The Mystery of the Midnight Bloom

At the stroke of midnight, an inquiry blossoms

"At the stroke of midnight, an inquiry blossoms"

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There are six types of blooms in the game: azure, crimson, golden, pale, verdant, and midnight

Each bloom has a sale value of 12 shards EXCEPT the midnight bloom, which is worth only 1 shard. Why? What separates the midnight bloom from the others? What makes the midnight bloom the black sheep of flowers? I cannot find a reason.

This exception would make sense if:

[A] Dye vendors require 12 times more midnight blooms than other blooms - high demand, low supply

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[B] Midnight blooms are 12 times more frequent in the wilds - high supply, low demand

But neither is the case. Game economics treat the midnight bloom no different from other blooms, except for it's sale value (Figure 1). Spawn rate of the midnight bloom is a bit above average but nowhere near 12x greater, or even 2x greater than the other types (Figure 2, Table 1).

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Figure 1. Examples of dye prices

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Figure 2. Random sampling of 684 blooms across the open world map (Daunt excluded)

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Table 1. Results of bloom survey

Bloom	Quantity	% Population
Azure	127	18.6%
Crimson	101	14.8%
Golden	100	14.6%
Pale	106	15.5%
Verdant	115	16.8%
Midnight	135	19.7%
Total	684	100%

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What about the Daunt?

Some players claim that the Daunt is full of midnight blooms, so I canvased the Daunt. I cannot guarantee this is every bloom in the Daunt, but I picked over that entire area quite thoroughly.

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Figure 3. Survey of blooms in the Daunt

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Table 2. Results of Daunt survey. This is a separate population from the blooms catalogued in Figure 2 and Table 1

Bloom	Quantity	% Population
Azure	17	17.7%
Crimson	10	10.4%
Golden	10	10.4%
Pale	12	12.5%
Verdant	18	18.8%
Midnight	29	30.2%
Total	96	100%

Midnight blooms are indeed a little more common in the Daunt. However, there aren't that many blooms inside the Daunt to begin with. I couldn't even find 100 blooms. Compared to the thousands of blooms available outside of the Daunt, what's inside the Daunt is negligible.

Furthermore, you cannot spend blooms while locked inside the Daunt. The first dyer you meet is in Plainsong (the Utaru city), which is after the Embassy and after you unlocked No Man's Land.

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Any changes over time?

I looked at game guides from 2022, the year of Forbidden West's release. Bloom costs of purchasing dyes have not changed over the years.

A reddit post from March 2022 highlighted the sale value of blooms - values haven't changed over the years.

I searched the Forbidden West patch notes. I didn't find any changes related to the topic of this investigation.

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Conclusion

After reviewing all of the information presented above, a hypothesis formed. I suspect the midnight bloom sale value is a typo. Someone at Guerrilla may have accidentally entered 1 instead of 12. This error has been rooted under our noses for years because it's a detail no one cares about. There are a million things to do in this game, who is gonna look twice at the market value of flowers?

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What else, reddit? Am I missing a piece of this puzzle? How do you explain this discrepancy?

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Footnote 1)

No, I didn't do any data mining. I don't own the game on PC, and I'm not gonna drop sixty bucks just to browse some data tables.

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Footnote 2)

Useful facts about blooms that I learned while conducting this study:

A. Different types of blooms are not regional. It's not like there's one mountain covered in crimson blooms. The six types are evenly spread all over the map.

B. Bloom spawns in the Daunt do not change depending on whether or not you played through the Embassy and unlocked No Man's Land.

C. Bloom spawns are fixed. The same bloom will respawn in the same location. This isn't surprising because vegetation spawns are also fixed. You know that medicinal berry bush that always spawns just behind Rukka, the rumor lady outside of the Base? Yeah, it's like that.

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Footnote 3)

Why does this bloom situation interest me so much? Because collecting flowers can add up to a significant chunk of change. When you walk past a bloom, remember that you're walking past 12 shards. But when I find a midnight bloom, I scowl and shake my fist in frustration.

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"Underwater?! This flower is outright mocking me."

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Too Long; Didn't Read

In Forbidden West, there is no clear reason as to why the midnight bloom sells for twelve times less than the other blooms.