Cultivators and Sub-Slots
The passive ingredient generators you place in your kitchen are now called Cultivators (you may still see "Producer" in a few older surfaces — they're the same thing). Everything below uses the new name.
Your Kitchen has up to 6 cultivator plots. Each plot holds one Cultivator; each cultivator has a number of sub-slots — set by its tier and its level — and you plant one ingredient seed per sub-slot. The cultivator drips those ingredients into your Inventory on its frequency timer.
This page helps you decide which tier of cultivator to plant, whether to level a cultivator you already own or buy a new plot, and whether the Signal 6th plot is worth it. It walks each plot one by one, then the sub-slot and harvest math.
The cultivator system was rebuilt into a refinery. If you remember the old model, the big shifts are:
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Sub-slots hold a seed or an avatar worker. You plant ingredient seeds and commit avatars to the same cultivator. Seeds are the feedstock and the timer; avatars do the upgrading. See Committing avatars.
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Output quality (rarity) comes from your avatars — nothing else. Seed rarity no longer raises output rarity, and neither do cultivator tier, equipment Elegance, or Kitchen Level. With no committed avatars, every output is Standard, no matter what you planted. See Harvest rarity.
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Seed rarity buys lifespan, and a chance to come back. A Standard seed lasts 3 harvests, Rare 6, Mythical 10. It does not make outputs rarer or larger. Lifespan means fewer replanting trips, not bigger harvests: a slot still grows the same amount per tick, the seed just keeps feeding it for longer — which is why tier also buys the goes to seed roll below.
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Seeds can go to seed. A seed that runs its full life in a plot has a chance to flower and return one Standard seed of its own family — 20% from a Standard seed, 40% Rare, 70% Mythical. It only fires if you let the seed run out; uproot it early and you forfeit the roll. That is the trade: swap family now, or ride this one out and let the plot partly re-seed itself.
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Quantity is flat — 1 unit per producing slot per tick, every tier. More units come from more slots (level/tier) and from committed avatars (they amplify volume too), not from seed or cultivator rarity.
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Sub-slots come from level, and leveling is a merge. A cultivator gains more sub-slots each level. You raise its level by merging two same-family cultivators of the same level into one a level higher — not by cook-grinding. See Sub-slots and Leveling.
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Ascension is gone. Producer/cultivator Ascension was retired (2026-08-09). Everything it used to do now flows through level (the merge ladder) and your committed avatars. There is no A0→A5 axis anymore.
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Harvesting earns Cultivation Mastery. Claiming harvests levels one account-wide Cultivation Mastery, which grants Tilth — extra rarity upgrades on every harvest. It's the only part of harvest quality you earn rather than equip. See Cultivation Mastery.
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Food cultivators no longer pay RSNC. They pay ingredients. The old 5-RSNC-per-ingredient drip was removed so a cultivator does one legible job — growing food. A dedicated RSNC producer is coming in a later batch. Mines and Wells still pay RSNC, as before.
Mental model
A cultivator is a refinery. You mint one, plant ingredient seeds in its sub-slots, commit avatars to work it, and walk away. It drops ingredients into your Storage on its frequency timer. You come back and click Claim. Seeds set how much and how long; avatars set how good; empty cultivators make nothing.
Cultivation lines — how your cultivators are grouped
On the Cultivators surface, every cultivator you've placed is sorted into a cultivation line by what it grows. There are three lines — Farms, Workshops and Worlds — and all three always show, even when a line is still empty (an empty line shows a "cook one" prompt rather than hiding):
| Line | What lives here | What it grows |
|---|---|---|
| 🌱 Farms | Food cultivators (the five ingredient families below) | Seeds replicate into cooking ingredients each tick. |
| ⚒️ Workshops | Material & essence cultivators (foundry, smithy, mystic, extractor, mine, and the like) | Materials & essence — ore, spark, refined goods. |
| 🌍 Worlds | World-tied cultivators (volcanic · storm · tidal · verdant · sonentius) | A world's yield, tied to a live frontier (e.g. the Stormswept Windwell or Barnacled Tidepool). |
The lines are a display grouping — they don't change any cultivator's mechanics. A cultivator's line is decided by its type, not by the plot you put it in. The rest of this page's math (sub-slots, seeds, avatars, leveling, harvest) applies to every cultivator regardless of line.
