Tips for conserving energy in gardening

Three medium area patches, one pest spell

Like oil’s status in the world as an energy source, energy in the spiral is the rare resource that needs to be conserved.  Since the money from all those millions of memberships plus crowns is apparently not enough for KI, selling energy at every possible turn is the name of the game.

Fortunately they’ve also given those of us who can’t afford to endlessly pay for energy elixirs a few ways to participate in gardening, pet training and fishing without purchasing energy.  The big thing is that the energy refills over time so if you can confine your use to the energy you have at the moment, you can let it refill while you go live your life for a while.

We just can’t do all the energy-requiring activities at the scale of those who buy energy elixir at the drop of a hat.  Refilling is a very slow way to get energy except at level-up moments and if you have to rely on refills, you need to learn how to use energy carefully so you can get the most out of it.

Energy also automatically refills every time you level up, so when you get close to leveling, you can use all your energy for gardening, keep questing till you hit the next level, then train a pet or fish.  Or train a pet till you run out of energy then level up then train some more…   This is especially handy in the lower levels where you can level up fast, so take advantage with new and low level wizards; I sometimes create and delete wizards just to take advantage of the fast leveling and do pet training.

You can also earn energy elixir at Freeki Games playing Grub Guardian.  For some reason the game makes no sense to me and the many guides to playing at a high enough level to win the elixirs read to me as if they’re in Greek; I don’t find anything about Grub Guardian to be enough fun to learn it.  But if you are good at this little game, it’s apparently a nice way to keep supplied in energy elixir.

In gardening, there are a few things you can do to help conserve energy.  For me, the first issue is making sure my gardens suit the amount of energy my wizard has.  That means not only that the garden’s needs can be met within the limits of base energy plus any energy gear but also that the total number of plants in any given patch can be planted (at 2 energy points per seed planted) within those limits.

The big, three-tiered, 69-plot mega gardens many people love to grow require an energy refill every time you re-plant, so I don’t create them.  They require 138 points to fill with plants (69 at 2 points per seed to plant) which, until the very highest levels, is way beyond the energy you can acquire even with the best energy gear.  See previous post for more on this.

Stacking is still a good way to fit a maximum number of plants within the large area spells (i.e. one spell takes care of many plants), but I only do two tiers and gardens of 40-52 plots*, which is the maximum I can plant at once.  I also like doing 18 small and 12 medium plot patches, both of which fit medium area spells.  Fitting a lot of plants within one large or one medium area spell saves a bunch of energy.  See here for info on gardens for mid-level wizards that stay within their energy.

Over time I’ve learned a few more tricks and KI, in adding gardening TCs at the Bazaar this year, has provided a couple of helpful ways to conserve energy.

1. Starting at Celestia, there are pest spells available that keep pests away for 48 or 96 hours, so you don’t have to keep using energy to get rid of pests.  They’re also available as gardening TCs which means you can use them long before getting to Celestia.  The Pest Zapper (not trained till Zafaria**), for instance, keeps away rank 1 and 2 pests for 48 hours and takes 15 energy points.  For five more points than Gusty Winds, the one-shot pest spell for rank 2 which must be cast at least once a day, you can go two days without casting another pest spell.  That means for those two days you have a little extra energy left with which to fish or play a couple of pet games.  The 96 hour spell (which appears to be available only as a TC) costs 20 energy points and is also larger than the normal large-area spells so you can group a couple of patches together and, for four days, keep pests off two areas that would normally both each require a pest spell every day.  The Pest Zapper TC tends to be always in stock at the Bazaar; the Massive Pest Zapper is harder to get.
2. Needs occur with kind of mysterious frequency, so sometimes I go in and every patch has every need plus pests, which, for many of my wizards, takes pretty much all energy.  Other times only some of the needs have occurred and there’s a decent chunk of energy left. At those times, if the 48/96 hour pest spell is over, I cast another even if there are no pests at the moment.  If I get these cast when there’s energy left, then for the next couple of days there’ll be some energy left over for pets (I don’t fish, but for that too) or, if needed another Summon Pixie.
3. I also use Summon Pixie (it puts a pixie on the plant you cast it on for 48 hours–a like for I think all plants that’s picked up by everything in the patch) which requires a hefty 25 points, so I use those extra energy moments to add pixies; in many of my gardens I don’t have enough energy to meet all needs and still cast 25 or 50 points worth of pixies so timing matters.   In spite of the hefty energy cost, the spell only lasts for 48 hours so most plants require casting it at least twice, some of them three or four times, to keep a pixie “like” going throughout the life of the plants.  It can be a challenge to have enough energy left after needs to add another pixie, so take advantage of the moments when you’ve got some extra energy.
4. The gardening TCs at the Bazaar include spells for all indoor or all outdoor plants.  For instance, if I have a large-area patch of King Parsley, which requires music, and a large-area patch of Evil Magma Peas both growing outside at one of my houses (for me pretty much always Red Barn Farm), which also requires music, I can cast one Flute Symphony and clear the music need for every plant in both patches.  It takes the same 15 energy points as a large area spell, so this basically saves 15 points of energy (without it, I’d have to cast one 15 point large-area spell over the Parsleys and one over the EMPs.  For the water and music “all indoor/all outdoor” cards you may have to sit at the Bazaar refreshing the garden spell tab for a while.  The one for bees (Zounds) shows up much more often for some reason and the one for sun (Supreme Sunlight) slightly more often, but the water and music are hard to catch.  These spells are a great way to conserve energy and I’m now planning which types of plants to grow at the same time based on overlapping needs that let me use those all indoor or outdoor spells.

