Year 1 Spring Guide: How to Make Money and Underwhelm People (TL;DR: Fish and then Plant)

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Shoukry, Feb 22, 2017.

  1. Shoukry

    Shoukry Big Damn Hero

    I took the liberty to add a clause to your reply, albeit a very important clause, for how you choose to play the game. For you, (from what I know) I agree, there is probably no reason to look at a guide. I suppose you could call it a walkthrough, but if it is a walkthrough it is a very poor walkthrough since I walk you through one season only. And how does one follow a walkthrough for a game with no end or specific goals to reach?

    We have highly differing opinions on what a walkthrough entails.

    The creator labelled it as "an open-ended country-life RPG." There is no promise of the game being relaxing, and you have already claimed the game was becoming stressful because of self-imposed demands:
    And then asked for advice for a game where people can do whatever they want whenever they want:
    I may be daft, but I fail to see the difference in asking in a forum for any help at all with a game or looking up any information about it being any different to looking for help from a guide or "de facto walkthrough." I proffered information before people may ask. My only promises with the guide are a player could have a certain amount of gold, skill levels, various items, and tool upgrades done in Spring of year one. No more; no less.

    Feel free to send me a PM if you want to continue discussing this.
     
      Zrul and One More Day like this.
    • Shoukry

      Shoukry Big Damn Hero

      @One More Day

      Catfish will make things easier, but I may slightly disagree about cheaper fish delaying XP since they are easier to get perfect casts on which makes the XP gains similar. Perfect Chub and Bullhead casts net more XP than a Catfish will, which I would say are less than likely to be perfect casts.

      And Strawberry Seeds are not mandatory: they are a nice bonus if you have the coin for them.

      I am eager to read your strategies. I have no illusions that this is the best or most optimized way of doing this in the Spring.
       
      • kheti8

        kheti8 Tentacle Wrangler

        Nope... I am not running any mods. Have been playing for about two months. I have several games into year 2, but have been trying out the guide.
        FWIW, I like fishing at the river better, because the typical fish are all 12/13/14 xp, whereas carp are only 8 xp (and you catch more of these typically), and I find chubs to be particularly annoying to fish for.
        I do wonder if anyone has looked into whether you get different hit rates for the different locations. Have not seen anything about this. Usually after getting through the first couple mine days, I drop a chest up at the mountain lake and fish there as well, but I like starting at the river.
        I will keep working on the Mines. Who knows, maybe I will get better. I am really looking forward to going the Joja route!
         
        • kheti8

          kheti8 Tentacle Wrangler

          Sorry but I disagree... Minecraft is a sandbox game... but Stardew does actually have quite a number of target objectives. Yes, you can take them on in many different ways (as shown by Shoukry and the myriad replies), and there is a "win" at year two if you want to go for it.
          I do agree, you can play this game any way you like. I personally find it challenging to see if I can actually hit some of these ad hoc targets the guide proposes.
          To each her or his own.
           
          • Shoukry

            Shoukry Big Damn Hero

            That is no solution from me to you then. You may end up a few days behind schedule if the fishing and mining requirements are too stringent, but as long as you can get your crops planted and watered by Spring 16 it shouldn't be a problem. You could even forestall planting until Spring 22 if you want one ungodly harvest, but I would be hesitant to recommend that. The pickaxe upgrades can definitely be delayed if reaching 45 ore is unlikely. However, if you don't reach 45 ore on Spring 5, you can head back to the Mines first thing on Spring 6, bring your furnace with you, and dive down 5 more levels to obtain the remainder of ore. As long as you can get to Clint's before he closes, and then you can simply fish the river for the rest of the night since you prefer that anyway.

            Speaking of which, fair enough with preferring the river to the lake. I cannot recall trying to reach Fishing 2 from fishing in the river or ocean, but I do not see why you should not be able to. You also probably save 40-50 minutes of gametime by not running up to the lake, although I have no idea about different hit rates for different areas. If I see a hot spot somewhat nearby I will scoot over to it, but I tend to stick to a single spot on a given map. Higher fishing skills increase your bite rate according to the library books, but I have never tested out what this increase might be, nor have I seen any of the code readers post about it. (Although that is not to say they have not.)