"Workshops" is not a separate system — it's just the line that holds every non-food, non-world cultivator you place. Same sub-slots, seeds, avatars, merge and harvest rules as a Farm; only the outputs differ.
Your Farms and Workshops share the same 6-plot budget (each line soft-caps at 3 placed cultivators). Worlds are a separate additive pool of up to 3 plots that does not count against your 6 — so placing a World Cultivator never costs you a Farm or Workshop plot.
Plot unlocks at a glance
| Plot | How you get it | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tune-In L1–4 | Free |
| 2 | Tune-In L5–14 | Free |
| 3 | Tune-In L15+ | Free (Tune-In cap) |
| 4 | Paid permanent unlock | 5,000 RSNC / $5 USDSC |
| 5 | Paid permanent unlock (needs plot 4 first) | 15,000 RSNC / $15 USDSC |
| 6 | Signal subscriber bonus — free, not buyable | — |
Tune-In gates plots 1–3; plots 4 and 5 are one-time paid unlocks; plot 6 comes only with an active Signal subscription. The hard ceiling is 6 plots.
Each cultivator plot, walkthrough
Plot 1 — your first cultivator (Tune-In L1, free)
The plot you start with. Unlocked the moment your account exists.
What to put here: Your first Standard cultivator. Cost: 5,000 RSNC or $5 USDSC. Pick a family that matches a Permanent recipe you want to cook:
- Want to run Pulse Bread (the easiest beginner recipe)? You need Pulse Eggs + Harmonic Herbs → mint a Photon Aquarium OR a Frequency Garden.
- Want Echo Espresso for daily mailbox boosts? You need Echo Spores + Stellar Honey → mint an Echo Mushroom Cluster OR an Astral Beehive.
A Standard cultivator starts with 1 sub-slot and gains more as you level it (see below). Plant one ingredient seed per sub-slot; all sub-slots on a cultivator must be the same family.
Plot 2 — Tune-In L5 (free)
Unlocks automatically at Tune-In level 5.
What to put here: Your second family. If Plot 1 is Sweet, make Plot 2 Vegetal or Earth — coverage across families opens up more recipes. By L5 you've cooked a few rounds; you know what ingredient your bottleneck is.
Plot 3 — Tune-In L15 (free, cap on free)
Last free cultivator plot. Unlocks at Tune-In level 15.
What to put here: Your third family. With 3 cultivators in 3 different families, you can complete most Permanent recipes without buying ingredients.
If you've started running Flash or Limited recipes, consider upgrading one of your Standard cultivators to Rare instead of adding a third Standard. A Rare starts with more sub-slots, has a faster frequency, and gives a small yield kicker — so a Rare in plot 1 + Standards in plots 2/3 often out-produces three Standards.
Plot 4 — paid permanent unlock
Cost: $5 USDSC or 5,000 RSNC. Permanent — once paid, you keep it forever regardless of Tune-In level.
What to put here: A cultivator covering a family you haven't yet, or your first Mythical cultivator ($50 USDSC / 50,000 RSNC). Mythicals carry the most sub-slots at every level and top out at 24 sub-slots at L10 (see Sub-slots).
Why pay for Plot 4 instead of just leveling Tune-In?
- Tune-In to L15 takes weeks of consistent AS. Plot 4 is one click.
- You're not limited to one Tune-In path — paying for Plot 4 doesn't block your free L15 unlock for Plot 3.
Plot 5 — paid permanent unlock
Cost: $15 USDSC or 15,000 RSNC. Same shape as Plot 4, more expensive — and you must own plot 4 first before plot 5 can be bought.
What to put here: A second Mythical or a specialist Rare that complements your existing four. By Plot 5 you usually have a clear strategy — Plot 5 is the role-player plot.
Plot 6 — Signal Subscription only
Plot 6 is not buyable as a one-time unlock. It comes only with an active Signal Subscription.
What to put here: Anything. Plot 6 is +1 on top of all your other plots — at Tune-In L15 + Plot 4 + Plot 5 + Signal, you have 6 cultivators running concurrently.
