My dCrops Farming Journal #2 – Climbing the Leaderboard and Expanding My Farm 🌾

Welcome back to another edition of My dCrops Farming Journal!

Last week, I started documenting my progress in dCrops, the farming game on the Hive blockchain.

Since then, quite a lot has happened. I've been investing in more CROP, expanding my liquidity pool position, buying new seeds and blueprints, and exploring more cooking opportunities.

And the Holding Rewards leaderboard has become particularly interesting!

🏆 Holding Rewards – From Rank 75 to Rank 57

My biggest visible improvement this week has been my position on the Holding Rewards leaderboard.

Milestone	Rank
Starting position	75
First improvement	69
Next update	65
Continuing upward	61
Latest confirmed position	57

That's an improvement of 18 positions!

My latest recorded 15-day average reached 347,155.949 CROP POWER.

I've also been purchasing additional CROP regularly rather than making one large investment and stopping there.

Because Holding Rewards use a rolling 15-day average, those purchases take time to become fully reflected in the reward calculation.

Of course, other players are also increasing their holdings, so moving up the leaderboard isn't guaranteed.

Still, my long-term target remains the same:

The Top 50!

🎁 Bigger Quest Reward Chests

Another interesting development has been the growth of my Reward Chest.

When I started tracking it, my chest contained 27 items.

Here's how it developed:

Previous	Current
27 items	33 items

That's six additional items per completed quest chest, an increase of approximately 22.2%.

Larger chests give me more opportunities to obtain useful resources, boosters, and other items.

I'm particularly interested in construction materials because I want to expand my equipment collection without having to purchase everything directly from the market.

💰 Growing My CROP Holdings and Liquidity Pool

My latest recorded farm balances are:

Asset	Amount
CROP held in-game	206,150
SWAP.HIVE:CROP liquidity pool shares	6,137
15-day average CROP POWER	347,155.949

My liquidity pool position has increased from 4,461 to 6,137 shares since I started recording these figures.

That's approximately 37.6% more shares.

However, it's important to distinguish between increasing my investment and actually earning a profit.

Additional liquidity deposits increase my share balance, but they aren't automatically investment returns.

I'll continue tracking the pool separately from my CROP holdings and Holding Rewards.

🌶️ Expanding the Seed Collection

I've also been working on improving the farm's long-term production capabilities.

One of my recent additions was a Rare Alpha Cauliflower Seed.

Its characteristics include:

• Spring season
• 10-day growth time
• One Cauliflower per harvest
• 24 Shares per harvested Cauliflower

I've also been evaluating a Legendary Alpha Bell Pepper Seed.

This one caught my attention because it produces five Bell Peppers every two days during the winter season and continues producing until the season ends.

Bell Pepper is also an ingredient for one of my newly learned recipes.

My strategy with seeds is straightforward:

I buy them to produce crops, not to speculate on resale prices.

Even duplicate seeds could be useful if they allow additional or staggered production.

That's something I want to investigate with my automation setup.

🥪 Chaos Farms Opens a Sandwich Department

My kitchen expansion has taken an interesting turn.

I purchased a Toaster Blueprint for just 0.45 HIVE and learned the Epic Classic Sandwich recipe.

Unfortunately, making a sandwich in dCrops isn't quite as simple as putting two slices of bread together!

The recipe requires:

Ingredient	Quantity
Bread	2
Tomato	1
Kale	2
Cilantro	1
Onion	1
Ketchup	1
Bell Pepper	1

The recipe takes 36 hours and has an indicated selling value of 227.20–681.60 Shares, excluding land bonuses.

At one-star ingredient quality, the displayed ingredient value is 174.60 Shares.

The catch?

I still need the actual Toaster equipment and several ingredients.

Bread and Ketchup also introduce additional production requirements.

So the cheap Toaster Blueprint has opened the door to a much bigger project.

I may have accidentally started building a restaurant.

🔧 More Blueprints and Production Equipment

Another purchase was a Blender Blueprint for 1,800 CROP, paid using my Hive-Engine CROP balance rather than my in-game balance.

I'm gradually building up a collection of blueprints that can support future production.

The biggest equipment question remains the Windmill.

I found a complete Windmill listed for 1,900 SWAP.HIVE.

It was the only available offer when I checked.

Interestingly, the last recorded trade I found was approximately two years old and had a price of just 140 HIVE.

That doesn't mean the Windmill is worth either amount today, but it certainly illustrates how thin the market for some equipment can be.

For now, I'll continue watching the market rather than paying such a high asking price.

⚒️ Crafting and Farm Automation

My automation setup continues to handle much of the routine farming work.

I've also been crafting materials such as Stone Slabs and Copper Ingots, which will be useful for future equipment construction.

One feature I particularly appreciate is the ability to adjust crafting priorities.

For example, I can reduce or disable automatic Strawberry Jam production when I want to preserve ingredients for other uses.

I can't configure planting priorities in the same way, however.

That raises an interesting question:

If I own multiple copies of a seed, how does the automation decide how many to plant?

I'll be watching that behavior more closely during future quests.

It could help determine whether duplicate seed cards are worth keeping for additional production capacity.

🌱 A New Season, New Opportunities

The farm has also been approaching another seasonal transition.

Season changes are always interesting because they affect which crops can be planted and harvested.

With my growing seed collection, I'm looking forward to seeing how the automation handles the next rotation.

I also want to improve how I monitor my inventory, production chains, and actual rewards.

There's still plenty to learn!

📊 My Next Farming Priorities

For the coming weeks, I'm focusing on a few areas:

Holding Rewards: Continue monitoring my position and actual HIVE payouts.

Seed Production: Improve ingredient availability through productive, reusable seed NFTs.

Cooking: Explore which recipes are practical and whether their output justifies the ingredients and production time.

Equipment: Build useful machines when the required materials and investment make sense.

Liquidity Pool: Keep tracking my position separately from earned rewards.

Most importantly, I want to make my farm more efficient without turning the game into a second job.

🌻 Final Thoughts

This has been a productive week.

I've climbed 18 positions on the Holding Rewards leaderboard, increased my Reward Chest from 27 to 33 items, expanded my liquidity pool position, and made several additions to my farming and cooking plans.

The biggest lesson so far?

Building a productive farm is about connecting the different systems.

Seeds provide ingredients. Ingredients support cooking. Equipment unlocks recipes. Crafting supplies construction materials. And CROP holdings contribute to the reward system.

There's always another production chain to explore.

If you're playing dCrops, I'd be interested to hear how you approach automation and cooking.

Do you focus mainly on farming Shares, Holding Rewards, or building complete production chains?

Let me know in the comments!

Until next time...

There is no Order without Chaos! 🌾

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This is a personal gaming journal, not financial advice. Game rewards, NFT values, and token prices can change.

Join me in dCrops: Start farming here

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Images and screenshots are from me or AI generated

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