I know there are multiple Stardrops in the game and that eating/acquiring one permanently increases your energy, but is it worth it to find them all and increase your energy?
Energy is productivity in this game-- the overall ability to get more done. While you start the game with a maximum 270 points of Energy in your bar, every Stardrop will permanently increase your maximum Energy by 34 points; this will be a total of 508 points of maximum Energy if you get every available Stardrop in the game, which is nearly doubling your maximum by the end. More farming time, more fishing time, more mining time, more foraging time. So it's worthwhile to get every Stardrop you can, though there are a couple that may not be worth the grinding involved. But if you're anxious to get them all, they can certainly be earned! I've personally never gotten the Master Angler or Complete Collection Stardrops because I'm not much of a fisherman and getting one of each fish would be impossible (for me, my fast-twitch reflexes are appalling) without cheating, and I've come up /one/ artifact short on the Museum. Five of the seven available Stardrops are fairly easy to get, once you know the requirements-- the final two (Master Angler and Complete Collection) are a lot of work!
No. Each Stardrop, whether purchased or earned via a quest, is unique. Once you get that particular Stardrop, you can never get another from that same source.
Three of them are very simple, just about everyone gets them in every game: * Buy one from the fall fair for 2000 stars. Simply win the garange contest and do a bit of gambling (smart money on green). You'll have it in no time. * Hit level 100 in the mines. Found in chest. Probably the easiest in the game. * Sweet Gem Berry -> statue in secret forest. It requires enough advance planning to get a Rare Seed from cart vendor in time, but not much. Even on a first-time run, most people will pick up a Rare Seed on curiousity's sake, then when they discover the secret woods, the hint is fairly straightforward. These next two are fairly common, but can be missed depending on how you play your game * 13/12 hearts with spouse. This requires you to have a spouse in the first place, which requires at least one upgrade to your house. Able to be missed if you have a habit of stopping giving gifts when you max out hearts with everyone. * Purchasing from Korobus. It requires you to unlock the sewers, which requires a lot of donations to the museum. Considering the rewards for doing so, other than the first three, are complete and utter wastes of space, and how RNG dependent artifacts are in general, And finally, these two are rare, and most commonly missed by many players * Catching all fish. Doing this one also requires knowing exactly which fish you don't have, which requires a certain amount of knowledge about it. And fishing is the single worse minigame in the entire game. * Completing the Museum entirely. No, seriously, who the hell does this more than once for the 'cheevo and bragging rights? If you value your sanity, unlock the Sewer, then stop playing Gunther's game.
I've found twitch reflexes to get in the way on the harder fish. I can't move the fishing bar fast enough to chase them around, so why chase something I can never catch up to? I'll go after a fish, but if it starts flailing around I'll leave the bar in the middle of its movement range and go to meet it when it calms down a bit. As long as the bar is getting generally fuller, that's good. If the bar goes from almost green to almost red, that's fine. 'Almost' doesn't count.
Yeaahhhh.... I'm gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that one. It took me three in-game years to figure out what the heck you were supposed to do with that... and even then I think I had to wiki it! Or maybe I'm just that dense... whatever!
The only way I know you can increase your energy a lot is using an exploit (ps4 and Xbox one). Other than that, you legitimately gain a reasonable amount of energy by gathering the usual ones.
It's "straight-forward" if you unlock the secret forest around fall and read tool-tips. Otherwise the statue just kinda falls back as decor with quirky text on it, and the sweet gem berry is just an inedible crop. And if you're not actively focused on the statue (which is why I said unlocking it around fall) then you'll likely just forget about it completely. It's pretty hard to miss, but then the puzzle pieces kinda fall together over time. Is the exploit the "Gunther's Stardrop" one? That one is also on PC, I believe.
Keep in mind it's three prong thing. The stardrops will nearly double your energy... And each skill level cut's down the energy that using the tool expends... And each upgrade to the tool makes it more efficient. An iridium axe only takes three swings to fall a tree. Level 10 foraging and an iridium axe is like the deforestation mini-game. You can cut every tree on the map in an afternoon, with half energy.
