Luthien's Firefly Hollow Thread

Thats awesome! ^^ best wishes indeed!

 

Hey everyone, welcome back to the chicken ranch! Time for this week's update - just finished Summer of Year 3. I don't have *tons* of news this time, but I do have a couple things worth mentioning. The farm is winding down now, having reached the point in the game where stuff gets a bit repetitive from day to day and from season to season, so my updates are going to be short and sweet from here on out.

House: All greened up for Summer. And yes, that is indeed a Junimo you see sleeping in the tv room. I'll tell you more about that soon. You'll also notice that rng tends to favor me in regards to finding prismatic shards. I've found a total of 8 on this save so far - one being in the museum collection, one having been turned in for my sword, and the rest displayed rather extravagantly in the living room. If I find any more I'm probably going to switch them up to the gem room on the upper left.


Farm: Still the same, except at some point during the season we had a little meteor shower and now there's one sitting in the chicken yard. I don't really need what's in it so I'm just leaving it there for the chickens to hang out around.


Major achievement for this season was completing the Museum Collection. The last item needed was the green strange doll, so Mara went digging in the ice levels of the mines (where it's known to be found) on a lucky day and finally completed the last piece of the set. This of course brought her the 7th Stardrop, which I *think* is the last one.


Now, about that Junimo. Soooo I normally don't do the kids thing in my game. I'm not a huge fan of kids anyway and I don't see much point to them in game, but I found a really good mod that turns the children into Junimos. So this time, when Shane popped the question, I said "sure, why not" and early on in the summer Mara awoke to find she'd given birth to...a Junimo? lol It sits up in the spot where the crib normally is, just sleeping for now but soon it will start running around the house and just generally being adorable. My canon for purposes of the story is simply that the farm is attracting Junimo and this one wanted to live in the house. I named him Lazuli, as his sprite will be blue once he gets out of the "baby" stage.


The slimes are still taking over the river in Cindersap, even going to the far south end and hanging around the trashed area below the cliffs. Not much I can really do about them now except try to work around them. lol Fishing is interesting as they can be quite a distraction.


The Luau was a huge success - Mara's contribution of a gold-star cheese left the Governor very pleased with the results.


Only one cut scene this season, and I caught it just as Mara was on her way to see the Moonlight Jellies. Abby was in the graveyard practicing her swordsmanship.


My final stats for Summer: Getting pretty close to that 10 million mark. I may even reach it before the end of year 3, at the rate I'm going.

This will leave me at a bit of a crossroads with this save. On the one hand, I have always aimed to finish each save out to the end of year 5. But on the other, I am unsure if I want to stop at the end of year 4, or even just finish out year 3 with this one. With everything accomplished, it's getting difficult to fill the days with anything worthwhile. I'm spending more of the hours of the day killing time in the mines or just standing around waiting for it to be 5pm so I can close the animals in for the night and go to bed ( I didn't even stay awake any nights to see fireflies this season) early, than I am actually farming. And farming is the part of Stardew Valley I enjoy most. Everything else is just background noise. With so little new content, I find it hard to give interesting updates here.

That being said, I'm at least finishing the next couple seasons. We'll see where it goes from there. As always, thanks for reading.

 

I kind of run into the same thing on my animal farm. I think I retired it in winter 5. I'd take care of the animals and then just fish all day until it was time to close the barn doors. I'm kind of stuck now waiting on a console update because I still want to do a play-through on the Xbox.

Your farm has been really cool and I'm inpressed with the profits you've squeezed out of your chickens.

 

I kind of have this idea for my next farm where instead of just focusing on one thing for the whole 5 years, I might switch it up every year. So first year crops, second year animals, third year flowers/honey etc. It would give me an excuse to reorganize the farm once a year and have a whole bunch of something new instead of just one same thing the whole playthrough. I loved my dairy farm, might go back to that at some point, but I'm getting a bit spent on the chickens. lol Your sheep ranch is cute too btw, I've seen it on other threads.

 

If you're going for honey i can give you a hint, never turn honey into mead, only turno wild honey (without flowers) cause the price don't stack up

 

I kind of want to do a really large orchard. I think I'd probably end up with 3 orchards, one for each season with hops in my greenhouse.

 

By that time money would be far from an issue for me, so I'd probably do just a bit of everything. A little bit of wild honey, and some from whichever flowers grow during the season. It would be purely for variety's sake at that point, some would be turned into mead, some would be sold raw. But yeah, I'd probably sell the flower honey raw and brew half the rest into mead.

