This post is rated C for Number Crunching. This post will contain significant quantities of math and profit optimization, which may not be suitable for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised So, an extremely cogent point was brought up in another thread about the profitability of Winter Seeds. I had previously discounted the foragable seeds in my calculations, however that may have been premature, at least for the Winter seeds. So, now we are going to do an in-depth look at these unique seeds, and what sort of return we can expect from them. First off, you get 30 of them for free when you complete the Winter Bundle, and 'free' is one of my favorite words. But that's only the butter-frosting on the cake. You see, you can put Winter Roots in a Seed Maker to get Winter Seeds. You know, the ones you get down in the mines from 40-79? You probably get several of them every time you go down there, depending on what you are killing. This can give you the winter seeds you need to actually plant in volume before winter actually begins. Winter Seeds can produce one of four types of items normally only obtained via foraging: Winter Root, Crocus, Snow Yam, and Crystal Fruit, and the weights appear to be roughly even, taking into account a certain amount of RNG noise. So, what can we do with these? Crystal Fruit is going to be your cash crop for the winter. Brewed into wine, with Artisan, it sells for 630g. Preserves, with Artisan, go for 490. Now then, the odds of getting a Crystal Fruit is 1 in 4. So, when we divide by four, to get our statical average, we get 157.5g from wine, or 122.5 from the preserves. Now, you get four harvests out of the season, so that goes back up to 630g for wine or 490 per season with preserves. This is NOT taking into consideration the chance of double yield from Gatherer. You can likely increase these numbers by 20%. Compare this with Cranberry Preserves for a monthly profit of 1760 for the month. We're already over a third of the way there. Yams, unfortunately, can only really be sold, and only sell for 100 each. Granted, with Botanist, that's a guaranteed iridium-star for 200 each, and there's that 20% chance from Gatherer for a double-collection. So, 630 + 200 = 830 * 1.2 = 996. Getting somewhere now. Next we have the Crocus. This rather underwhelming flower only sells for 60 (or 120 iridium-star from Botanist). However, it is a nearly universally liked gift, with Sandy loving it, and Seb, Gus, and George disliking it. However, with Gatherer and Botanist, you're looking at a seasonal profit of 144. If you sell them, you're looking now at a seasonal profit of 1,140 per wild seed. And finally, we have the Winter Root. We'll assume zero profits here because they're going to be plowed back into the Seed Maker for the next batch of Winter Seeds. So, depending on your gifting habits, you're looking at anywhere from 996 to 1140 seasonal income per wild seed, on average. Obviously, if you get more crystal fruit, those numbers are going to skyrocket, if you get less crystal fruit, those numbers are going to lag. If it was just crystal fruit, the monthly income would be 3,024, which would blow the hell out of blueberries or cranberries (in fact, almost doubling what Cranberries do), and would even begin to approach what Starfruit can do. However, there's no way to guarantee that, so 996-1140 is going to be the numbers I'm going with for winter seeds. Lackluster compared to the other three seasons, but hey... free money.
Yes, which is why they have been taken into consideration when calculating profits. Despite being planted, they are based on Foraging not on Farming.
@ShneekeyTheLost Remember that with the 1.1 update Botanist is guaranteed Irridium quality on foragebles which is x2 base profit.
According to the Wiki, you can drop Common Mushrooms into the seed maker to get Fall Seeds, which like Winter Roots are pretty easy to aquire in large quantities if you pick the mushroom cave upgrade from Demetrius. This produces the following plants; Wild Plum - sell direct for 160 or keg into plum wine that sells for 336 (artisan) Hazelnut - sell direct for 180 Blackberry - sell direct for 40 or else jar into blackberry jelly that sells for 126 (artisan) Common Mushroom - just cycle back into the seed maker to make more fall seeds. using the above calculations as a guide that gives us an average expected profit of about 642 per seed plot per season, not fantastic but still essentially free money and is about twice as much profit as selling your common mushrooms directly. If we instead hold back some of each harvest to craft into seed packets the numbers run more as follows; assuming a plot of 10 we end up with an expected average of 2.5 of each foragable per harvest, subtracting 1 gives us an adjusted 1.5 of each per harvest. This translates to 504g worth of plum wine, 270g worth of hazelnuts, 189g worth of blackberry jam and 120g worth of common mushrooms for a total of 1083 per harvest. Divide by 10 for 10 plots gives 108.3 per plot per harvest. Times 4 harvests per season gives 433.2, so you are always better off turning your mushrooms into seeds in the seed maker in this case
You get Summer Seeds by dropping Spice Berries in the Seed Maker, and there are only 3 possible products; Spice Berry - sell direct for 160, cycle back into more seeds or else keg into berry wine (336 w/artisan) Grape - sell direct for 160 or keg into grape wine (336g) Sweat Pea - Keep for gifting (near-universal like) or else sell for 110 If we cycle all our spice berries into more seeds we end up with average expected profits of about 594.6 per seed plot per season, if we instead hold back 1 of each item to craft another 10 seed packets each harvest then we need to adjust our figures slightly. assuming we have a plot of 10 seeds we expect 3.33.. of each crop per harvest, subtracting 1 from that to represent holding back 1 of each crop to turn into 10 more seeds we get 2.3333... of each per harvest. that translates into 784g each of spice berries and grape (kegged) and 256.66... worth of Sweat Peas gives us an adjusted profit of 1824.66... per harvest, divide by 10 for 10 plots and we get an average of 182.46 per plot per harvest. multiply by 4 for 4 harvests per season and we end up with about 729.866... per plot per season. Again, pretty decent for what is essentially free money.
@ShneekeyTheLost Given how MUCH more profitable crystal fruit are compared to the other winter foragables I would expect turning winter roots into seeds to be more profitable then witholding a portion of each harvest but let's run the numbers! Again, assuming 10 plots to start we end up with 1.5 of each crop after adjusting for witholding or 945g worth of crystal fruit wine, 300g worth of snow yams, 210g worth of winter roots and 180 worth of crocus. Total value per harvest 1635, divide by 10 for 10 plots gives 163.5 per plot per harvest times 4 harvests equals 654g per plot per season. So yeah, crafting winter seeds rather then using the seed maker results in losing roughly half of your profits for the season.
Not sure where your numbers are coming from, but mine are taking into consideration plowing all roots back into more seeds rather than crafting them. So yea, been there, done that. As for the other seasons... the problem is opportunity cost. Other crops are able to be grown in those seasons which absolutely dominates what your wild seeds can do, so there's not much point.
