Hi Shoukry, Thanks for the great guide. The focus on fishing and mining early on is a huge breakthrough for me, and will really accelerate future playthroughs. I have a couple thoughts on Spring 3 catfish. On Spring 2, I think it's really important to get fishing level 2, and then get about halfway to 3. I would make sure you have enough money to buy the fiberglass rod, 1 trout soup, and about 50 bait. I think you'll probably need about 70 bait to get through one day of fishing, but you'll probably get some from a treasure chest. After you buy from Willy, start fishing in the river until you reach fishing 3 (hopefully around 12 or 1). Then, you can eat the trout soup to recover 100 energy and boost your fishing level to 4. This will also provide the following benefits for 4 min 39 s: slight increase of fishing bar, ability to cast to the deep water (at a diagonal), and slightly more docile catfish. If you can catch even one catfish you might have otherwise missed, the trout soup would have paid for itself. Even if you are not great at catching catfish, I think fishing in the river is preferable to the mountain on Spring 3. You can sometimes get a relatively calm catfish, so although you might miss 10, you should still be able to catch a couple. Furthermore, I think the money should be about the same as heading to the mountain to fish. In the river, you definitely won't catch everything, but you also don't need to waste 1.5-2 hours traveling to the mountain. Finally, you don't absolutely need to get back to the farm to sell on Spring 2. You can sell fish directly to Willy on Spring 3 (just make sure you have everything in your pockets before collapsing). If you have any gems, you can sell those directly to Clint. Unfortunately, you can't sell any forageables on Spring 3, since Pierre's is closed; you could place them in the bin on the morning of Spring 2, though. You can buy the trout soup the day before, so you go into Spring 3 with only G250. If the 10% loss of money on passing out is correct, this will only be G25, which is easily covered by the couple extra fish you were able to catch (and the extra fishing experience). If you're going to try this, you should likely have placed the town fishing chest the prior day, since you will need all your inventory slots on Spring 3 for fish. You can also make sure to leave all beach forageables alone on Spring 1 and 2 so you can pick them up on Spring 3 to sell should you need a little extra cash. Also, I don't recall if this was mentioned in this thread, but you really want to focus getting chests and perfect catches. A chest multiplies the experience by 2.2, and a perfect multiplies experience by 2.4, so these will really add up quickly.
I agree, finishing Spring 2 at Fishing 2 or higher is a necessity since Willy won't carry the Fiberglass Rod without you being Fishing 2. Higher fishing levels sooner is always a good thing. I've yet to use Trout Soup or any of the other +Fishing foods, but if the buff is needed to catch Catfish, and many Catfish can be caught in the 6+ in-game hours that the buff lasts, then I'd say it's a win. I'm yes and no with this. Even if you assume a worst-case scenario and all of your potential Catfish bites were Carp instead, if you're catching 1 out of 7 Catfish that get hooked, then it's more profitable to catch those Carp. The average catches between the lake and catching 40% of the Catfish bites and everything else in the river during rain are equivalent. Once the Bream come out at 6 pm and the Largemouth Bass disappear at 7 pm then the river becomes equal, even with 0% Catfish catches. However, fishing xp is more important in the first 2 or 3 days than catching higher-value fish, in my opinion. Carp are one of the best fishing xp gains for most who can't reliably catch Catfish since they're one of the easiest fish, if not easiest, to get perfect casts. 