Sundew Farm: Part Journal, Part Guide

So, how did we do? Did we hit our benchmarks?

Total Earnings:
$56,474
Pretty good, better than I did last time. Certainly the strongest start I've ever had

Tools:
All copper, +Fiberglass Rod
We're equipped to take on the new season!

Mines:
Cleared to level 40. There was really no immediate benefit for me past the first 20 floors or so, but this is long term progress towards unlocking other and better stuff later in the game. It's also way deeper than I've gotten before, while still being in a game where I earned way more. In a "real" game, I would probably ease off on this one a bit.

Social:


Did it! The Wizard is the only hold-out, and I said at the beginning that I was going to let him slide. Even then, he's more than halfway there. I even got to dance at the first festival, which is supposedly an impossible pie-in-the-sky dream. I probably could have gotten about 80% of the results for about a third of the effort though. I'll get into this later.

Experience Levels:
Not a benchmark I set at the beginning, but it's still interesting to see how I did:


Artifacts:
Again, not a defined goal, but still an interesting benchmark. I got 30:



Construction:
Kitchen, Silo, Coop

All unneccesary wastes of resources this early in the game, but it's a measure of the extra income I that I got.


Spiral into Terror:



10/10 Probably the only aspect that has no room for further optimization.


I'll talk about what could be done to improve things in a later post.

 

Let's talk about what could have been done better.

Farming
I am convinced that farming is not worth it with basic tools. Planting those initial potatoes was a mistake, and probably delayed my tool upgrades by several days. There are only three circumstances in which zilch-tech farming makes sense:

1) You intend to give the crops away. Here, you're not trying to make money, you're trying to do better at the social mini-game.
2) You are maintaining a small cache of varied crops in anticipation of quests and bundles
3) You already have the seeds, in which case it's a crazily profitable use of time and energy

Item 3 is a big one. I let a lot of my free seeds sit idle because I was already struggling to keep up with the rest of my farm. A better solution would be to just not farm at all except for seeds that are given to you, along with a small plot for gifts and quests. But any seeds you get from quests should be planted immediately.

Fertilizer
Didn't think of it, didn't use it, had lots of sap to make it. Using it midway through the season isn't optimal, but is still a net gain.

Earlier Access to the Community Center
I didn't get the CC cut scene for quite a while. That's not good, because the 30 free wild seeds you get from the first bundle are a huge leg up. I've done some experimenting, and here are the conditions that trigger it
1) It must be Day 5 or later
2) The time must be between 8:50 and 12:50, inclusive
3) It cannot be raining
4) If these conditions are met, it will trigger when you enter the town from the bus stop road.

Nothing else is required. I did test runs where all I did was sleep all day until day 5.

Earlier Fiberglass Rod
It makes a big difference, and should be prioritized. I got mine well into the second week, but I think getting it by day 5 or 6 should be possible, even with a day 4 purchase of the backpack. Pushing for it earlier than day 5 doesn't make much sense, because without access to the mines, you don't a have a reliable source of bait.

Field Snacks
Taking Zero Zet's advice, I looked into these more. They're actually a pretty good way of bolstering a flagging spring onion supply. I think that the smartest way to handle them is to look at them as a side effect of chopping, rather than a thing to be deliberately farmed. By alternating between chopping pines, maples, and oaks, you generate a steady supply of Field Snacks as you work. You won't gain net energy doing this, but you will significantly offset the cost. Eat them first, because you aren't ever going to stack them up very high, and you want to minimize inventory clutter.

I looked into deliberately shaking trees as you move around, but it's just not worth it. It takes way more time than you think it does, and the drop rate is low. A trip through the forest that would normally take an hour was taking 2-3 hours when I was constantly re-routing myself towards the trees.

PhD Level Stalking
If you aren't hung up on specific goals with arbitrary deadlines, you can get really good heart income for much less time than what I spent. If all you do is meet an NPC twice a week and give them a "liked" gift, you gain 130 points a week. That's two hearts a month. Sure, there's some decay for non-interaction, but the odds are you will run into them by chance often enough to more than offset that (one casual chat is worth 20 points, one day of non-interaction costs 2 points. That's an order of magnitude difference). Birthdays and quests kick this up even higher. I think that the big thing is learning when NPCs clump up in groups, and then consolidating your stalking behavior.