Every time I go to the Bazaar with every wizard, I spend a few minutes refreshing that garden tab and grabbing as many of the hard-to-get pest and all-indoor-or-outdoor TCs I can for every wizard.  It’s worth spending a little time to get them as they really help you to conserve that precious energy.

With a little care and attention you can manage quite a bit of gardening and pet training (not so sure about fishing, which in the little I’ve done seems much more of an energy-eater with little or no result) and stay within the energy you’re given for free.  Even non-members’ energy refills over time–just more slowly–and at leveling up, so everyone can participate.

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*I go ahead and create that size even for wizards who don’t have enough energy to fill it.  They might only plant, say, 30 at a time (for a wizard with only 65 energy).  That way as the wizard levels up and gets more energy, the garden is already set for adding more plants which means I don’t have to keep tearing down and rebuilding.  I’ve done so well at stocking mega snacks, treasure cards and reagents plus constantly hitting the gold maximum that I have no plans to create larger gardens when and if I have a level 110.

**Zafaria is where KI started making it impossible for a lower level wizard to port to someone and train higher level gardening spells.  Starting in Zafaria the gardener doesn’t appear until you’ve done a chunk of the first quests so you can’t get any of those spells until you have the spiral key for that world and start the quests.  Same thing in Avalon, except you can’t see the gardener until far into the world.

Pink Dandelions: Pretty and Beneficial Too!

One of my favorite plants in the Spiral is Pink Dandelion.  Besides being pretty when you have rows of them growing (and those sweet faces!), they’re one of the few easy-to-get crown plants .  They drop all over the place.  They provide some great reagents, dandelion seeds and Golden Pizza snacks to sell in the bazaar, and they’re easy to care for without using up a lot of energy.

18 Pink Dandelions

At one time I had all six wizards on my first account growing 18 pink dandelions in two levels of nine plots.  Unbelievable how fast you can amass some great reagent stores with regular harvests of 18 PDs. The reagents dropped:

Ancient Scroll
Black Pearl
Blood Moss
Bone
Cat Tail
Crystal Vial
Lava Lily
Spring

If you start growing PDs as soon as you get drops in Krokotopia, you’ll have no problem with all those Black Pearls for the Dragonspyre crafting project.  And for crafting some of the great housing stuff the other reagents (along with reagents from other plants I grow) have kept me ready to craft on many projects.

I rarely feed pets anything but mega snacks since–as I mention all too often 🙂 — I don’t like playing pet games, so the Golden Pizzas that drop at elder harvest net some nice gold at the Bazaar.  Prices vary, of course, but generally I sell them for 300 gold each and generally at least a dozen of my 18 PDs drop one; 3600 gold per elder harvest.

They can drop Dandelion seeds at more than one harvest; I usually get at least one from every plant at some stage.  At the Bazaar I sell them for 120 gold; 2160 gold each round of plants.  You also get a replacement PD seed at elder harvest, so once you’ve fought enough charmed slaves or Kroks or Ronins, etc. to collect 18, you’re set–as long as you never kill one 🙂

They can also drop TCs at elder harvest.  You might get Fire Cat, Fire Trap or Sunbird.  My Fire wizard keeps some of those.  All the rest sell them.  It’s not a lot, as the Fire Cats go for only 20, the Fire Traps, 35 and the Sunbirds 40, but it accumulates when you’re getting 10 or so at every elder harvest.

