Stardew Valley

Wew. Made the million G by the end of Fall 18 Year 2.

Best earners: Crystallariums making diamonds, copius amounts of fruit preserves and wine, all the berries.

Also Botanist be crazy for getting made forage profits. Iridium EVERYTHING is OP.

Not everything. The Iridium Watering Can is hilarious on account of how many Iridium Sprinklers I had by the time I bothered upgrading it. My whole farm is self-watering; the only purpose for a Watering Can at this point is to make my cat happy.

I used to find it kinda amusing when my character's wife would say that she watered the crops. All the crops are hooked up to sprinklers. What'd she do, water the sprinklers?

Then, one day, I noticed the patch of ground under one of my sprinklers was wet. She did, in fact, water the sprinklers. Now it's hilarious.

Well I enjoyed fishing, so I picked the river farm after my first test on a regular farm.

Didn't think it'll get described as hard mode.

If I'ma restart this game, I'll probably pick forest now.

Forest isn't bad because you can just save up for an initial crop of Strawberries from Flower Fest, transition into Blueberries and jam for Summer, then ramp up from Grape Wine and Cranberries in fall, leveraging foraging boosts from the free stumps easy hay from the initial grass plains.

River isn't as powerful unless you want to grind River biome fishing for early cash to help bootstrap.

Also Nintendocaprisun got lucky in his LP, a random overnight event saw a fairy instantly bring his Ancient Fruit bush to full maturity.

Completed the CC in early Fall Year 2 because I got a rabbit's foot drop early in Summer, got lucky repeatedly with the travelling merchant over the past year, and just had to wait for my apple tree to bear fruit.

Once I had a few Stardrop Fruits raise my stamina cap I've never had stamina issues ever again.

edited 4th Jan '18 4:05:42 AM by AceOfScarabs

The river farm is my favorite! It makes the beginning of the game so much easier! Fishing is easy money. Just fish a whole bunch, eat a fish for more stamina, and fish some more. On top of that, the large plot of land south of the farmhouse is great. I tend to spend the early part of the game (spring and summer of year 1) accumulating money (fish) and sprinklers, then go all out and fill that big south plot with cranberries in fall.

Your professed love of fish, and admittance to eating them raw regularly is absolutely hilarious when paired with your lovely bear avatar.

Funnily enough, I made a post about the Farm Layouts, and how to improve them, in the official Stardew Valley forums And my thoughts on them are mostly the same as yours, Totemic Hero! Forest is best since the bonuses it provides are great (foraging items AND daily Hard Wood) while having plenty space for farming, Wildland is good enough since it's basically standard with more water and monsters (though the monsters could be a bit more impactful and useful to have), Hilltop is my personal favorite for scenery alone but the limited space requires much planning (the mining aspect of it could also use an improvement, namely the ore and geodes respawning at a faster rate), and I think Riverlands is the worst since it takes away so much space for a bonus that isn't really good enough (you can only catch River fish, which are not nearly as profitable as those in the Lake and Ocean)

Sadly, as someone on that forum pointed out, the other Farm Layouts are actually outclassed by the Standard one since crops (which Standard favors by a LOT) are the only truly successful means of money in the game, with the other professions not nearly being enough and the animals both lacking automation (no sprinklers and Junimos for affection and gathering products) and being bugged (apparently, if you give them too much affection, it loops back to zero). Though we did come up with a few "solutions" to the other Farm Layouts to give them even more benefits than Standard by having them also affect animals, crops, the Mushroom/Bat Cave, and even be affected by the seasons (ex. Riverland keeps soil watered for another day due to wet environment, Wildlands has bats deliver fruit daily since there's a bigger population on the farm, and the Forest has increased amount of foraging items in the Fall)

The animal mood bug is one of the most misunderstood things about the game, to the point that I've never seen a source fully explaining it, despite me having put together basically what happens some time ago. Well, scratch that, let's have one source explaining it fully - right here.

An animal's mood is represented in the game code by an unsigned 8-bit integer (2^8), which has values ranging from 0 to 255. It can overflow if the value is set to increase beyond 255, looping it back around to a low mood number. In the game, this usually happens when the player pets an animal after it has eaten from outdoor grass, because eating outdoor grass sets the animal's mood to the maximum value of 255. If you were to trigger an overflow prior to the animal eating outside grass, it won't matter because they just get maximum mood anyway. Also, remember that on rainy days, animals will not go outside (unless you trap them outside, but by that point your animal's mood will be in the toilet anyway), will thus not eat outside grass, and are usually not in danger of getting hit by the overflow glitch.

The trick is, mood gets adjusted by a couple of other factors, and one of those factors is how late your farmer stays up. In non-winter seasons, animal mood starts taking a hit every ten minutes you are awake after 6 PM. The hit is small, but it adds up. However, if you stay up late enough after causing a mood overflow, the ticking clock on their mood will trigger an underflow, resetting their mood back to a very high level. Thus the actual glitch doesn't "stick" very often, since it requires you build up enough mood on the low end of the scale and not stay up late enough to offset it. If you stay up close to midnight every day, the mood overflow will all but guaranteed to never be an issue (although it might make it tricky to keep your animals at super high mood values, but that's the tradeoff).