At some point, the farm I have in mind would be mainly an orchard. I think I would start with one of each tree in year one, and then gradually add onto it each year so that by year 4 and 5, most of the farm would be trees. I could see doing something with all these winding paths, and I'd be making all kinds of wine and jelly.

 

The orchard farm is exactly what I am aiming at with my new farm. Because trees are expensive, I try out ShneekytheLost's powergaming guide for the first month. (Don't tell him that I won't go powergaming the whole thing ;-) )
The biggest problem will be how to arrange all the trees so that it looks nice / natural and not planned / industrial.

 

My biggest tip for that would be to stay away from straight lines. Putting the trees in rows or inside planter boxes (like I always do lol) makes it look planned - I think if you keep them in groups and sorta scattered, they will look a bit more wild. Planting grass starters around them after they grow and using the cobble path (instead of the stone or wood path) to wind between them will help too. I've seen some really gorgeous farms that use those tricks. For some reason I can't get away from the straight pathways and planter boxes though. lol

 

I don't suppose you have the link or name to that mod? I'm not a big fan of kids but I do like the idea of a Junimo running around. Also I thought you couldn't move the beds/crib in that room? Is that also a mod or is there something I'm missing lol.

 

There are mods for both of those things.

Remove nursery decor: http://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/369/?
(You will have to decide which version you want, there's about a million of them. lol)

Change your children to Junimo: http://community.playstarbound.com/...nd-toddlers-with-junimos.115073/#post-2902145

 

If you're having trouble filling the days, you could shorten the time on timespeed. I know its easy to get spoiled with nice long days (I feel the same way), but once things are more automated I usually shorten things up.

 

Awe, thats amazing progress and oh my god I just looked at your savings, I dont think I could ever get that much on my third year! probably about half, and thats if I put my mind into it >w<

 

Aaaaaaaaaa!

Wow, your farm is sooo beautiful! You picked such a beautiful name for your farm as well.

 

Greetings young adepts! I have enclosed an item of special significance for you - it's Sunday, and that means it's time for an update.



I've just completed Fall of Year 3 on the chicken ranch, and I do have a few interesting things to share this time. First though, the house and the farm...

My house, as you will notice, is sporting some fancy new wallpapers - made by yours truly to fit the season. n_n I also decided to go ahead and add the cellar, which is looking pretty darn spiffy thanks to a mod I found that adds several nice features, not the least of which is a jukebox that will play music for you as long as you stay on your farm. Want it? Check it out here: http://community.playstarbound.com/...more-map-edits-make-sv-more-immersive.127523/


The farm got a little bit of a makeover as well. I've had some dinosaur eggs sitting in a chest for a while now, and I decided to just go ahead and hatch them. But I wanted them to have their own coop and yard, so I added to the main pasture to create a space just for them and the cows. I actually like how this looks much better than just the barn by itself. I've hatched three so far: Yoshi, Reptar, and Spike. Not sure what I'm going to call the fourth one yet.


On the last day of Fall, I finally caught the final recipe I needed for the Gourmet Chef achievement. Now that it's ticked off my list, the only one left is Craft Every Item. I might get bored enough during winter to try and knock it out, but we'll see.


My slimes are still running amok in the forest and turning the river into a frothing purple mess. Lewis was standing by the water one day, presumably wondering why the town's water was starting to taste funny.


Lazuli, my little Junimo friend that moved in with us last season, has begun to explore the house now. Sometimes he's a little too adventurous.


A photo of my flower garden full of Fairy Roses, just because. Usually by the time I get my full farm screenshot all my gardens are empty, so I wanted to get a picture before I picked them all.


And now, something I worked on *way* too long yesterday. I thought since I didn't have much to share on this update I would do something different, so I made a little "Day in the Life" series to show you guys my typical daily routine. Hope you find them interesting. lol

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF FARMER MARA



If you made it through all that, I applaud you. And your reward is my end-of-season stats.


That's all for now - See you next week with the winter update, thanks for reading.

 

A bit early this week, but I'm going to be out of town this weekend (and all next week) visiting my mom again, so I had to get this taken care of early. This is going to be my final update for Miss Mara's Chicken Ranch - primarily because I've reached the point where the farm and house aren't going to change any more (save minor decor differences), and any pictures I post after this update would be repeats. I am already thinking of some ideas for my next farm so this thread won't die completely, but there will be a bit of a hiatus while I finish out at least a couple more seasons on the chicken ranch.

