profession skills discussion

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Shepherd_0, Dec 2, 2019.

  1. Shepherd_0

    Shepherd_0 Starship Captain

    Hello, I'm new here. I've been lurking on these forums for a while now and today I decided to make an account to join in on the discussion. I'm playing the switch version of Stardew Valley, so I'm still dying to try out 1.4 for myself. Hopefully the update will arrive next week or so.

    I want to talk about the different professions. Overall, I think a lot of the professions were not very well-balanced before, but 1.4 has a lot of direct and indirect effects on the professions. I'd like to examine which ones are better (or worse) now, and which ones might still need some balancing changes in the future.


    The first and most obvious change is that forester now drops 25% more wood for every tree or stump, rather than increasing the sell price of wood by 50%. This is a great change because nobody sold wood anyway, effectively making the skill useless before. Together with the new tree fertilizer, it makes getting large quantities of wood much easier without having to spend gold for it at Robin's shop.

    however, lumberjack and tapper still seem to have some problems. Lumberjack is decent now I think, but that's mostly because of the introduction of tree fertilizer. The problem is that there aren't all that many things you can use hardwood for, and the amount of hardwood you actually get through this skill is also a bit too low imo. Tapper suffers from the same problem that forester did before: nobody sells syrups. You use them on kegs and beehives and such. It's dissapointing that tapper wasn't changed to reduce the amount of time it takes for product to fill up the tapper, especially because CA already recognized that nobody sells wood. A buff to the tapper profession like that would be amazing for industrial type players who litter their farm with kegs and beehives.

    I'm not really sure if the forester route is worth it now, but at least it is much better than before. It's a step in the right direction because the foraging tree was easily the most unbalanced skill tree before.


    Another skill tree that was influenced by the 1.4 changes is the fishing tree. I think it used to be fairly balanced. Fisher was almost always the the 'better' choice because crab pot fish aren't worth that much money, but players that don't care about the fishing minigame at all could pick trapper and continue to not care about the fishing minigame. It's a bit of a shame that trapper isn't more viable for all sorts of players though.

    In 1.4, the difference in usefulness between fisher and trapper only grew larger. Fishing recieved two major buffs: the chance of getting two fish with wild bait and getting a higher quality fish on a perfect catch. I really like these two buffs, but it also makes fisher and angler even better, while trapper doesn't really benefit from either of the buffs. That is why I think that trapper should get a buff. I think increasing the selling price of crab pot exclusive fish would be a good place to start to close the gap in profitability between trapper and fisher. I would also like to see a passive buff that grants a chance of getting two crab pot fish, which could be something that you get at level 7 fishing level, similar to how you get extra berry harvests at level 4 foraging.

    Then there is also the inbalance between luremaster and and mariner. Mariner removes the chance of getting trash items. However, instead of reworking the trap chances of all the different crab pot fish to accomodate for the lack of trash items in the pool, all the fish just have an equal chance to appear. This means that mariner significantly increases the chance of getting the rarer, more profitable fish compared to luremaster, which doesn't have this advantage. I think it would be a much simpler solution to always give all the available crab pot fish the same chance to appear, regardless of wether the player chose mariner or luremaster, or neither.


    The farming skill tree didn't get many direct changes, but it did get some indirect ones. There are two new crops that can benifit from tiller, though neither of the crops are very profitable so it doesn't really matter. The bigger change is the introduction of dinosaur mayonnaise and the fact that looms can produce an extra piece of cloth. Both of these changes give some extra utility to coopmaster and shepherd respectively. However, considering both dino mayo and cloth benifit from artisan too, I wonder if it's even worth going through rancher to get to coopmaster or shepherd.

    This is the biggest problem with the farming tree. Most items that benifit from rancher also benifit from artisan, but artisan gives a much bigger increase to selling price. This means that rancher is outclassed by artisan even if you mainly use animals for profit, which doesn't make much sense. To close this gap, either rancher should be buffed up to a 40% increase in selling price, or artisan should be nerfed. I think both should give a 30% increase to close the gap, because that seems more balanced than either of the aformentioned options. This means that you can choose rancher for the benifits of coopmaster or shepherd without 'losing' money by not choosing artisan. A nerf to artisan also makes agriculturalist a more attractive option.

    What do you think? Do you agree that artisan is a bit too powerful compared to the other professions in the farming tree?


    I think the mining tree is the most well-balanced one. It doesn't need any changes in my opinion. I only really talk about it here to make a point about the combat tree later.

    The thing I like about this skill tree is that it can really change up the playstyle of your character. If you are an industrial kind of player that makes a lot of sprinklers and tappers, miner is a great way to get more ore. Prospector compounds this kind of playstyle further by increasing the chance to find coal to build large amounts of beehives and preserves jars. This also combines nicely with the newly buffed forester skill. On the other hand, geologist is a good way to earn some extra money from mining in the early-mid game. A more casual or social player will probably like this profession too, because gems make for good gifts. Excavator makes the hunt for minerals for the museum quite a bit easier, and it allows casual players to get iridium from omni's without having to go into the skull cavern. It also gained some extra utility in 1.4 thanks to the new desert trader. If you are the type of player who doesn't really care about the extra crafting materials prospector and excavator grant you, you can also go for either blacksmith or gemologist to make a decent profit from mining. All the options are very different and all of them are viable and useful depending on your playstyle, which is a great thing.


