@Chibi88 I feel like this may be turning into a troll, at this point, but whatever. If you want crop profits in Year 1: Spring, from best to worst Strawberry Cauliflower Potato Green Bean Kale Parsnip Blue Jazz Tulip Strawberries will yield 2 harvests unless you either buy Speed-Gro from Pierre -- which isn't worth it, in my opinion -- or if you do the Community Center; harvest a Cauliflower, Green Bean, and Potato by Spring 13; turn them in after the Egg Festival; and then get the 10 20 Speed-Gro from the Spring Crops bundle. Then, for 10 20 Strawberries you will have 3 harvests. Easiest way to math these out is for 10 crops over 12 days: 10 Strawberries x 2 harvests (8 days + 4 regrow) (20 x 120g/sell) - (10 x 100g/seed) = 1,400g profit 10 Cauliflower x 1 harvest (12 days) (10 x 175g/sell) - (10 x 80g/seed) = 950g profit 10 Potatoes x 2 harvests (6 days, 2 plantings; 20% chance for an extra Potato on harvest) ((20 x 1.2) x 80g/sell) - (20 x 50g/seed) = 920g profit 10 Kale x 2 harvests (6 days, 2 plantings; no Farming xp) (20 x 110g/sell) - (20 x 70g/seed) = 800g profit 10 Parsnips x 3 harvests (4 days, 3 plantings) (30 x 35g/sell) - (30 x 20g/seed) = 450g profit Cauliflower in a 3x3 grid can also turn into a giant crop, which gives, on average, 18 Cauliflower. I have no idea what the percentage is for that to happen but it makes them that much more valuable than Potatoes. Green beans don't figure well with 12 days so you can either trust me or go look it up on the wiki. If you want money in the Spring, don't bother with Parsnips, even for the Quality Crops bundle. Flowers are pretty and good for honey, but they aren't very profitable. Plant Melons and Corn in the Summer with Basic Fertilizer underneath. I plant only 8 Corn and have yet to fail in acquiring the 5 required for the bundle. Plant 16 if you're worried about it. Two plantings of 24 Melons should be enough. Plant Pumpkins in the Fall with Basic Fertilizer underneath since you need to wait for a Pumpkin for the Fall Crops bundle anyway. Better profits all around. I believe people plant Parsnips and Potatoes because they're cheap when money is one of the biggest limiting factors in the game.
Thanks for all the good and long answers Still thinking about what is better on the first day: a) forage the map, sell everything except onions and buy 3 parsnip in order to prevent crows eating them to get farming 1 and buy potatoes from the rest (nearly got 1000g when foraging the map) or b) forage the map, store it in the chest for whatever reason (energy?) and buy potatoes from the 500g or all parsnip? Any good starting strategy?
My favorite start is to forage the whole map, get the spring onions, go to Pierre's and buy 1 green bean, 1 cauliflower, and 1 potato. Plant the parsnips, the 3 crops you bought and any mixed seeds you found -- that's all of the crops I'll plant until I craft a scarecrow. I don't sell any of the forage. I wait until I have one of each and craft them into Spring Seeds and sell the seeds instead. Individually the four items (horseradish, daffodil, leek and dandelion) sell for 180g-270g depending on the quality. The 10 seeds you can make from them sell for 350g. I save 2,000g from selling the seeds for 20 strawberry seeds on the 13th. On the 13th I hoe and water 20 spots needed for the starwberries, go to the festival to buy my seeds, come home and take the green bean, cauliflower, potato and parsnip to the community center and complete the Spring Crop bundle -- your reward is 20 speed grow. Use the speed grow and then plant the strawberries. You'll get 3 harvests instead of 2 which is a big deal early on for money and the farming experience. I plant as many cauliflower as I can - they give a ton of profit and farming experience for the least amount of work. A pickled cauliflower sells for for 400g without the Artisan perk -- better money than anything else at this stage of the game for less energy I think. You can plant cauliflower up until the 16th. After the 16th plant parsnips for the quality crop bundle and potatoes for their short grow time. I use the rest of my energy each day early on chopping just the tops of the trees and leaving the stumps behind. You get all of the foraging experience up front for the tree tops for less energy so while energy is in short supply I don't waste any (I clean up the stumps later so they can regrow). Everyday I get the spring onions and use them to chop trees and mine. My goal is to get to level 4 foraging by Spring 15 when Salmonberry season starts -- at level 4 foraging you get 2 berries instead of 1. I spend all four days gathering the salmonberries and use them for unlimited energy and gifts well into Summer. Unlimited energy makes farming for mats (preserve jars, upgrades etc), reaching the gold level in the mine for sprinklers (level 80) and gaining level 6 foraging for lightening rods by Summer fairly easy. You'll be broke for the first few weeks but you can use that to your advantage. The salmonberries give you unlimited energy so you can work up until 2am without any real penalty. Is it the best start? I don't know but it sets me up for the rest of the game: my Honeydale Farm let's play using these strategies.