Big Clump Events for Spring:
-Stardrop Saloon, every night: Gus, Emily, Shane, Pam, Clint (Clint arrives later)
-Stardrop Saloon, Friday night: Leah, Marnie, Lewis, Gus, Emily, Harvey, Willy, Clint, Robin, Demetrius, Sam, Abigail, Sebastian (almost half the town!)
-Pierre's, Tuesdays 12-6: Pierre, Emily, Robin, Jodi, Marnie, Caroline (Emily leaves at 4, but she's easy to catch at the Stardrop).
-Library, and stretch of road running from Jodi's to the Library, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday: Penny, Vincent, Jas
-Park, Saturday 12-4: Penny, Jas, Vincent, Haley
-Carpenter's Shop, Weekdays, 6: 30: Robin, Demetrius, Sebastian, all standing outside. Maru will be heading home by now, so you can usually catch her too.
-Stardrop Rainy Nights: Leah, Gus, Emily, Clint, Pam, Shane, Willy, Sam

That right there is enough to meet most villagers twice, just by crashing maybe five events or so a week. Many of those events are things you would encounter through natural play.

Some villagers are reliably located near the center of the town, don't lock themselves in their rooms for long, and can generally by found just by doing normal things. Conveniently, most of the people that don't attend the clump events fall into this category:
-Lewis
-Evelynn
-George
-Alex (can be annoying because of his work out schedule, but is otherwise usually outside near the town center)
-Pierre
-Linus (not central, but you probably go to that area at least twice a week, and he's always right there)

Some villagers tend to hang out in central buildings, but hide way in the back and are a pain in the ass to approach:

-Caroline (you get one easy hit on her on the Tuesday aerobics club meeting)
-Harvey (you get an easy hit on him during the Friday night Saloon party)

Some villagers are just out of the way, or hide in their rooms a lot, or move around erratically, and can't be reliably met twice during clump events:
-Haley (get one easy shot during Saturday)
-Leah (get her at the Stardrop on Fridays and rainy nights, because she's otherwise a real pest to find)
-Jodi (not so bad if you happen to take the forest road in the mornings, otherwise she's out of the way. Get in one free shot during the aerobics club meet)
-Willy (reliably located, but out of the way. Can be found on Fridays and rainy nights at Stardrop, so you'll usually get two hits in for free per week).
-Sam (is either out of the way, or locked in his room. Get him during the Friday night party)
-Maru (not so bad if you time your visits to the carpenter shop right, otherwise pretty difficult)
-Wizard (doesn't move around, but you don't go to the tower all that often)
-Elliot (the worst, by a wide margin, requires deliberate effort to meet at all)

Not Buying Stupid Stuff
Don't really buy a kitchen on the first season. You can't even use it, because most recipes require off-season items. That's 10,000 gold and 400 wood freed up.

Efficient Experience Gains
This one is complicated. I'll make it into another post.

 

Have you made note of when certain NPCs go shopping at Pierre's? I don't know the exact time, but I know that Leah and Elliott both go there once a week (Leah goes on Mondays around noon, but I don't recall Elliott's schedule). Marnie and Gus are also once-weekly shoppers—I think Marnie is Monday, but I don't know what Gus is.

 

If memory serves, Gus is Sunday bright and early. I remember purposely stopping him from going in before 9 when I went to get Abigail a gift every week, though that means it may have been Monday still.

 

Really loving the comedy right here

 

I feel like i rebel,i always give robin a complete breakfast everyday when she is building something for me

 

I was originally going to leave it ambiguous as to whether Robin really was as dangerous as the POV character thought, or if it all was in his head, but the joke at the joke was too good to not use. But, there is still some outside evidence that Mr. Sun TIde might have been right, vegetable related psychosis not withstanding. This was reported in another thread:

I really, really wish this had happened in my game.

 

To raise the robin drama even higher

 

There's very little good information about experience works in this game, and a staggering amount of wrong information. Here's what I've learned.

