Willa's Self Sufficent Farm Challenge

I'm not entirely sure how to do a spotlight thing here so here I go.

Once upon a time, Flight Rising was my daily hidey hole. I developed a nice story about my dragons, a 'nuzlocke' of fighting that gave them more life then just pixels on a page. I'm a writer by hobby, so this appealed to me.

One of my dragons is a Fire-aligned mirror named WIlla. She likes to scavenge and forage and make birdskull jewelry.




However, Willa grew bored. Bored of the endless scrounging and bartering for her precious birdskull jewels (don't get started on how dang RARE aqua birdskull apparel is). So, she decided to move out of the lair and find home elseplace.

This involved becoming rather... humanoid. As you can't just land as a dragon in Stardew Valley without finding Marlon's guild chasing you down with pikes and seeking to peel your hide off to put on the wall. No thank you.


Nice job on her shape shifting skills, but still, Willa's not fond of people. She's unused to their way of life. She does not know how to 'shop'.

Long story short, this is a challenge I found on Reddit that is Here: The self sufficient farmer

Can't buy anything from Pierre but backpack upgrades, no bait, nothing from Joja, if I get seeds from Sandy in the desert, its only 3 packs of a single seed per trip.

Thats right, only foraged seeds folks.

I'm presently on Spring 16, and have an empty farm as I wait impatiently for Marnie to be open so I can get chickens and start leveling my farming skills by patting chickens. If I get a rainy day next, I'll be going whole hog on earning a cow barn next. I have cleared all the trees in the mountain path and Cindersap's spruce trees.

 

I wonder if it should still be called self sufficient when you are cutting trees for money... regardless, that is a very interesting challenge! I would love to partake on this endeavor, but I havent even been able to keep up with my own 1,1 save, much less a challenge! But still, good luck!

 

Don't underestimate those mixed seeds, there's decent potential in them. I used to throw all mine away because I generally prefer to know what's growing in my garden but on my current save I've started keeping what I call the Roulette Garden. Any mixed seeds I dig up get planted in there and I just see what I get. I managed to get ahold of some crops I couldn't even buy yet in year 1 so I would imagine you could get ahold of a very valuable crop and use the seed makers to expand your inventory of it.

 

Luthien speaks truth. The mixed seeds are a pretty big crapshoot, but they have real potential to net you a tidy little sum and grant access to crops not otherwise normally available for the year. That being said, enjoy the challenge and I look forward to more tales of Willa.

 

I've done this challenge too, with slightly different rules.
I didn't allow myself to buy strawberries from Pierre, just have to hope to get them from the travelling cart just like with the fruit trees.
And I did socialize and because I wanted to get married I also allowed myself to buy one bouquet from Pierre.
I limited myself to 10 of each of Sandy's seeds in total and that's it. Have to use the seed maker if I want more of those or hope I find them from the travelling cart.
I allowed myself to automate all I wanted as long I as I gathered the resources myself. You don't exactly need a lot of sprinklers though considering the concept of the challenge.
And I also used bait crafted by myself or obtained from other means, like treasure chests. But no bait from Willy (not that I ever buy bait from him anyway) or from the bin.
And because my focus was on not buying seeds from Pierre or Joja I also allowed myself to buy whatever I wanted from Gus.

I'm not quite finished with the challenge yet, 1.1 rolled around and it was put on hold. I'll definitely come back to this save one day and finish the challenge though, it's been fun!

 

It seems I get 50% wheat in my summer random seed mix so I don't really see the appeal.

 

RNG will eventually favour you, keep trying!

 

Willa has made it into summer.
She has built a barn. Built a coop. Built a silo out of order, and let her chickens go hungry for two days of rain... apparently chickens will not go out in the rain like she thought they did.
The Forage picks up now in pairs some.
She wonders if it might be worth it to keep grinding the levels full of flies and bugs and weeds for seeds. Is it worth it? Can she make a living?
Yes, if the fish were anything to say. (Installed easier fishing, holy cow she caught 11 catfish one rain day)
And mayonnaise takes 3 hours per jar. earth crystals are rare. Where find?

 

Earth crystals? They're usually in the easier levels of the mines (between 5-20 or so) and you can sometimes find them in geodes if I recall right.

 

Done/doing this but no seeds purchased except for the beets for the casino and going to allow myself 1 rare seed for stardrop. Also no fruit trees. It's... Something else but doing it on the forest farm thing so it worked out pretty well.

Also congrats on the catfish, you must be good at fishing and lucky!

 

Willa is an honest sort; She (I) installed the standalone mod easier fishing. And now is having a hard time finding SMALLMOUTH bass. Its more difficult to tell apart fish with their movements now.

About halfway through summer now. Willa has been collecting all the summer forage she can get her claws on; wondering what she can do with sweet peas; you can't eat them; and she's not the social type. Might sell them.