As far as reagents, I usually work on getting each wizard supplied with 300 of the common ones and 100-200 of the rarer ones (depending on degree of rarity) and then 500 of each in the Shared Bank.  If you have six wizards each growing 18 at once it’s amazing how fast you can reach those goals and then you can start selling extras.  Reagents drop at every harvest and 3-4 at elder harvest.

Some of the reagent sale prices:  Ancient Scroll, 260; Black Pearl, 338;  Blood Moss, 270; Bone (not so many drop), 4; Cattail, 2-18; Crystal Vial, 5-138 (wildly variable); Lava Lily 2-12; Spring, 315.  After a while I’m generally selling quite a few Ancient Scrolls, Black Pearls, Blood Moss and Springs and you can see they really help accumulate the gold!

When it comes to care, they’re easy.  As the above picture shows, a medium area spell fits around the two-stack-18-plot garden.  They only have two needs, Pollination and Water.  They only get rank 1 pests.  So two 8 point medium area needs spells and one 5 point pest spell; 21 energy points a day and they’re thriving.  See here for info on building the garden.

Their likes:  Blue Ball of Yarn, Potted Cattail, Tropical Garden Gnome, Pixie, Snapdragon, Red Barn Farm/Botanical Garden.  Blue Ball of Yarn is pretty easy to get at the Bazaar, although sometimes you have to refresh for a while or make a couple of trips back to get one.  Potted Cattails are very tough to get at the Bazaar and in general (see post and also).  Snap Dragon and Tiger Lily (for pixie)  are easy to buy at all times at the Bazaar.  If you can manage at least four of the Likes they only take 4-5 days to reach elder harvest so you can keep replanting and garnering harvests often.

UPDATE 11/3/16:  In the last year the growing time for these has lengthened so with all likes they take 5-6 days.  If you’re missing a like or two probably more than week from start to finish.  Also, a while back plants started dropping housing items, almost always including their own likes, so PDs now drop Potted Cattails a LOT which ends the issue about getting them.  They’re pretty much always available at the Bazaar and if you grow one crop of PDs you’ll probably have one or several by the time you harvest the final time.

Lots of rewards, easy care.  Don’t have to spend any Crowns or gold to get them.*  Why not grow a patch?

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* Among my wizards I’ve varied between wizards who seemed to get a PD in every other battle all the way through KT–i.e. have the full array by the end of that world– and those who had to go back and fight endlessly in order to accumulate 18.  But I’ve been able to fill all those gardens off drops.

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Do you need a mega garden?

When I first started looking into gardening and ran into the concept of mega gardening, I wanted to maximize drops, etc.  I learned how to stack plots (see here for one of many guides), read about building a casting platform (see here for extreme gardening e-book that guides you through building stacked garden and casting platform and much more), studied up on maximum numbers within a spell, etc.

Mega gardeners generally create three tiers/levels of plots–using crates and a glitch that allows plots to be placed on them–and then a casting platform in order to get large area plant spells placed properly.  It’s a bit tricky to get the spell aimed at the right spot to get all the plants to receive the effects.  Supposedly the greatest number of plants that a large-area spell will successfully cover is 69.

I quickly realized, however, that for lower level gardeners mega gardening has issues that are not often discussed.  Most of those who seem to write about mega gardening are very high or highest level wizards who appear to have forgotten the limitations.  Even my level 76 wizard doesn’t have enough energy to plant 69 plants at once.  At 2 energy points per plant, that’s 138 points.  With her energy gear she has 116.

The whole idea of fitting all those plants in one spell is to have them progressing at the same rate so that one gardening spell at a time can meet all of their needs at once.  If you have to plant some in one round and then wait for your energy to refill in order to plant the rest, your timing will be thrown off and you’ll have to cast the same spells more than once a day.

Your other choice is to pay to refill your energy (or play Grub Guardian–personally can’t figure it out and don’t enjoy it enough to keep trying– to get elixirs) every time you need to replant a garden.  At the best price for crowns, the cost is about 25 cents.  Not bad.  Except many plants will reach elder harvest more than once a week.  And you may have more than one wizard with a big garden.  So the 25 cents starts multiplying.

If you just have one wizard growing one type of plant in one patch, the $2 extra a month may be worth it.  But if you have six wizards each growing two large area patches, you’re looking at more like $24/month.  If you can spare that much, great, but if you’re playing on a budget, that’s probably not for you.

