Resources > Wheat

Wheat

We originally knew of wheat indirectly, from an option to add it to a grain oven, though it did not exist in Egypt. On June 8, 2007, a trader named Falaha who spoke in a different language introduced wheat into Egypt, trading different strains for various herbs. Currently this trader is the only primary source of new wheat strains.

You can get some secondary seeds from a chest by the Essence of Harmony in Seven Lakes; please limit yourself to 2 seeds per strain and replace them when you grow them.

What we know

We know that different strains grow during different seasons, and that it can be loaded into a greenhouse for crossbreeding and Mutagenics.

Wheat can currently only be dried by dropping it and waiting a few seconds. The drying time appears to be 60 seconds + 5 seconds/grain. This is 2 minutes for 10, 10 minutes for 100. When Shemu Wheat:Druze is dried, it loses its name and becomes Wheat (Dried, Raw), which can be used as a cooking ingredient.

Extract from recent logs
2007-08-27 16:31:34 Apophis here. I have just made some substantial changes in the code involved in drying things in the drying racks and flax hammocks.
2007-08-27 16:32:50 First of all, all durations for drying things in the flax hammocks have changed to be similar to that of grass, in that the duration required is now a function of quantity - drying 1 wet linen now takes a fourth of the time as drying four wet linen. This applies to papyrus, grass, linen, flax, and wheat.
2007-08-27 16:33:34 Also, you can now dry wheat in both the flax hammock and drying rack.
2007-08-27 16:34:52 Finally, the graphics for wheat have changed. Wheat now appears as grass, except larger. This should give you a graphical indication of when wheat has dried properly, so that repeated click to checks will not be necessary.

Wheat (Dried, Raw) can be put into the grain oven and cooked to Wheat (Light Roasted), Wheat (Medium Roasted), Wheat (Dark Roasted), or Wheat (Burnt) similar to barley and malt. The various roasts, as well as Wheat (Dried, Raw), are usable in cooking as foodstuffs, and their cooking coordinates have been uploaded to the cooking reference chart.

For cooking folks: the current wheat potencies are above 7000, which would normally indicate an additive, but it's very likely that wheat will be used as a base or, interestingly, as a multiple unit additive to plump up the durations, so the potency will rapidly drop to the 2500 range that is typical for Barley and Malt.

Given new Herb potencies being around 27,000, when testing new ingredients it is easy to determine which are to be bases and which are to be additives, and wheat is of course meant to be a base and given the strength of the new herbs, will be almost pointless as an additive - Tactician

Growing Wheat

Caution: do not attempt to grow wheat in an unconfirmed/incorrect type of terrain unless you have multiple grains to spare; you will not get anything back.

Once planted in the proper terrain, wheat behaves like a cross between barley and flax. The only menu options seen at any point after planting are watering and harvesting. It is too early to know how to best grow it beyond what sort of terrain to use.

Some observations:

• The option to water comes up about 28 seconds (every 7 timesteps) after the last watering. If you wait too long (over 5 timesteps) to water after the option shows up, the wheat bed will disappear, leaving you with nothing.
  • Some of the wheat stalks will vanish at the same time the option to water becomes available.
  • Only water is required to grow wheat.
  • You can water with the W hotkey, if you don't want to use the menu.
  • You don't have to water every cycle; the wheat seems to recover completely if you water at any time during the 5*28=290s watering cycle.
  • Watering seems to be independent of weed growth and wheat yield, but the tests are by no means definitive.
• There are 7 types of weeds that either grow or disappear every timestep of about 4 seconds.
  • Only one weed appears/disappears per timestep.
• There is no current option for using fertilizer or weed killer, but perhaps crossbreeding/mutagenics will lead to wheat strains that are resistant to weeds and/or have greater yields or shorter growth cycles.
• The Wheat bed has ownership and DPRA menu options, but there's no known way to extend the unwatered life of the bed beyond 3 minutes.
• A Harvest option will appear whenever there are no weeds, and at that point you have 4 seconds to accomplish the harvest. Use the 'H' hotkey to avoid missing the chance. If you do not harvest in time, the bed continues its weed cycle.
  • Is this positive? Are there any invisible weeds? While growing Druze I frequently see the bed go weedless without getting the harvest option. I've had this happen up to 7 times on one bed before... eventually, the bed did harvest. -Numaris
    • Lag is a very important consideration when harvesting Wheat. The important factor is not what you did, but rather whether the server found out about your intention before the 4 second timer expired. If your Harvest hotkey is just barely in time, or worse if you're waiting for a menu to pop up and then trying to respond, it will seem that there is some sort of invisible weed, simply because you missed the 4 second window. - MarvL
      • While I can't rule that out completely, my connection tends to be pretty good, and a 4 second lag with that kind of frequency would be extremely unlikely, especially since I live in a very low-populated area. More likely I'm having an issue displaying some of the weeds, as noted by someone below. -Numaris
        • Some people's computers cannot display some of the weed varieties (I've counted seven different weeds) so some people may experience invisible weed syndrome.
          • I see the following 7 kinds of weeds: fluffy white; almost identical fluffy off-white; tall red-orange; big orange blossoms; stemmy thing with orange buds (shown in picture above); purple (shown in picture above); short green. This is with a Windows XP computer with an nVidia graphics card, so if you can see these 7, I doubt you're missing any. Additionally, remember that it only has to be 2 second lag, not 4... first the server tells you that the wheat is ready to harvest, then you tell the server to harvest it. Add in the time for the graphic to be redrawn and your and your computer's reaction time, and you might need as little as 1.5 second lag to miss harvesting. - Nefer-Bast
• The popup menu does not automatically update. You're better off looking directly at the wheat bed, and counting the types of weeds.
  • Only one type of weed comes or goes every 4 seconds, so if 5 kinds of weeds are showing, you have at least 20 seconds before you can possibly harvest the bed.
  • Conversely, if you only have one type of weed showing, there's a 50/50 chance that the next cycle will be weed free, and available for harvet.
• Yield increases with the number of beds in the vicinity. Reports of individual beds yielding in excess of 600 have come from Rosalyn and Sqatsi.
• Abacua appears to yield better than Druze.
• It may be possible to deplete an area through repeated growing.
• Sometimes even if you harvest, you get no yield, only a message saying "For some reason, the wheat stalks were weak, and no good grain could be harvested." The frequency of this occuring may be related to some sort of pollution.

Known Strains

Name	Season for Growing	Terrain for Growing	Source
Abacua	Shemu	Clay that is "not too sooty" (confirmed on clay near a raeli oven Ecology test for soot on that area returned "soot 0.")	Event character
Druze	Shemu	Grass and Dirt (yes, both confirmed)	Event character
Wicca	Shemu	sand	Tournament
Druze	Peret	Grass
Santeria	Peret	Dirt or sand, according to event character	Event character
Wicca	Peret	Sand
dedenav#161	Akhet	Sand	crossbred
Wicca	Akhet	Sand	Cooking event
Macumba	Akhet	Dirt	Yokir Tournament
Sanabest Wheat	Akhet	Grass and Sand (yes, both) - dirt and clay not tested	crossbred?

Wheat Research

Wheat Solvent Findings