According to a Reddit Post at, https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/8g0j7s/stardew_valley_13_beta/ it would appear that Marnie will be selling an 'Auto-Grabber' that automatically harvests from cows, sheep and goats for 25k. This sounds like a massive game-changer because to me it never seemed feasible to have a large ranch and get the most out of it while there was still daylight. The reason I am interested is because I wanted to start up a new character on the regular map who would to try the ultimate challenge (jk) of not relying on selling wine. That way I wouldn't feel conflicted when I married Penny, i.e. the marriage candidate who dislikes alcohol (for good reason). On my first game I set up a fantastic winery operation with not a single animal on the farm I would need to take care of. Which means that the only eggs and cheese I have are... really old. Really, it's dumb I can't buy groceries from Marnie or from the town. With that said, would trying such a character still be difficult even if you did not have gather every new item yourself? And I don't mean if we use the Ranching Skill, that still seems weak, but if we had Artisan?
Depends on what you mean by 'feasible'. From a pure profit perspective, nothing has changed. The numbers still turn out the way they always have. However, this will at least make it MUCH easier to maintain cattle, sheep, and cows, as you will no longer need to chase them down with a milk pail or shears.
My first farm was mostly all animals because I hated having to plant such large fields, but milking and sheering took the better half of my day, even if I was chugging coffee and kept all the animals in smaller pastures. So this would definitely have helped A LOT. So I guess I'm saying it was already feasible, if you were willing to skip a day of milking/sheering to go to the mines or take care of business, but I did eventually get very bored of that play style and started a new game. So maybe I'll pick up that farm again!
You'll still need to chase them down every day and pet them, so I'd say only slightly easier. Large herds will still consume big chunks of each day to pet, but if you only have one or two barns it won't make much difference either, because petting and milking/shearing a full barn can be done in less in than an hour anyway. You still have to collect the "grabbed" goods every day if you want to make the most of artisan and turn the milk into cheese. Or have an excessive number of cheese presses. Particularly with sheep and goats, which only produce every other day, you save even less time. Sure it's a nice addition, but hardly a game changer imo. Other than pigs and truffles, which are still labour intensive but at least can earn big money, ranching needs to have much higher value items to sell, or produce more items per animal per day, to have a hope of competing financially with crops, which, hops aside, can just be forgotten about for many days, until harvest time.
Well it figures. I actually checked and if I wanted to do a profitable run without selling alcohol I could just make Jelly. It's not that much less profitable than low grade wine, and when I was running a large winery I never actually bothered casking most of my wine overlong because it was hard to keep track of and even the fabulous return on Ancient Fruit Wine aged until purple grade didn't change the fact that once I had Ancient Fruit growing in a Greenhouse I was all but guaranteed riches. So instead of a Ranch, I might do a Penny-Friendly Farm where I make lots of Jelly and maybe keep a single cow along with a pig and two chickens because we don't have any grocery stores out here. It really is a shame that a ranch build was never optimal, but there is still plenty of variety in growing crops.
I have to ask, what do you define as profitable? I did a run where I only sold animal products (No processing them!), and ended year 2 (Where I usually cut off my challenge runs, since Grandpa) with 727101g. Ended up with 4 each of Sheep, cows, pigs, and every coop variant but white chickens (Blue serves the same purpose.) Is that good? I dunno. One of my better challenge runs.
For what you were working with? Absolutely, that's not bad, and I tip my hat off to you. In fact, it means that a 1 million year 2 might be possible with nothing more than animal crops, which is quite fascinating. In my current run? I've just hit the Night Market in Year 2. I'm married with one kid. I have the Rod of Return (2 million price tag), Water Obelisk (1 million price tag), paid for Pam's house out of chump change (500k), and I've got 120 casks of Starfruit Wine from the first batch in Summer that are almost done, which should net me a tidy sum. I'm aiming at 10 million gross before the end of the year to show to Grandfather that I have been managing his property well. After hitting a Year One CC completion. But I'm one of those wierdos who plays SDV with a calculator at hand, so I'm... let's say 'atypical'.
No that's good, but I don't know if I could manage all of them without a slow time mod. I'm impressed that you managed to get so many Blue Chickens though, I might aim for that in my next run. That is a frightening turn-around. I made many mistakes in my first run and wasn't even married until the start of my third year because that sailor doesn't seem to show up in Winter. I intend to make good on my second run - do you have any guides I can follow?
I mentioned this in another thread a while back; if you want blue chickens and have seen Shane's blue chicken cut-scene, you can buy them from Marnie. When you buy a chicken, on the screen where it asks you to pick which coop on your farm it goes into, it actually tells you the colour of the chicken you'll get at the top of the screen. If it's not blue, hit ESC and try again until you get a blue one. Could take 10 tries, could take 2, but it will show up eventually.
I may have written one or two guides on these forums somewhere or another. Here's a First Spring Build Order that can give you some ideas on how to get yourself at least started going. Keep in mind that it is kind of out of date, especially now that 1.3 is being pushed out, but it should give you some ideas.
Thanks, I'll be sure to look at it. Although to be fair, I might just cheat a little an download a slow-time mod. Always found the pace of the game a bit fast - the reason I never made many friends the first year was because I simply didn't have time to. Oh sure, I befriended Linus early but that was just for the sushi recipe.
Honestly, you have a *lot* of time on your hands even with that many animals. It's 3 buildings worth, and near the end I basically hit a point where there wasn't much more I needed to do. Honestly, the best part of these little challenges I do is the early game where I can't sell anything and am relying on the bulletin board for money to get started. Once I got my first chicken, money just stopped being a major factor, since even at 50 gold a day, it's only 8 days for another, and it starts adding up fast. Not as fast as playing normal or actual farming, but still fun. I don't recommend all my challenges, though. Some were...Less than stellar moneywise.