Other Signal benefits that compound with Plot 6:
- +1 rarity bias on every mailbox roll
- Quest Pack discovery feed
If you're treating the Kitchen seriously, Signal pays back through the cultivator plot alone.
The five food cultivator archetypes
These are the Kitchen Garden cultivators — each archetype accepts exactly one ingredient family. Different archetypes for different families:
| Archetype | Accepts family | Standard name | Rare name | Mythical name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Astral Beehive | Sweet (Stellar Honey, Astral Apple) | Astral Beehive | Astral Hive Cluster | Solar Orchard Hive |
| Frequency Garden | Vegetal (Harmonic Herbs, Lunar Lettuce) | Frequency Garden | Tideway Greenhouse | Resonance Biodome |
| Echo Mushroom Cluster | Earth (Echo Spores, Void Truffle) | Echo Mushroom Cluster | Subsonic Fungarium | Mycelium Choir |
| Photon Aquarium | Protein (Pulse Eggs, Photon Fish) | Photon Aquarium | Tidal Hatchery | Genesis Spawn Pool |
| Crystalline Reactor | Crystal (Resonant Crystals, Quantum Salt) | Crystalline Reactor | Tectonic Refinery | Singularity Geode |
Beyond these five food archetypes, Workshop cultivators grow materials and essence, and World Cultivation cultivators grow a world's element-specific yield — see Cultivation lines above. They share the same sub-slot, seed, leveling and harvest rules.
Cultivator stats
Each cultivator rolls a Frequency stat at mint, within a tier-specific band. Higher-tier cultivators tick faster:
| Tier | Frequency (h) |
|---|---|
| Standard | 7–12 |
| Rare | 5–9 |
| Mythical | 4–7 |
Quantity is flat — 1 unit per producing slot per tick, at every tier. Cultivator tier does not scale how many units a slot grows. You get more by unlocking more sub-slots (level/tier) and by committing avatars (they amplify volume — see below). (Cultivator tier used to add a small kicker to an RSNC drip; that drip is gone — see Harvest economy.)
Rarity isn't a cultivator stat, a seed stat, or a Kitchen-Level thing. What rarity your harvested ingredients come out at is decided entirely by the avatars you commit to the cultivator. See Harvest rarity below.
Sub-slots — how many you get
A cultivator is a container for seeds and avatar workers. Its sub-slot count is set by tier + level, and each level adds two sub-slots (one more for seeds, one more for avatars — kept in lockstep):
- Level 4 is the "no-nerf" anchor: at L4 a cultivator has as many sub-slots as the old system gave at max — Standard 10 · Rare 11 · Mythical 12.
- Each level above L4 adds +2 sub-slots, up to L10 — Standard 22 · Rare 23 · Mythical 24.
- Below L4 a freshly minted cultivator carries fewer; you climb by merging (see Leveling).
| Tier | At L1 (fresh) | At L4 (anchor) | At L10 (max) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 4 | 10 | 22 |
| Rare | 5 | 11 | 23 |
| Mythical | 6 | 12 | 24 |
Higher tiers carry one more sub-slot than the tier below at every level, and roughly half of a cultivator's sub-slots are seed capacity and half are avatar-worker capacity. So leveling a cultivator is how you grow it — more sub-slots means more seeds planted and more avatars committed, which means more yield and better quality. See Leveling.
Same-family rule. Every sub-slot on a single cultivator holds the same family — a Photon Aquarium can hold any mix of Pulse Eggs and Photon Fish, but it can't hold Stellar Honey.
Seeds are consumable: the FIFO queue
Seeds aren't a permanent fixture — they're an ingredient you plant, and they burn up over a few harvests. The sub-slot itself stays; only the seed turns over.
Seed harvest counts (by rarity)
| Seed rarity | Harvests before consumed |
|---|---|
| Standard | 1 |
| Rare | 2 |
| Mythical | 3 |
So a Mythical Stellar Honey seed planted in a sub-slot produces honey across 3 harvest ticks and is then gone.