And the thing is, now that I’ve maximized gardening on a smaller scale for a while (see previous posts here and here), I’m not sure I see why a complete mega garden is a necessity — or even worth while.

I have several wizards who each have 24 CPs (two layers of 12) in one large-area-spell patch and two medium area patches (two layers of six medium plot or two layers of 18 small plot)–usually 12 EMPs and 18 PDs– placed close enough to fit large spells over.  Occasionally I trade out the type of plant in each area in order to get different reagents, but the basic plan stays.  They can take care of the needs easily within the free energy and often can play a few pet games as well.

Mid level garden

Plus, it’s so much easier to cast those gardening spells on a two layer garden.  No casting platform required and pretty easy to just eyeball the spell circle surrounding the plants.  One wizard has a three-tier garden and the couple of times I sucked it up and bought energy so I could fill it, I found the casting-platform bit to be cumbersome.  Much prefer the ease of my two-level patches.

When it comes to the many benefits of gardening,  some thoughts about why you don’t really need to go mega:

GOLD

Let’s start with the gold.  I’ve had most of my wizards growing gardens of 2-3 medium area patches, each with a different plant, at one time or another.  With the low gold limit (300,000), even with those smaller gardens I find myself bumping into the maximum constantly from selling TCs, snacks and reagents.  If I keep buying things in order to reduce my gold so I can then sell more, I start bumping into the backpack, attic, item slot and shared bank limits.  If I were growing any more plants than I already do, I’d be going nuts trying to stay within the limit.

MEGA SNACKS

Then there’s the mega snack thing.  Up to a point I can see the advantage of growing, say, 69 Evil Magma Peas in order to harvest 69 mega snacks every four or five days.  But if I’m using all my energy to plant and care for a mega garden, I don’t have that much left for training pets.  Which gets me back to the cost of constantly having to pay to refill energy.  Plus, I don’t really like playing the pet games so I’m not going to be using 138 snacks a week — or even close to it.

On one account for a long time I had all six wizards growing twelve EMPs each.  One also had a 24 plot Couch Potato garden, so she distributed some mega snacks via the shared bank.  Each wizard got 24 mega snacks a week from the EMPs and then some random amount out of the 48 mega snacks harvested from the CPs.

The smaller gardens didn’t use all of their energy so each wizard could play a few pet games a day (not that I could stand to play that much :-0 ) and had more than enough mega snacks to feed one at the end of each game.  Are there really people who need 138 mega snacks to play 138 pet games a week?  Unless you’re crazy for pet training and have the money to refill energy multiple times a week, I see no need to harvest that many mega snacks.

TREASURE CARDS

I don’t use treasure cards a lot, so I know that my experience is probably somewhat different than those who rely on TCs extensively.  But the limit of 500 for Treasure Cards means my gardens are constantly bumping up against the limit.  I try to keep a selection of cards my wizard might actually use and sell the rest.

In the midst of harvesting plants, I’m constantly having the annoying Harold Argleston pop-up notification that I have too many TCs.  I have to stop harvesting, go to the Bazaar to sell a bunch and then go back to finish gardening.  If I’m running into it all the time with my somewhat smaller gardens,  I can’t imagine how crazy it would make me to be mega gardening and dealing with all those Treasure Cards.

REAGENTS

With my smaller gardens I’ve managed to set minimums on lots of reagents and get all the wizards to that minimum*.  I have a larger minimum for how many I want in the Shared Bank.  It’s taking a while to get the Shared Bank amounts where I want them, but I’ve met all my minimums on lots of reagents and am well on the way with others.

While I can see that a mega garden could make the process go a little faster, I’ve been able to meet all crafting needs/wants off the reagent stores I’ve gotten from my smaller gardens.  Certainly wouldn’t be worth it to me to buy a lot of extra energy in order to speed up the process.

Bottom line, I’ve been able to do very well on gold, mega snacks, Treasure Cards and reagents without having a mega garden.  My gardens operate well within my wizards’ energy limits.

If you just gotta show you can do the most, have the most, maximize to the max, etc. and you have unlimited crowns to buy energy, check out one of the guides mentioned above and make that mega garden.

If you just want to have enough gold to buy great equipment and houses, enough mega snacks to train plenty of pets, enough reagents to do not only crafting quests but to craft other stuff, then two-level gardens of 40-44 medium or 24 large plots or medium areas of 12 medium or 18 small plots will bring you everything you need.

My answer is no, you don’t need a mega garden.

