I really like to play RisingStar, buying NFT... progressing... for just a little time of actual play. So looking for a similar game, I decided to try Dcrop, which has actually even less time of actual play!

So I bought myself a self-made "starting pack" of 1 Fertile Land and a set of Common and Rare seeds to grow all year long. I chose these because of the low investment required and best apparent productivity.

Then the results of my first growing season came! And... I have to say I was a bit disappointed, so let's do some math!

Calculation of break even time

So if like me you start the game now, you don't have much choice but to buy the Land and Seeds NFT on the market. You might find some alpha packs to buy, but the randomness of its content makes them unreliable to have a complete set. Take it just as a reference, but you can consider that the current actual prices are (at the cheapest) around these:

For each complete set, you will need 1 Land obviously, and as much seeds needed to keep it occupied during the 15 days of each seasons (if the growing time of the seed is 4 days, you will need 3 seeds of it).
Each harvest can then give you vegetables of 1, 2 or 3 stars, which sell for more shares. This probability is accounted, so you have a mathematical esperancy for each harvest as below:

Now, in the current state of the game, you get actually a little less CROP than you had shares. But for the sake of simplification, let's just say the CROP received is equal to the shares produced.
Then there's the probability of getting a better harvest, according to the rarity of the Land used, from 2% to 20%. We can then calculate how much shares or CROP can be produced per plot and per season.

Then it's done! It just remains to factor in the investment needed per plot (Land and Seeds) and per year (a little simplification indeed), as well as the price of CROP (0.0028 HIVE for reference) to get the number of seasons needed to break even the investment. Behold!

Conclusion

So, what can we say with that?
In my case, I had a good intuition: Fertile Land with Common and Rare Seeds provides the better break even time (and thus the faster return on investment) and yet... We are talking about, at best, 35 seasons: 525 days. I should have looked into it before getting in.

Also, High Tec Land are overpriced, and Legendary Seeds are wayyyyy overpriced!

These numbers are also all on the optimistic side: cheapest prices, bettter CROP than real. And keep in mind that the share of CROP will decrease with time.

All in one, it seems that, if you didn't get in early and got alpha packs, it is a bit too late to start and the investment isn't worth it (in the actual state of the game, I have no idea about the future balancing of the game).

Another limitation of my maths is that I didn't consider daily holding rewards when you reach 20k CROP power. That's top 180 of players so... Not soon if not never.
Although I did my best, I could have made a mistake in my numbers. Don't hesitate to point it out, I will be more than happy to reconsider this poor result I found!