Once Human now introduces 3 new classes that you can pick when you launch the game. One of them is the Gardener class, who can create biomechanical plants to do their bidding. But, there is a lot more going on besides tending to the soil and creating new hybrids. Here, we will detail everything there is to know about the Gardener class in Once Human.
Gardener Class: Overview & Skills
The Gardener is a unique class that lets you manipulate plants and create hybrids that can be used in battle or otherwise. You can pick the Gardener class by either starting a new character, or by collecting Class Fragments through scenario challenges and exchanging them under the Free Person tab in the Memetics menu. Once you have unlocked the Gardener, you will get your starting equipment, which is the Greenhouse Core.
Gardener Skills Overview
Here we will briefly discuss the core skills and talents of the Gardener Class and how they function below.
Core Skill
- HP Sewing: Helps graft crops with other crops or other biomechanical parts.
Talents and Unique Equipment
- Environmental Expert: The Gardener comes equipped with the Environmental Detector. This helps them figure out the soil parameters to optimize crop growth.
- Portable Planting: Another unique structure that the Gardener class comes with is the Portable Planter Box. This can be used to store and process biomechanical plants.
- Greenhouse Core: Helps in managing irrigation and lighting of the crops, as well as perform grafting. This is the base where plants are prepared and used for grafting purposes.
Besides these skills, you can also utilize two unique items to help enhance the way you plant and grow your crops. While under this class, you can utilize the Grafting Catalysts and Soil Solution, and these items will help keep your plants and soil in check. With the Grafting Crystals, you can combine two random crops of any kind during the harvesting stages. The Soil Solution will help increase soil fertility, which further enhances crop growth rate.
How to Play the Gardener Class
The Gardener isn’t a combat-focused class, as they are mainly a support class that helps procure various crop hybrids for the Chef or the Beastmaster classes. You might find that the Gardener is highly beneficial during early game, as creating new crops for recipes will increase your chances of survival tenfold.
During late game, you can still enhance your grafting skills and learn how different crop combinations work. Ultimately, becoming a Gardener is a huge learning curve, where you have to constantly understand and discover the ins and outs of plant grafting to create new species for survival.
Tips and Tricks to play as a Gardener in Once Human
Playing as the Gardener can be intimidating from the start, since there is a lot to do but with less time at hand. Here are some tips you can try so you can enhance your gameplay experience under this class.
- Use the Environmental Detector when you are planning to move base, as this can help you determine the optimal soil fertility so you don’t have to craft several Soil Solutions to increase fertility.
- Utilize the Portable Planter to place your new biomechanical plants in it and use it while you are outside your territory. They can be resummoned back to your backpack by interacting with it.
- The Greenhouse Core will require boiling water in larger amounts, so unlock the Automatic Irrigation skill for the Gardener in the Memetics skill tree at the earliest.
- Once you have created your Biomechanical crops, you can place them around your base for added defense.
- Start scavenging for Detoxidents at the earliest to help you craft Grafting Catalysts. The best place to look for them is around hospitals.
- Be careful while interacting with the Disassembly Bench while you have your biomechanical parts in your inventory, as these will also show up in the Disassembly menu and will be lost forever if you are not careful.
Let’s now look at each of the four aspects in detail:
- Greenhouse Core
- Grafter
- Portable Planter Box
- Increasing Soil Fertility
Greenhouse Core Explained
The first readily available structure of the Gardener is the Greenhouse Core. You can place the Greenhouse Core anywhere within your territory, but it will require 15W to run. Craft and place a solar panel nearby to help it receive electricity. You will spot a parameter around the structure to place your planters and get the benefit from the Greenhouse Core.
While interacting with the Core, you will find two features. You can control the lighting and the irrigation that will be supplied to the planters. When it comes to fixing the irrigation time, you will find that it will require 10x boiled water per minute.
You can unlock the Automated Irrigation in level 4 of the Logistics skill tree in the Memetics menu. You can also unlock Grow Lights here to supply lighting automatically. This is the only way to automate your Greenhouse Core, but you will still need to create boiled water manually.
How to Graft Plants
When you interact with a fully grown crop, you will get three options: Grafting, Harvest, and Transplant. Picking the Grafting option will combine a suitable mechanical part with the crop at hand, or combine two crops together. A Grafting Success Rate will indicate how successful you are likely to be in obtaining a new combination.
Biomechanical parts drop from deviants and other enemies, and different deviants will drop different parts. Do note that any parts collected will be shown in your Disassembly Bench if you interact with it.
Increasing Grafting Success Rates Using Grafting Catalysts
To increase your chances, head over to your Supplies Workbench, and a new recipe will be available:
- Plant Grafting Catalyst to increase your success rate of plant-to-plant grafting, or
- the Biomechanical Grafting Catalyst if you want to increase your success rate in procuring a biomechanical plant.
