This article is a stub
It lacks sufficient information and needs to be expanded. You can help by adding more content.
The studio has consistently described farming and fishing as the way to play Zeverland without fighting. The phrasing from 2025-11-16 is that a peaceful player can build houses, farm and fish, and both activities are named together as a refinement target on the July 2026 Roadmap. That makes them a stated pillar rather than a side activity, but the published detail is still thin in both directions.
Farming
Crops exist and are watered by hand. Watering them one at a time was raised by players as a grind problem during the second pre-alpha tech test, and the studio grouped it with crafting tiny materials out of the backpack as a pair of efficiency problems it had agreed to work on. That is the most specific published detail about farming there is: no crop list, growth timer, water requirement or yield figure has ever been released. The build is covered on Second Pre-Alpha Tech Test.
Ranching appears alongside farming in exactly one announcement. On 2026-06-30 the studio said that farming and ranching would each get their own skill system. Both of those lines are announced rather than built, and nothing else about ranching, including which animals it involves, has been published. See Skills and Progression.
Fishing
Fishing is confirmed as present in the world, in the same 2025-11-16 answer that named it part of the peaceful loop. A deeper fishing system is confirmed as in development: in the wishing-well section of its 2026-08-03 letter the studio said a fuller fishing system is already in the works. What that system contains was not stated, and the roadmap line gives no further detail either.
Community Requests the Studio Acknowledged
Three fishing ideas circulate as though they were features. They came from players, and the studio answered them with interest rather than commitment, so they are listed here as requests and nothing more.
Request | What the studio said |
|---|---|
Different fish in different bodies of water | A player request acknowledged in the 2026-08-03 wishing well. Not announced as a feature. |
A minigame for landing a catch | The same. A player request the studio noted without committing to it. |
A rack for displaying catches | The same. A player request the studio noted without committing to it. |
What Farming and Fishing Feed
Produce and catches feed Cooking, which the studio rebuilt for freeform ingredient mixing, and cooked food feeds Survival Needs. Chefs are one of the four survivor roles named in first-party copy, and recruited survivors have to be kept fed, which makes a working farm part of the maintenance cost of a full shelter. Companions in the second test also ate the apples they were sent to pick, which the studio acknowledged as behaviour it would fix. See NPC Companions.
Food expiration exists and was measured in real-life hours during the second test, meaning stock spoiled while players were logged out. On 2026-07-01 the studio agreed to retune expiration to in-game time and to exempt canned food. That retune is announced work and has not appeared in a public build.