It always blows me away when I start a new save after playing one for a long time and am back to the first axe. Sooooo much work to fall a tree! Then, after upgrading, going from Steel to Iridium is a huge Whoa! Suddenly I'm chewing up trees like gum! No tree is safe!!! hahaha It's such a huge difference.
For me it's the worst with pickaxes. I always prioritize the watering can (at least to copper) and the axe (at least to steel) but then I'm left with this suuuuupeeeer slooooow cooooppeeeeeer piiiiickaaaaaxe that I need to get all the ore to do that in the first place. Then when upgrading the pickaxe I have to dig/fish for ore (at dig spots or fishing treasure chests) unless I want to fall back a little on the productivity. By that point I'm usually doing pretty okay in the mines though (at least to level 40+, I get through the mines pretty quickly) But yeah, getting a stardrop or two asap is a good strategy, but after that I think the better strategy is to maintain energy (while working towards the rest of the stardrops, because they ARE useful) the best way to preserve energy is having highly upgraded tools, upgrade the house at least once and get a few easy-to-make recipes, placing a chest or two in the mines entrance, fill it partially with food and then use the elevators for easier spelunking, returning to the surface when you're low on energy, then pulling food out of the chest and dumping some non-essential or full stack items into the chest to make room for more stuff. Even better when you start raising more cows and building cheese presses, as milk (and eventually large milk) will start coming in quickly, and even common quality cheese restores enough energy that the food made out of it is just a waste of other items (except for the related achievements that want you to cook recipes, eventually all the recipes in the game; those achievements don't do anything except give you hats, though, so I'd say wait until end-game for that unless you REALLY want those hats). Gold-star cheese is one of the best healing items because it's easy to come by and it heals a lot, and can be made even more efficient by aging it to iridium (but I wouldn't bother too much unless you're selling it or if you already have a surplus). You can put chests with a small stack of cheese in other places too, like the secret woods and the tidal pool area on the beach for fishing, or if you have an area on your farm that you use for tree farming, but for the most part i think the mines and the skull caverns will be the most energy consuming. (Side note: With the skull caverns, it's much more efficient to have large stacks of decent healing items, instead of several small stacks of less efficient items. You'll need the extra space, as the skull caverns don't have elevators and the best way to get iridium ore is to use bombs and/or stairs, made of stone and don't stack, to get to lower levels. So instead of filling your chest with a lot of food, fill it with a good-sized stack of efficient food and then fill the rest with stones, bombs, and maybe some ammo for your slingshot if you're using it.) By the time you've got an efficient system set up that works for you, you'll likely already have 4, maybe 5 of the stardrops already, or more if you've been doing a lot of fishing or treasure hunting. There's only 7 in the game (without exploits or item spawning), but one of them is insanely hard to get without cheating... Well, I guess it's RNG. Anyways, the point is, it's better to be efficient with the energy you already have than to waste it clamoring for a stardrop that might take some time to work towards, and in setting up a system that works for you, you'll likely end up with plenty of stardrops just by playing the game.
That's the one I started doing, but then I switched it over to just using Marnie and naming your animals after the Stardrop. Gunther is the one I did if you want to make some money.
I'd considered that, but never actually tried it, so I didn't know if it would work lol. Get even more by naming your character, your cat/dog, your farm, all your animals..... Lol. Now I'm wondering, if you also set your "favorite thing" to the Stardrop's id, would you just end up in an inescapable loop of infinite stardrops... I just love those stardrops too much, apparently.
Well, your best bet is Marnie. Only because Gus' route takes too much time with EVERY single Stardrop you acquire. Where as with Marnie, you control how many you get because it's not your name. Gus is just good for making LARGE amounts of money. Marnie has controlled item spawning.
This is what I do with cheese on my mining-focused farm (mainly the Skull Cavern part). I got one cow for the bundle and then realized how good the cheese is for restoration. It's so powerful that I've never run out even with just the one cow. Cheese, coffee, the occasional Spicy Eel drop, and you're set to tear through the SC, food-wise.
If you want to test the theory a bit i can give you a chest with a bunch of them in your game, Ol' resident item spawner treasure lass over here
if you're referring to the CJB item spawner, i tried to put them in my inventory and it just made me eat one.