Each skills uses the same experience table

1 100
2 380
3 770
4 1300
5 2150
6 3300
7 4800
8 6900
9 10000
10 15000

Most of the benefits of a level up are applied the moment you gain enough experience, even though the game does not notify you. If you do a lot of fishing in one day, you can see your fishing bar get noticeably larger as the day goes on from all of your silent level ups, for example.

You subtract 0.1 stamina from the cost of using a tool per experience level you have in the relevant skill. This discount does not scale with the cost of the tool. A normal watering can, a charged copper watering can, and a fishing rod all get the same flat discount, even though they cost 2, 4, and 8 points, respectively.

Farming
-Harvesting most crops: 8 points
-Harvesting flowers (tulips, blue jazz, etc): 7 points
-Scythe harvests *kale, wheat, etc.): 0 points

There's only one way to gain xp in farming. You gain the points for the harvesting action, not for picking things up (e.g. you do not gain extra points when you get a multi-potato drop, because even though you get two vegetables, you only did one harvest action). Wild plants, such as leeks and spring onions do NOT give farming experience, even if you grew them on a farm plot using Wild Seeds. You do NOT gain points for using the hoe or your watering can.

Leveling Tips
Not much to say, really. Power leveling your farming skill is simply a function of expanding your farm, which you are going to do naturally, anyway. The first big break point is at 2150 points, when you get your perk. That's 269 harvests, which you are likely to get during the first season, anyway. The 15 parsnips you get at the start guarantee you level 1 by day 5. I guess you could aim for getting to level 2 on your first harvest by planting 48 crops on day 1, but I don't think the minor benefit is worth it. Maybe if you want to rush Fertilizer or something.

Mining
-Breaking those gray rocks found on the over world: 1 point
-Breaking the large over world boulders: 0 points (yes, zero)
-Breaking the gray rocks found in the mines: 3 points
-Breaking the various brownish-hued rocks in the mines : 0 points
-Breaking boulders in the mines: 0 points
-Mining a copper ore: 5 points
-Mining an iron ore: 12 points
-Mining an aquamarine: 38 points

That's all that I gathered data on, but presumably the higher value ores give more points. You get the experience with the final stroke of your tool. You do not get points for finding/processing geodes, picking up minerals from the floor, etc.

EDIT: You DO get xp for ores and rocks broken by explosions, so bomb away.

Leveling Tips
The big takeaway is that most rocks don't affect your mining level at all. I used to skip the dense gray stones in the mines because they take two hits, now I always mine them because they are one of the few things that give you xp at all. You can't really power level your mining, there just aren't enough rocks. You need to descend deeper into the mines and find denser and more valuable ore deposits to keep improving.

Foraging
-Picking up things that require pressing the x button, but not farm vegetables: 7 points (most wild plants, minerals found in the mines, seashells on the beach, etc.)
-Harvesting spring onions: 3 points
-Felling a tree: 12 points

Only the actual harvest action gives you points. Shaking seeds out of trees, berries out of bushes, digging up artifacts, picking up monster drops, etc do not give you points. Plants grown with wild seeds give you foraging xp instead of farming xp. Trees give experience when they fall. You don't get points for clearing the stumps, or any sundry logs.

You start getting double drops from wild berry bushes at Foraging level 4. At some point, you start getting triple drops, but I haven't identifed the breakpoint yet. The information I posted about salmonberry drops doubling on Thursday was incorrect. By insane coincidence, both of me test cases ended up reaching Forage 4 on Wednesday night, causing me to draw the wrong conclusion.

Leveling Tips
The big break point is level 5, when you get your perk. Just normal foraging behavior should get you there by the first season. I don't recommend trying to mass harvest trees to power level your Foraging. It takes way too much time and stamina, gives you way more wood than you'll be able to use at that point of the game, and will at best let you get your perk maybe one week earlier, and at a giant opportunity cost. Try to collect all of the forageables every week, and check the spring onion island as often as possible. You can sometimes find 20 at a time, which is a lot. Definitely plant the 30 Wild Seeds that you get from the Spring Harvest bundle immediately. That's 210 xp right there. You could try mass crafting Wild Seeds once you get the recipe, but any gains you make here are going to come at the cost of not gaining farming xp instead.

