Stardew Valley Min/Max Guide FULL YEAR 1 Spring to Spring UNCUT with Commentary | Part 06 

Howdy Foxy, just finished the video; great push on day 12 and I loved the call-out ;) IMO plant the strawberries even if you don't water them. if you get a rain day of the 14th or 15th you basically waste it w/o seeds in the ground, and if it does rain you get free progress. plus going to the festival on the 13th is pretty much a wash from a profitability perspective, may as well spend the energy laying out the farm. the last day to have watered strawberry seeds in the ground is the 16th, otherwise you lose a harvest. as Nick mentioned below, you are at Farming 5 (2150 xp) and you only need 3300 total xp to get to F6, so you need 67 or fewer kale (17 xp), however that really adds to your watering area for 6 days. functionally this is trading 6 days of watering an additional 67 kale (402 tiles) for sprinklers on the 20th (skill up 19th) vs just waiting for the first strawberry harvest on the 21st for sprinklers on the 22nd; assuming that you fish for the 4700 to buy the kale on the 14th and then get the seeds in the ground and watered the same day and that you don't delay the strawberry watering.the 402 tiles of watering kale would save you 200 tiles of watering strawberries; though a single rain day throws all this math into the gutter, and statistically you get 1 per ~6 days of time. additionally, if you delay watering the strawberries, up until the 16th, you lose 100 tiles of watering to the kale route per day delayed, and as suggested above you could delay 3 days (300 tiles). this pretty heavily weights the math in favor of the kale: you are spending 400 tiles of watering to potentially save 500 (or more with rain). The primary cost is that the time you spend fishing, hoeing and watering during those 6 days is time you could be farming up more sprinklers, which "may" save you watering after F6. If you think you can still farm up the 13 sprinklers for the strawberries and water all the extra kale before the first strawberry harvest, then the kale is mathematically the better option. imo the "Geologist" skill is not the right choice. The skill gives you a 50% chance for gems to duplicate per gem node, vs +1 ore per node from Miner. Not taking "miner" means you do not have access to "Blacksmith" at level 10, which is the primary money strategy in Skull Caverns. In the case where you go to skull caverns most of your profit is from Iridium bars with "blacksmith", in the case where you skip it, most of your time mining in the regular mines is looking for ores (mostly for sprinklers) so either way miner is a straight efficiency buff. The only time that Geologist would be better is if you were hunting for specific gems in the regular mines, however with the addition of the Crystalarium regular gems become abundant by late-game. Skull caverns is mostly about daily luck, which is why having food buffs is the linchpin. as mentioned by Quagersall below diving deep in the mines is about prioritizing drop shafts before anything else, which spawn based on current (daily + food buff) luck. Buff up with spicy eel (Ruby) and Triple Shot Espresso (Diamond) from the desert trader and push as far as you can on a day with good or best luck. after the buffs its about popping the max number of stones per minute and that's as simple as Mega Bomb>Bomb>Pickaxe. not having gold or Iridium pickaxe REALLY hurts your speed because of the multiple hits required to break nodes. you can only finance a limited number of bombs, so the meta-game becomes keeping your health up with whatever consumable you find (people buy salad from Gus), and keeping all your iron, gold and coal on you to craft bombs and mega bombs as you dive. Bombs are just iron and coal, so people buy 100+ coal from Clint before they head down, and Mega bombs need Gold void and solar; void are plentiful and solar come from the mummies and ghosts. beyond that, only use staircases to skip infested floors and floors that are really spread out, or if you would take a long time to get to the next node cluster (which is a "feel" thing). also Sundays you can buy staircases with Jade, so having a fleet of Crystalarium loaded with Jade is much cheaper than mining/buying all that stone. I would say that you shouldn't start prioritizing mining iridium till after 6pm because it is more efficient to go deeper then it is to mine it along the way, unless you can pick up veins with the rocks you are breaking looking for ladders anyway. Early on, you can prioritize diamond, jade and ruby nodes just to buff up your next run, but after a couple runs you will be swimming in Spicy Eel and Triple Shot. the only "tricks" I can give for skull caverns is keep your health above 40% because you can be 1 shot really easy and using the menu to prevent a quick double hit KO: if you get hit, open the menu really fast and scroll over to your food. then spam the button as soon as you leave the menu. this helps prevent the flying stuff from doubling back behind you and wiping you out before you can react. otherwise it becomes a test of how much you can get done while still fending off those stinking bats and serpents. Plus pausing the game can give you a little bit of a breather on more hectic floors. What a wall of text... I apologize to everyone who made it this far. Good luck on your interview Foxy :D