Winter is a little bit of a different story here. Obviously, your animals cannot eat outdoor grass, because there is none, so they will not get the auto mood set to 255. However, assuming you have a heater in your barn/coop, they no longer lose mood value as you stay up late. Instead, the opposite occurs if they already have 150 or more mood value - they gain mood points every ten minutes after 6 PM. In winter conditions, overflow would occur if you stay up too late (while somewhat random, on average, it amounts to staying up past 9 PM), and there's no real possibility of underflow to offset it. So, getting to bed before 9 PM in winter is recommended for avoiding the mood reset. (If you don't have a heater, they lose mood like in the other seasons, but without the outside grass gain this is not recommended.)

So while it seems like a random glitch, in fact there are specific steps you can take to avoid it. The easiest being petting your animals before they eat grass outside (and with cows, goats, and sheep, milking/shearing them in advance too), but if you can't swing that, moderating your bedtimes is the next best thing.

edited 4th Jan '18 7:50:11 PM by TotemicHero

I usually don't have the energy, ingame or out, to focus on huge-ass crop sectors that span the entire map, so the Forest one is the most beneficial for my purposes, as I seek to obtain that coveted Greenhouse and other foraging/wood harvesting stuff as soon as I can.

Also, fuck the kids. I always tell my spouse to never have them.

Aw. But they don't even consume resources, or cost you anything! They're just adorable!

Except for the creepy glitch where they spawn in the black void ourside your house, 14 weeks old, and then later they turn back into an infant? That was terrifying...

But they're adorable, and they like to play with stuffed animals. They never seem to go outside, though, which is weird.

Kids these days with their televisions and the rap music....

I always thought they did cost resources, or at least your spouse's attention, meaning you won't get any help with farmwork. Plus, hitboxes getting in the way; it was already a problem when my pet got stuck on the hall. And what's the point of having kids if they don't grow beyond tiny children and can't talk or do anything?

I hope the next patch includes a vasectomy/tube-tying option.

edited 5th Jan '18 8:31:46 AM by RainingMetal

...help with the farmwork? I had Abigail literally watering the sprinklers for lack of anything useful to do.

I leave a few 3x3 areas without sprinklers so I have a chance at getting those giant crops. Plus, with a fully upgraded watering can, it's not too difficult.

There's also repairing fences, feeding animals (possibly preserving grass or something) in addition to watering crops.

<.< The upgraded barn and coop come with auto-feeders.

How do the fences get damaged? I've literally never had to repair one, but I have heard my character's spouse talk about doing it so I know it's a thing.

Nah, the spouses continue to help out around the house even after adopting/birthing children.

My problem was that Alex has terrible timing, fixing fences when they're practically new, ignoring the ones that are years old.

Fences decay with time and eventually disappear

edited 5th Jan '18 12:36:14 PM by blkwhtrbbt

Fences have a increasing random chance to break down and disappear after existing for so many days (the better quality the fence material, the longer it lasts), so eventually the fence WILL break down and disappear. Your spouse "repairing" the fences resets the timer on this breakdown.

The timers are very generous (the basic wood fence is guaranteed to last one and a half to two seasons, and it scales extremely heavily up from there), to the point that once you're married you'll probably never see a fence fully breakdown, unless you're (A) using the basic wood fences and (B) have really bad luck on your spouse's A.I. Roulette of helping out.

edited 5th Jan '18 2:11:04 PM by TotemicHero

Oh well. Either way, the kids of are no benefit to me.

What's the current record for most iridium found in a Skull Cavern dive? I once got 2 bar drops and about 35 chunks of ore in 1 trip on a lucky day.

Well, I decided to start a Hilltop run for the lulz...and got a fairy visit on the very first night.

And then by the end of the week (where I stopped), I also had gotten a diamond from a fishing treasure chest.

Now I'm curious to see if my crazy luck is going to continue.

Any particular reason why Reddit hates Clint so much? The Scrappy entry mentions his "unreliable" schedule, but for me it's anything but, except on Fridays once the Community Center is restored the traditional way. Didn't really find his closeted affection for Emily to be a negative thing either. Hell, I'd nominate him to be a future bachelor.

I just... Found him boring. Also, having him upgrade your tools means you lose half a week of work with that tool and you can't buy ore or coal in the meantime. There's also the fact that he doesn't really really about much except about how he's lonely but makes no effort to change that. I never disliked Clint myself, but I could easily understand why people might find him annoying in a town full of people otherwise working very hard toward their goals.

Sure, I can understand the whole upgrade delay sort of thing. You gotta plan ahead for it. I often upgrade my tools the day before a festival so that I don't end up missing much (for the watering can, just before a rainy day). Though this ends up biting me in the ass during the Luau after I drive Joja Mart out of town due to said day after being a Friday, where Clint's schedule becomes inexplicably inconvenient.

1.3 beta is now avalible on Steam! (GOG will be avalible in a few days)

You can buy Pam and Penny a proper house with this new patch. That's ....pretty weird actually