The FIFO queue
Each sub-slot holds one active seed plus a queue of waiting seeds. The active seed is what's producing this harvest window; when it's used up, the next seed in the queue auto-promotes.
- Multi-select planting. Drop multiple same-family seeds into a sub-slot at once. They stack into the queue in the order you added them.
- Stack indicator. The cultivator card shows the active seed plus a small "+N queued" pill if more are waiting.
- Empty sub-slot. When the queue empties, the sub-slot shows a Plant seed CTA and stops yielding until you plant something. (Empty sub-slots produce nothing.)
A seed earns from when it's planted
Yield accrues per seed, from the moment that seed becomes active. A seed you plant mid-window only earns the ticks since it was planted — not the whole window. The practical upshot: a last-second swap earns almost nothing that window, while a long-standing seed earns its full share.
Swap active seed (no slot loss)
If you want to replace the seed that's actively producing — for example to swap Standard Pulse Eggs for a Mythical Pulse Egg you just minted — open the sub-slot and use Swap:
- Same-family swap. One-click compare (current seed vs candidate). Confirm and the new seed takes over; the old one drops back into the queue or returns to Storage. The queue is preserved.
- Cross-family swap. Routes through a "Switch family?" confirm, because it changes what the whole cultivator can hold — the existing queue is returned to Storage (no mixed-family stacks).
Why it works this way
This is the supply discipline for the kitchen. Cultivators used to drip ingredients forever from a one-time plant; now they drip until the seed runs out, then politely stop. You stay in control: queue lots of cheap Standard seeds for steady, hands-off throughput, or load Mythical seeds so a slot runs ten harvests before it needs replanting. (Seed rarity is purely lifespan — it doesn't change the quality of what comes out; your committed avatars do that.)
Committing avatars — who sets the quality
Every cultivator — including the food cultivators above — has sub-slots that hold a seed or an avatar worker. Seeds are the feedstock; committed avatars are what upgrade your output.
To commit an avatar: open an empty sub-slot and choose Commit an avatar instead of planting a seed. The avatar goes to work on the cultivator and shows up on the card as a worker tile. Avatars lock while committed (they're not consumed like seeds) and return to your roster the moment you release them.
What committed avatars do:
- Set output rarity. This is the only thing that upgrades quality — see Harvest rarity. No avatars ⇒ 100% Standard.
- Amplify quantity. They add up to +100% volume (double) at 1,000 aligned stats.
Element match matters. An avatar whose element matches the cultivator's family counts 1.5× toward both effects. Family → element:
| Family | Matching element |
|---|---|
| Sweet | Radiant |
| Vegetal | Verdant |
| Earth | Umbral |
| Protein | Tide |
| Crystal | Mystic |
Cultivation gear — one tool per worker
A committed avatar can carry one Cultivation tool: non-battle gear that raises the worker power that avatar brings to the cultivator. Its bonus is added to the avatar's stat total before the harvest math runs, so a tool lifts both the rarity roll and the volume boost — exactly as if the avatar were stronger.
Open a committed avatar's sub-slot and use the Cultivation tool row to equip, change, or remove one.
- It's a separate slot from Avatar Equipment. Battle gear does nothing at a cultivator, and a Cultivation tool does nothing in the Arena. It is not role-locked or element-locked — any tool fits any avatar.
- One tool per avatar, and one avatar per tool. A single tool can't power your whole roster; unequip it to move it somewhere else.
- Moving a tool is free. Equipping is a soft bind — nothing is spent, burned, or consumed, and unequipping returns the tool to your inventory intact.
- Rarer and later-world tools grant more. A tool's bonus follows the same world × rarity power band as avatar gear, so a Mythical Barnacled tool beats a Standard Ashen one by a wide margin. The avatar's tile shows the grant as "+N worker power" (and the tool itself reads "+N worker power in any cultivator" — the word any is the point: the bonus is generic, it is never locked to a matching world or family).
