Stardew Valley Min/Max Guide FULL YEAR 1 Spring to Spring UNCUT with Commentary | Part 03 

Haha, right? Like, it doesn’t make you “lose” or anything, the game is just so good at guilting you into it lol.

She was speaking in regards to finding the staircase rather than resource or experience gain

Potatoes have a 20% chance to drop 2 potatoes on harvest, so on average they should net 7.67 gold/day. The main difference is the experience at harvest: potatoes yield 14 xp/plant while kale yields 17 xp/plant. generally you don't want to manage more than 100 strawberry plants in late spring (unless you love watering) and at 100g a seed packet its only 10k by spring 13; which, demonstrated by Foxy on Part 2 of this guide, she had by the end of the day spring 4. The bigger consideration is getting to Farming 6 (3300 xp) for quality sprinklers to start automating the watering process.

Yep what Bob said! I have confidence I’ll have enough to buy 100 strawberries which I don’t really want to deal with more than that. Ideally I can have a chance to upgrade my watering can but that doesn’t always work out. The 2 main reasons I chose kale over potatoes is because they’re worth more when pickled, but also because I don’t have to water as many to get the xp.

Thanks for all that math! I am constantly second guessing my decisions and this episode was no different. :P The downside of the Kale strategy is that even though it nets a lot of money from pickling, it’s going to be a while before I can do that. So...is it better to sell the kale raw early on to have money for other seeds, or is it better to save for greater profits? I’m not really sure. It might be a mix of both. I think I’ll decide that around day 13. I’m planning on about 100 strawberry seeds. Nothing crazy, but as you said I’m not going to have sprinklers by that point(which I knew would happen). The thing I need to figure out before day 13 is whether or not I want to go hops(it matters for how I arrange the strawberries). Are you the one that pointed out hops are a huge time sink due to harvesting them every day and having to deal with the kegs more? I’ve thought about that a lot and am still contemplating what to do. Pale ale IS the highest ROI from kegs, but it’s also a time sink and they take up a LOT of kegs. So yeah, lots of thinking and math to do. :)

@@FoxyFernGaming yep that was me. my issue with hops is just the enormous amount of effort you have to put into watering and harvesting them: every single day you are out at the field picking hops regardless of if you have sprinklers or not. I didn't realize that they only take 2 days to keg, which is a plus, but if you are talking about ~200 hop plants you are going to have to harvest 3400 hops by the end of the season. At 2 days to keg you are talking about 6800 days of time. even with 100 kegs its still going to take you 68 days (2.25 seasons) to catch up with your summer harvest. you will however make 1 million gold from 200 hops in a single summer; or 5k of worth per plant (more with artisan). The drawback is the daily harvest starting day 12 and time-to-keg, so in late summer you are going to have to spend your time harvesting and making kegs over making profit elsewhere. (Edit: 1.0 million w/o the artisan perk, 1.41 million with the perk) the alternatives to hops in summer are Melons and Starfruit: Melons: 200 melons yield 2 fruit per plant and each fruit takes 7 days of time to keg for 1k profit per plant, so the 200 plants take 2800 days to become wine and yield 0.4 million. the advantage is with 100 kegs it only takes 28 days vs the 68, though for 40% of the profit. Starfruit: 200 starfruit yield 2 fruit per plant and each fruit takes 7 days of time to keg for 3k profit per plant, so the 200 plants take 2800 days to become wine and yield 1.2 million. which is just a straight advantage over the hops. (Edit: actual is 0.74 million w/o the artisan perk, 1.1 million with the perk, meaning hops are more profitable overall) Both options have low time investment day 1-12 so you can spend your time generating kegs or profit. the advantage to the melon route is if you open up the desert and buy up the starfruit you can switch all your crops on the 12th. This only nets you 0.8 million for 200 plants for the summer but opens you up to do more during your day the second half of summer and allows you to be done making wine by the end of fall. spending time making more sprinklers will expand these calculations, but the sooner you reach the desert the more it begins to favor the starfruit; Each day you delay hops past summer 1 you loose 300g of the 5k net which drops to 0 on day 17 and beyond. Ideally you would generate 82k by spring 28 and unlock the desert so you could skip melons entirely. the two variables are the number of kegs you can produce and the number of plants you can comfortably manage during a day. Other than skull caverns I don't think there is any activity that rivals 1 million in a season. if you ignore it you could spend most of your time harvesting hops, and building kegs and you may finish the ale by Spring 1 or earlier. It basically all boils down to your "Endgame" and how you want to spend your day. just to include it here, a iridium bar is worth 1500 with the "blacksmith" skill (mining) for 5 ore. With a deep skull cavern run with bombs you can net 200+ ore which is >60k gold per day; plus the value of spare ore and prismatic shards. that calculates to >1.7 million in a season if you are willing to spend all your time down there. bar none it is the best option come wintertime (pun intended). this is where the calculations of >10 million in year 1 are coming from: 6mil from skull cavern runs daily, and >4mil from starfruit wine and pumpkin Juice/pickles.