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* They’re a bit randomly set but mostly vary with the rarity of the reagent; smaller minimum for rarer reagent that’s used in smaller quantities, larger minimum for common reagent that’s use in large quantities.

Why have a garden?

When I was first introduced to gardening it seemed like an unnecessary side line.  I planted the first couple of seeds, didn’t really catch on to what was happening with the drops.  Quit gardening.  Sold a lot of seeds I wish I could get back…

Morgan D. got to Dragonspyre before issues with reagents sent me searching the web for a better way to get the ingredients for crafting quests.  Which led to finding out plants drop tons of reagents, including most of the rare ones.

Once I found info on creating mega gardens, I also encountered the news that there are mega snacks with XP from 25-50 and that those are dropped by plants.  Since I’ve never liked the pet games much, that was welcome news!

It didn’t take long to realize none of my wizards had enough energy to get into all out mega gardening (more on that in upcoming posts), but I worked on figuring out how to get the greatest number of plants within medium spell areas.

18 Pink Dandelions

Medium Area dorm room garden

Two medium area patches

Two medium area patches, one pest spell

Mid level garden

Three medium area patches, one pest spell

The gallery shows a variety of gardens I’ve had for wizards in the 20s-40s.  As you can see, you can put as many as three medium area-sized patches within one pest spell.  All of these gardens are easily cared for within the energy limits of wizards in those stages.

Once you get to Mooshu (anywhere from level 30-ish to level 40-ish, depending on whether you’ve done side quests or main story only), and can get the large area spells, those spells fit over the same garden patches as the pest spells.  At that point I often expand to have a patch of large area plants like Couch Potatoes (two levels totaling 24).

As soon as I started gardening on these larger scales, every wizard had plenty of gold.  Plants drop Treasure Cards, reagents, pet snacks, gold and seeds (not all plants drop all of those) in such great amounts that you can collect all you need and then start selling them.  I regularly have to buy expensive items just to keep within the gold limits.*

The crafting quests suddenly became easy.  Even the Zafaria crafting quest that so many wizards complain about was a snap — already had enough reagents collected to do the whole thing.

Pet training became so much faster and easier to take with all those mega snacks.  I rely pretty much on Evil Magma Peas and Couch Potatoes to keep me in those high XP snacks.  And the great thing about Couch Potatoes is you can amass them for free starting at a pretty low level if you’re just willing to fight Troubled Warriors for many, many hours.

Even if you’re not sure you want to train pets or do the crafting quests or amass so much gold you can buy anything you want at the Bazaar (or the great houses and furniture sets you can buy for gold in the Crown Shop), I highly recommend you start maximizing the gardening as soon as you can.  If you’re playing on a budget, this is one of the best ways to earn the gold for having great gear, great houses, great housing items, etc.

You can start gardening at level 12.  It takes a while for those first plants to get to harvest and you won’t have the gardening rank to buy the medium area spells in Krokotopia until they do, so just plant them and keep questing.

I find I’ve usually reached the rank required for the KT medium area spells not long after I get there. (I do all side quests in Wizard City)  As soon as I can put a bunch of plants inside a medium area spell I start creating a larger garden.

Once you start growing 18 or more of a given plant, the benefits will multiply rapidly.  Different plants drop different reagents and/or TCs and/or snacks, so you might want to have different wizards growing different plants.

Since I waited so long to start gardening for my earliest wizards, I basically stopped questing for a long time while I caught them up on reagents and snacks.  If you start early and don’t like it and/or don’t feel you need all the drops you get, you can always stop, but it’s harder to catch up if you wait until later to start gardening seriously.

I’ll be posting more about gardening, including specific plants so keep checking back.

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* Usually I pass those on to the lowest level wizard (pre- or beginning gardening) on the same account to sell.

More medium area gardening

On my second account Fire  wizard Tatiana has a garden on the Island Getaway property. Right now she’s level 46, her energy is 73 and she has no energy gear.  I’ve kept her with two areas, each the right size for medium area spells.

She has large area spells now but when she first got this property and started a garden there she had only medium area spells.  There are two areas that each fit within medium area spells plus a couple of extra plots for “liked” plants.

One area has 12 medium plots and she’s varied between Evil Snow Peas, Baby Carrots and Red Bell Peppers; she’s now moving toward filling it with King Parsleys.

I passed her a King Parsley that dropped in DS for another wizard on the account and they’ve been slowly multiplying.  KP’s occasionally drop a seed on one or more of the mature harvests and always drop one at elder harvest.  Currently she has five planted and they’ve dropped three more seeds so far.  Right now they’re sharing space with some Red Bell Peppers.  Both types need sun*, and then each has one other need.  Three medium area spells take care of that one.

