As per my last two posts, I've been working on Clovers. I've been successful in breeding the 64 Leaf Clover and wanted to share all my findings:
Clovers affect the strange rate and the farming speed.
The strange rate determines how many strange crops you harvest (these give 5x the revenue). The default is 0.15% (so very low) and gradually increases the more clovers you plant. The farming speed determines how fast your crops grow. The default is 100% and decreases the more clovers you plant.
I've calculated the efficiency for each type of clover and put it into a few tables below:
(note: the Efficiency is over 100 for 0 Clovers because I’m defining 100 as normal growth time but only regular carrots. Also, the values seem to be different depending on what patch you play, but I’ll update this if I see anything change. The formula for the Efficiency is the following: ( 1 + strange_rate * 4.0 ) * farm_speed, where all values are absolute, not in percent, so the strange_rate for 2 clovers would be 0.0039 for example)
Baseline:
Clovers Strange Speed Efficiency
0 0.15 100 100.60
4-Leaf-Clovers:
Clovers Strange Speed Efficiency
1 0.30 99.95 101.15
2 0.39 99.61 101.16
3 0.45 98.70 100.48
4 0.50 96.97 98.91
[...]
16-Leaf-Clovers:
Clovers Strange Speed Efficiency
1 0.76 99.95 102.99
2 0.91 99.61 103.24
3 0.99 98.70 102.61
4 1.05 96.97 101.04
[...]
64-Leaf-Clovers:
Clovers Strange Speed Efficiency
1 1.35 99.95 105.35
2 1.50 99.61 105.59
3 1.59 98.70 104.98
4 1.65 96.97 103.37
[...]
As you can see, no matter which type of clover you place, the ideal amount is 2 clovers and it drops slowly after that. I've tested this with numbers much higher than 4 clovers, but believe me, the more you place the faster it gets worse.
Clovers have an animation when placing them in a straight line (or diagnoal, if you take the grid as orientation). This signals that they are breeding. You can breed 4-leaf-clovers to get 16-leaf-clovers and breed those to get 64-leaf-clovers. I don't know for sure about the likelyhood of getting ne 'next higher' clover, but just placing whatever clovers you have and hoping for the best worked for me.
Overall I find the clovers an interesting addition, but they are barely worth investing time into. It takes ages to get and then breed them. While breeding them, you'll likely have many placed down and will therefore harm your farm yields. And the long term effects are only about 5 percent extra (efficiency 100.60 vs 105.59), far less than every other farming equipment provides. If going for max efficiency, you'll have to get them, but if you are more casual, just watch out that you don't place any more than two.
TL;DR: Clovers increase farming efficiency. The more leaves, the better, but regardless of type, place exactly 2 for best results, any more can harm your yield. You can buy 4 leaf clovers at Rosemary (they are rare) and then breed clovers by placing 2 or more in a straight line (or diagonally if you look at the building grid). Sometimes the breed clovers will have more leaves. They are barely worth it (only about 5% yield increase).
