Summary
In Horticular, it’s far more rewarding to build up a vast array of habitats than focusing on one or two animals that are easy to get. However, you won’t be given every item that you need right off the bat; instead, you need to save up your money and purchase various items from Mercury.
If you’re feeling exceptionally bold and want to get some decor, you may spend the nectar that you collect from your garden, with Corbett. However, most of the items you buy with nectar probably won’t have any impact on the actual habitats that you’re building.
10Red Velvet
Tags: Flowery
Red Velvet isn’t that special. It has the flowery tag, but so do many, many other items in the game. However, it can help you diversify the flowers that you have scattered throughout your item and may help you attract butterflies at some point.
It’s one of the cheaper items that you’re able to get your hands on and, as soon as it’s out of the shop, you’ve made room for more items. In all honesty, the more items you can get your hands on in the early game, the more you can beautify your garden and feel compelled tocontinue carrying on with this cozy game.
9Boulder
Tags: Basking, Tall
While you’ll get your hands on a basking rock fairly early on in your gameplay, you won’t get your hands on an item with the tall tag until you purchase something from Mercury. The boulder is one of the easiest and quickest items you can get.
It pops up fairly often in Mercury’s shop and serves multiple purposes, helping to break up the landscape a bit in an appealing way while also adding the tall tag to a few of your habits. If you’re building a Dragonfly habitat, you’re going to need the boulder.
8Lawn
Tags: Land, Orderly, Soil
Anything that functions as ground is a great purchase from Mercury. Unlike many of the other ground tiles that you might come across, the lawn has an orderly tag on it, which is a necessity for certain habitats. Other than that, it’s a great way to break up the monotony of certain areas and give your garden some wonderful aesthetic depth.
It also doesn’t cost that much, which means that you can get your hands on this unique ground tile fairly early on in Horticular - a must, given that land tiles are fairly sparse and not that easy to come by.
7Carrots
Tags: Foliage, Vegetable
There’s a chance you can get the Hortic Day challenge to plant as many vegetables as possible. While carrots are hardly the only vegetable in the game, they’re the most likely to pop up in Mercury’s shop and they’re one of the cheapest.
Once you get your hands on them, all you need to do is slap them down over the top of some flower bed tiles. They make for a nice variance in decoration and they’re necessary for some habitats, like the rat’s habitat. All in all, a great purchase that serves multiple needs.
6Leaf Litter
Tags: Insects
Leaf Litter is one of the more unique pieces of decor and habitat items that you can get in Horticular. You can get it fairly early on from Mercury and start using it as soon as you have the pond tile. While you can’t place it on a stream it makes for a great item if you’re angling for the Catfish habitat or any other water-based creatures.
The item’s description implies that it’s filled with hidden little bugs and insects. The insect tag is part of the reason that you should get it early on, given it will be somewhat easy to get your hands on.
5Tulips
Tags: Flowery, Foliage
Tulips, while they make great decorations and provide excellent flowers to scatter throughout your garden, are also a necessary purchase from Mercury. Although you might consider holding off them, you really shouldn’t - when you see them in the shop, buy them.
There’s a quest you can be given that requires you to grow twenty of the red, purple, and yellow tulips. After that, you need to deliver 10 fully adapted tulips of each type, meaning you should probablyhave some kind of farm set up in your garden.
4Hollow Log Or Sticks
Tags: Insects, Wood, Shelter (Hollow Log Only)
Unless you somehow manage to get your hands on the broken pot early on, you really should angle to grab the Hollow Log for yourself. It has three distinct tags, Insect, Shelter, and Wood. Sticks also happen to share the Insect and Wood tag, which makes both unique items. Both of these should appear in Mercury’s shop within the first in-game month.
These tags are necessary when building specific habitats, like the Rat’s habitat. Not to mention, the Hollow Log, especially helps to break up the landscape a bit and add some interesting features to both water and land.
3Cattails
Tags: Foliage, Shelter Tall
Although there is a quest that will give you reeds upon completing it early on, you may only purchase Cattails from Mercury. For the sake of both diversity and beautification, you should consider investing in some Cattails.
Although they aren’t much different from your standard reeds, if you get creative enough, you can utilize them to help denote where certain habitats are and what the goal of certain areas is going to end up being. For example, you could use Cattails on the Catfish habitat while only using your standard reeds for the Goldfish habitats.
2Boardwalk
Tag: Construct
Does the Boardwalk ao anything aside from decoration? Surprisingly, yes. While it won’t help you to build up your habitats, if you choose to get the Boardwalk from Corbett, then you may build pathways over your rivers and little docks over your lakes.
This will help your Keepers to do their jobs more quickly,casting their fantastical and magical upkeep spells, given that they won’t have to jump in and out of their boats nearly as often. Just as how the walking paths increase movement speed, these Boardwalks will do the same.
1Insect Hotel
Tags: Insects x2, Flowery
The insect hotel is another item that you have to get from Corbett, and it might take you a minute to get it. Given that this item requires 128 Green Nectar and 42 Yellow Nectar, you’re going to be collecting for a while. The Yellow Nectar is easy enough to get, but if you’re going for green, take your time, and don’t be frustrated if you can’t get the insect hotel right away.
Given that it has two insect tags and a flowery tag, this is a great item to scatter about for the harder-to-obtain habitats. It also makes it so you can cut down on other items so your garden doesn’t end up too crowded.