She has 3 cows, and 4 chickens. The chickens were super happy one day and all four of them had large eggs; 2 silver 2 gold quality. Just hit level 4 farming as well, and lv 8 fishing. Carefully working on deforesting Cindersap Forest, and she just finished upgrading copper pick and copper axe.

Four lightning rods to start creating a fence for the animals. Perhaps using regular fences or going aipom on murdering ALL THE BATS and making lots of lightning rods.

Lv 50-55 in the mines, and a silver saber is definitely not enough at present. Holding a sword is difficult and being mobbed by bats, ghosts, dust sprites and murder-face slimes make the iron levels for her very hard. It might be difficult the further she goes down.

It'll be a decision on what to do during fall. Upgrade the coop? Upgrade the barn? Hoard items to make cheese and mayo and survive on that for winter?

With this variation of playthrough, it is SO difficult to get quality crops, let alone any crops for the bundles until she makes the seed maker.

 

The Seed Maker requires 9 Farming, which is going to be exceedingly difficult to do in this sort of play-through. You're basically relying on wild seeds and animals to work up your Farming skill, and there simply isn't enough volume there to grind Farming in any sort of reasonable rate.

Having said that, there is another way to get one. The Dye Bundle gives you a Seed Maker as a reward, and it is really no more difficult to finish it with these restrictions than without them, at least in your first year when Red Cabbage is only going to be available from the Cart Vendor anyway.

Once you get that seed maker, your options grow exponentially. Especially once your Greenhouse is unlocked, you can use it to grow your seed stash for any season's crops. Once you have your seed crops for any given season, maintaining it will be trivial, you just throw your last harvest into the seed maker, and this will also help push your Farming skill up to the point where you can produce more seed makers. Unfortunately, unless you get very lucky with the Cart Vendor, you will likely not get the single most profitable plant available to you, which is Hops.

 

The animals that provide the most farming exp will be cows, as you get exp from petting AND milking, which with cows you can do every day for 10xp per cow per day. According to the wiki, it takes approximately 10,000xp to hit skill level 9, or 1,000 cow-days. So if you shoot for 24 cows (2 full barns) ASAP it seems feasible to expect to hit farming 9 by the first week of Winter Year 1 on animal xp alone, and farming 10 about 2 weeks later.

Also worth noting is that going Trapmaster -> Luremaster with your fishing points is likely the most convient option if you don't plan on fishing more then you need too, mostly as a source of easy Refined Quartz from recycling. This not only gives you access to lots of Lightning Rods and Quality Sprinklers, but also indirectly leads to a greater coal supply as you have less need to smelt Quartz into Refined Quartz directly.

 

Working towards it; turns out going out in summer to catch Dorado and pike in the river was a good idea.

edit: Accidentally removed fall_town when putting in my map recolor mod files and pulling the old stuff. oops. All fixed!

 

Grungy Display day!
Willa's Progress of Skills:


She's got 4 cows, 4 fully happy chickens and is now rather concerned of the 'rollover' so the birds might be contained for a while eating hay... Not sure. Just built a new coop and a new barn; Intending to get ducks and goats by winter; if fishing pays off;

The foraging crops are a handy thing to have; and the amount of fruit being hoarded away.. that is silver and regular for seed making; mm. Haven't had much luck with mixed seeds for fall. Most if not all the weeds on the farm and in the forest have been torn out, and Cindersap is regrowing all the spruce that's chopped down about twice a season. The bus stop trees have been tapped and are a slow but handy source. Bees for spring. Yes.

Steel pick and axe, copper watering can, and slowly making sprinklers. Made lv 10 fishing at long last, so the crab pots are making an appearance. GIVE ALL THE STUFF.

 

Not sure if you've delved into the mines much but you can chop weeds in up to level 30 to get some mixed seeds as well, also ancient seeds if you're lucky (I got two while I was down there looking for earth crystals today). If you can get ahold of an ancient fruit, you'll be good to go.

 

rating of 101 for Grungy Display thingy.

 

Well, I guess this means Strawberries are on the menu next year.

 

Willa got a surprise from her 5 heart chickens this morning.



Just finished Winter 2, and short of crocus, Willa has found all winter forages.

Upgraded the coop at the end of the fall, got one duck, and when the duckling hatches, I'll sell the adult and do a 'cycle' of ducks.

 

18th of Winter; A very important day for Willa.

Two days ago, she hit Foraging 10, and everything she touches outside of chicken eggs will be iridium quality.
Three days ago, she repaired the bus.
One day ago, she broke apart the glittering boulder.

And today....

She has finally cleared out (I believe) all of the debris around the farm. Once the trees are all chopped down, she has a clean slate for Spring, and can move everything around.

Next stop, seed maker and a stable.