7 casts is about 2 hours of fishing at this level and if only 1 Catfish is caught in that time this is 24 xp and 200g. 7 Carp, by contrast is 56 xp and 210g. I would also hazard most of those Carp catches to be perfect, which bumps the xp up significantly. The reason xp is so important is gold-quality fish can start being caught (and at an almost 50% rate, by my personal tests) at Fishing 4, and the faster you hit Fishing 5 and 10, the more money you're passively making with the profession bonuses. I wouldn't recommend fishing the river if I were catching only 1 in 5 Catfish just because of the extra xp gained from lake fishing, but I'm also assuming no fish are getting away at the lake at this point so if that isn't true then the river is likely better, yes. Having said that, I certainly wouldn't fault anyone for fishing the river instead because they wanted to see if they could try to catch Catfish and if you start at the river then I would suggest fishing the entire time at the river; it's easy in hindsight to say it was a good idea or bad idea when the day ends, but I think getting used to how Catfish move is good to learn, regardless. Finally, the run from the Beach bridge to the lake islands reliably takes 50 minutes compared to the 10 to get to the river spot, which is 2-3 missed casts at this point. Agreed, this isn't a necessity (there are very few true "necessities" in the guide), but the reason this is the only other day I don't recommend passing out is the pros don't really outweigh the cons. The biggest pro would be catching 3 more Bullhead or getting a treasure chest with something fantastic inside. Reality is likely 2 more fish that sell for ~100g and a trash catch when the third cast goes past 2:00 AM before biting. Half of that profit is taken from passing out (unless you've purchased something like you mentioned) and now you have to carry all of those fish in your backpack (up to 8 differing types and qualities) to the Fish Shop. But if you're bringing the Hoe, any potential artifacts, any Bait from treasure chests, and any potential Spring Onions then there's not enough space (I don't plop the Chest the day prior, but that is fantastically foresightful of you so I have the Chest in the inventory too, but you would have the Trout Soup). The Beach foragables just add some more wasted running time if you have a full inventory, but I wholly agree to pick them up regardless and sell them for any extra Bait. Having a full backpack on Spring 3 causing extra back and forth running has happened to me too often so I don't recommend passing out on Spring 2, but I'm also not a gambler and assume the worst will happen with RNG. It's a matter of preference, really: either way will end up fine. I do not, but, yes, perfect casts and chests definitely need to be goals. My memory is likely faulty because I was thinking a perfect catch was higher than 2.4 and that chests were lower than 2.2, but I don't have a source and it's been a long time since I've looked so I trust your numbers unless I hear otherwise. And getting both is a cumulative bonus rather than multiplicative, unfortunately, but 36.8 xp for a Carp is pretty good. These come down to time efficiency for me since that's where so much of the day gets lost. I don't mind stopping at shops when they're on the way, or things like that, but running back to retrieve or deposit items from chests, forgetting items, or any kind of back and forth drive me a bit insane so I strive to limit those possibilities. If something helps you/others to limit inefficiency then I am all for it. Although, when I get around to playing again I'll have to try out the Trout Soup. When first I was having trouble hooking the Lava Eel, Scorpion Carp, Octopus, and the legendaries, I kept meaning to use Dish o' the Sea or Fish Stew for that little extra boost, but I truly am a lazy gamer so I fought against this clever idea to make things easier on myself, didn't move, needlessly lost a whole lot of casts, yet finally caught them. After that, I realized I could catch everything without food buffs so I never used food buffs. Probably to my detriment. Thanks for the great insights! It's hard not to get locked into one way of doing something so hearing varying opinions is great.