Fishing
Fishing is complicated. Each fish has a base xp value. This score gets modified by various things:
-Opening a treasure chest: adds a number of points (seems to vary between 20 and 40, couldn't figure out the pattern here, points are only awarded if you also catch the fish)
-Silver Star: Multiply by 1.25 (applied after the treasure chest bonus)
-Gold Star: Multiply by 1.5 (applied after the treasure chest bonus)
-Perfect: Multiply by 2.5 (applied after all other bonuses, stacks multiplicatively with the star bonuses)
-Trash, Algae, etc: 3 points

Some example base values:
Small mouth bass: 12 points
Herring: 11 points
Sunfish: 11 points
Bream: 14 points
Eel: 23 points
Catfish: 28 points

Leveling Tips
Get perfect catches! The multiplier is HUGE. Always try to fish in deep water when you can, to get the quality bonuses. I got to level 8 in my play through, and level 9 should be entirely possible. You don't even really need to power level. You should be doing a lot of fishing in the first season anyway, since it starts out so strong. Just don't be lazy and always aim for that perfect catch! Well, okay, don't abandon a chest just because you would have to lose your perfect bonus to get it. You tend to lose points overall when trading away a perfect catch for a treasure chest, but the treasure is usually worth the hit. If you get lucky and are able to stack a treasure chest with a perfect catch, you can easily get over 100 points in one go.

Combat
You get points for killing stuff
-Blue Flies: 1 points
-Green Slimes: 3 points
I stopped caring after that

Leveling Tips
Uh, combat just isn't a very important skill and doesn't interact with the rest of the game in a robust way. The low level monsters give very weak xp, so grinding the easier floors doesn't help you much. I'm sure the xp bounties get better as you go deeper, but I just didn't care enough to gather more data.

 

For mining, does it matter how you break the rocks? ie, Do you still get XP if you blow them up with a bomb instead of using a pick?

Also, how were you seeing the XP values? Is there a way in-game, or were you using a mod, or viewing your save file?

 

Nice tips on the leveling. Grey rocks for mining is a really good one, there's no way would have figured that out on my own. Looking forward to your next visit to Silent Hill Stardew Valley.

 

Spit it out or experience a cold shower on a winter night,OUTSIDE

 

Don't know about bombs, haven't tried it yet. I'm using a memory editor to view the values in real time. Much easier than looking through the save games.

Specifics like that are on the wiki, but I find it that it's just a little bit too fiddly for me to plan around little things like that. My list condenses things down to the Stardrop Saloon, Penny's class, and the aerobics club, which are relatively easy things for me to remember. If you're willing to make extensive reference to the wiki while playing though, you could get a nice advantage out it.

 

When I first saw the title, my initial thoughts were to the effect of, "journals are always role play/borderline fanfic, not interested." But, then I read your first entry. Your humor, bud, got me. So, this thread became something I began to look forward to. As for your analysis, I learned a *lot* (the XP values was a great addition). I don't really have much to add to this conversation, but did want to make it a point to drop in and tell you this was really good. Here's hoping you either decide to continue with this save game, or journal another.

 

So, I tried applying some of the principles that I learned and found that I can do better. Like, a lot better. As, in "had a Stable, all iron tools, two fruit trees, mines cleared to level 85, a Legend fish sitting in my chest as a trophy, and $15,000 in the bank to greet the new season with." I might post a short outline of what I did to make all of that possible.

This project ended up being more fun than I thought it would be, and it got a positive response, so I might do a Summer season. I'd be using the new and improved game state, but it would exist in the same narrative universe as the previous run, just with MOAR STUFF. Don't expect season two to resolve into a surprise psychological horror story though. That kind of stuff is hard to pull off.

 

Go go summer Lets see the real heart of darkness Been fun to read, so why not. It's a pity I can't update my own journal as much as you do.

 

I added some more information to the data dump post on this page. There's an important correction in the Foraging section. I also slightly expanded the Mining xp table, and added some newly discovered facts about farming xp.