The exact worker-power a tool grants, by world and rarity (only the four open worlds are shown; later worlds grant far more):
| World (theme) | Standard | Rare | Mythical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ashen (volcanic) | +40 | +47 | +74 |
| Stormswept (storm) | +52 | +82 | +98 |
| Barnacled (tidal) | +87 | +105 | +168 |
| Overgrown (verdant) | +110 | +175 | +214 |
Where they come from: you cook them. Each world has a full set across two crafts — Bonecrafting makes the implements (Hoe · Fork · Rake · Spade) and Tailoring makes the wearables (Garb · Gaiters · Waders · Apron) — each in Standard, Rare and Mythical. A Fork and a Gaiter of the same world and rarity grant exactly the same worker power, so pick whichever line you'd rather cook — the implement name is pure flavor. Like other world gear, a world's tools need that world's chapter book unlocked; see where books come from.
Equipping and cooking Cultivation tools is public. The only gate left is the usual one: a world's tools appear in your picker once that world has opened — so early worlds' tools are available now, and later worlds' arrive as those worlds open.
There's a set of Cultivator Packs (a Farm Starter plus Standard / Rare / Mythic tiers) that bundle a choice of cultivators with a batch of Cultivation tools and seeds. They're still in operator testing and aren't buyable by all players yet — if you don't see them in the shop, they aren't switched on for your account. Everything they grant (cultivators, tools, seeds) is earnable through normal play in the meantime.
Because a sub-slot holds either a seed or an avatar, there's a trade-off — an avatar slot isn't growing a unit itself, but it lifts the quality (and volume) of every seed slot. Leveling a cultivator (more sub-slots) is how you run plenty of both at once.
Since output rarity comes only from avatars, put your strongest, element-matched avatars to work — that is what sets quality, and no seed can buy it.
Seed choice is now purely about how often you want to come back. A Mythical seed runs 10 harvests to a Standard's 3, so it is roughly 3 slots' worth of replanting saved — genuinely useful on a farm you want to set and forget. It still spends a high-value item to do it, so the honest trade is: Standard seeds when you're playing daily, Mythical when you want a week of hands-off drip — and keep Mythical ingredients for recipes, gear, or trade when neither applies. What it will never buy you is better output.
Leveling — the merge ladder
Cultivators level 1 → 10, and leveling grows a cultivator exactly one way: more sub-slots (see the table above). More slots means more seeds planted and more avatars committed at once, which is how a leveled cultivator out-produces a fresh one. Slots are the level reward — there's no separate per-seed yield multiplier, and reaching max level doesn't change your harvest cooldown.
You raise a cultivator's level by merging, not by cook-grinding. Merge two cultivators of the same family at the same level and they become one cultivator a level higher — the classic "1 + 1 = 3." One input (the survivor) steps up; the other is consumed.
P + P → L2 L2 + L2 → L3 … L9 + L9 → L10 (cap)
- Same family, same level is the only requirement. A Standard and a Mythical won't merge; an L3 and an L5 won't merge.
- The merge fuel can sit in storage. Spare duplicate cultivators you're holding un-placed count as merge inputs — you don't have to place both on plots first. The survivor keeps its plot (if it had one); the consumed one frees its plot.
- Merging is instant and safe. It's one atomic step — no cook timer, no half-merge. If anything hiccups, the merge reverts cleanly and you keep both cultivators.
Working your cultivators — leveling them and cooking their refined materials — is Cultivation-craft activity, which raises your Cultivation Mastery. Growing your cultivators and growing your Cultivation specialization are the same activity.
Merging duplicates you already hold is often the cheapest way to add sub-slots — you're spending spare cultivators, not RSNC. Buy a new plot when you need a new ingredient family; merge what you have when you just need more slots on a family you already run.
The Gravity Cake dish cooks into a token that instantly raises a cultivator's level — a Standard cake grants +1 level, a Rare +2, a Mythical +3 — without needing a duplicate to merge. Bind the token to a specific cultivator; if it's already at L10 the cake refuses (no wasted level), and an overshoot applies only what fits.
Harvest claims
When your cultivator hits its frequency window, a Claim button appears on the cultivator card. Claiming:
- Mints the ingredients per the harvest math below.
- Drops an RSNC payout — only from a Mine or Well. Food cultivators stopped paying RSNC on 2026-08-15.
- Counts toward your daily Streak.
- Consumes one harvest from each active seed. When a seed's remaining-harvest counter hits 0 it burns and the queue advances.
