If you’ve spent any time exploring the biomes of Enshrouded, you know how quickly you can burn through resources when crafting, healing, or even just keeping your hunger bar full while clearing shroud zones. For many new players, constantly looting berry bushes and chopping down random trees gets old fast, especially when you’re trying to focus on building out your base or taking on tough boss fights. Learning how to plant seedlings enshrouded is one of the most impactful quality of life upgrades you can unlock early in the game, and it doesn’t require nearly as much grind as you might think.
What You Need Before You Start to Plant Seedlings Enshrouded
You don’t need to beat any major bosses or unlock high-level crafting tiers to get your first farm up and running, but there are a few non-negotiable items you’ll need to gather first. The first thing to track down is basic plant seeds, which you can get by harvesting any wild plant, from berry bushes to pine trees, as you explore. Every harvest has a 15-20% chance to drop a matching seed, so if you spend 10 minutes looting the meadow near your starting base, you’ll likely have 5-10 seeds to start with. Next, you’ll need wooden planter boxes, which you can craft at your workbench with 8 planks and 2 pieces of rope per box. You can place these directly on the ground inside or outside your base, no special flooring required. The only hard requirement a lot of new players miss is that your planters can’t be placed inside the Shroud, even if you’re using a flame altar to clear the area temporarily. If you get a red placement outline, move to a spot that’s permanently above the Shroud line to avoid losing your crops later.
You also don’t need to worry about unlocking any specific skill points to farm, though there are a few skills in the survival tree that make the process even easier. The “Green Thumb” skill, for example, increases the seed drop rate from wild plants by 30%, so you can stock up on seeds far faster if you put one point into it early on. I usually grab that skill before I even build my first planter box, because it cuts down the time I spend looting seeds by almost half. If you’re playing co-op, you can split the work with your team: one person can gather seeds while another crafts planter boxes, so you can get your farm up and running in less than 10 minutes total.
Step-by-Step Process for Planting and Growing Seedlings
Once you have all your materials gathered, planting your seedlings is a straightforward process that takes less than a minute per planter box. I’ve messed this up enough times in my own playthroughs to know that skipping even one small step can leave you waiting days for crops that never grow, so follow these steps closely:
- Place your planter box in a well-lit area above the Shroud line, with at least one block of empty space on all sides so you can access it from any angle.
- Open the planter box interface and drag the seed of your choice from your inventory into the empty seed slot. You only need one seed per planter box to grow a full crop.
- Add fertilizer to the bonus slot if you have it, to cut growth time in half and increase the number of resources you get per harvest. You can make fertilizer from rot and bone meal, both of which you’ll get plenty of while looting monster camps.
- Close the interface and wait for the seedling to grow. Most basic crops take between 10 and 15 in-game minutes to fully mature, and you don’t need to water them or do any extra maintenance while you wait.
One trick I picked up after my third failed farm is that you don’t have to stay near your base while your crops grow. They’ll keep maturing even if you’re off exploring a distant shroud zone or clearing a vault, so you can go about your regular gameplay loop without checking in every two minutes. Just make sure you don’t let your flame altar run out of fuel, because if your base’s protection drops, hostile mobs can spawn near your planters and destroy your crops before you get back to harvest them. Once you’ve done this a few times, you’ll be able to set up new farms in any base you build without even thinking about the steps, since the process for how to plant seedlings enshrouded is the same no matter what biome you’re in.
If you want to speed up growth even more, you can place a torch or a campfire within two blocks of your planter boxes. The extra light cuts growth time by an extra 10%, which adds up if you’re growing a lot of slow-maturing crops like oak trees. You can also build a small roof over your planter boxes to protect them from rain, though rain doesn’t actually damage crops, it just makes them take 5% longer to grow. It’s a small difference, but if you’re playing on a server with frequent rain, it’s worth the small amount of extra wood to build a cover.
Best Seedlings to Plant First for Maximum Benefit
Not all seedlings are worth planting early on, especially if you only have a few planter boxes to work with. I always recommend prioritizing crops that give you multiple uses, instead of ones that only serve one niche purpose. Berry bush seedlings are my number one pick for new players, because each harvest gives you 3-5 berries that you can eat raw to fill your hunger bar, or turn into jam for a long-lasting healing item. They also grow faster than most other crops, so you’ll have a steady supply in no time. Next, plant pine tree seedlings if you spend a lot of time building. Each mature pine tree gives you 12-15 planks when harvested, which saves you hours of running around chopping down wild trees every time you want to expand your base. If you’re focusing on combat, aloe seedlings are a great pick, since you can turn aloe leaves into health potions that are far more effective than raw berries. You can skip planting things like cotton seedlings early on, since you won’t need large amounts of cloth until you start crafting high-level armor 10+ hours into your playthrough.
If you’re playing on a higher difficulty level where hunger drains faster, you might want to prioritize berry bushes even more, since you can eat them right away without any extra crafting. I once played a hard mode run where I survived my first three shroud runs entirely on berries from my farm, because I didn’t have enough materials to craft healing potions yet. Once you get access to higher tier seeds later in the game, you can swap out some of your berry bushes for more specialized crops, like wheat for baking bread or cotton for making cloth armor. You can also plant flower seedlings if you want to decorate your base, though they don’t give any practical resources, so I usually save those for after I have all my functional crops set up. If you’re not sure which seedlings to start with, stick to the three I mentioned earlier, since they’re the most versatile options when you’re first learning how to plant seedlings enshrouded.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Growing Seedlings
Even if you follow all the basic steps, it’s easy to make small mistakes that waste your seeds or delay your harvests. One mistake I see all the time is players planting multiple different seeds in the same planter box, but that doesn’t work in Enshrouded. Each planter can only hold one type of seed at a time, so if you try to add a second seed, it’ll just replace the first one you placed, and you’ll lose the original seed entirely. Another common mistake is harvesting seedlings too early. If you click on the planter before the crop is fully mature, you’ll only get the original seed back, no extra resources, so you’ll have wasted all the time you spent waiting for it to grow. Never place your planter boxes near your base’s crafting stations, either. If you later decide to move or upgrade a workbench, you might accidentally delete your planter box and lose all the crops growing inside it. I learned this the hard way when I deleted a planter full of 12 almost-mature berry bushes while rearranging my crafting area, and had to start my entire farm over from scratch.
Another mistake a lot of new players make is not leaving enough space between their planter boxes to walk. If you place them right next to each other, you won’t be able to reach the ones in the middle to harvest them, and you’ll have to break the outer ones to get to the inner crops. I usually leave at least one block of space between each row of planters, so I can walk through easily and harvest everything in a few seconds. If you’re building a large farm, you can also add paths between rows to make it even easier to navigate, especially if you’re playing in third person where movement can feel a bit clunky around small objects. These small mistakes are easy to avoid once you know what to look for, and they’ll save you a lot of frustration when you’re first getting the hang of how to plant seedlings enshrouded.
Setting up your first farm doesn’t have to be a complicated process, and the payoff is more than worth the small amount of time you’ll spend gathering materials and planting your first crops. Once you get the hang of how to plant seedlings enshrouded, you’ll never have to spend half your play session looting wild plants for basic resources again, and you’ll have far more time to focus on the parts of the game you actually enjoy, whether that’s exploring hidden vaults, building an elaborate base, or taking on the game’s toughest bosses. Start small with 2-3 planter boxes and a handful of berry seeds, and expand your farm as you gather more resources and unlock new crop types later in the game.