Never sell the components of forage seeds, always sell the seeds. Even with all iridium quality forage for spring forage (which you can get at level 10 foraging), it's only slightly better to sell the items. This changes if you have vats for making jelly. There are exceptions to this rule, but lets look at the numbers: Spring: seeds 350g per 10 horseradish: 100g + daffodil: 60g + leek: 120g + dandelion: 80g = 360g (with all iridium quality) Note that only the wild horseradish can be put into a seed maker to make 1-3 spring seeds. Summer: seeds 550g per 10 spiceberry: 160g + grapes: 176g (with tiller) + sweet pea flower: 100g (all iridium quality) = 436g spiceberry jelly: 294g + grape jelly: 294g + sweet pea flower: 100g (iridium) = 688g Note that a spice berry can be put in a seed maker to get 1-3 seeds for Note that summer is an exception because you can turn two of the parts into jelly and sell with the artisan profession at farming level 10. Fall: seeds 450g per 10 blackberry: 120g (with Bear's Know) + mushroom: 80g + hazelnut: 180g + wild plum: 160g = 540g blackberry jelly: 125g + mushroom: 80g + hazelnut: 180g + wild plum jelly: 294g = 679g Also note that mushrooms can be put in a seed maker to get 1-3 fall seeds for 90g average. Winter: seeds 300g per 10 crocus: 120g + crystal fruit wine: 630g + snow yam: 200g + winter root: 140g = 1090g (all iridium) Never sell winter seeds. It's best to make wine from the berry, sell the yam, and sell or gift the crocus. Winter root can be made into a roots platter with a cave carrot (125 energy), otherwise sell the winter root or put it into a seed maker for 1-3 winter seeds.

Ladydude. You are a hidden gem and im so glad youre making these videos 🙏 My Stardew Valley experience started about a week ago. Oh, what a work of art it is. Im absolutely in love. I found your video series somewhere around the end of winter of year 1 in my game, so watching from your first spring on and letting it sync up sort of with mine has been giving me a lot of tips and different ideas of things to look out for. ........one time our music was in PERFECT sync for about 20 seconds and it was realllllly weird dude. Just the distance apart, it took me a sec to notice and it was really trippy lol... Anyway. Foxy, I think it feels like im hanging out with a friend while im listenin, which is weird, because you've mentioned Seattle and im just on staycation over here in Brem 😳 for one more whole day n back to work. I hope youll make more of these videos so i can play more stardew with you lol Tldr: Thank you. Youve brought joy during some lonely times

Also good series so far! I followed your original spring guide pretty closely on PS4 with pretty close results.

It's pretty mind blowing how try hard I've been following this guide, and you're still absolutely smoking me as far as progress goes. 😅 But it's still cool to see what is possible if I made less mistakes. Maybe after this run I'll be able to go back through with more knowledge and do better next time. Ultimately though it's just a game for fun and spring 1 is bound to be the most hectic season anyway.

I love your voice it’s calming

The series is progressing nicely

Since you hit Farming 5: with the crops you have on the field you only need 55 Kale (3,850gp) to hit farming 6. This would get you to farming 6 by the 20th. Since you have access to gold levels you can now farm each ore. I would suggest planting and watering your strawberries asap so you can have your harvest before the 22nd which is the last day to buy Kale or potatoes for a last minute profit in spring. Between the 14th and 22nd you will just have to hope for rain so you can upgrade your watering can.

Am really enjoying this series. Enjoy the fact you are commenting on your thought process throughout. You got me to start trying these and am about to finish up my second min/max run. This time used a Forest Farm for even more fun.

Love it! They nerfed the skull cavern so now its not quite as lucrative after 1.4.2 as far as iridium amounts (it can still be massive though) I got to 100 in the Skull Cavern in my normal run on camera (and it wasn't even that good of a run) Basically you need to take any drop shoot you see or ladder immediately (even sacrificing good stuff like single iridium nodes) and bring ladders and stone for more ladders to skip any infested levels or bad levels. If you really want to minmax the skull cavern take a screen shot and check to see if there are any exposed ladders and plan out each floor (or just the big floors) AND TAKE MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF BOMBS and MEGA BOMBS, make them and buy the regular bombs from the desert trader for quartz when the time comes.

Mining is much better until your Iridium needs have been met. I usually go Mining/Coal (sorry I can't remember the actual skill names) until I've got my sprinklers, critical tool upgrades, buildings, and at least some of the crystalariums that I want built. The 10k to switch to the geology (and I presume double gemstone drops) sometime in year 2 is dirt cheap. That assumes I'm on a power gaming run. BTW, if there are any first-time players left, *ignore these types of videos*. You can only experience the joy of a first-time Stardew Valley run once. Thanks Foxy, good info all-round!

Looking forward to seeing which direction you go. Only problem with this guide is I have more time to play and dont have to edit, so I am already ahead of you Foxy! Might have to try again if you end up being more efficient (which you will because i stink at planning die these run). I went with 160 strawberries and was able to get the speed grow (i learned from your mistake!). I think i should have good profits be the end of spring and have been making good progress in the mines and getting ores for sprinklers, tappers, and kegs.

5 levels is really bad??? And here I was feeling all proud of myself when I manage to do it 🥺

bruh i lost my potatos on day 12 this is pain

Can you buy salads for mining too

Honestly for me, I like to take the mines slow and only go down 5 levels a day.

Welp rip my old phone with my stardew valley file