            To your and One More Day's point, in emails I have received, more people have said the fishing goals are the most unrealistic part of the guide, followed by the initial outlay of iron ore (you may be the first with copper, but I have an awful memory) so I may need to look at some slightly lower numbers. Thanks for the feedback!
             
            • kheti8

              kheti8 Tentacle Wrangler

              Yep... that is what I did... sadly I was too late for Clint, so I am running a day late. I did make up for it by fishing a bunch more, and I got lucky and foraged up 3 spring seed packs along the way.
               
              • One More Day

                One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                @Shoukry

                Tbh, that really was a total wild guess about XP than from any analysis of the numbers. I find bullhead the easiest to perfect at early levels, they slide up, pause, then only move a little bit up or down just before the bar fills up. That's easy to track for me. But that's about it.

                As for others, largemouth bass I'm always just happy to catch them, even though only one has ever actually escaped me in four playthroughs since I started attempting this. And I'm always so keen to not lose a bass, I often jump ahead of the carp. I can always recover and drop back down to catch the carp, but I feel that I won't always catch a bass unless I can get the catch bar moving quickly, so carp are rarely perfect early on either. And chub can definitely be quite jumpy too. I'm simply not good enough at getting enough perfect casts. All put together, that's not a failing of your guide, but of my ability. It's clearly possible, as you have proved.

                My revision isn't going to be the best either. For instance it offers no chance whatsoever of Farming 7. And as I play through to test it, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that I probably won't be able get a stable built either, even though I planned to. At least not until so late that it won't save enough time to be worth the expense. On the other hand, the reorganisation of workloads throughout the month does mean I don't have many days with lots of travelling where a horse might save enough time to be worth that expense. But anyway, I hope it's going to be as good as I can get it for my own limited fishing skills, and it may interest anyone else in the same boat as me.
                 
                • One More Day

                  One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                  OK, I think I might have come up with something which I can make work. I just finished a run through of about my fifth or sixth revision, previous versions also ending in various levels of failure, although improving each time. This last one remains similar in concept to OP's original idea, with upgrading every other day, but only the first tool, the copper axe, is in the same place in the order, everything else is changed. Many of the other plans and details are very different too. It's definitely the first one for me that can be termed a success, when measured against the original benchmarks. I finished with

                  • >152k earnings
                  • >70k cash
                  • Stable available on summer 1
                  • Resources for 40 quality sprinklers
                  • Resources for 10 lightning rods
                  • 24 space backpack
                  • Two gold and two steel tools
                  • The following experience
                    • Farming 7
                    • Mining 7
                    • Foraging 6
                    • Fishing 10
                    • Combat 3
                  I did also luckbox a Prismatic Shard from an Omni geode, so bus repairs will not be far away.

                  Gunther has 20 artifacts, but all gems and minerals were sold for cash, except the Prismatic Shard, obviously, because minerals are much more easily found again. I would only have been 4 items short of the Rusty Key if I'd donated everything, but I suspect I might have run out of cash somewhere in the middle had I done so.

                  Lol at my combat. I suppose technically I failed here, because it's supposed to be Combat 4, but it's easily the most unimportant aspect of this IMO.


                  And I didn't have to catch any catfish! I caught the following


                  • 59 L. bass (10.1%)
                  • 152 carp (25.9%)
                  • 119 bullhead (20.3%)
                  • 149 chub (25.4%)
                  • 108 algae (18.4%)
                  Percentages don't include cola or trash, guesstimate about 3% for those

                  I also noted exactly what it took to get to Fishing 10, at 2.30pm on day 16


                  • 41 L. bass
                  • 120 carp
                  • 100 bullhead
                  • 120 chub
                  • 90 algae
                  • plus about five cola and about a dozen trash


                  Now I want to run it all again at least once and check it wasn't just a fluke. There's a distinct possibility it was. On first four days I ran absurdly good with getting 59x spring onions, and pulling meals out of the trash, then on day 5, the first day in the mines, I just kept uncovering ladders and finding copper, and hit level 20 and found 81 copper ore by the end of the day, so I skipped a planned day of mining and got an extra full day of fishing, which wasn't in the plan but helped massively and I don't think it can be relied upon.

