A Powergamer's Build Order for your first Spring

I would like to note another thing. Not all the crops give the same amount of xp per harvest. FYI

 

Well, in my latest Let's Play (in fact, the episode that will be going live tomorrow), I've managed to do something I thought impossible, largely because of commentary here: I've hit level 80 and obtained gold in Spring of the 1st year. Mind you, it's like the 24th or so when it happened, and I got REALLY lucky with stairs, but I did it. Boiler Room unlocked on the 26th of Spring of the first year. I've got two days to grind gold for sprinklers before Summer hits.

It's not something I could expect anyone to do without a bit of practice, and it certainly requires a lot of luck (I went from 45 to 65 in one day with a regular un-upgraded pick), but it is not impossible. Also have Foraging level 4 by the end of Spring which... is manageable. Especially since I'm on the Forest farm and have all those stumps I can start chopping down for tons of foraging experience once I upgrade my axe. I also lucked into a very early Ancient Seed, which will give me a real head start on my greenhouse growth. I'll have two harvests from Summer and four from Fall, meaning six ancient fruits to turn into seeds, exponentially decreasing the number of iterations I will need to fill up my greenhouse.

If you're curious, the link is in my sig, it's the Stardew Valley Season 2 (season 1 came to an abrupt end when 1.1 came out).

All in all, not too shabby...

 

well I mean if we are going to look at good ways to get the crafting mats for the sprinklers you only really need to get down low enough to farm crap tons of iron ore until you hit level 7 mining. Then you can just craft gold ingots with allot less trouble. You can save getting to bottom and the stardrop till winter. also it takes 2 iron ingots to make gold. so if you going the buy ore way then you can buy iron ore and just convert the iron into gold when you need gold and save 500 gold an ingot.

 

I've never hit Mining level 7 before hitting gold levels, and certainly not in the first Spring.

 

Just wanted to throw my two cents into this guide. I hadn't played any Stardew for four or five months and got the itch to start anew. I've played several different saves all with differing styles, but I wanted to try an effective moneymaking route while also fixing the Community Center (I'm a big proponent of the Joja route after I completed the CC in my first save). I noticed this thread when I was about halfway through my Spring and wanted to share my methodology. I enjoy a lot of your posts @ShneekeyTheLost, because you're willling to do more of the maths to figure out cost-benefits than I am, so I was glad to see you'd made a thread about this too. I'll just give a brief outline of what I did and post some screenshots from Summer 1.

Basically...

• Plant your parsnips and nothing else until Spring 16
• Fish, fish, and more fish until you're level 10 (I hit on Spring 12) and take the Fisher>Angler skills. Don't sell more fish than you need to maximize on Angler
• Upgrade your...axe (yes, axe) first with your copper on Spring 6 or 7--depending on when you hit the mines, I recommend 7, and then make sure to upgrade it to iron so you get it back no later than Spring 13. Upgrade something every 2 days until the Egg Festival ruins everything if you started on 7
• Chop into the Secret Forest as soon as you can and every day before Spring 15 so you can hit Foraging level 4 (I try to be level 5, just because)
• Fish on the day you upgrade a tool, mine on the days in between
• Only sell what you must for the next day's upgrades/seeds and through the box on your farm, if you can
• I pick every Salmonberry every day during Spring 15-18. You will easily end up with 300-500+ Salmonberries
• Plant at least 108 potatoes on Spring 16 and again on Spring 22
• If you're going the CC route: plant 18 parsnips with fertilizer on Spring 16, 20, and 24; plant a bean, and a cauliflower; otherwise, I wouldn't bother
• From Spring 16 on you won't fish much except for the 2 days when your pick will be upgrading to iron, and maybe the last day or two of the season
• After watering crops, go and mine from Spring 16 on.

By the end of Spring you can be at least level 4 in all skills, have a decent nest egg for summer crops, have all of your tools upgraded to iron, and have a goodly amount of sprinklers.

I have enough bars for 50 quality sprinklers and 10 lightning rods. I hit Farming 6 on Spring 28 so the sprinklers will be ready for Summer 1. The iron watering can was sitting at Clint's waiting to be picked up. I gave it to him on Spring 27 after watering since it would be ready Summer 1.

Edit: picture caption and spoilers for the pictures

 

The main reeasons that is is that you spend a large amount of time getting to lower floors. But if you push to a floor that has lots of iron on them you can just repeat the floors to farm iron only. This will level your mining faster then progression because mining stone that doesn't drop anything but stone doesn't give xp. From the Wiki> "While generic rocks provide no experience bonus on their own, if coal is dropped, the player is awarded 5 points in mining. No other drops (gems, geodes, etc) awards experience." where as iron ore gives 12 each ore node broken. that means you only have to mine 400 iron ore node before the end of spring. that is what 15 iron ore nodes a day that is only if you don't get any skill ups before hitting iron which you will. Anyone know the best levels to repeat for iron ore? Time wise if you push for 5 levels a day till 40 you will hit iron the same times you get strawberries around the 13-14. that will leave you farming iron for 14-15 days. That is 28-29 a day but you should be able to get way more then that. Also don't forget you get the xp no matter which way you mine the ore. That including bombs so you can take the copper and wood you and make cherry bombs to use on the iron floors, if that helps.

 

Seems like you should make your own guide thread. It would really help to see what you did on each day in chronological order. Also keep in mind that this thread is about a farming heavy guide. Your "build order" clearly adresses fishing and mining fanatics. Especially fishing isn't loved by everybody

 

I spend a lot of time from 30-39 and from 50-59 during the summer grinding out copper and iron I need for kegs. Considering I"m wanting 300+ kegs... that's a LOT of copper and iron.

