Farming & Food Guide

If someone was asked what their favorite item in Minecraft is, they would no doubt answer "Diamonds!" While diamonds are exciting, they require a bit of preparation (or luck) to successfully obtain. It can take a long time of mining before even a single diamond is found. While you are doing this mining, walking, running, umping, (and everything else in the game), you will notice that the rightmost bar above your EXP bar is changing. As all of you no doubt know, that is your hunger bar. As all of you no doubt know, if you are hungry, you will starve (and die). Learning how to control your hunger bar can be a difficult process, especially in a hardcore economy server. This guide will show you the best ways to go about farming and keeping yourself full.

1. NEVER spend your NetherStars on food! You only get six (6) of these per day. They have a Sell Value of $150. At best, you can get eight (8) Porkchops with a single NetherStar. Cooked Porkchops are worth $0.50 each. Once you do the math, you just found that your $150 NetherStar just became $4 of food. You just lost $146 at best, and at worst, a chance to receive a very rare item (such as a melon sword).
2. Start a wheat farm early. You will get hungry very quickly, and will require food to be able to be safe. Find yourself a lake, river, or any other body of water, and set your home by it. If you have MultiHome or Water, you have an advantage (I strongly recommend both of these packages). Once you have your water, use the Minecraft water physics to expand your water as much as possible (irrelevant if you have the Water package). Next, run around breaking all the tall grass you see. Not only will this get you seeds, but it will also rack up your Herbalism skill faster than anything else. With your seeds, water, and dirt, follow this image to get yourself an efficient wheat farm going.
3. Try to find melons and potatoes as soon as possible. Melons, potatoes, and wheat are the best crops to farm on EcoCityCraft. AVOID carrots, pumpkins, and sugarcane. What is so good about melons, potatoes, and wheat? Melons are the single most profitable crop. Each slice is only worth $0.10, but if you craft nine (9) slices together, you get a Melon Block, which can be sold for $1.65. As a bonus, melons do not have to be replanted, unlike potatoes and wheat. Potatoes are the best source of food. Out of all the crops, baked potatoes have the best food quality, and they are worth the least to sell out of all the food crops (tied with carrots at $0.30). They do have to be "smelted," but the smelting is well worth it. If you use charcoal, the cost for smelting is only about $0.03 per baked potato. Wheat is in the middle of melons and potatoes. It is of good value ($0.60 each) and has the second best food quality of the crops when crafted into bread. At the beginning of your adventure, you may not yet have potatoes, and so wheat/bread will be your main food source. What is so bad about carrots, pumpkins, and sugarcane? Carrots only sell for $0.30 each, and have a relatively low food quality. This means that you will have to carry around more of them to keep yourself full. To keep it short, there is no reason to even grow carrots. Potatoes and wheat are better. Pumpkins and sugarcane are not food items. Pumpkins can be turned into Pumpkin Pie, at a loss of $0.40 for ingredients. To keep it short, you would be better off just growing melons instead of pumpkins. As already mentioned, sugarcane is not a food item, and has a very low value of $0.15. Although it is harvested quickly, which helps your Herbalism Skill, you would be better off breaking a bunch of grass and flowers in fields than trying to grow sugarcane.
4. Use /kit starter to get free cooked porkchops. Why did I not list this earlier? This kit can only be used every twelve hours, and only yields four (4) cooked porkchops. Unless you only get on every twelve hours for a few minutes at a time, this will not help you out in the long run. Don't take me wrong, this is a great way to get some extra food, but you should not depend on it.

If anyone is interested, attached is a PDF of a spreadsheet that summarizes the info on the MCF.

I included cookies in the spreadsheet, as they can be crafted from wheat and cocoa beans. However, in EcoCityCraft, you are still much better off eating bread or baked potatoes. I did not include cake, as it requires milk, which is unobtainable due to the lack of mobs.