute of gameplay	1 Point
Talking with NPCs in a town	1 Point
A battle	5 Points
Staying at an Inn to recover HP	20 Points
Completion of an in-game event that follows the walkthrough (such as completing a dungeon and getting the clue that leads you to the next dungeon)	all seedlings accumulate enough points to grow one item

Understand? This basically means that, for example, we want a Heal Berry to grow. We would have to gain 25 Counter Points (the Counter Point cost for a Heal Berry) for one to grow, then come back and harvest to get it. We could get these points by staying at the Inn once, then talking to people 5 times, or fighting 5 battles, or whatever your fancy. The best and absolute fastest way to do this is to stay at Gallows' room in Baskar Village over and over again.

Now you may be thinking that this sounds too good to be true. It is, unfortunately. You see, certain plants like Full Carrots and Tiny Flowers are harder to grow than Heal Berries and other low-level items. Each of the 8 gardening items has a Harvest Ratio that they begin with, and this ratio determines the probability that an item will grow after the seedling of its type reaches the needed Counter Point total. Here are the Harvesting Ratios for each item:

Item Name:	Starting Ratio:
Heal Berry:	70%
Revive Fruit:	60%
Potion Berry:	50%
Holy Root:	40%
Mega Berry:	30%
Mini Carrot:	20%
Full Carrot:	10%
Tiny Flower:	5%

Meaning, for example, for every 100 Counter Points we rack up, we have a 10% chance of growing a Full Carrot for use.

Eep. Yes, I know that some of them are very low. The only way to get these numbers up is to Breed with the corresponding items in your inventory. You will also have to Harvest items that you grow, and then breed them back to the seedling to get the precentages up to respectable numbers. It should be very easy to do this for Heal Berries and Revive Fruits, but some items such as Tiny Flowers and Full Carrots are so rare in-game that you will have to invest a lot of time into gardening, constantly staying at the Baskar Inn, then checking up on your crops so that you can harvest.