King Parsley - Gardening for Reagents Part 1

     Gardening and crafting can go hand in hand as many reagents can be easily harvested from plants every day, or even several times a day depending on the plant. Today I will discuss one of my favorite plants that I grow primarily for reagents.

King Parsley

     One word: Amber. I know rumor has it that Professor Greyrose has let slip that the White Tiger Lily is THE best gardening source for amber. While it MAY be true that you have a better probability of amber drops with the White Tiger Lily, I have found that what this plant does not drop is more seeds. Sometimes you can find them in the bazaar, sometimes you can actually get them dropped from boss fights, but for me personally I would rather grow King Parsley. Especially when you figure in the fact that White Tiger Lily can have explosive gnats (rank 4 pests) which takes way too much of my energy to combat. On the other hand, King Parsley plants only get ghoulish wisps at the worst. 15 energy for a pest zapper and I'm pest free for 48 hours!

     A bad thing about Parsley is acquiring your original seeds. They can only be bought from the crown shop, found in Wyvern's or Skyvern's Hoard Packs, or dropped. On a good note, you can access bosses that drop Parsley seeds as early as Dragonspyre, and even Baron Mordecai drops them while he is around during the Halloween festivities. Once you get a few seeds initially, these plants grow like weeds and will often fill your backpack up with seeds if you aren't careful. Now, this COULD be a bad thing if you are always short on room in your backpack. Personally, I keep 10 King Parsley seeds in my attic for those rare instances where the elder harvest did not produce a seed and I don't have enough for replanting. The rest go towards expanding my King Parsley crops. I started out with a medium area of Parsley plants. I now have six large plots of Parsley plants. This post has become longer than I intended and I will discuss in another post, later in this series, what I do with the extra seeds now that I have all of the plants that I want.

Requirements:

• Minimum Gardener rank is apprentice, rank 3.

• Medium Plot. This plant does not require enchanted soil. Just as a general rule though, I use enchanted soil for ALL of my plants simply because if I later decide I want to plant something different, I don't run the risk of having to plow up all of my unenchanted plots. You can plant either type of seed in enchanted but can only plant one type in the unenchanted.

• This wonderful plant only needs Sunlight and Music, once a day. As stated previously, the worst pests it will attract are rank 2. Each large plot of Parsley will require a minimum of 30 energy every day and an additional 15 energy every other day if you use the Pest Zapper spell, or 10 energy every day with the gusty winds spell.

Rewards:

• Reagents Aether, Aquamarine, Black Pearl, Diamond, Spring, and Sunstone can all be acquired daily with regular mature harvest. Your chances of receiving amber are only possible when the plant reaches elder stage.

• Treasure Cards supplied by this plant are tower shields and feints. Not only are both very handy to have in battle but they are also used in a variety of crafting recipes.

• The snacks provided by this plant are not the greatest. I probably wouldn't suggest growing King Parsley as a main source of pet snacks. However, I have found them handy to stock up my shared bank with these snacks for when a quick trip to the bazaar for easy funds is necessary. With several large plots of King Parsley you can expect to fill your backpack and/or bank with PBJ Sandwich, Rock and Roll Candy, Star Lollipop, and Star Fruit fairly quickly.

Boosts:

• Tropical Garden Gnome - Very easily acquired and every gardener ought to have at least one.

• Pixie - Parsley does not attract pixies on its own and the Summon Pixie gardening spell comes with a hefty price tag. It costs 25 energy to cast it and 175,000 gold to purchase it from Charley in the Oasis but can be well worth the effort, especially if Mr. Lincoln is nagging you to spend some gold. Gardeners must be rank 10 to use this spell.

• Red Barn Farm & Botanical Garden - The Red Barn Farm can be purchased with GOLD from the crown shop. I bought a second farm when Mr. Lincoln started nagging me to spend some gold because I had too much. The Botanical Garden comes with the new Evergreen Bundle and seems to have the same boost as the Red Barn Farm.

• Helephant Ears & Deadly Helephant Ears - One of our castle residents grows Deadly Helephant Ears, primarily for Pet Snacks. She is currently researching them further for possible inclusion into this series later.

• Bubbling Cauldron - This item, unfortunately, is primarily purchased with crowns either from the crown store or as a possible item from the Halloween Packs. Wavebringer, in Mooshu's Shirataki Temple, is rumored to drop this item but I have never received it and farm that area often.

• Star Chalice - This item is easily crafted, I have 5 or 6 of these that float around between castle residents depending on who is growing what.

And so there it is, everything you need to know about King Parsley - or at the very least, everything that I know about it. I plan to start keeping notes as to how much amber my crops do actually produce. I don't have any specific numbers at the moment, but here's what I can tell you: I have crafted 2 Loremaster spells (requires 12 amber each), and I have crafted a Zeke's Scavenger hunt game (10 amber needed for this recipe). I currently have 22 amber in my shared bank. I have only been actively gardening for amber for 3 months now.