The Flower Revolution has been successful! :D
The Farm of Sharing (about X=110, Z=10) now has all 6 flower species available for everyone to farm.
Now some of you will ask how I managed to collect those flowers since rnd and a few other players seemingly had all flowers in possession and don't just give them away or sell them.
The Flower and Dye MonopoliesWhen I joined the server, it quickly became clear that it is very hard to get any flower whatsoever.
Most other players got their flowers from rnd, apparently, but they too did not want to share or sell them. They told me they have vowed to rnd to never share, spread or sell the flowers. So it seems rnd was
very serious about avoiding at all costs. I tried to negotiate with rnd.
Dyes were very expensive. When I asked for a green dye, rnd offered me one dye per 5 gold (!) and got down to 3.5 gold (!) after negotiating. This was both way too expensive IMO and so I declined.
The Flower RevolutionThe ideaSo I had the idea to make a “revolution”. :D
I am actually not strongly interested in flowers or dyes, I did this mostly for the challenge. Using my wits to slowly accumulate all flower species so rnd and other players can't keep them all for themselves.
By making sure everyone can get flowers and thus breaking the dye monopoly. A large part of the “revolution” was in secret, and now I want to disclose on how I and other people did it.
Finding holes in the systemI tried my best to find weak spots in the system. First I tried the obvious step to just grab all flowers everywhere but I never succeeded because they were protected. Then I tried to negotiate and buy them but nobody offered me flowers.
Around rnd's and Zorg's property (which are close to spawn) (also justtest's property at the snow machine) I searched for potential pieces of unprotected land. No chance. My second idea is to search for unproteced air or water NEAR the grass where flowers might spawn, in hope a flower spawns on the unprotected land if “someone” places some dirt nearby. This was of course risky since everyone could also take away the dirt.
I also noticed that right at spawn, near the snow vending machine, land near the flowers was also unproteced so my plan was to place dirt nearby and pray that nobody takes away the dirt before the next flower spawns. This plan, however failed since abba became admin and protected pretty much everything in spawn, including the area near the snow machine.
The water at the crosshair used to be unprotected.
Another hole in the system was between the “PUBLIC ATM” (iron, copper and coal deposit) (and other properties of sorcerykid) and Zorg's/rnd's properties. Some land was unprotected here so I could have placed some dirt here and wait for flowers to spawn. This plan, however, never worked. This zone was too crowded and the risk was high that I would just lose my dirt; eventually sorcerykid protected most of the land.
Here are the interesting areas:
Note: The latter one would not have worked anyway since the “protection hole” was too far from the grass. All I could do is to wait and hope that Zorg will one day complete the missing dirt. This still did not happen. (Yes, it was me who dug away the blocks missing in the screenshot, but I quickly placed them back into the right spots after I took the screenshot. This was just for demonstration.)
The most promising hole in the system was right at the entrance of what is now the Dye Shop. Back then, there was only water and a strange cactus fence, but a colum of about 4×1 blocks very close to dirt with grass was unproteced; here placing some dirt would look very unsuspicious because it was directly next to the existing dirt. I just had to hope nobody else figured it out. This was the original plan.
The Dye Shop and the first flowerThen, however, rnd and others build the Dye Shop.
This was a REALLY lucky coincidence as it quickly became clear they were building grass right on the critical unproteced blocks. First I was like “Oh shit! They figured out what I am about to do and now they are destroying all possibilities to let flowers spawn.”. Well, probably not. :D
I watched almost the entire process of building the Dye Shop and waited for slip-ups. Early on, I had a brief chance to grab a rose first because it was DIRECTLY placed on the unprotected land, but I tried hard to avoid that rnd and Zorg notice me grabbing it. Sadly, I didn't do anything because I didn't want to get caught. They were just too close for my taste. Later, rnd took away the rose and replaced it with some steps. Oops, chance was gone!
But later rnd thankfully placed a blue geranium in the critical unprotected land again.
And so I grabbed my first flower (Blue Geranium) while rnd and some other people built the Dye Shop near spawn.
You don't believe how exciting getting this first flower was!