 

Finally got around to making a second pass at Spring. I greatly exceeded my previous benchmarks.

Total Earnings
94,924 with 9600 of that in the bank and ready to spend

Equipment
All iron tools, Iridium Fishing Rod, Obsidian Edge Sword, Magnet Ring, Iridium Band, Firewalker Boots

I dove hard on tools this time. Having all iron before Summer is going to be a treat. The rest of the gear is mostly guaranteed stuff you get from the mines. The Iridium Band was the only lucky item. I got it from a fishing treasure chest. It was nice, but isn't substantially better than the Glow Ring/Magnet Ring combo I was already wearing.

Mines
Cleared to level 90. The big change was that I started diving 10-15 floors per trip, instead of just 5. The worst layout is the spiral set up. It's basically a long corridor with no branches and sparse resources, and there's no guarantee that the exit will be in the center, so you have to break every single rock as you come across them, or face the possibility of having to do an EPIC BACKTRACK. The secret is to just always carry enough stone to make a staircase so you can just skip those floors.

Diving this deep represented a pretty serious opportunity cost with regards to income, but the resources it generated were 100% necessary for my other goals.

Social
6 Hearts: 1
5 Hearts: 3
4 Hearts: 4
3 Hearts: 10
2 Hearts: 11

Better this time. A big change was an early focus on raising parsnips and tulips exclusively for gifts. I only sold a single parsnip, and I did that only to fill out the shipping collection.

Experience Levels
Farming 6
Mining 5
Foraging 5
Fishing 10
Combat 4

Knowing how experience is earned helps a lot.

EDIT: Attached a savefile if anyone wants to take a detailed look

Construction
Well, Silo, Stables, 3 tree taps, 2 preserve jars, 1 recycling machine, 2 furnaces, 3 crab pots, 1 charcoal kiln

The kiln, the crab pots, and one of the furnaces were CC rewards. The jars were used to pickle my cualilflower, and taps were placed on three different kinds of trees to help with the community bundles.

Community Bundles
I slotted almost everything that can be slotted in Spring. The most helpful thing was getting the Boiler Room finished by mid-season. Gotta love mining carts. The only major category missing is animal products, which I absolutely did not have resources for. I even got the 5 gold star parsnips for the quality crops bundle.

Fishing
Got pretty much everything. I've got a Legend Fish sitting in a chest (I decided against catching multiples and selling them, since that would have trivialized things. I really think there needs to be a one per season limit on the things). I also got the elusive Ice Pip, Stone fish, and also made sure to get a Woodskip from the Secret Woods lake.

Stupid Extravagance
Rarecrow #5
Tub o Flowers Recipe
Rare Seed (from wagon)
Void Egg (from Wagon)
11 Strawberry seeds
An unsold Legend Fish that I'm keeping as a trophy
1 Apple Tree
1 Pomegranate Tree


I wanted to grab as much of the Springtime only stuff as possible on the first pass. That's about $20,000 that could have been spent on saner things.

Other Stuff
36 museum pieces, including 3 Dwarf Scrolls (so close!)
Danced with Haley
Beat Prairie King


So yeah, you can do a lot of stuff in Spring if you have a plan! I took notes and can answer questions about the process, but otherwise, I'm going to look into moving into summer and seeing just how badly I can disassemble this game.

Things I couldn't do
There was no way to get started on animals this season. I was really freaking hard getting things this far as it was. I have the silo, so that's a head start of sorts.
No kitchen. I got the Stables instead. Costs about the same, but you have to rush iron tools to make it possible.
Deluxe backpack. Still couldn't afford it I mean, I could if I had skipped the extravagances, but that's no fun.

I might continue this log into summer. I'm set up to seriously disassemble this game. Here's a savefile in case anyone is curious.

 

So uh, I had to go to detox for my spring onion poisoning. I'm better now, but Robin is still totally into psychological BDSM games. Also, while "Doctor" Harvey advised me to switch to a salmonberry diet, he says he still wants me to keep giving him spring onions for "research samples." Uh-huh.


