The Dragonwilds Farming Toolkit: Compost, Cans, Secateurs and Plant Cure
Fully hydrating a Dragonwilds farming plot takes 50 units of water. Fully fertilising one takes 50 units of compost. Those two numbers set the whole toolkit: how many plots a watering can covers, how many a compost bucket covers, and how often you walk back to the well.
And two of these tools do more than save time. Super compost multiplies yield by 1.75 and cuts disease chance to 25%; iron secateurs add a flat 25% to every harvest — but only if you harvest the right way.
The Four Watering Cans
| Can | Bench | Capacity | Rate per action | Plots per fill |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden | Crafting table | 200 (see note) | 10 | 4 |
| Bronze | Blacksmith's bench | 250 | 25 | 5 |
| Steel | Blacksmith's bench | 300 | — | 6 |
| Adamant | Blacksmith's bench | 300 | — | 6 |
A note on the wooden can's capacity. The wiki's own page disagrees with itself: the item description reads 0/100, while the page text says a capacity of 200. We have used 200 above because that is the stated figure, but treat the wooden can as the one number in this article worth checking in-game — at 100 it covers two plots per fill, not four.
The rate matters as much as the capacity. At 10 per action the wooden can needs five actions to hydrate one plot; the bronze can's 25 per action needs two. That is a bigger practical difference than the 50-unit capacity gap between them.
One rule applies to all four: a can holds either dirty water or clean water, never both, and once filled it cannot take the other type until it is emptied. You can empty it at any time and refill.
You cannot pour items into a can. The physical dirty water and clean water items will not fill it — the can must be filled at a source: a body of water, a rain catcher, a well, a water barrel or a large water barrel.
Compost and Super Compost
| Compost | Super compost | |
|---|---|---|
| Made in | Compost bin | Super compost bin |
| Bin unlocked at | Farming 10 | Farming 60 |
| Farming XP on use | 10 | 50 |
| Disease rate | Reduced to 50% | Reduced to 25% |
| Yield multiplier | ×1.5 | ×1.75 |
Both are collected with the compost bucket, which holds 150 units — and since a plot takes 50 units to fully fertilise at 10 per application, one full bucket does three plots.
The compost bin takes almost anything. Burnt food, vegetables and other plant matter go in, and it takes five seconds to convert one item into compost. The super compost bin is fussy: it accepts only yew logs, willow logs, watermelon, pumpkin, cadavaberries, dried cadavaberries, undead bone, undead meat, hollow bark, irit, corpse cotton and raw giant krill — and explicitly not cauterised undead steak.
Note what that list implies. Willow and yew logs are compost feedstock, which is worth knowing before you burn every log you own into charcoal.
You cannot destroy a compost bin with compost still inside it, so empty it before you rearrange your base.
Secateurs and Plant Cure
Iron secateurs are the quietest 25% in the game — and the easiest to waste.
| Field | Detail |
|---|---|
| Recipe unlocked at | Farming 42 |
| Made at | Blacksmith's bench |
| Materials | 2 Iron Bars, 2 Padded Cloth |
| Repair cost | 1 iron bar |
| Effect | +25% yield on fully grown plants |
The catch is in how you harvest. The bonus applies when you are wielding the secateurs and using the left-click Harvest option on the crop. It does not apply when the Uproot spell is used — even with the secateurs equipped.
That is a real trap for anyone with the Magic tree open. Uproot is faster and clears the plot, and it silently costs you a quarter of the harvest.
Plant cure is the other odd one out:
- It cures diseased plants and gives 2 Farming XP on use.
- It is made from 2 Weeds, 1 Animal Bone and 1 Clean Water.
- It is made at a stone range or cooking range — not the brewing cauldron, unlike every other potion.
- The recipe is learned at Farming 3, and you must interact with a stone range first for it to appear.
Weeds are an ingredient, not just a nuisance. The things your spade clears out of a plot are the thing that cures the next plot.
Putting It Together
The toolkit unlocks in a clear order, and each step is worth taking as it arrives:
- Farming 3 — Plant cure. Interact with a stone range, then make it from weeds you already have.
- Farming 10 — Compost bin and compost bucket. ×1.5 yield and half the disease rate, from rubbish.
- Farming 42 — Iron secateurs. +25% on every hand-harvest, and repairable for one iron bar.
- Farming 60 — Super compost bin. ×1.75 yield, a quarter of the disease rate, and five times the XP per application.
Stack them deliberately. Super compost and secateurs are multiplicative on separate steps — the compost improves what the plant produces, the secateurs improve what you take off it.
And keep one can per farmer. On a shared world, the bottleneck is rarely the plots; it is four people queueing at one well with one can between them.
Running your own Dragonwilds server
Farming is the slowest loop in Dragonwilds and the one most obviously worth splitting between people — which only works if the plots are still growing when the next person logs in. A gamever Dragonwilds server keeps Ashenfall persistent with automatic updates and one-click backups.
Conclusion
A Dragonwilds plot takes 50 units of water and 50 units of compost to fill, which sets every other number in the toolkit. The four watering cans run 200 / 250 / 300 / 300 in capacity — four, five, six and six plots per fill — though the wooden can's own item description says 100, contradicting its page, and is the one figure here worth checking in-game. Rate matters too: 10 per action means five actions per plot; bronze's 25 means two. Cans hold either clean or dirty water, never both, and can only be filled at a source, never from the item. Compost gives ×1.5 yield, 50% disease and 10 XP; super compost gives ×1.75, 25% and 50 XP, with the compost bucket's 150 units covering three plots; the super bin's ingredient list is short and includes willow and yew logs. Iron secateurs at Farming 42 add 25% to hand-harvests but do nothing when you use Uproot — the single easiest way to lose a quarter of your crop. And plant cure is made at a stone or cooking range, not the brewing cauldron, from weeds, an animal bone and clean water.
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