Cap. Harvests accumulate up to a 24-hour ceiling — leave a cultivator longer than a day and the extra time past 24h doesn't bank more. Claim at least once a day to never leave anything on the table. See Reference — Harvest Accumulation Caps.
The kitchen's cultivator activity sub-tab is called Harvests (it was "Producers"), and its Recent Harvests feed lists your latest claims. Tap View full history → on that feed to jump to the full Harvests activity tab.
Harvest economy
Each producing sub-slot grows 1 unit per tick — the same for every tier. The count you get on a claim is, per tick:
producing sub-slots × 1 × (1 + avatar boost)
- producing sub-slots — only sub-slots holding an active seed count; empty ones and avatar-worker slots contribute nothing to the count (avatars contribute the boost instead).
- avatar boost — committed avatars amplify volume by +100% per 1,000 aligned avatar stats, capped at +100% (double). Element-matched avatars count 1.5× toward that total.
- Cultivator tier and seed tier do not change the count. Level raises it only by adding more sub-slots.
- Mining Efficiency adds a flat +1 / +2 / +3 units per harvest window (1/2/3 Scroll stacks) on top. It is a flat bonus for the whole cultivator, not per slot, and it only applies to a cultivator that is already producing.
Food cultivators pay no RSNC. They used to mint 5 RSNC per ingredient on top of the food; that faucet was removed so the cultivator does one job — growing ingredients — and RSNC generation can live on its own dedicated producer (coming in a later batch). Your Yield rate on the farm header now reads in items/hr for this reason; a Mine still shows RSNC/hr because it still pays it.
Fractions carry over between claims, so nothing is lost to rounding — a modest avatar boost that works out to a fraction of a unit per tick is banked and paid out on a later claim rather than being rounded away.
Harvest rarity — your avatars set it
Harvest rarity is decided only by the avatars you commit to the cultivator — not by the seed, the cultivator tier, your gear, or your Kitchen Level. Each upgrade climbs a two-step ladder:
- First gate: Standard → Rare.
- Only if that passes, second gate: Rare → Mythical.
Each harvest, a food cultivator earns an upgrade budget sized by its producing sub-slots — the structural width you unlock through levelling and merging — and spends that budget lifting units up the ladder. It is not a roll on every unit.
This is deliberate, and it's what keeps rare ingredients rare: anything that raises your volume — seed lifespan, avatar rate, mastery, cultivation gear — floods you with Standard and leaves the upgrade budget untouched. Tripling your output does not triple your Mythicals. To earn more upgrades you need more producing sub-slots or stronger committed avatars, which are the two axes that can't be farmed quickly.
A fractional budget is never lost — a small cultivator earning less than one upgrade per harvest banks the remainder and pays it out on a later claim.
Both gates scale with the aligned stat total of your committed avatars (an avatar whose element matches the cultivator's family counts 1.5×). More and stronger avatars ⇒ better odds, up to a ceiling. The mix below is what a cultivator produced at the pre-2026-08-15 baseline rate; at higher rates the same budget spreads across more units, so the share that is Rare or Mythical falls while the count stays put:
| Committed aligned avatar stats | Output mix (Standard / Rare / Mythical) |
|---|---|
| 0 — no avatars | 100 / 0 / 0 |
| ~420 | ~58 / 35 / 7 |
| 1,050+ (max) | ~35 / 49 / 16 |
With no committed avatars, every output is Standard — even a max-level cultivator full of Mythical seeds. That's by design: seeds are feedstock and lifespan; avatars are quality. To harvest more Rare and Mythical ingredients, commit stronger, element-matched avatars — planting rarer seeds does nothing for output rarity.
(Rarity value for reference: 1 Rare = 8 Standard; 1 Mythical = 48 Standard = 6 Rare.)
Cultivation Mastery — Tilth
Committed avatars set the rate of rarity upgrades. Cultivation Mastery adds a flat bonus on top, called Tilth, and it's the one piece of harvest quality you earn rather than equip.
Earning it. Every harvest you claim grants Cultivation Mastery XP. There's nothing to buy, unlock, equip, or spend — claiming is the whole mechanic. It's one level for your whole account, shared across every cultivator, every family and every world.
