While chatting on a stream, a friend and i had a brief idea for a variant on FF5's Four Job Fiesta (hereto referred to as FIESTA) implimented in other games. And that lead us to Stardew, and that leads to Four Crop Fiesta!, a fun variant that acts more as a challenge run, for laughs, and idk, if it were to take off like FIESTA, an annual charity event for donations and charity... But that's for a later date. The concept is as follows: *Establishing some form of randomized (akin to Gilgabot) where seasonal crops then jobs are set on a randomizer. *Each season, the bot is consulted, and a random single crop is selected (or job such as fishing, cooking, mining, foraging, etc., for the Winter) *Player is only allowed to make money on that crop alone. *Other tasks may be completed and done for the sake of preparation for future seasons, raising skills, gifts, and bundles. *Player continues until Grandpa's evaluation and takes that rating/score *Optionally, year 2 can be re-rolled to include the new crops for year 2 and desert access *Player can use the initial 15 parsnips to fund seeds. (Selling or growing to be determined) Clearly, this is a thought in progress, which is why I come here to share and refine the idea, even if it becomes not but fun and challenge! This certainly isn't a mod, as it doesn't require changing any game files, just vanilla, out of box Stardew.
I moved your topic to the Stardew Valley section. Please note that the social section is not for games released or published by Chucklefish since the games all have their own dedicated sections here on the forums.
Well, off the bat, I see some things with this that I would like to address: The fundamental assumption is inherently flawed because there is no time limit. In many ways, this would have the same problem Nuzloke runs have: Without a time limit, even if you get stuck with a sub-optimal choice, you can just grind up until it wins anyway. There is no 'end' to Stardew Valley, you can go on for ten plus years if you like. Therefore, there is no challenge without additional limitations or constraints. Money, while useful, isn't everything. I know, this is the 'guy with the iridium calculator' saying this, which has probably shocked no few individuals around here. But in all seriousness, once you get your farm established, money becomes nearly worthless, except as a way of getting a few niche toys. You only need to earn (not have in your possession) one million to max out Grandfather's points from cash, by the end of your second year, which is going to be possible no matter what crop is selected. Even if you end up with Turnip/Radish/Bok Choy, you will still hit your grandfather target by the end of the second year. How would you handle income from other sources? Periodically, you are just flat given cash, especially if you select a female character (gets 500g from father in a letter, while male farmer gets cookies from mother). How do you handle income from fish, foraging, and minerals (which can greatly exceed the income from crops, especially in your first spring)? Likewise, selecting only a single skill to profit from is similarly uninteresting. Fishing is actually FAR more profitable than growing in the spring, and is quite viable the whole way through. Picking up the right perks, mining is equally viable, especially once you get down to Mine level 80+ and can start selling gold bars with Miner/Blacksmith, much less picking up Geologist/Gemologist and making bank on minerals. Foraging would be the only significant 'hit' but even there, you can just keg/jar your foraged goods and keep up with the Joneses. Since mobs drop any number of things, using Combat just doesn't make sense, unless you want to limit things to sell to be those things which the Adventurer's Guild will purchase, which would just be painfully slow and uninteresting. It's an interesting idea, I've played the 4 job Fiesta before, so I know what you are talking about. However, the play style is not going to change significantly, no matter what random number comes up. I mean, rolling up all melee in 4 Job Fiesta makes certain encounters more difficult, if you have no magic other than consumables, or at least it makes you change up your play style. Similarly, four caster classes makes for a very different sort of run. You have to change your tactics based on what your classes end up as. That's not the case with Stardew Valley. No matter what you end up with, your basic progression is going to be essentially unchanged. The only difference will be 'kegs for fruit, jars for veggies', and whichever one the rolls fall under is the one you produce en masse. So while 4 Class Fiesta is fun and interesting, because it can break you out of a groove, and force you to play in different ways, that won't be the case in SDV, which makes the challenge far less interesting and entertaining in general.