First of all, @Chibi88 , you sound as though you're somewhat new (please forgive me if I'm wrong) to the game. Speed-running and "power-gaming" is something that is usually done by veterans, as they know all the ins and outs of the game, and they've put a few hundred hours into the game, done their research on wiki, and have done spreadsheets and all that other jazz to know exactly what to do, and how every mechanic of the game works. I never recommend speed-running and "power-gaming" or perfection to a newbie, because quite simply, there's really no need for the newbie to do this. I know that there's this thought, this temptation when you first sit down to start playing SDV or any game like it that you want to "do it right the first time", but to be honest, there really isn't any "right" way to play this game (though I did write a general 'how to get a farm started' and/or 'how to learn the game' thing to give people a general direction on how to get started). It's fine if you want to be a perfectionist, but if you're not experienced and well-versed in the game's mechanics, then you are going to need a step-by-step guide and the chances of you screwing something up is rather high unless you are seriously looking everything up before you play each day of the game. I know everybody's tastes are different, but TBH, I think that would kill the fun of discovery if you were looking absolutely everything up before doing it. My advice: Learn the game. Instead of worrying about perfection, just do what comes natural. Maybe look some stuff up (like the CC Bundles) that you don't want to screw up and have to wait a year+ to fix, but otherwise don't worry about being absolutely perfect on your first couple playthroughs. And again, please forgive me if I guessed wrong about you being rather new to the game. It's just from the things you've said in this thread, you kinda come across as being somewhat new. There's no shame in this, in fact, being a newbie is great. A game is never as fun as it is the first few times you play through it. I think rather than placing rigid rules on yourself, it would likely be more fun to just grab a general guide, to get an idea of what you should do for good results and then just wing the rest of it as you learn the game, as you have fun discovering what it has to offer. Then after a couple playthroughs after you've become well-versed in the game and its mechanics.. when you want a new challenge..... that's when speedruns and powergaming comes into play. When I see newer people wanting to be perfect and emulate the speedrunners and perfectionists, my heart sinks a little. I doubt @ConcernedApe put all the content in the game he did just for people to go speeding through everything and breaking the game in every way one could imagine. The game has lots and lots of content... why rush it?
I stopped going to the stardew subreddit because of all the elitists telling people how the game is supposed to be played. Dude or girl wants to know how to optimize. Wants to make the most money the first day. Its an open end rpg. CA put in a beginners 'General' guide into the game. Livin off the land and the mail from everyone. Following anybody else's guide'll kill the fun of discovery. I never understood how people think one guide is powergaming and one guide is okay. Your guide has a lot of minmaxing in it. Tell people gold fishing spots and to fish the river when it rains. You tell people to plant lots of blueberries. Cranberries. Where certain drops in the mine are. And more. Theres so many spoilers in your newbie guide theres no discovery with it.
But yet I leave my guide rather open, I don't insist that people try to max out everything they possibly can. My guide was more aimed at newbies who try the game, and get frustrated because they can't seem to get anywhere, the newbies who make it to late summer/fall and they still have sub-10k on hand at any given time, who have yet to make any meaningful progress and they're scratching their head going "what am I doing wrong!?" That's who my guide is aimed at. It's a "this is how to actually get a game of this started without being broke or poor all the time with relative ease." And in all fairness, I wrote it before the berry nerf. Need to update it, perhaps be a little less rigid about how to make a decent amount of money in the first year. I'm exploring things currently and when I'm done, I'll update it. It's just at the time, it was berries or bust. But CA made several changes since then.
My general rule of thumb is this, you can sell or keep for energy. Just depends on your goals really. HOWEVER! If you plan on doing CC, save one of each foraged item and one of each major spring time plant. Potato, Cauliflower, Parsnip, and bean. That way you have something to contribute to that bundle. Otherwise sell it if you're going for pure profit. Or keep some and use it for energy to get more done early on.
.....Are we talkin about the same Stardew Valley 1.1 Newbie guide you wrote for 1.1 the day 1.1 came out? The 1.1 when berries were nerfed? Where coffee is introduced as a crop you reference? I haven't found a guide on this forum that tells people exactly everything to do every day. You're guide leaves stuff open, shneeky leaves stuff open, progression leaves stuff open, shourky leaves stuff open, filmstudy leaves stuff open. If people have played through a year already they aren't noobs. I think you're guide can help people they're second time through but if its for a first timer then your ruining stuff for them even though you seem to be against ruining stuff for first timers. There's no time limit unless you put a time limit on yourself so then why wouldn't you wanna try to get things done faster? I don't get it. I don't care that you wrote a guide for the game I think that's cool. Guides are cool. But trying to say you're guide is better because it fits you're playstyle and you're way of thinking the way a sandbox game should be played that has no win conditions as better for another person is crap. Following any guide is gonna make a game rigid "oh no I need to plant 40 parsnips by this day because the guide says to". Your guide is a minmax if you like it or not. Your trying to minimize the chance for max loss for players that don't know what they're doing. Why only plant 1 cauliflower, bean and potato and the rest are parsnips? Why not even amounts? Or some kale and blue jazz if your trying to experience the game? Gonna stop this now. It's not why I like these boards. You think you're guide is better then others, that's cool. I hope you do. OP wants to optimize though so people are trying to help the op optimize. crows can eat 2 of your the parsnips from the mayor and you'll still reach farming 1. I like potatoes because you don't need to water as many of em as if you buy more parsnips for the same money so you get off the farm earlier every day.
