I enjoyed Stardew Valley greatly for the first two and a half years, and then suddenly I stopped having fun. Why? Because my farm was so amazing productive that I had to spent easily six hours just harvesting my crops. It was jarring, because I have so many tools I can invest in to make the other chores in the field easier. I can upgrade my hoe and watering can to make planting and maintenance easier, and I can build sprinklers. But there is nothing I can do to avoid having to pick each plant individually by hand! (Apart from planting nothing but Wheat and Amaranth, anyway.) It's also always been odd that I can upgrade all of my tools except my Scythe. So it occurred to me, why not kill two birds with one stone? Why not add in scythe upgrades that allow you to harvest multiple tiles at once, even when those crops aren't normally harvested by scythe? I'd pay top coin for that every time. And it would make what had been an amazingly fun game fun again, for me. Surely I'm not the only one who feels the same way? (My apologies if this has been suggested before. The forum is 43 pages long! I might've missed an earlier iteration of this same suggestion; mea culpa.)
Oh my freaking god, yes please! =x It takes forever to harvest stuff, and being able to do this would be great. The scythe is a good item to include in it, even though it might look a bit weird to do it with that. Alternatively (and maybe even better, tbh)...being able to develop something (maybe via Maru...and MAYBE Demetrius...and gathering supplies/paying for the research funds) that allows you to do this instead of the scythe would be amazing. It could start with a 3x1 area (as in, the 3 blocks directly in front of you)...and then there could be research to improve it to 5x1, then 3x3, then 5x5 or something like that. It wouldn't need to have the "special attack ability" persay...it'd just...harvest all crops in that range.
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Well, I dunno about a bot...but having it have a low chance of destroying one of your crops isn't necessarily a bad thing. It could be the trade off for having it harvest a larger area. Maybe it could have a lower chance of destroying a crop with each upgrade...with the final upgrade eliminating that chance as it has been "perfected"...but...have it be expensive. ^^ Just having the option for this would be great, though.
I think I'd prefer an upgraded scythe to a bot, as it would feel more natural and easier to control, but that's just me. In retrospect, since the scythe already naturally harvests from a large area, I wonder if instead of upgrading it's harvesting area, you'd upgrade how many swings it took. Just a Copper Scythe would take several swings to harvest crops with (and different crops would have different difficulties for what they took to harvest), but with an Iridium Scythe, you'd be walking around harvesting everything in one or two swings. It'd honestly be good to have another money sink for the agricultural stuff, though. I enjoy the farming a lot more than the ranching and fishing; if I could use my scythe to harvest crops, I'd fill the entire farm with nothing but crops once the bundles were all completed and I didn't need animals anymore for restoring the community center. As it is I'm considering downsizing my farm(!) or even stopping playing altogether because I'm strictly tired of picking crops. When I got tired of watering, the game provided a solution, and I let the number of sprinklers I could build dictate the size of my farm. But for being tired of picking tons of crops by hand, there is no solution. I also think it'd help give the scythe its own identity once you got a sword. The sword and the scythe both cut grass in a wide arc, and the scythe isn't really more effective, that I've found. It's just sort of this odd man out among the tools, in that you need it to start off and to harvest Wheat or Amaranth, and then for nothing else, ever again. Expanding its role in the game overall just feels natural to me, and would solve one of the game's biggest issues, in my opinion. That said, you could also have an option for a harvesting machine, maybe. I'd figured you couldn't buy tractors to till the land because the game wanted to thematically emphasize tools and your personal involvement on the farm (though having sprinklers maybe doesn't fit in with that idea). If a harvesting machine were added, or a tractor, you would have to have somewhere to keep them, though. Maybe they can be pulled by your horse??? Couldn't come from Joja, though -- cause then I'd never buy it. I boycott them on principle, there was a corpse at a desk! I've refused to even set foot in their store.