There is a high-efficiency variant of these Catalysts that further increases your success chances. Normal Grafting Catalysts will give you a 1% or 2% increase in success rate, and the High Efficiency Catalysts up to 5%- 10%. However, that requires a Refined Detoxident as crafting material, as opposed to Detoxident for the normal version. Detoxidents and Refined Detoxidents are only obtainable while scavenging the wilderness.
Portable Planter Box Explained
The Portable Planter Box is used for ‘seed breeding’: Place any fully grown crop from your inventory within it, and, in return, you will get its seeds. This way, you can farm up to 3 seeds per plant, but that plant will be used up in the process. You have to have this plant in your inventory for the option to work. The purpose of Seed Breeding is to collect the same seed variety of the crop you want, so you don’t have to scavenge the wilderness for more plants of the same type or start from scratch.
How to Use the Portable Planter Box
After you are done growing your crop, interact with it and select the option to Recycle. This will automatically harvest the crop and place it within your Portable Planter. You can also select the Place in Backpack option, but this will shift your crop to your inventory instead.
Head into your inventory and select the Portable Planter Box. It will show you what plant is currently occupying it. You can then place your planter box around your territory to see how they function. This way, you can use it during your exploration outside your territory too. To put them back in your backpack, interact with it and select the option to Cancel Summon. There will be a short cooldown before you can resummon them.
Plants within the portable planter can also have their seeds harvested, making it easier to collect more seeds of the same crop variety. You can also switch them out if you have discovered a new biomechanical plant. To switch out the existing plant with a new one, you can just interact with the crop you want to harvest and select the Recycle option. Your existing plant will be removed and gone forever after being replaced with the new plant.
All Biomechanical Parts, How to Get and Uses
Different biomechanical parts, when grafted with a crop, will yield various results. This, in turn, can help you either in combat or while gathering resources. Biomechanical parts will drop from different deviants, and below is a list of parts to collect and what they do if grafted.
- Balloon – Defeat the Senior Employee in the Way of Winter Scenario to get a chance to obtain the Biomechanical Part – Balloon.
- Morphic – Morphic parts are dropped from defeating Morphic Crates found almost everywhere. Fusing a specific crop with the Morphic part will have it passively produce the final products and seeds of that particular crop.
- Scorcher – Defeat the Scorcher found at industrial sites and factories to collect this biomechanical part. Grafting it will turn the crop into a combat plant that can spew flames.
- Drill – The Burrower deviant has a chance to drop this, and they can be found around industrial areas too. After grafting a crop with the drill, you can use it to mine resources like Sulphur.
- Lamp – Find and defeat Watcher enemies found everywhere on the map. Using the Lamp part can enhance your light source and provide warmth for plants when grafted with a crop of your choice.
- Umbrella – Defeating the Rainfall Reaper at Sutherland Chemical Plant will drop the Umbrella part. This part can be fused with a crop and taken into battle to enhance environmental damage from your weapons.
- Bulb – The Flare Bulbfly found in hotter areas like Scorching Bluffs and Ashen Fields have a chance of dropping the Bulb part. This can provide ambient lights to your base when attached to a crop.
- Suitcase/Briefcase – This part drops from Agent enemies found at Military Checkpoints and Abandoned Facilities. Crops with the briefcase part can be used in combat and the head will spew power orbs to attack enemies.
Soil Fertility Explained
You can also change the fertility of the soil within your planter boxes to help you get more favorable crops. To do this, head over to the supplies workbench and select the Soil Solution recipe. You will require 2x fertilizer, 5x Spoiled Food, and 3x Purified Water. Next, equip the Soil Solution in your hotbar and place it in your hand. Keep an eye on the top left screen corner, you will notice a soil fertility rating up here.
Use the Soil Solution, and each time you do, the fertility rate will increase by 10 and will use up 10x Soil Solution for it. Improving the soil fertility will improve its growth speed, helping you grow more crops at a shorter amount of time.
Using the Environmental Detector
Another way to check for soil fertility is with this unique contraption called the Environmental Detector. This item is solely available for the Gardener Class, and you can equip it in your hotbar and use it during your exploration to get a reading of the soil’s fertility rate. Check the information on the top left corner of the screen to know which region has the most fertile soil.
You can then use this information to move your base over there to reap the benefits. This equipment is highly useful during early gameplay when you are yet to decide where to build your base. The only thing to keep in mind is that, as you regularly use up the soil for planting crops, the fertility will continue to dip anyway. This is when you can start crafting Soil Solutions to bring the fertility up, or continue to plant in the existing conditions.