Shoukry, I just tried out my strategy for catfish and I must say it worked remarkably well. The only problem was I had very happy spirits on day 2, so I don't know how well it will work with normal or bad spirits, but I feel that I'm setup quite well for success on day 3. I ended with G2086 between 6 stacks of fish, in pocket, and the artifact quest (for a lucky 250). I have not yet completed the Introductions quest, and I have several forageables on the beach. Those two would probably account for an additional 200, so this would offset the lucky 250 from finding an artifact. I also already have 40 bait from chests, and I have a chest with my trout soup and hoe waiting by the river. My fishing skill is also about one catch away from 3. I really benefited from the lucky day. I got a lot of chests; I would estimate at least 10. This really helped out with the experience. I don't think it actually helped all that much with money, though. I only had 7 large mouth bass out of about 40 casts (12 carp, 7 bullhead, probably about 8 chub, although I at about half). I didn't get much trash. To recap, I played day 1 exactly as you described. It is actually possible now to complete the Introductions quest on day 1 (you don't need to meet Willy), although I forgot to give a gift to someone on either day. On the morning of day 2, I chopped down 3 trees to make a second chest and dropped a couple foraged items in the bin. I picked up spring onions, then went to visit Willy to get the fishing rod. I then bought the trout soup from Willy (but couldn't get any bait since he doesn't sell it until you reach fishing 2), went back to town and dropped off one chest, the hoe, and the trout soup, then made it to the mountain lake by noon. I then fished for the rest of the day, eating chub to replenish energy, and ended with the totals I mentioned above. Fishing from 1 am until 2 actually didn't really help since I only got 3 sticks, but it didn't really hurt (other than losing G25, which I think is quite small). Other than forgetting to give someone a gift, the only thing I didn't really like was needing to start day 2 by chopping for a third chest. This wasted quite a bit of time and energy. I think it would be better to eat some food on day 1 to chop all 3 chests then, thus leaving more time and energy to fish on day 2. I'll let you know how the catfish hunting goes on day 3. I'm ok at reeling them in at low level fishing, but I've been closer to 25% success than 50%. We'll see if I'm any better at level 4 fishing (and maybe 5). On another topic, I actually mistakenly cast one time too many at the end of the day and entered the exhausted state. However, I was surprised to find I awoke the next morning with full energy. I think the game is actually a bit more forgiving about collapsing at the start of the game than it is later on.
I followed the guide to the last point just to try whether I could actually manage the milestones and it works very well, but there are some very luck dependent issues, imho. One of them is fishing and, based upon the success you have while fishing, your ressources to buy seeds on the 13th. Two times I played through the first 15 days and I never had enough funds to buy a decent amount of seeds AND the stable. Except catfish, I never lose a fish, even with the bamboo stick. That's why I, except from some catfish training and reloading, I stayed at the mountain lake on the 3rd. I get perfect catches a lot and manage to achieve the fishing skills according to the guide. I don't sell any fish before fishing lvl 5 except for the fiberglass rod. And tool upgrades ofc. And still, I'm seriously lacking funds on day 13 and 14. Do I miss so much profits in the mines? I have a little excess of copper and iron, but not enough to sell for serious profit. I have auto-run enabled, but maybe I'm wasting too much time while foraging in the mornings? I read through the guide to see whether I missed sth., but couldn't find additional points. Can it be, that fishing is that luck dependent or am I just not seeing an obvious error? =) The other is foraging and that can be very luck dependent. I actually did a few trials til day 4 and you can miss out on a lot of spring onions. I had a few zero onion starts and only one where I found 10+ on day one. Following days vary of course but sometimes you can end up with only a couple onions left on day 4. Even if you don't fxck up while fishing, you'll need a few to keep going til 12:50. This is especially bad if you catch mainly carps and bullheads. Chub catches can be as high as carps or as "few" as largemouth bass. All in all the guide is pretty awesome, though demanding. The only question I have is whether luck makes that much a difference in profits or whether I have to reach your catfish-fishing skills to have 30k available for seeds and stable.
I don't think the strawberries are a must have. Their better but not necessary. Think he said that somewhere. I tried this again and got the stable but not the strawberries. Planted potatos instead and I made more money then i did the first time I tried and I got strawberries the first time but no stable. Definitely think there's some luck with some of the things in his guide but I hit the goals twice now. Didn't hit them when he said exactly but still before summer started.
Yeah I read that, it's not that I thought the guide would guarantee both if you'd follow through. Still, I had barely any money left after purchasing the stable. Not enough to plant a decent amount of potatos. I stopped at day 18 the second time, because I was a day behind with upgrades and got frustrated. I guess I will try again today after work and maybe restart days when I think I could've made more money from fishing.