    As far as I'm aware, the combat tree didn't recieve any major changes. I still want to talk about it though, because I think the effects of any of the combat professions are very negligable compared to most other professions in the other skill trees. The choice between fighter and scout is already unbalanced. Scout is simply really bad. The base crit chance is very low, so a 50% increase might seem like a lot, but it really doesn't make a difference. fighter is very boring, but it is useful. Both brute and defender are very boring again. Brute is decent though, at least, but defender barely makes a difference. It allows you to maybe take one more hit in the SC, which is a bit pathetic. Acrobat is actually cool, but the special moves themselves leave a lot to be desired which means that acrobat is less useful than it could have been. Desperado is also interesting, but because the crit chance is so bad it's also not as useful as it could have been.

    There are a lot of different ways to 'fix' the combat tree. Ideally, the fighter branch would be completely reworked. Plain stat boosts are never a bad thing to have, but it's very boring and it doesn't really match a certain playstyle. I think a good way to rework the combat tree as a whole is to distinguish between two distinct playstyles: one based on offense and one based on defense. Something like the following:

    The level 5 profession can the boring fighter and defender buffs to announce a distiction between an offensive and defensive skill branch to the player. The offensive path would then branch into acrobat and a new profession called sharpshooter (increases slingshot damage), to further split the offensive branch into a melee-focused playstyle and a ranged-focused playstyle. The defensive path would split into two new defensive professions. Here are some ideas:
    - Desperado (reworked): cancels all negative effects and grants a +1 speed buff for x seconds when health drops below 50%. This allows you to escape enemies more easily.
    - Vampire: restore x amount of HP after killing an enemy (like the vampire ring). This allows the player to stay alive longer.
    - Rouge: reduces detection range of enemies by x amount. Also replaces dagger special ability by a new ability that makes the player undetectable by enemies for x seconds. allows you to completely bypass enemies, and it might make daggers more useful.
    - Brute (reworked): increases knockback by x amount. Heavy impact attacks (club special ability, bombs and slingshot shots) also stun enemies for x seconds. Makes it easier to deal with swarms of enemies.
    - Bombardier: increase explosion damage against enemies, but decrease explosion damage for the player. Makes bombs and explosive ammo more viable in combat and protects the player from damaging themselves.

    By seperating the professions into an offensive and defensive category, it can change the playstyle of your character, like how the mining tree does it. Skills like these are a lot more interesting than flat stat buffs in my opinion. What do you think?

    Congratulations if you came this far, and thanks for reading. I'm interested in your opinion on the viability of the professions now that 1.4 is out.
     
      WilliamZ likes this.
    • WilliamZ

      WilliamZ Phantasmal Quasar

      Welcome to the forums, I love big posts lol, expect to see the other players gather but as a matter of advice if you want to discuss about something casual is better to join the Stardew Reddit.
      As a shepherd player I can say that receive two cloth pieces from the loom doesn't make any difference, on a barn full of sheeps usually I get one or two silver quality wool, as the gold and iridium is more profitable to sell as a shepherd, I have 5 barns on my forest layout so +10 cloth pieces isn't nothing (and assuming that I will get double pieces because they are random). This may be something big for a sheep farm for an artisan and artisan always get the top of the cake in this game.

      The fighting professions is a problem that CA keeps increasing, he didn't design the skull cave in a way that we can reach the bottom by fighting monsters and breaking rocks,unless you're super lucky in finding the holes, he keeps pushing grindy endgame goals that I don't think that fits the proposal of Stardew Valley, I hate the combat, our hitbox is too big and facing enemies from bellow is always a guaranteed hit from them so it's best to avoid combat altogether, I don't know if he will continue to release new content but combat is something that need a fine tune.
       
      • ShneekeyTheLost

        ShneekeyTheLost Master Astronaut

        Personally, I feel that the fix to Prospector to make it actually function in the mines put the final nail in the coffin on the Geologist side of the perk tree for Mining skill. It was already a good option for those who wanted to make stuff, but with the fix it is now pretty much mandatory IMO. Geologist side makes you pocket change, Miner/Prospector makes you infrastructure. Seems a no-brainer to me.

        Then again, that's probably due to my play style.
         
        • WilliamZ

          WilliamZ Phantasmal Quasar

          Crystalariums shouldn't use Iridium to be built, it was fine before because Skull Cavern wasn't all that hard, but to farm iridium now you already need to have a steady supply to prepare for the cave and it is more towards mid to endgame, there is no point in build crystalariums for money at that point because you already will have more options available.
           
          • squigglyruth

            squigglyruth Pangalactic Porcupine

            Great analysis!
            I don't think my choices of profession have changed for 1.4, but it's still interesting to read through the options again. I would be tempted by Forester if Botanist wasn't so good.
             
            • Shepherd_0

              Shepherd_0 Starship Captain

              Exactly, it's your playstyle. Prospector might be the 'better' choice in terms of making the most profit, but when I'm doing a more casual playthrough I prefer going excavator because I don't really care about infrastructure too much in that case. That's what I like about the mining professions, the different choices fit different styles of playing. Though, I do also think the geologist could be a little better. Maybe an increase in the base selling price of gems would help geologist to stand out more.
               

              Share This Page