@@FoxyFernGaming I just realized that i missed the first part: 100 strawberries is only 10k in the bin on the 12th, which is like one good day of fishing. no reason to sell the kale unless you want to go for the desert early on or outright buy the speed grow; another 10k investment for 2k profit for the extra harvest on the 28th. plus having all that extra cash on hand means no passing out at 2am. after all the math above, I'm considering how realistic it would be to have the ~200 kale for farming 6 harvested before the 13th. it would be a pain to water early on, but it means you could layout your strawberries in the 3x3 grid, and just fill in the sprinklers as you get them after day 13. all said and done you would basically be trading watering on days 2-7 for watering days 13-21. thoughts?

​@@bobnewkirk7003 I'm not sure about the watering thing. You're right that it's a trade - but if I spend all my time watering early on instead of fishing or mining, then I'll likely have to sell some of my kale to get the 10k necessary for strawberries. I also don't want to go too nuts with the watering since this guide was supposed to also target console/mobile players, and the excessive watering in my first series was the main reason non-PC players couldn't keep up. The standing in one spot while watering the 9 tiles around you is a huge time advantage on the PC(too bad this wasn't designed better for the porting). I'm a little confused by your crops calculations and am wondering if you made a typo - you mentioned that it's 2 fruit per plant for melons and starfruit? Do you mean you can plant them twice, or am I missing something? The other thing I have to consider with starfruit vs hops is that 1 hops starter costs 60g and yields 17 harvests each, where as starfruit costs 400g and yields 1 harvest. So the net profit of 1 hops planted on Summer 1 turned into pale ale is 7,080g per crop, and starfruit turned into wine is only 2,750g per crop. Buuuuuut...way less time investment and cask usage equals unknown priceless value? Man. It's really hard to decide lol. SO. MUCH. THEORYCRAFTING. That's part of why this game is so amazing, and I'm guessing that Concerned Ape was not planning on any of this. :)

@@bobnewkirk7003 Oh and one thought on speed-gro with strawberries - you might be on to something there. If I have the money for it, buying speed-gro on the 12th(I'd have to do it by then since I can't go to Pierre's on the 13th) could actually net me 40,300g in the long run. 100 speed-gro would cost an extra 10,000g, but if I turned 100 extra strawberries into wine that'd be 50,300g with artisan buff. However, if I have an extra 10k by day 13, it'd be MORE profitable to just buy an extra 100 strawberries instead of speed-gro. The downside being I'd have to water them all, so still not 100% certain which way is better. SO MANY CHOICES

I don't think forgetting to water them should cause them to die, I think they just don't grow for that day? If they died maybe crows got to them?

@@FoxyFernGaming I didn't actually restart the run. It's been the best start I've had since I started playing (only a couple months). I'm into year two with my greenhouse almost full of Ancient Fruit, and a complete Community Center. Thank you!

I think you forgot a scarecrow? I plant 1day only 13 parsnip plus one green bean plus one cauliflower for bundles. Potato you get from planting at day 6. If tou have less than 16 crops crows would not come and eat your crops. And after picking 13 parsnips you level to 2 farming and can put scsrecrow. Then i plant all mixed seeds day 5 and day 6 I plant as much potato as I can. But I never got lvl 6 farming on day 13 for sprinklers because I never have enough money to buy so much potato. Kale is even more expensive.

Haha I hope you don’t mind I mentioned you! No not at all. I’m an animator by trade so I am used to feedback. I always appreciate constructive feedback and tips! It’s more enjoyable for me when I have people to interact with so I encourage it. :)

If you're gonna pickle stuff, fertilizers don't help.

Hypothetically as soon as you get the community center open (day 5) you could deposit the 42k gold required, but you would also need to fulfill several other bundles to get the Vault room to unlock. I think the fastest route would be spring forage, then construction, then some mines stuff till the vault room unlocks. I would say its near impossible, without cheats, on day 5, but that is the first time you have the opportunity to open the desert. after completing the bundle the cut scene will play overnight and Pam will trudge out to the bus stop the morning of the following day. at a sprint you would need 2-3 days of mining to get the bundles stuff, and at least 4 days fishing (unless you get lucky with rain) so I would say Day 8-9 would be the first days you could complete the bundles. Most players will need a lot longer than that though as you need to be at 80+ in the mines and have made that much money. A good goal to shoot for would be spring 28, that way you could buy starfruit seeds for planing on summer 1.

@@bobnewkirk7003 thanks

Yep what Bob said! He knows his stuff! :) one thing to add though - while you could get to the desert by just unlocking the bus stop, if you want to go to the skull caverns you also have to get the key which you find at level 120 of the regular mines.

IIRC the potatoes are because the seeds are cheaper and they give you enough farming points to get you to level 6 in time for strawberries. I think that's why I was pushing potatoes, not because of the gold.