Hey there! Haven't checked back here very often as of late, so hopefully I didn't miss my chance for you to see this... RNG definitely plays a part in this game (and most any game) regarding fishing. But, like many odds-based things, it tends to work out over a long enough timeframe. I agree with you, depending on how successfully you fish, and which fish you catch, will affect whether you should purchase Strawberry Seeds or not. Strawberries are the most efficient crop for profits and farming xp in Spring, although, at this point, fishing is still a better source of income. I haven't looked at the guide in a while, but as @Reuter mentioned, I don't believe I made any mention of the Strawberries being a guaranteed part of the process. Are they the best crop? Yes. Are they the best choice if funds are limited? No. If it comes down to Strawberries or the Stable I would choose the Stable every time. Even if you have only 12,000g in fish for the Stable and the upgrade at the beginning of Spring 13, fish instead of going to the Egg Festival, and fish again on Spring 14 will provide enough capital (4,000g) to buy at least 80 Potato Seeds on Spring 15. This many should yield ~7,700g (factoring in the bonus harvests), which lets you buy 150 more Potatoes, which gets you to Farming 6. Any profits from mining is a bonus. Drops in the first 40 levels are not lucrative and coal is too precious at this time to consider selling bars for extra cash. I'm uncertain if you mean reaching foraging 4 is luck-dependent, finding Spring Onions is luck-dependent, or both. Regarding forgaging 4, enough trees and hardwood is chopped to always reach foraging 4, even if nothing else is foraged. Spring Onions are definitely luck-dependent. Sometimes you'll find many day after day, and sometimes none will spawn for days. I don't use them for fishing though: they are reserved for the mines exclusively. If your Chub stocks are depleted then I'd start eating your Carp since they are the next most efficient fish to eat that you'll be consistently catching. You can eat the Spring Onions instead, but if you're doing that then you will likely want to bring some extra food to complement your Green Algae for mining. Again, I recommend against eating Spring Onions for fishing. Profits can vary wildly by the end of Spring. I have yet to finish under 100k when I was testing this and in the runs I played afterward trying to work out the kinks--it's probably been close to a dozen Springs now with this playstyle. I've ended with as little as 120k and my personal best is now 263k (without exploiting mushroom levels or solely fishing). Although I've also tested without catching any Catfish and I haven't had problems reaching the goals. The steel axe is the upgrade I'd say you can't miss out on if you want an early Stable. Otherwise, if you're a day behind after the Egg Festival it's not a big deal. You can make some more money fishing and then get down to the mining a day later. There is plenty of time to acquire all of the materials in the last week. Thanks for the response. I'd like to help if there's still a problem.
Hi Shoukry Thanks for responding. There's no problem at all with your guide, I hope it didn't come across like this. It's awesome and also effective while still fun to play. At least for me. I love the fishing mini game. Back when Fable was released I used to only fish for hours. My main concern was to know how badly RNG can affect a run. Because I felt that I should have made more profit by day 13. By now I played the first 5 day a few times more, just to check, and the differences can indeed be significant. I'll start a new playthrough this week. If I do well, I'll post results here.
