Sengoku Dynasty: NPC Farming Guide

With the new farming update now firmly in place, it’s time to get your people to work! After all, you’ve done so much for them, right? Isn’t it time they returned the favor?
Farming was added in a recent update and NPC farming was introduced shortly thereafter. The ability to automate farming will free up an immense amount of time, resources, and storage space for one major reason:
NPC farmers don’t require a hoe, fertilizer bucket, or water bucket. All they need is a seed bag and they’re good to go!
(Sure, this might change in the future but, for now, run with it!)

There’s been some confusion in how this process works so let’s go through it step-by-step, shall we?

First of all, you’ll need fields. Only one NPC can work a single field at a time. The NPC is limited to how many plots in the field they can work. This starts at 24 and increases to a maximum of 32 when you have maximum happiness on all 6 current needs: Meals, Beverages, Heating, Maintenance, Healing, and Security. So, the largest useful field for either land or water is 32. For symmetry, 4×8 is a nice, rectangular field that you can line up nicely. Here’s an overhead shot of one of each (taken from the room of my general storage):

So, how’d I get those farmers out there, working?
First, go into the Dynasty Screen and select the jobs tab. Find your fields:

and select one. I chose water field for this example. Next, you’ll see the field UI.

It comes already selected with a crop for that field (Lotus for Water, Garlic for Land). Click on the image of the crop to select which one you want your worker to plant. For this exercise, I chose rice.

The UI will update with the appropriate crop. Next, you need to assign a worker. Choose one from your list.

Finally, click on the red seed bag box below the crop image in the UI.

and select the appropriate seed bag. Now we’re set!

The water field will update in the main game to show the worker and the crop.

The same process works for land fields but you have a lot more choices.

A quick note on seasonal crops. In the above image, you’ll see up to 3 symbols next to each crop. In order, they are Spring (green leaf), Summer (yellow sun), and Fall (red leaf). No crops currently grow in winter.

With your crops set up, you’ll begin to see the work appear over time.

This is purely aesthetic though. The real work only occurs, as with all other production, during the season change. Your new crops will appear in your food storage (with the exception of Tea Leaves which are marked as beverage for storage purposes).

And that’s it. Hope this clears things up for you.

With NPC farming, your list of items needed to farm decreases drastically. Now, instead of a bunch of stuff cluttering up your inventory, you need only one thing: Seed Bags! Bow, how does one get them?
Well, for many items, you’ll have to head down to Aratani and find this guy:

He’s a major wanderer so you may have to look around a bit but he does like hanging out near the Tavern. The farming trader has some nice stuff from time to time but his real worth is in seed bags. His stock is randomly shifted every season so if he doesn’t have what you want, come back next season. Sometimes, it’s a real pain in the backside though. I went 5 YEARS before the guy got a single seed bag of soy. So, a little patience (or end-of-season save-scumming) will be needed.

So, you got a seed bag, use it and notice a catastrophe! They have durability and they’ll break!!!

OH NO!!!

Okay, maybe just a smidge melodramatic. But fear not. Once you grow a crop once, you’re in business for the entirety of your game. Because you can make your own at the Tailor’s workbench.

Why the tailor? Because seed bags are made from 4 leather and a variable number of harvested crop. Makes sense, right? So, head to your Tailor’s workbench and pop open that UI.

On the left, you’ll see selections for both land and water field bags. We want to make a rice seed bag (cuz our last one fell apart, the rotten thing). So, select Water Fields Seed Bags. A New radial will pop up with your options.

Here you can see the cost of all the seed bags in the category.

So, when a crop comes in and before you let those ravenous NPC’s eat, grab enough to make a new seed bag. Always have at least one spare seed bag for each operation NPC field. They will automatically take a new one when their current one breaks (usually 2-3 seasons max).