Bizarre results with Special Fertilizer

I already posted these findings on fogu, but I figured I would share them with you all too:
So I decided to do some testing with how much of a difference using Special Fertilizer makes on golden crops, and to see what impact there was for using Special Fertilizer repeatedly. So I took six groups of 5 golden carrot seeds (all straight from the shop) and plant them. Each group had had between 0 to 5 Special Fertilizer applied to it. I reloaded the night before they reached their first stage and got a total of 300 samples for each amount of Special Fertilizer yielding the following results:

0 Special Fertilizer: 213/300 (71.00%) survived first stage
1 Special Fertilizer: 229/300 (76.33%) survived first stage
2 Special Fertilizer: 208/300 (69.33%) survived first stage
3 Special Fertilizer: 210/300 (70.00%) survived first stage
4 Special Fertilizer: 190/300 (63.33%) survived first stage
5 Special Fertilizer: 202/300 (67.33%) survived first stage

Individual crop breakdown:
0 Special Fertilizer: 46/45/43/40/39
1 Special Fertilizer: 50/49/45/44/41
2 Special Fertilizer: 46/43/42/40/37
3 Special Fertilizer: 47/45/42/40/36
4 Special Fertilizer: 44/42/36/35/33
5 Special Fertilizer: 44/41/40/40/37

As an aside 5 was the most I could apply before they reached their first stage, so the 5 Special Fertilizer also served as the Fertilizing the night before they grew group. Needless to say my results for using Special Fertilizer make no sense what so ever to me. Worst case I was expecting was that it would have no impact, yet some how that for 2+ Special Fertilizer groups they did worse then no Special Fertilizer. Only thing I can conclude is either the RNG in this game is really messed up or I am missing something with how wilting works for golden crops (like wilting chance is not exclusively determined the night before). If anyone has any ideas or things they have noticed I am all ears.

Hmm, so using Special Fertilizer doesn't seem to make the golden crop immune to wilting...

Gosh, and since Special Fertilizer alone doesn't actually raise quality...

Maybe there is a special "wilt resistance" stat that is slowly raised by using Special Fertilizer?
I dunno...



Those results are very strange, though!
Maybe best to just put off trying to reliably grow golden crops until you can build the Ferris Wheel in Yr4 or later. :S

All I know is I planted 9 plots of golden turnips and one plot survived to maturity. So I'm waiting for the Ferris wheel to unlock before I try anymore golden crops.

On an interesting note.

I read that using Golden Crops as an ingredient in a dish results in 2 dishes instead of 1.

But I didn't know this:
If you use a golden crop in a dish, and the resulting dish would also be a 5star dish, the stars will turn red and the selling price will increase again.


That makes me really wish I could build the Ferris Wheel already.
Golden crops sure are nice.



I guess there's always that Edit Combo for increased chance of Golden Crop Survival...
Maiden with Shield x3
Snow Maiden with Shield x3 (?)

Or the "edit combo" for increased chance of golden crop survival. (gold-colored decorations in general, you won't get a notification though since this isn't a full-fledged combo)

I used a 5* gold onion to cook, and the alert music is different. And you do get double the dishes cooked, and the red stars. ^^

Since I might not have tested using enough Special Fertilizer and I wanted to see if Special Fertilizer's effect could be passed on to next generation of crops so I took one Golden Carrot and Special Fertilized a total of 19 times, and it went through the seed maker twice. So I took the 9 golden carrots it yielded and planted them and did not use any Special Fertilizer on them. Then I did what I did before with the original batch and got:
19 Special Fertilizer + 2 Trips through the Seed Maker: 202/306 times (66.01%) survived first stage

So... it might be carrying over and if so it is still hurting it. Meh how troublesome

Aside from your testing, what are the known practical uses for special fertilizer?

Special Fertilizer can only be used on Golden Crops.
And it's supposed to help them not wilt...

But these results...

I do wish that special fertilizer at least increased quality, like regular fertilizer does.
But, nope.