                  On the other hand, I also made some silly mistakes, which cumulatively cost me lots of time,
                  • forgetting Pierre's is closed on a Wednesday, when I wanted to get the backpack, so that's another adjustment I need to make to the plan
                    • compounding that mistake by going home early that night to not lose 200g, when I probably should have just sucked up the loss and carried on mining, or at least farming ore
                  • allowing myself to run out of bait on a fishing day, which wasted time farming cave flies when I should have been fishing
                    • given I did run out, I probably should have run down to willy with a bunch of fish and bought some, because I couldn't take advantage of extra mining because the pickaxe was already in for an upgrade
                  • forgetting to smelt enough copper for an upgrade, even though I had plenty of ore. I had been smelting gold and iron instead because they require less attention than copper when trying to concentrate on fishing
                  • forgetting to bring the artifacts with me to donate and get the cauliflowers seeds, which I then had to go back for
                  • almost forgetting to upgrade at the blacksmith after breaking geodes, and having to go back there
                  • chasing across my farm to find a large stump when it wasn't really necessary, I just got too obsessed with how many were in the plan
                  • getting stuck on a monster level for hours, unable to staircase down because I'd left my stack of stones in the chest at the top, and unwilling to exit because it was the last floor before the elevator and I didn't want to lose four floors of progress

                  The 70k cash at the end was definitely a bit of a fluke, I got an extra 15k from revisiting a mushroom level on day 27 while farming the last bit of gold for the sprinklers, it would otherwise have been about 55k cash.

                  Turns out I can get Farming 7 after all, in fact I now plan to. Not that it really offers much more than Farming 6, except the fact that it needs almost 50% more crops and therefore earns about 50% more money. Getting the stable is still a bit tight, just got it built on day 27 for first use on the first day of summer, but I'm hoping that the rest of the plan is solid. Honestly, I'm still not sure the stable pays for itself at this stage, and I'm wondering whether it's actually a trap at this stage, whether it would be better to just save the money.
                   
                    Last edited: Apr 21, 2018
                  • Disc1pl3

                    Disc1pl3 Intergalactic Tourist

                    @Shoukry

                    I finished my first playthrough going the community center route. I'm going to go the Joja route now, but a couple of questions first.

                    1. What are you planting after you harvest Parsnips on Day 5 of Spring?
                    2. I had a world where I worked myself up to 11,500 gold in time for the Egg Festival, how many strawberry seeds should I be looking to buy?
                     
                    • ShneekeyTheLost

                      ShneekeyTheLost Master Astronaut

                      Some people will tell you to only buy 20 strawberries because with the 20 speed gro you get from completing the Spring Bundle (assuming a day one cauliflower that didn't get eaten by crows), you get a third harvest before the end of the year on them, and you save on endurance and time by only getting 20 of them. Personally, I try for 40 strawberries. If I can manage to get Foraging 3 and get four tappers down on pine trees, I can make another 20 speed-gro so they all get a third harvest. Kind of tight timing, admittedly, because that's 8 copper when you're already trying to upgrade both your axe and pick as well as manage a coop/silo.
                       
                      • One More Day

                        One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                        Getting ore for all this is now much harder in 1.3, at least at the moment, because the levels don't regenerate every visit. Getting the upgrades and tappers still seems manageable, but come the end of the month it's now hard work finding 200 gold and 300 iron for sprinklers and lightning rods because you can't just keep going up and dropping straight back down again to levels 41 and 81.

                        I'm going to try to rework my own version of this plan once again, to see what other gains can be found to offset this.

                        Nothing is planted immediately after parsnips, which are only really of any use to get Farming 1 and the scarecrow. We're doing other stuff until it's time to plant the main crop that will push you to Farming 6 or 7 by the end of spring

                        If you are doing strawberries then you might as well get as many as possible, as long as you can still afford all the other stuff you need to pay for. Personally I've given up on trying for strawberries and I don't bother with the egg festival at all, I think it's also a waste of a valuable day. But everyone has different skills and preferences and if you can make strawberries work then they're probably still the best route despite the loss of time at the festival
                         
                          blind3rdeye likes this.
                        • Disc1pl3

                          Disc1pl3 Intergalactic Tourist

                          @One More Day @ShneekeyTheLost Thanks for the replies! What exactly does @Shoukry mean by "deposit x gold in Collection Bin"? I know why we want to maintain a 0g balance, but I didn't realize there was a way to store your gold in the collection bin? How does one do this?
                           
