So I ask a ton of stupid questions and propose a lot of off the wall ideas. And I commonly buck traditional well practiced methods of playing the game. I certainly don't worry about Skull Cavern. But frankly folks, it's because to a degree I am playing a different game than you are. I'm trying to plan for a multi-player game where the clock never stops ticking. Time never stands still. There is 1/3 the foraging and 1/3 the trees in respect towards XP. Sure there are 3x the starting parsnips, but if you plant them say hello to the crows. So frankly there is 1/3 the initial farming xp. 2 or 3x the backpacks to buy. 1/2 the time to upgrade tools. (Or nearly 2x the tools needing upgrades.) Which is fine. It just needs accounted for. I play with my two teenage sons "Three" and "Four". They like to fish, mine, pet animals, and run about the place. Farming is ok, and planning is ok, sometimes they just wanna do what-ever. I'm fine with that, but we have a farm to run. So, I stay mostly on the farm dealing with the planting, watering, harvesting, processing and shipping. Which I enjoy. We are in the middle of first summer in probably our 5th farm and it's great fun and going reasonably well. But based upon how the first spring went and have previous games have played out I'm working on a *guide* for our next go through. Call it a business plan if you want. The days end much sooner in multi player than when playing alone. During the pause screen at night we can confer, but during the day staring blankly into a chest wondering why I opened it just eats up the time. "I need someone to stop at Clint's tomorrow before 4pm to get the pick upgraded." "First thing tomorrow Four, I need you to harvest the hops in the NW field to level your experience and drop them all in the chest by the kegs after that do what you want to do." "Mining would be great, can you try for 75 copper ore? I'd like to build some more tappers." "Three, you can take the horse to the lake to fish as long as you stop by Pierre's and grab X, Y, and Z seeds that I am going to plant tomorrow." "Was anyone planning on cutting any trees tomorrow?" "Would someone cut me 4 trees tomorrow or leave me the steel axe so I can do it?" "It's Lewis's birthday tomorrow, where did we put those peppers?" "Who left the gold watering can in the chest at the lake again?" It's a riot, I promise you. But long stupid story short, the more I can calculate and plan ahead, the quicker the night breaks are and the more we can actually play with me being less confused about what it was I was going to do as the sun screams across the sky. Obviously they won't be hard and fast rules, some things are just too hard to plan for and some of the organic evolution of play is why we do it. But as we all know, certain milestones can be achieved in single player during spring one. I suspect the same type of 'planning' can be applied to multi-player as well. I'll level in farming and foraging to a degree. Four will level in foraging and fishing and Three will level in fishing and mining. We take turns in pairs in the mines, one digging for ore and stairs the other keeping the monsters at bay. If some of this leaks into my solo game play, then so be it. That is a whole different thing too. I hope this explain a bit more why I really don't care about "artisan bonus this" or "speed run optimal that" that in response to questions about how certain parts of the game work. cheers folks. and thanks for reading if you made it this far.
Sounds like what you need is distribution of duties. No sweat, let's do this First off, looks like you're really the only one interested in farming. So... you're the Farmer farmer. You can go with an old-school tried-and-true mass-parsnip route. Sure, you might lose one or two from crows, but most of 'em are going to be up, and with three times the parsnips, you'll easily hit at least Farming 1 when they come up. From there, you can start dropping scarecrows and obviate that problem. I wouldn't try for any fancy Day One Cauliflower or Bean strategies, though. Being that you're the highest Farming level, you'll also want to be doing all the watering. Which means only your watering can needs to be upgraded, theirs can be neglected. And even then... honestly I'd personally just skip the watering can upgrade entirely, but that's another discussion we're having in another thread. When not farming, you can go foraging, but leave the tree chopping to Four, who will be foraging and fishing. If Four gets good at the fishing minigame, you can solve a LOT of early-game woes from the profits of his fishing. If you've got spare stamina, you can do some logging, but your primary stamina drain will be either farming or in the mines. Four starts off day one chopping trees (foregoing Oak trees if you want to set up an oak tree stand for kegging later). Once he gets 50 wood, he makes the initial storage chest that everyone can drop stuff into. Since the two things Three can start clearing rocks to try and get Mining 1 up before he starts hitting the mines, and also collect some coal for your first scarecrows. Your initial goals are to try and get your Spring Forage Bundle stuff in a chest and collect whatever Spring Onions are available. Day 2, the kids can go fishing while you focus on watering your field, then going foraging. Collect spring onions and anything else laying around on the ground. Hitting up dig spots is also, clearly, valuable. Only one player needs to keep their hoe on them at any given time, the others can call out if they see a dig spot. Once you are done watering and foraging, you can spend the rest of your stamina clearing trees out of the farmstead. The rest of the first week can generally