However, there's a SLIGHT correction. Regular stones give no xp (unless they are dropping something like coal or an ore), but the differently-colored ones that are guaranteed to drop stone DO give a small amount of xp. However, your timing seems off. You won't have the energy to really hit the mines that early, between the parsnips needed for the quality crops bundle and the potatoes to cash in. Unless you just say 'sod it, go Joja', in which case it should be possible.

Having said that, levels are procedurally generated. Getting several iron nodes on a given level, then restarting back to the previous iteration of 5 and going down again will result in a different map, with a good chance of having fewer, or even zero, iron nodes.

In my latest LP, I had all 20 sprinklers going by the end of Summer 2. Not too shabby for a farm-heavy play-through. This will give me the time and energy necessary to hit the copper and iron hard while my oak grove starts cranking out the resin.

 

Ok I posted xp based on the wiki. You can look up the xp totals for each item mined on there. The idea is to farm the level with the most iron ore possible drop so we go to the entry in the wiki for mines and see that there are several level that have "Abundant iron ore" This means there will be more the usual drops of iron ore on these levels no matter what is generated in map wise. This is because these floors are tagged so to speak to generate more iron ore then other floors. The floors that tagged this way on the wiki are 41-49 and 71-79. So you can use the elevator to go to 40 after getting to there and go down mining just iron ore till you have no more quick ways down and then taking the elevator back up to the main floor and then right back down to 40 and repeat. Most people run 40-45 over and over. For gold as an example you can find some on 81-89 they are not Abundant there. Gold isn't Abundant till 101-109 so it is kind of waste farm 81-89 for gold. Hope that help explains that one for you. Your plan you use has very detailed amounts needed as long as you keep that much on hand you can grab a few salads every night that you go mining on and sell any extra stuff like gems to make up the cost till you get berries of coarse.

 

One modification that will make your first spring a lot easer is if you Up the first planting of parsnips to 48 instead of 40 this allows you to go straight to a level 2 farmer saving a lot of endurance on the planting and watering.
Also you can delay the first mass planting of potato one day and still have it harvested by the 12th allowing you to scarecrow and fertilize the potato

 

You won't have enough money to buy 48 parsnips on day one unless you get extremely lucky with foraging, or if you get multiple coal trying to clear out your plot and can make it to Clint's in time to sell it. Also don't forget that crows are a thing, so merely planting 48 parsnips will not guarantee that you can harvest them all, meaning you may end up one or two short of level 2 farming and basically buy yourself the worst of both worlds.

 

I've always had good results by hitting level 41 over and over. You get dust sprites, iron ore and occasionally copper ore.

 

Main question:
Why plant more Parsnips on Spring 6 instead of as many Potatoes as you can on Spring 5 to save energy? Is it for xp?

Minor question:
Why wait until Spring 6 to plant the Parsnips? Is it just because 1) they will still mature before Egg Festival (in other words, because you can), 2) they will be under scarecrow protection, and 3) they will be fertilized for an early chance at gold star for the Gold Star Crops bundle and Pam's birthday?

 

The xp doesn't hurt, but the big reason is the Quality Crops Bundle. Get 5x Golden Star parsnips, and you can complete the bundle by Summer (since Corn can also be grown in summer).

Parsnips go on Fertilizer to aid in completing aforementioned five gold-star parsnip requirement for the bundle. But you don't unlock the fertilizer until the end of the day on the 5th. So on the 6th, you can make your fertilizer, and plant. Make sure to hoe, then water, then fertilize, THEN plant. In that order. You can swap around watering and fertilizing, but you cannot fertilize after you have planted.

 

Thanks for the reply. That answers those questions very well. My next question is:

If Potatoes mature in 6 days, why not plant those too on Spring 6 to harvest pre-Festival on Spring 12? Energy management? Padding? XP 1 day earlier for some reason? Did you allude to that in the build and I missed it?

 

The build seems to suggest that potatoes planted Spring 5 will only mature Spring 12, but I don't think that's right - if you plant and water Spring 6, they should mature Spring 12.

EDIT: IMO you should save planting parsnips for later - getting a few farming levels first increases the chance of gold parsnips quite a bit. Also, for powergaming I'd prioritize getting down to level 80 in spring, for sprinklers, although to do that you do need to get at least level 6 farming by end of spring.

 

Ahh... hmmm... by the math, you *should* be able to get them by the 12th, sell them, and have the money for the 13th, but every time I wait until I get my scarecrow down, I end up harvesting ON the 13th, which does me zero good because you can't sell them during the Egg Festival. I will have to do more testing on this and get back to you with a better answer.

 

Looking over this again, I'm kinda surprised you didn't advocate fishing on Spring 2-4 for money/energy, but I guess that makes it more beginner-friendly. That being said, if you're good at fishing, it makes a great way to a) get cash for for early seeds and b) get energy to get down the mines asap.

AFAIK this cutscene can happen any day after the 5th, but only on a sunny day. Make sure to enter the town after 8 am.

 

Yea, there needs to be some updates to this. I was planning on actually doing a whole new write-up in a more comprehensive manner.

 

Thanks to all for the input. It does seem better to hold off on more Parsnips until after the Egg Festival, but I know very little, and I wanted to see what ShneekeyTheLost had to say about it. I don't want to simple-mindedly step wholesale from Parsnips to Potatoes to Strawberries if there's a solid reason not to. But it sure seems like a straightforward approach to energy management that allows for a couple of down days (or padding).