Aspen : Bountiful Beginnings

Giant Crops

Potatoes, carrots, beetroot, wheat, netherwart, sweet berry. These crops have all been augmented! Using a new mechanic added in Aspen, you can make them grow to enormous sizes! The aforementioned crops have all been given two "buddies" that when planted nearby, cause them to grow faster. One "buddy" makes them occasionally have a growth spurt, and two causes it to happen more frequently. On full moons, if both "buddies" are present near their favorite crops, then they have a chance to grow huge! This will make your gardens much more beautiful. Below is a graph for the current "buddies" and the crop that benefits from them. A small side-section is also present, describing the sustenance provided by giant berries. As well as how to make candy, a new quickly consumed food item made with sugar and sweet berries. 

Aspen Forest

New biome! The aspen forest is a woodland biome of yellowing vegetation and suspicious mycological activity. Aspen wood can be harvested from the trees, providing a good in-between for the colors of birch and oak. These logs can also be gouged to create farmable mushroom colonies and can be crafted into an aspen totem. Around this biome, you may also find unusual spore prints gathered in the grass. Feed them a spider eye to grow them into something!

Aspen Totem

The aspen totem is a unique block crafted from aspen wood. It can be given many items as offerings, to receive more useful items in return. Currently, you may offer it poisonous potatoes, and pufferfish. Offering it a poisonous potato will provide you with a seed of life, which is currently the only way of growing daidarabotchi, giant bamboo. Pufferfish will provide you with a golden pepita, which can be used to cultivate fatstems. At maturity, they will grow glistering melons during the day, and golden pumpkins at night. 

Mementos

The aspen totem also serves as a retrieval method for getting back lost mementos. Mementos are esoteric items that are received by completing all of an update's achievements. They tease some of the content of the next update through a poem. Once one is unlocked, if by some means you have lost it, or your inventory was full and you didn't receive it, you may change the name of a piece of paper to the name of the memento, and offer it to the aspen totem.

Melon Additions

Melons and pumpkins of all kinds are now carveable and have lantern variants also. Glistering melon slices can now be turned into glistering sorbet with sugar and ice. 

Medium Mushrooms

 

Thanks to the new aspen forest biome, you may now grow mushrooms into large colonies. Simply take some aspen logs, gouge them with a sword, and inoculate them. Inoculants can be made by brewing a small mushroom of your choice into a tinted glass bottle. These bottles are made the same way as normal ones, just with tinted glass. Right-click the gouged log with your chosen inoculant to begin the growth process. During the day it will ripen into small mushrooms, during the night it will ripen into a colony of great size. Along with these mechanics, recipes have been added for all mushroom blocks and mushroom stems.