Hi Shoukry I know this is a bit of a necro, but this is still your guide so it seems the best place to ask I've come across this and been reading through the updated version on gamefaqs, where it goes into a lot more detail about the requirements for doing a CC completion, which is nice, but either I've missed something, or I'm seeing a small omission Spring 21 is the day to take all the stuff for the geologist, adventurer and blacksmith bundles to the boiler room and repair the minecarts, but... unlocking the boiler room scroll requires two bundles to be completed, and unless I've missed something, the guide hasn't unlocked it yet. Although it's not mentioned, I'm assuming the spring forage bundle is turned in on Spring 6/7, so we can sell the 30 seeds for 1050 to help fund the upgrade on Spring 8. That's one of the bundles, but where's the other one? We could go for spring crops, and we grow one of each of bean, cauliflower, parsnip and potato. The investment is relatively tiny, just 210g, and could be done by planting under a scarecrow from Spring 6 so nothing is lost. They'll all be ready by Spring 19 latest. Missing a day of watering while the watering can is upgrading is no big deal, nor is the daily energy to water a handful of plots. We know we're only doing it for the bundle, not the money or XP, so it's just a small daily chore. The only alternatives I can see are the construction bundle, but that's a lot of valuable resources to throw away on a bundle that could have been be held back until fall, and both the energy and resale value to get it is way higher than to grow one of each of the spring crops the exotic foraging bundle, which almost certainly ties you into the mushroom cave rather than relying on the mines for the mushrooms, and also means getting a couple of tappers up probably slightly earlier than expected The main reason I saw this apparent gap is because I'm trying out your guide, and I got a fire quartz and some gold ore from fishing chests on Spring 4, and with the rest of the guide structured as it is, I immediately saw an opportunity for some seriously early minecarts, perhaps as soon as spring 9 or 10, until I realised the room won't actually be open. It's now going to be at least Spring 18, I'll try it out and see what happens. I don't think it's a fatal flaw, this is still a peerless guide, I think the boiler room is just a little oversight
Thinking a bit more on this, the only other bundle which is even possible right now is the crab pot bundle, but there you definitely have to divert a chunk of iron bars, minimum 3 for a single pot, and combine whatever turns up from the farm pond with some beach forage. Just relying on beach forage (cockles in particular seem quite rare to me) and killing rock crabs until one drops the crab, is trusting too much to the RNG, something that I think this guide is designed to avoid.
You, sir or madam, are absolutely correct: I neglected to mention anything of the sort. It has been a long while since I looked at this and, having looked over it again, I noted several aspects of it that need some tweaking, context, or additional explanation. Regarding the second bundle, I wholly agree with you that the Construction and Exotic Foraging bundles are two of the easier bundles to unlock the Boiler Room. Additionally, I would throw in the Crab Pot bundle. Planting the other 3 crops on Spring 1 or 5, like you said, for the Spring Crops bundle is likely the simplest and earliest route if you are restoring the Community Center. Thinking about it now, I guess minecarts are not really a big goal guide-wise (or maybe personally) since a mid-Spring Stable is a central tenet or perk in following this outline. Unless I am planning a Mines-only day, or a Mines-to-Blacksmith-to-upgrade day, I ignore the minecarts and take the horse everywhere, even if the minecarts could get me there sooner. Quick thoughts on bundles: Construction Bundle Following the guide, and post-Salmonberry season, Foraging should be level 5. I am assuming, but 99 Stone should definitely be available from mining, and 10 Hardwood is easily obtainable from the Secret Woods. 198 Wood for the other two slots is ~12 trees to chop. Having the Steel Axe, this is 108 swings at 1.5 Energy/swing for 162 Energy. For me, this doesn't seem too bad since you have Salmonberries to eat. This is my preferred method because you have complete control over it—no RNG to deal with. Exotic Foraging Bundle I believe I disregard to mention anything about Tappers until the very last day's note. One of the hardest things for me with the guide was remembering to put some things in that I rarely think about when I play as I just do them and assume everybody else does them too. Tappers are one of those things. Somewhere during all of the mining in the first two weeks I procure 2-6 Copper Bars for a Tapper or three. By Spring 21, those tappers have each produced at least once. (Maybe twice if I loaded one on a pine tree but they are low priority.) Between whichever Tapper good I get, I get a Morel from the Secret Woods, a Cave Carrot almost certainly will have been procured from barrels, and Red and Purple Mushrooms spawn regularly past level 80 in the Mines for the five items. Some RNG here with the foragables, but I do not remember having trouble completing this bundle. To be fair, my memory is awful. Crab Pot Bundle This is the most RNG-dependent, but it is one of the more likely bundles able to be completed by Spring 21. Mussels, Cockles, Oysters, and Clams are procured from the Beach whilst Crabs can be had from the Rock or Lava Crabs in the Mines. (I had this almost ready to post, but it takes me too long to write on my phone and you said what I was going to say...) Thank you for bringing this to my attention! To your point, I recently started my first playthrough again over the weekend for the first time since...last March?—and I had the same problem as you, because I had forgotten about needing a second bundle to unlock the Boiler Room. Maybe one of these days, weeks, or months I will finally update the guide with all of its errors and oversights...