                          • One More Day

                            One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                            Just means sell goods worth the amount needed

                            So for instance you need 2000 for a copper upgrade on day 6, so on day 5 you put stuff worth exactly 2000 in the shipping box to have exactly 2000 available to pay for the upgrade
                             
                            • squigglyruth

                              squigglyruth Pangalactic Porcupine

                              I prefer a strawberry route myself, and normally plant about 120. More than this can become hard to manage.
                               
                              • Astrid Speckles

                                Astrid Speckles Subatomic Cosmonaut

                                I don't think I need this guide now that I'm not a beginner but your introduction of
                                "If you don't [x] you won't like this", the final one made me laugh.
                                So brilliant I'm going to read it anyway, I'll leave my thoughts when I get around to finishing it :D
                                 
                                • UnexpectedParole

                                  UnexpectedParole Phantasmal Quasar

                                  Yes this a "necro" but the last comments (even buy the op) were only a month ago and this is specifically related to this thread. It makes no sense to start a new one.

                                  I have tons of questions because I love this start / plan idea in concept but struggle with the implementation. -all me I am sure. -Especially my unwillingness to pass out at 2am, and my inability to clear mining levels quickly at all even when dodging enemies and actively avoiding combat.

                                  But let's stop wandering and start with the simple ones.

                                  1. How do you know what in your inventory to place into the box at night to get to 2000 g? (for example)
                                  Is there a mod? Do you have an .xls sheet with the prices? A great memory, the wiki pulled up or what?

                                  2. When running this first month are you selling 'everything' such as fibers, sap, wood, stone.. etc?
                                  Or just the minerals, fish and produce? -type things.
                                   
                                  • One More Day

                                    One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                                    You'll quickly get used to passing out at 2am, and realise that it's actually working for you, just as long as you make sure you manage to maintain the 0g balance properly. As for the mines, clearing whole levels isn't necessary, you only need to break enough rocks to find ladders and get ore — as soon as you find a ladder you can ignore all of the rest of the ordinary rocks

                                    I started by using the wiki and a desktop calculator. Beware though, there are a few minor rounding errors in the wiki, particularly on the fish when it comes to the 25% and 50% bonuses, so make sure you don't end up 1g or 2g short (but if you do, just sell a single copper ore to Clint, or a piece of wood or two to Robin, or whatever they buy to whomever you're going to be buying from - don't waste time going to other merchants).

                                    Now I've got to know the cost of everything, I do it by memory, but still use a calculator to add it up.


                                    Wood and stone are far too precious to sell imo. Wood is for chests, buildings, scarecrows etc, and stones are very useful for staircases on awkward levels of the mines, particularly infested levels. Once I've hit level 80 I also usually then staircase down to 90 to grab the obsidian edge. It's a huge time saving because the steel axe takes 2 hits for regular stones past level 80. I certainly don't sell either wood or stone.

                                    But sap and fiber, in volume, can also make decent chunks of money in the first week or two. They are also great for rounding out the shipping totals exactly. Just make sure that you hold back 40x fiber for a couple of scarecrows.

                                    All the sap can definitely go, because the amount it will add to the value of your crop by making fertilizer is less than the value you would get just selling the sap as is.
                                     
                                    • kners

                                      kners Subatomic Cosmonaut

                                      Use mod named: CJB Show Item Sell Price.
                                      Great mod.
                                       
                                      • UnexpectedParole

                                        UnexpectedParole Phantasmal Quasar

                                        thank you for the reply.
                                        re:passing out. No, I choose not to play that way. I won't wrap my head around deliberately working myself to the point of exhaustion that requires me to be carried home at the end of every night. -And to further penny push miser the coins to a zero balance just to use a game feature to use a mechanic like that to my advantage. I'm not a role player typically- but I'll fall asleep at work only when I have physically actually forgotten to get to bed on time. -Like the end of summer 1 I got caught up in trying to plant every single crop I had purchased and did not realize that I was late. - Lucky for me I had bought down to 1 coin, and fell asleep inside my cabin running for bed anyway.
                                        That is not a judgement on others' play or this guide. I am just trying to include the first month in the life emulator, not play the first month up to then set me up for a life of $$.