Her second area is 18 small plots.  One is always a Tiger Lily (for Pixie potential) and she alternates between 17 Pink Dandelions and 17 Fickle Pickles.  A nearby large plot holds a Snapdragon (“like” for Pink Dandelions plus Pixie potential).

I’ve placed the two areas plus the couple of extras close enough for the pest spells to fit over the whole thing.  Now that she has large area spells, they also fit over it all.

Fickle Pickles, with their five needs, challenge her energy capacity but the ability to fill a couple of needs for all plants at once saves just enough points to enable her to do it. When she has Pink Dandelions instead of FPs, she always has some energy to spare since they only have two needs.

She makes lots of gold from selling  snacks, extra reagents and lots of Treasure Cards.  The Red Bell Peppers give her lots of Fire treasure cards, so she also has a nice stock of her school’s spells for her side deck.

The only missing element:  mega snacks.  One of the other wizards on the account has all the Couch Potatoes any wizard on the account has gotten as drops and a few Evil Magma Peas.   That makes her the sole provider of mega snacks on that account.  When she has filled her 24 plot garden of CPs**, one of the others will start  a CP garden.

Tatiana’s supply of reagents is slowly hitting all the minimums I’ve set and, as mentioned, she’s making plenty of gold from selling unwanted snacks, extra reagents and most of the boatload of Treasure Cards she harvests regularly.  You really don’t have to go in for mega gardening to get very good results from gardening.

*In the picture KPs are sharing the area with Baby Carrots; in that case both need music and KPs have one other need.

** I’m getting CPs only from drops–no Crown purchases–so one wizard or another periodically farms in Savarstaad Pass.

Couch Potatoes in a medium area

For a long time my best experiment with maximizing couch potatoes within a medium area spell was to plant four in a two by two stack.  But I wanted to keep trying.  My next step was to put one more on the ground kind of centered with the other two.  Five worked really well.  Then I went on to eight.

It’s doable but also tricky.  It’s very easy to place your ring when the potatoes have needs while still at the seed stage but when they’re full grown it’s hard to get the placement right because they’re so huge you can’t see most of the ring.  I use the mouse to see it and then run my character around a bit to check placement.  But it’s still hard to get it exact.

I’d suggest that you make sure the rest of your garden’s needs leave you with some extra energy.  Often one of the four stacks of two doesn’t get enough of the spell around it and I have to cast two individual spells.

I’m getting better at getting it all in but I still have days when I have to cast those individual spells.  Still, it definitely is possible to get eight couch potatoes in a medium area spell if you want to get more mega snacks.

All eight CPs, by the way, were earned in drops in Grizzleheim.  Lots of fighting Troubled Warriors (which I think are the easiest; maybe not if you’re Ice) and Splithoof Barbarians.

Two medium areas under one pest spell

As I experimented with gardens that can use medium area spells I tried out a few configurations that would let me  use one pest spell to cover two medium area gardens.  It’s pretty easy to get two areas close enough.

Just set one up and then place a few plots for the other and check the spell coverage by clicking on a pest spell and placing the ring around the area; right click to cancel the spell.  I had to dig up and put down a few plots to get the spacing so that I could put a liked plant or two in between and still get the spells over.

In the above example, you can see that there’s a nearby Snap Dragon (liked by PDs) and if you peek through the EMPs you can see a pot that has a boom shroom (liked by EMPs).  There’s also a Tiger Lily in between the two areas (when it attracts a pixie both areas get the like).  One pest spell fits over all of that.

The Evil Magma Peas usually require a rank two pest spell (10 points) and the Pink Dandelions need a rank one, which is included in the rank two.  If the two areas were too far apart to use one pest spell it would take five extra points to use one rank one and one rank two spell.

In the example pictured above, the wizard is high enough level to have large area spells.  The two sections have two overlapping needs –water and pollination–so she can care for the whole batch — including the three extras — as to pest spell and two needs. The EMPs usually have  one  more need, music, and the shroom is placed so that its music need can be filled with the medium area spell cast on the EMPs.  The SD  also needs a magic spell.  The total to care for all of them is 51 points of energy.

For a wizard with only medium area spells it would take two more points to cover the needs.  The Tiger Lily is placed close enough to the Pink Dandelions that the medium area needs spells cover it too.  So 53 points for all of it.