Summer 1

I'm woken up at six in the morning by a visibly nervous Jodi. I was still half asleep so I had a hard time concentrating, but I caught the words "large," "ass," "mouth," "I want to make a casserole out of it," and "come by my house at 7:00."

Dayum woman. I mean, we've been corresponding by mail, but I thought that was us just being recipe buddies. Well okay then. Just for future reference though, that's pretty fucking heavy first date.

This complicates an already complicated day. I've been thinking about how I want to handle summer, and I have a plan. I want to build something like this



The four fields are optimized for my iron watering can. The fundamental unit is no longer a 3x3 plot, but a 1x5 stripe. The idea is that I can come out of my house, collect the hops along the trellis as I'm approaching the farm site, and then move in a circle while watering my crops. This way there's no wasted movement, and I'm always right next to a water source. I planted the fruit trees in the corner where they will be easily accessible once they mature. I'll put chests and preserve jars and other useful things in the inner ring, spaced so that they're always easy to reach, but never in the way. I also have crab pots in the pond to the right, and visiting it on the way out should feel very natural. That area is a bit underdeveloped right now. I'll want to move my recycling machines there, make a few more pots, and maybe do some organized tree planting and move my taps there.

The two vertical stripes in the middle are overflow plots. I don't really want them, but sometimes you get extra seeds from quests and what have you, so you have to have a plan.

The plan is for the northern plot to have one stripe for each of the 9 non-blueberry crops, and for the other three plots to be all blueberries all the time. There are a few complications:

1) The seeds end up costing about 14,000, and I only have $9600
2) I want to fertilize everything, which takes 450 sap. I only have 300 sap.
3) Jodi's unexpected attention means there's going to be a huge hole in my work schedule where I have to travel to town and back.
4) My horse would help a lot, but I used an editor to slightly reposition my stable so that it looked better. The problem is that the horse is now stuck in the walls and won't be able to move until he resets in the morning. So basically, I have a fucked up non-Euclidean Cthulhu horse right now. Either that, or he's just acting out because I named him Glue Bottle.

I start out working on getting that 150 extra sap. If trees made horror movies about mass killings, the movie they would make about my actions today would be called The Treecapitator. I am very, very glad to have the steel axe right now. There is no way I would have gotten this done in time otherwise.

As for money, well, I can raid the mushroom cave for a few hundred, but everything else is going to have to come out of my reserve stock. I don't want to sell that stock. It's mostly archived stuff from the last season that I've been holding onto in case a quest or recipe needs them. But oh well.I grab a few items. To make it all work out, I also have to grab the single iridium bar that I have, along with 5 gold bars. I really wanted to save those for upgrades, but I gotta have the cash now. I take the mine cart to Clint's to sell the metal, and then sell the vegetables to Pierre and am just barely able to buy what I need.

It's hard to justify all the resources I spent on the iron hoe, especially this early in the game, but there's no denying that it's a real pleasure to have it today. The tilling goes super fast. I'm about ready to start fertilizing the fields, but then I look at the clock I realize it's time to fertilize Jodi instead.

I meet Sam on the way in. He's kind of hostile today. I guess his mom has done this kind of thing before and he knows what's up. He takes a cheap shot at my rural living conditions:



Yeah, good one kid. You know what an even sicker burn is? Me boning your mom, that's what.

Jodi doesn't waste any time



Damn lady, at least wait until your son isn't standing right there. I mean, geez.

We finally chase the little goblin back to his room and turn out the lights...



Thank you ma'am. I lift hard for that. By the way, in the gym, we call that "definition," but you can call it "breading" if you want.

On the way out, I stop by Sam's room and hand him a tulip. Just to complete the pwnage.

I have to work all night to get the farm set up, but I do get it done. Here's a shot of what it looked like the next morning:



I had 9 overflow seeds. 4 of those were leftover melons (Gunther gave me 9 seeds a long time ago, and I had four left after setting up the main farm). One of them is the starflower seed (another Gunther gift). The others are mixed seeds that have been cluttering my inventory.

 

Really nice Journal @SunTide I like the concept i look forward to reading it more i learned some stuff. Props to you!