That being said, lets get this update going!


Winter seems to have flown by - probably because I played it in about half the time I'd normally take on a season. lol Since the animals stay inside during winter, I was able to get up, take care of farm chores, and then basically just go back to bed. Unless there was a birthday gift to hand out or a festival to attend, I'd simply repeat the process for the entirety of the season and before I know it, winter is drawing to a close!

As always, the house was decked out properly for the season. Maybe even moreso this year since I had my new wallpapers to play with. At one point Shane changed out the wallpaper in the tv room buuuut it really didn't match the rest of the decor, so I switched it back pretty fast. >u< (Funny thing is, the wallpaper he picked, even though it was one of my modded ones, was actually the pizza wallpaper. Big surprise. lol) As you can also see, another Junimo decided to move in...but something tells me it'll be the last one.


The farm is the same as we left it at the end of Fall, just more snowy. I used the hen pasture as some extra gardening space for a while but I cleaned it up after the second-to-last harvest of wild winter crops.


Not a whole lot to tell about since I rushed through, but I have a few pictures I took, just for points of interest.

Here's my greenhouse as it looked on the morning of the 28th. As you can see the fruit trees are all indoors (I made that move in year 1 or 2, I can't remember now), and my ancient fruit have their own section of the garden. I have a small area for Shane's peppers and tomatoes, and the rest is devoted to growing each season's major crops ahead of time. So in winter, I'm growing rhubarb and strawberries, so that they'll be ready to start making wine and jelly as soon as spring hits, instead of waiting til halfway through the season. In spring I grow Starfruit, melons, and blueberries; in Summer, pumpkins and cranberries; and in Fall, I get a jump on the wild forage so I can use Crystal fruit (along with the blackberries from Fall) over winter.


I finished hatching my dinosaur eggs - I've elected to only keep 4 of them in the coop, since that was how many eggs I'd actually found before I made the coop. When they lay new eggs, I simply turn them into mayo.


The Feast of the Winter Star set me the task of being Vincent's Secret Santa this year. I made him some cranberry candy, and later discovered that my Secret Santa was Willy. He gave me a stack of 25 beach warp totems. I'm 99% sure I'll never use them but hey, it's the thought that counts right? lol That night, the Witch decided to leave me a gift as well...a void egg, in the dinosaur coop, not 30 squares away from a whole deluxe coop of void chickens. Gee, thanks. >u<


And that's pretty much a wrap on Winter and Year 3. My stats:

Yes, that's right, I am veeeerrryyy close to hitting the 10 million mark. Less than 600,000 gold away. I have no doubt whatsoever I'll be able to hit that mark during Spring, at the rate I go. My income is all tied into mayo, wine and jelly now - and any mining I might do to pass the time.


As to the next farm - I have some fun plans. I don't want to give too much away for now, but suffice it to say there will be a LOT of Junimo on this one. n_n

I appreciate everyone's interest in my little farm thread here. I will leave it to go dormant for now, but don't go too far! Like trees that sleep away the coldest months, branches bare and dead by all outward appearances but very much alive on the inside, great ideas are stirring for the next playthrough, and you won't want to miss the fun!


EDIT: Came back to add this artwork I made of (the furry versions of) Mara and Shane. I thought it might be fitting to include it here since I'm wrapping things up with their farm.

 

HELLO EVERYONE! My goodness it has been a while, hasn't it? I have been quietly finishing up on Miss Mara's Chicken Ranch, playing at my pace rather than keeping to a schedule, so it took me a while to play out the final year. But, I have finally finished, and I wanted to pop in real quick and give a little update.

To start, the final stats for the farm - a whopping grand total of 326 hours, 14 minutes (for anyone new here I use Timespeed), and a final earning of just under 15 million. Not bad for a little chicken ranch, eh? Mara was also able to boast an impressive collection of Prismatic Shards, 15 total found over the course of her four years on the farm. She had an entire room in the house dedicated to displaying them by the time the last Fall rolled around.

And in case anyone is curious, her last Feast of the Winter Star gift was a pumpkin pie from her dear hubby Shane. How sweet is that? She celebrated New Years eve with that and a bottle of her own aged iridium quality Ancient Fruit wine, a fitting way to end a very successful playthrough.

