Plan your potato god clone

Potatoes fill a trough best: 125 calories an item in stacks of 20, so a full trough of them feeds cows and sheep longer than any other food. In the kitchen they go into Hunters Pie, Fish Pie and Shepherds Pie.

Potato growth stages and times

Base times from the game files (minutes at default server settings). A potato seed is a Seed for 1 min and already counts as a neighbour, a Seedling for 10 min, then a Sapling for 10 min: from about 11 to 21 minutes after planting its cuttings copy its genes exactly, before any crossing. At 21 min the potato enters Crossbreed for 1 min; its new genes are worked out once, as it enters, from the plants touching it in the same planter. Potato's Mature stage lasts 45 min: the time to read the genes and take cuttings. Fruiting takes 30 min, so a potato plant is ripe about 1 h 37 min after planting, stays Ripe for up to 24 h, and then turns Dying: the harvest and cuttings are gone, and 1 h 40 min later the plant dies. Poor light, water, temperature or soil stretch all of that for potato; each G gene speeds its growth by 25%.

What potato goes into

Potato is an ingredient in 5 recipes on Godclone's Recipes page. Cooking Workbench: Hunters Pie, Fish Pie, Shepherds Pie, Rich Fish Pie and Rich Hunters Pie. See the potato recipes with their ingredients and craft times.

Cows and sheep eat potatoes from a trough: 125 calories an item, in stacks of 20. The trough calculator says how many to leave before you log off.

When Hardiness matters for potato

H Hardiness copes with cold, heat and poor soil, so it earns its place in a snow or desert base, where GGGYYH potato beats a plant that dies before it fruits. Anywhere else it is the weakest green for potato too: the calculator scores H at 0.5 against 1 for G and Y, and you can raise it in Options when you farm in the cold. A potato plant's water intake is 4 in the game files; each W Water gene adds 10% to it, which is why W counts as a bad gene.

How to breed a potato god clone

1. Plant potato seeds in one planter and wait about 11 minutes for the Sapling stage, then take a cutting from each and read the genes in its name.
2. Add the clones above (the calculator on this page is already set to potato) and press Calculate. It tries every way of putting your potato clones around a centre plant and shows the layouts that give GGGYYY or GGYYYY, the planting order when a tie needs it, and the chance of each.
3. Plant the layout in a planter with nothing but potato in it. The centre crosses once, about 21 minutes after it went in (12 if it has 3 G); from Mature (45 min long for potato) read its genes and clone it.
4. Clone the potato while it is Mature or Ripe. A potato plant gives 2 cuttings a cut with no Yield genes, 3 with GGGYYY and 4 with GGYYYY (one more per two Y, game code), so the god clone multiplies itself.

Which of the two to aim for with potato depends on what you want from it: more Y means bigger harvests and more cuttings, more G means a faster bed. When to plant and the triangle planter cover the timing for potato and the small planters.