To start, thanks for the guide... it certainly helped me rethink my own strategy. You did a nice job on the details. As to Fishing... on repeated tries, I don't hit fishing 2 on Spring 2, but I found if I fish at the river, I can simply run to Willy on Spring 3 when I hit fishing 2, and the fiberglass rod is there. (yes, the skills level up midday, so you can go then to get the rod) Then I run back to the river and fish out the day. I will say, I *really* struggle with the copper ore, and rarely get to 45 ore on the first mining day. I have no problem diving levels, but the elevator does not help with finding copper ore in the quantities you mention. In 6 attempts, I have only gotten to 45 copper once. The only way this part of the guide works is if I were to restart the day if I am only at 26 copper (last run).
Sorry you are having trouble with the fishing and early mining aspects. I must ask with the fishing: are you using any mods that make fishing easier? Most of the people who have emailed me about that particular problem have used such mods and that affects the amount of xp gained, which makes it so you have to catch many more fish. If that is not the case, I would only be able to recommend practicing it a bit more. The timeline may be pushed back by several days, but you would still be able to reach most of the benchmarks even if everything was pushed back a week. The mines can be troublesome, for sure. You may need to descend to levels 6 or 11 for additional copper nodes to spawn (i.e., ore nodes do not spawn on elevator levels). If you are adept at descending quickly, once you hit level 10, I would suggest you continue going down and start mining nodes as you see them. I do not go out of my way to break copper nodes when I am diving, but if I am breaking rocks to find a ladder, I will prioritize copper (or iron or gold) first. Hope this helps!
The game is essentially a relaxing sandbox-type game where people can do whatever they want whenever they want. Not sure why people would then look up what is de facto a walkthrough and play by a very strict script. But hey, that's me! Like I said, fantastic effort and all that, it just seems a little odd to me for a game that isn't about great skills, clicks-per-minute and all that stuff, unlocking secrets in weird places (okay, with some exceptions), tough puzzles, or tricky shooter games or whatever. It's a lovely game I like to play to relax and just faffle about a bit, going this way or that. As the saying goes, it's more about the journey than the destination.
OK, nice to hear that I'm not the only one having difficulty with this. I have tried it three times now, and twice I ran out of cash on the tenth, with the 5000g steel axe upgrade. Third time I just limped to the 12th, but couldn't afford any strawberry seeds, and had little hope of 10k for the stable two days later, even if I passed on the strawberries. I don't think keeping up with the ore, or the descent, is the problem for me, in fact I got ahead of both every time. But how anyone can ship 18000 for strawberry seeds at the egg hunt, is beyond me. I think my problem is that I can't catch catfish 100% at Fishing 10, never mind Fishing 2. Although I once fluked one on Spring 3, I'm virtually drawing dead against them. I'm OK at the lake, never miss anything even at Fishing 0, and getting a few perfects along the way, so I don't have a problem getting Fishing 2 on schedule. But after that, not only do the cheaper fish delay our income, they also delay acquiring the XP to level up quicker; this then impacts the future in two ways, first by delaying the 25% perk at Fishing 5, and second by delaying the reduction in bite time that accompanies every increase in Fishing level. You get further behind on both fish quantity and fish value until you go bust. So, what to do? Well, I've been working on a serious rejig of this walk through, retaining the basic principle of continuous upgrades, which is absolutely solid, and the descent strategy of prioritising ladders over everything, whether ore, gems or combat. But I've considered changing the order of those upgrades a bit, and many of the other details and activities quite a lot. Once I've finished my revision, which will be soon, and finished testing it, I'm mostly through the month already, I'll present it, hopefully within a few days. The goals will be the same as the original, but the route will be quite different. As the saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat.