Here's the spot which was unprotected and rnd and Zorg apparently had no idea for quite some time (it is protected now):
In the screenshot, the pointed dirt and flower and all the other grass blocks in viewing direction were unprotected. I just waited for the right moment and grabbed a blue geranium. Note that I grabbed it BEFORE it looked like this (it didnt have so many flowers), I had to do it while the shop was still under construction.
Secret flowerI kept possession of the blue geranium secret at first; I did not want to open the flower section until I had enough flowers to theoretically craft all dyes. This was because I still planned to negotiate with rnd and other players, but this has failed. I even offered a nyan cat to rnd but that didn't help.
Guess rnd was very serious about trying to stop flowers spreading on “uncontrolled” land. ;-)
Intelligence, and two more flowersFor getting more flowers, I asked in private MANY players and I looked around everywhere in the main city. I wrote down notes on which players owned which flowers and where and looked for good places to secrtely place some dirt in hope to make a flower spawn.
In finding players, I was unsuccessful at first as players either did not have flowers, did not have them anymore or did not want to give them away because of a promise to rnd.
Then I noticed that sorcerykid suddenly had flowers on her property. It turned out she got them from rnd and promised to only use them as street decoration. She also told she makes sure the flowers are always far enough to not spread on other properties. Well, this seems clever, but I still thought this was a great fate since this means flowers will slowly appear all around the city. I just had to wait for sorcerykid to make one small mistake to grab another flower from accidentally unprotected land. This was, however, never neccessary.
One of the first street decorations of sorcerykid was this one:
I couldn't believe my eyes as she placed the flowers very close to two surrounding properties. The house at the front belongs to HalXXXX (4-digit number I can't remember), the wall to the right belongs to Adelia (or whatever).
I planned to contact the property owners to notify them they have a chance to get a tulip or rose simply by rebuilding their property. but they were never around when I were. Much, much later I noticed that the small hole in the background was actually unprotected, so I could have even placed dirt and grass here and hope for the best. None of this had been done, but this is one of the other possible plans in my mind.
I think I have met sorcerykid right when she was finished building this. Had I a diamond sword carrying around at this moment, I might even have attacked her to steal the flowers from the bones. This was far away from spawn, after all with no city block nearby. Or maybe I would not have had the guts, this was risky as such an attack would surely end all my chances in getting flowers by negotiating.
Eventually I found a player who just handed me these two flowers over.
Shortly after, I have opened the flower section in the Farm of Sharing and the 3 flowers + coal were already enough to craft all dyes.
A Nyan Cat for a flower!I also posted a reward, offering a nyan cat to everyone who can hand me over any of the missing flowers.
I was very lucky easlier in finding a nyan cat with 15 (!) nyan cat rainbows deep underground, you can find it in the “Post your Nyancats!” thread.
After the 2nd day after posting the reward, sasha2 handed me over a yellow dandelion but declined to take the reward. Sahsa2 was very clever as sasha2 placed dirt with grass very close to Fixer's property who had a yellow dandelion at a very good spot. So all sasha2 had to do was waiting. And it worked.
The secret flower farmThe final flowers, tulip and viola were easier than you will guess: Sasha2 has found the flower farm maikerumine was alluding to in this post:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=15334&start=25#p230048It's basically another public flower farm, but far away from the city. I won't disclose the location, just put some effort into it if you want to find it.
First sasha2 thought the farm was “broken” as flowers seemingly never spread but when I came there I was able to pick up a tulip and viola. Turns out the secret flower farm had all 6 flower species all along! Murphy's Law …
(Fun fact: I have actually read the aforementioned post but I probably did not really understand it. I thought flowers just spawned randomly on stone or whatever, and that rnd was just the fastest player to grab them all.)
All I had to do is to extend the flower section a bit, plant the missing flowers, multiplying them and saving a few flowers as “backup” in case something goes seriously wrong.
ConclusionAnd that's how I and some other players managed to liberate all 6 flower species and finish the flower section. :-)
Whew, getting these 6 flower species was quite an adventure! :D
I hope you enjoyed reading this as much I enjoyed hunting down the six flower species. :-)
And let 1000 flowers bloom! :-)