- Bigger harvests teach more, and higher-tier output teaches most — a Mythical ingredient is worth 10× a Standard one in XP. So pushing the quality ladder speeds up the stat that pushes the quality ladder.
- A claim that produced nothing teaches nothing, so there's no point tapping Claim on an empty cultivator.
What the level grants — two things.
| Stat | What it does | Curve |
|---|---|---|
| Tilth | Extra rarity upgrades on every harvest — better quality | Slow at first, accelerates hard toward the cap |
| Growth | Your cultivators keep accumulating for longer before they fill up — 24h at the start, up to 48h | Steady and even, so you feel it early |
("Tilth" is the farmer's word for the condition of well-worked soil — good tilth grows better crops. It's quality, not quantity.)
Spending it — you don't. Both apply automatically to every harvest. Your cultivator card shows it as an amber Tilth +N.NN pill beside the Rare and Mythic pills; that's how many extra Rare-or-better upgrades that farm gets each harvest, on top of the slot/avatar budget.
What it's worth. At the level cap Tilth reaches +2.5 upgrades per harvest — roughly doubling the rare output of a fully-levelled, fully-crewed farm — and Growth stretches the accumulation window to a full 48 hours.
A cultivator stops accumulating once it hits its window (24 hours by default). Claim after 36h and you've lost 12h of production. Growth widens that window, so you can leave a farm longer without losing anything.
It does not make your farm produce faster. Two players who both claim within 24h get identical results no matter their Growth. It only ever helps the player who can't get back every day — which is the point: it's a chore lever, not a power lever.
Tilth is back-loaded on purpose: early levels grant a fraction like +0.05 and it accelerates sharply toward the cap. Fractions are banked, not discarded, and pay out as a whole extra upgrade once they accumulate (about every 20 harvests at +0.05). A "+0.05" pill is genuine progress. If mastery paid out generously from level 1, every casual farm would flood the game with Rares — the exact problem the per-harvest budget was built to solve.
Tilth moves quality only — the mix of what a harvest produces, never the size of it. (Growth doesn't raise your rate either — it just stops the clock running out.) Volume comes from seeds, slots, committed avatars and cultivation gear. Don't grind mastery expecting a bigger pile.
Forge gear-part drops
Separately from ingredients, each harvest tick rolls for a Forge gear-part drop. The chance rises with the rarity of the seeds you've planted (better seeds → better odds, from a 5% floor up to a 50% ceiling), and the rarity of the gear part depends on the cultivator's tier:
| Cultivator tier | Standard | Rare | Mythical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | 90% | 9% | 1% |
| Rare | 67.5% | 30% | 2.5% |
| Mythical | 45% | 50% | 5% |
Gear parts convert to Avatar Essence — the fuel that forges and deepens Avatars — so this is a key feeder of your Essence supply. (There's a weekly cap on how many gear parts a cultivator can drop; harvesting steadily is what keeps the supply flowing.)
Where cultivators come from
- Marketplace. Mint a new cultivator directly via the kitchen perk grid.
- Mailbox. Daily mailbox rolls can drop low-tier cultivators (Standard most often, with Tune-In-aware rarity bias toward higher tiers at higher levels).
- Recipes. A small number of Limited recipes (e.g., Spectrum Soup) drop random Mythical cultivators as outputs.
Pricing (cultivator mint)
| Tier | USDSC | RSNC (pre-Tune-In discount) |
|---|---|---|
| Standard | $5 | 5,000 |
| Rare | $15 | 15,000 |
| Mythical | $50 | 50,000 |
Pricing follows Pay-or-Play parity — Tune-In discount on the RSNC side only.
See also
- Kitchen Quickstart — your first walkthrough
- Specializations & Mastery — the Cultivation craft, and leveling a cultivator as a Cultivation cook
- Equipment — the rack that boosts your cook odds and Elegance
- Recipes and Cooking — what to do with your ingredients
- Mailbox — other ways cultivators drop
- Progression — Kitchen Level, which feeds your harvest rarity
- Reference — every cultivator number on one page