there is a point in the game where i just stopped beeing a farmer and only made the things i needed to do. i am floating in money.. probably because i invested in around 20 chrystalariums. this frees my time for other, non tedious, stuff. yeah, i get what you are saying. at one point the farm grows so much that it is impossible for you alone to manage it and have fun in the game. we should be able to either make tasks on the farm automatic or employe people (like shane for example)
Yeah, employing someone to pick the crops for you in the morning would be nice. However, the suggestion I made to tackle it was to have Maru and/or Demetrius develop a new ITEM for this. It'd be handheld...think of it like a sort of Vacuum item. That said, I'm perfectly fine with simply the Scythe being upgradeable to tackle this. Maybe have the "final" level require a battery and some research notes you get through an event with Maru and Demetrius (have to have Maru at at least 8 hearts and Demetrius at 10 hearts)...and once you get the notes, you can go to the blacksmith (or have one of them upgrade it for the "iridium" price and the items necessary) and have it made. ^^
Oooh, employing people would be good, too. I haven't really gotten into the social side of the game, but I can still think of some characters who'd happily take the money -- and it's not like I couldn't afford to pay them really well. I make stupid amounts of gold! I hadn't thought about a handheld crop-picking machine. It's a neat idea. A battery-powered Scythe upgrade ... I like it! I do think you wouldn't want to require the social hearts levels, though. It locks things off for people who don't want to or don't enjoy doing the social stuff. It'd be strange to only have one item upgrade/farm equipment thing be locked off by social barriers. I wonder if you could do both, and employ people to pick your crops, AND give them each an upgraded tool to do it with! So how productive they are with the picking depends on how well you equip them as an employer. All that said ... I can see how this game really needs multiplayer. A lot of these problems diminish or even go away if 2 to 4 players are tackling the chores every day. Regardless, though, single player needs to be truly viable on its own, and eventually you'd think a multiplayer team would still want to automate, at least on some days so you can all go devote the whole day to a mines run or something.
Well...who said it has to be JUST this one? Robin could give you blueprints for a super axe...Clint for a super pick...and Lewis or someone else could give you one for a super hoe? They'd all be more powerful than iridium (which would mean that you could have the scythe go to iridium and THEN this), etc. These are just examples as I could probably give decent "combos" for people if I thought about it, heh...though most of them would include maru or demetrius cause they're the "techies" in the valley. =x I really like the idea of the "combo" events, though...because I like seeing the interactions between people in them. ^^
Been a while since I played Harvest Moon, but it's scythe acted something like. Basic-swing cut one square, 2nd upgrade-swing cut three squares, 3rd upgrade did a full 360 swinging cut. I agree that the scythe should have a upgrade tier like the other tools. There is a mod to use the scythe to harvest items that I like, made by ThatNorthernMonkey. I just swing at them and they hover over to me by use of my magnetic ring.
This is a suggestion that really needs to be considered. Having another tool to upgrade (giving Clint something else to work on.... and another money sink) is useful by itself and it solves the problem of the end game by removing a little bit of tedium that can come into the farming. I also wouldn't mind seeing the Copper Pan to become upgradable too in a similar manner, even if only for aesthetics and as another money sink.
I suggested something similar to this on my own thread, ideas and suggestions. One of the things I suggested was a craftable item to be able to move in a line with and would harvest crops. I have over a thousand crops on my farm and it gets pretty time consuming to do so, its why I use most often blueberries and crops that grow back over time, all planted on the same day as to at least give me about 3-4 days between harvests to go do other things like fishing, there are other ideas I mentioned as well like a fish farm, where you can put fish you caught into for breeding. If your interested in seeing a few of the other suggestions I put there go ahead and take a look. As for apologizing, don't it is a long forum so I don't blame you for not reading every single one.
I agree, I think the scythe would be a great item to upgrade so that you are able to harvest crops with it and multiple crops with upgrades. Or maybe another tool, upgradable like the Ax/Watering Can/Pickax/Hoe. I also posted the idea in another thread that your children grow past the toddler stage and may help you harvest crops, more crops as they get older