I've tucked away the save file into a folder where I keep all my photos, so for now, my game roster is empty. But I do have some plans in the works for my next farm, which will most definitely be getting started tomorrow! I don't want to give away too much yet, but I can share a little sneak peak of the next farmer. I'm going to create a proper ref sheet for her once I have the actual game sprite built, but for now, this is what she looks like.

This is Luthien - a Stardew Valley, human version of my Elven she-wolf OC. I have sort of used her before but she had red hair instead of black, so this version is more true to the actual character. I'm going to switch a couple things up about her background, but I'll tell you guys more about all that in the next post. n_~

 

I... I give up, im speechless! I cannot think of any proper compliments to congratulate the final year... other than congrats! amazing! bravissimo! ganz toll!

I find your commitment and effort put into this game to be so admirable and creative! and yet I can find no way to imitate your energy, I just cannot see myself doing something to this extent... and I tried!

Oh gods I TRIED!

ehem... anyways! I really loved the progresses and updates throughout this thread ^w^ it was always very inspiring and gave me a lot of ideas to work with! (even if I ended up lazing on it) wish you the best on your future playthroughs! never lose that energy and creativity!

 

That's some very serious dedication. Very impressive. Dunno how so many of you can put so much time into these posts but its very cool.

 

I started playing on my new save this morning and I've already managed to play through the first 6 days, so I figured I'd better get on here and introduce the new farm.

Followers of this thread, welcome to Misthaven Manor Farm - a little piece of unkempt land (for now) tucked into the edges of the Secret Woods. Someday, I intend for this to be a magnificent goat farm, with a bit of artisan goods production on the side. This is the layout I made (quite a while back actually) with the planner. I'm using the Secret Forest Farm Map by Mushfae, which can be found here: http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/alis-secret-forest-farm-map-and-buildings.117561/



My farmer is called Luthien, and like I said before she's somewhat based on my furry OC but with a bit more of my personality mixed in. She of course loves nature and will enjoy all aspects of farm upkeep more than other activities like fishing or mining, and she, like me, is also an artist. Joja was a soul-sucking job and it barely paid the rent anyway, so her ultimate dream was to just quit and do art for a living. Never in her wildest dreams did she think such a thing would be possible though. When she found the note from Grandpa, it was like a light at the end of the tunnel and although a bit scared, she was overjoyed to have the opportunity to move into the country and try her hand at running a farm. She could devote more time to the things she actually cared about - and get some much needed breathing room. A huge introvert, she prefers to interact with other humans sparingly, so the small town setting would be perfect.



She's already spent a week in this new town, and I've decided this time I'll tell the story of her progress on the farm through journal entries. It will allow me to cover the important stuff and still keep an aspect of fiction to it, and also put a bit of my own personal spin on things as well.


For this save, I'm also switching a few of my aesthetic mods out to switch up the look of things. I'll be using a new furniture and wallpaper set I pieced together from a couple different mods along with some things I made on my own, and also the new seasonal Victorian buildings by Eemie: http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/eemies-mods-new-mod-seasonal-immersion-buildings.115533/ (the non-SMAPI version) and the updated paths that go with it.

Here's a shot of the starter farmhouse in Spring - not bad for a place that's sat empty for years huh? ;D



Finally, just really quick, a few little things about ME to give you some context for why I'm able to put so much time into these updates.

I'm a full-time artist (of the Furry variety) who takes commissions to pay the bills - so I work from home. I work fast and tend to only need a few hours a day to spend on art stuff, leaving the rest wide open. I don't have kids, or school, or a second job, or any other time and attention-consuming obligations... just lots and lots of glorious free time. Sometimes too much. lol This game gives me another outlet for my creativity, both through designing the farms but also by doing the little updates here. I love getting feedback from you guys and seeing how the stuff I do on my farms influences what others do on theirs; this community as a whole is awesome about sharing ideas and inspiring each other and that's why I'm here so often. n_n So yeah, that's a bit about me but this thread is about the farm, so from here on out that's what I'll stick to. lol

Anyway, I hope you guys who have stuck with me this far will enjoy seeing the story of my latest farm unfold. If it starts to delve too much into the fan-fiction territory, moderators can feel free to kick it to the correct subforum, I've just stuck everything onto one thread to avoid spamming and so I have it all in one, easy-to-find place. Thanks for reading!