follow suit. When the Parsnips come up, save any gold-star ones, save another one for the spring crops bundle, sell the rest. Get at least one of the rest of the spring crops bundle crops, and double down on potatoes. Yes, it'll be energy expensive, but you literally don't have anything else you need to burn your stamina on since you can always call in Three or Four to run errands for you. Also, another 40 parsnips on Fertilizer (which you just unlocked) to get 5x gold-star parsnips might not be a bad idea, and net you Farming 2 before the 11th when your potatoes come in. While you are doing that, Three and Four can fish or do their own thing. If Four wants foraging, having him clear-cut trees on the farm property isn't a bad use of stamina. Gives you plenty of room to work with, since you're gonna need it. If he manages to get 300 wood by saturday, the Tidal Pool can be a tidy sum. You can do brief mining forays, but hold off on the serious mining until salmonberry season. Potatoes come in just in time for the Spring Festival, cash in on Strawberries. Plant on fertilizer, since you likely won't have speed-gro. Salmonberry season is now here. Everyone divide up the entire valley and go berrying for the next couple of days, you are spending most of your stamina on watering anyway, and Four can continue logging after he's done berrying. Farm should now be mostly strawberries and potatoes with a few cauliflower (like the 9 cauli from the Gunther reward). Now we hit the mines and hit them hard. Every day, you finish watering your crops, then you and Three head to the mines. Let him do most of the mining to work his skill up, while you focus on fending off the monsters. With the salmonberries you collected, the two of you should be able to do 10-15 levels a day easy. Meanwhile, Four continues fishing. By now he should have Fishing 5, with a Fiberglass Rod and Bait, bringing home some serious bank from the Mountain lake. If he doesn't want to fish, he can chop or forage. Hit the mines until you strike level 80 and Gold. Hopefully, you'll have enough Farming to produce Quality Sprinklers by now. Plan out your farm plot, start placing down sprinklers as you are able. Spend the rest of the month doing this. The more sprinklers you have down, the less you're going to be spending watering, and the more time you have to back up Three in the mines or do chopping for yourself. For Summer, your farm really starts hitting stride, your goal here is to try to keep Robin as busy as possible. Also, Clint should be getting some work as well. Someone needs to upgrade their Axe to Steel quality so y'all can get the Fiddlehead Fern from the Hidden Forest (assuming you aren't on the Forest map). First backpack upgrade all 'round wouldn't go amiss either. Obviously, Melons and (depending on play style) Hops are the two big crops. You're wanting fields of 40-80 Melons on Fertilizer (for the 5x Gold melons for the bundle), Blueberries for a particular strat if you haven't gotten your Ancient Seed while mining, and if you plan on doing mass kegging, as many Hops as you can fit and still reach them all. If you aren't planning on leaning into kegging, moderate your Hops accordingly. Selling raw Hops makes PunPun cry, you'll want to have enough kegs to process all Hops into Pale Ale, but if you don't plan on hitting them really hard, you can have a few and keep them going over the fall and even winter if necessary. Don't forget the rest of the Summer Crops Bundle. While you're doing that, have the kids start out helping with the tilling of the dirt (it'll really be the only day of the season you need to till dirt), then have Three try his luck out in the Ocean and Lake for bundle fish while Four goes on walkabout for Summer Forage Bundle items. If Four has Foraging 6 yet, ask him to make some Lightning Rods to protect your crops with as well as starting to stockpile batteries for your Iridium Sprinklers later on. Summer is going to be pretty consistent. If you're planning on doing 'serious' processing, have Robin make you a couple of sheds to put them in. You're also going to want a Silo, a Coop, and a Barn down, and have upgraded at least the Coop if not both Coop and Barn to Big before the season is out. If you're wanting to try for a Year One CC Completion, try to squeeze out a Deluxe Barn and get a Pig installed before the end of Summer. You're also wanting to get an Apple Tree down before the last week of the month so you can get your Fodder Bundle done next month. If you're seriously kegging/jarring you may also consider a Big Shed upgrade at some point. If you aren't planning on doing serious processing, then no need for more than one shed as a centrally located processing center. Cheese Presses and Mayo Machines are going to be needed, both to fill out Artisan Bundle slots and because Mayo sells well and Cheese is an amazing health food item and also sells for good money. When you hit Farming 9, assuming you don't already have an Ancient Seed, there's a trick you can do with Seed Makers. All those Blueberries? Yea, don't sell 'em. We're gonna turn 'em into seeds, which by the way still nets you a bigger profit margin than selling the berries themselves. Make a vertical (due to how SDV handles processing RNG) row of five or so Seed Makers, and go to town. Sell the blueberry seeds, trash the wild seeds, and when you get an Ancient Seed save it for the Greenhouse. Three and Four can pretty much do whatever, it'll be contributing to the overall growth of the farm. If they start fishing, then that's a bunch of money you could be bringing in at the Mountain Lake. You can go mining after you're done with your 'mornin' chores' with your other one whenever he