                                        The clearing of levels. I only mention clearing the levels in that regard because 95% of the time when picking the staircase is always under the last rock I mine. -As it should be. the other 5% I break 1 more rock because I had already clicked to smash the neighboring rock before seeing I had a staircase.
                                        -I have consciously entering the levels with a pick and only striking 1 hit rocks and ores, ignoring monsters and out of the way things working my way until I find the staircase and then drop down. I consciously always drop down staircases and avoid clearing afterwards. MY RNG and experience has been that it is quite often most of the rocks on the level need broken to find the stairs.

                                        I fully realize leaving the mines between 11:40 and 12:40 ish each night to run home (no mine carts or horse yet) costs me 1 hr 20 to 2 hrs 20 each 'night' which adds up. Over time I am short days mining. Period.

                                        I suspect though it is like what I learned about the fishing targets. If I can clean up my morning routine a bit more, and get to the lake (mine) earlier that will help as well. More casts or pick swings a day adds up. Not to mention I need to look into using bombs more I think. And definitely staircases. I don't remember to bring the stone to staircase past those trouble levels. I think I have crafted only two staircases ever.
                                        ----

                                        re money. thanks for the reply and to kners as well. I'll look into that mod.

                                        I think I have too much clutter in my bins yet then. I might need to sell more and hold less when I go though again.
                                        ---
                                        I'm super happy with the play through though, and the progress. I planted 103 strawberries after the festival. I've never been able to do that (my previous best might have been 35?). 20 of them had the speed grow so they got an extra harvest too.
                                        I planted 100 blueberries this summer one and had nearly 200 total crops in the ground summer 2. My biggest ever planting, and biggest ever expected profit from harvest.
                                        I had 3 gold ore from fishing chests going into spring 28 so I bought 2 ore from clint to get the bar for the bundle, but while trying for my sardine I hit 18 gold ore in one cast, so I scrapped that Idea to craft 4 quality sprinklers. Due to ghost drops in early summer I've been able to get the bar for the cc as well now.

                                        Summer 6 year 1, first small wheat harvest gone by and I'm just now reaching the gold levels 80 / 85.
                                        I will be making more and more quality sprinklers to place to reduce my watering needs.
                                        I am a fire crystal way from completing the minecarts bundle, and a week from having the hardwood to build the stables. I'll have it about a month behind the guide, but about a month before I usually have been able to get it in the past. And I'm not at all worried that I will be able to afford it when that day comes.

                                        -I'll end here. It's stupid how long I can go on about this game. cheers I appreciate everyone's help.
                                         
                                        • One More Day

                                          One More Day Cosmic Narwhal

                                          Best way for me to remember stones for staircases is to leave them in my chest by the top of the elevator in the mines entrance. At the end of each day of mining I dump the pickaxe and weapon in there, unless I know I'm going to need them on the farm (or for upgrades). Then when I come back next time, I have to open the chest for the tools, so I also remember to get stones, cherry bombs and food. I use cherry bombs only to save time blowing open large clusters of metal ore nodes, not for general rock clearing.

                                          I'm not convinced by the utility of the stable as early as this guide suggests, considering the effort it requires to get the money needed by Spring 14, when you also need money for everything else. The hardwood is less of an issue, because I want to chop stumps and logs for Foraging 4 and the second salmonberry from every bush. But the 10k price tag is the hard part, and sometimes also the iron ore for the 5x iron bars. Even though I'm much better at catching perfect fish now, I still don't get the money fast enough to buy everything, and certainly not as fast as OP. Nothing else that I need to buy can wait, so I usually don't bother with the stable at all in spring. Instead I focus on pushing down the mines to get everything for the bundles that repair the minecarts, typically around the beginning of the last week of spring, and save the travel time there instead. Stable usually waits until month end for me, instead I invest 2,000g on getting the 24-slot backpack upgrade on Spring 5 and having it for the first day in the mines, so I never have to leave anything behind.

                                          Getting all the gold ore for quality sprinklers is hugely more difficult in version 1.3, with the levels not regenerating each time, so my next thing is to work out where else I need to deviate from the guide to fit that in. I pretty much just play the first spring over and over again at the moment, trying to improve on my previous effort, like a sort of challenge against myself. I can at least get a decent amount of strawberries now.
                                           

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