wants, either hitting up levels 30-50 (if you're going keg-heavy and need all the copper/iron) or trying to hit the bottom. Sandcombing the beach when fishing for Ocean Bundle Fish or at least once or twice a week, especially clearing out the Tidal Pool. Yanno, kinda chill. You're really the one doing most of the stretching at this point, since you're working on design layout and building planning. They're just keeping you in resources and cash to help you do it, doing whatever they enjoy doing in this game. By the time Fall hits, you should start really getting CC rooms finished. The Boiler Room should already be done, likely the Vault is already as well (if not, might want to get that taken care of). But this season, you can get the Fishing Bundles done and the Pantry bundles as well to unlock the Greenhouse. Now, how you set up your greenhouse is up to you. The 'lazy' way is 116 Ancient Fruit. Basically, you take that Ancient Seed you got by luck or by pluck (and by pluck I mean by plucking hundreds of blueberries until you got one), drop it down on Deluxe Speed-Gro, and start propagating. For this, I would really strongly suggest also having a Big Shed full of 116 Kegs, so once a week you rake in a quarter million or so. I'm sure you've seen other strategies I've posted previously for a more 'optimized' greenhouse. Ironically, the 74 hops greenhouse layout works pretty well in Multiplayer because you can afford to have one player spend half the day picking them while the other two go off doing other things, but ultimately that's your call man. Obviously, sliding into Winter, you've got your infrastructure and you can largely rest on your laurels, doing whatever you like. You've got passive seasonal income set up, you've got some more bundles to complete like the Winter Forage Bundle and the Research Bundle if you didn't have a chance to schmooze with Demitrius to get the nautilus shell. From here you should be cruising on autopilot, reaping the rewards of your hard labor in your first year.
We are working in the 4 corners map, since it gives us each our own little area. Funds are shared, but the on farm quarry is pretty sweet. There is a spot of fishing and a renewable hardwood stump available too. yeah, I've been kicking the specialization breakdowns around in my head a bit already. I feel like everyone should have farming level one fairly quickly so that the basic scarecrow and fertilizer are good from anyone. Then I was seriously considering some-one pushing foraging to have foraging 4 by salmonberry season and foraging 7 for tree fertilizer asap. Sure it's harder to cover the whole map alone, but with two other people to do everything else, why not? Someone (maybe two someones) will push for fishing 5 with one staying on more of a push for 10. I was planning so far I think with day 1 coverage on sellables and three of us day 2 fishing we should be able to get two fiberglass rods and plenty of bait by morning of spring 3. Possibly one of them before close of business on spring 2. Considering home grown speed-gro, undecided about cc speed gro for the strawberries. Day 3 fishing would be just the two fiberglass holders. The odd would likely be chopping and foraging. Copper axe upgrade on the 6th. Maybe a pick on the 8th. (It's not like we'll need all three at once.) Steel axe on the 10th to get foraging rush going by opening secret woods, reduce the energy spent chopping, increase wood production and maybe collect hardwood for a stables or the house upgrade. 2nd Pick upgrades to copper on the 12th. Steel pick upgrades come in salmon berry season. Then another copper axe. after that things get murky. My regular planting plan easily gets farming 6 by summer 1. I'm going to look into what extra it would take to get farming 8 by the end of spring. I'm much more interested in the tool upgrades than farming 8 if I have to choose. Looking at the current file now. Without any planning last farm we planted summer 1 with 60 hops, 56 blueberries[24 with speed gro 32 with quality fert.] 50 melons quality fert, 16 poppys quality fert. (planning to court penny), 24 corn under quality fert. 8 radish to rotate with poppys, 5 tomatoes, 5 peppers all easily. We also had 8 rare seeds and a coffee plant and a mess of wheat to fill in where some of the spring tilling held over out of pattern and off sprinkler. Having the hops tomatoes and peppers all together make it easy for a boy to run down those rows and harvest to bring thier levels up without worrying about quality, while I watered and dealt with the other harvests. I know we didn't have it all sprinkler covered, but i think we had 18 to end spring which left me a little watering. and we left the holes open and added more each day. 34 sprinklers right now on summer 14. As the sprinklers increase past the plantings we've added crops, mostly the mixed seed I think. Soon though I think we'll say enough is enough on the crops and shift more towards making more kegs and jars Robin is building the shed as we speak. we have 13 kegs and 3 preserve jars so far. coop is down with a mayo machine and two chickens. barn is down with 2 cows and a cheese machine. 4800 in the bank, silo, a kid fishing and resources to upgrade the coop soon I think. Minecarts unlocked. over 100 trees palnted in an orchard in roughly an even split. Though 90% of what is grown is pine and maple. Don't know why the oak trees have not matured yet we'll get there. both summer trees planted in late spring. both fall trees planted soon probably when we hit 10k. Bat cave to cover other needs in cc two beehives and a partridge in a pear tree. Just looking to streamline what we did and maybe be in a better spot than this next time.
