1-Year Community Center Challenge

The other interesting challenge is the 'year one millionaire' challenge. Not to say that you have a million in liquid assets, but that you've earned a million over the year. The costs involved in picking up both deluxe barn and coop, plus ancillary costs in making sure bundle is completed on time, puts you surprisingly close, so it only takes a shift in what you plant during the seasons to hit it.

 

Winter day 5. Only the Red Cabbage left.... Come on Cart!!!

 

I know about it, but I've never been interested in giving it a shot because of the red cabbage. I don't really like challenges where you rely this heavily on pure luck. You could do everything to perfection but your rotten luck won't give you a cabbage. No thank you.
Luck should be an advantage, a help, in a challenge not be a roadblock.

 

For what it's worth, it's a community-created challenge, and not one built into the game or the Steam achievements.

If you don't want to do it, there's absolutely nothing pressuring you to do so. I made this thread because I'm more interested in those who have tried or are trying now, and what strategies they use.

 

The cabbage is an annoyance, but the challenge is really about everything else. Start simple; Can you complete the Community Center by Summer 10 of year 2? That gives plenty of time to grow your own cabbage, and if it shows up on the cart it's an advantage, not a roadblock.

 

Oh I know, I'm not bashing the challenge! If people are into this, by all means, don't let me ruin your fun
Just not my cup of tea.

I could probably complete the CC in a year as long as my luck is with me. The cabbage is always one of the last things I miss, sometimes I get lucky and get it before summer year 2 other times I just have to wait. The other things I usually get last are the rabbit's foot, the pomegranate and the three apples. The foot because again luck and then I just don't bother planting the fruit trees in year one because I want to plant them in the greenhouse. Everything else is easy to get in year 1.

If I made it a point to get the fall fruit trees in year 1 and bunnies as fast as possible, then I don't see why I shouldn't be able to get everything in year 1, with the red cabbage as a big maybe of course. But eh, again this challenge is just not my cup of tea

 

It's going to be my luck that on Winter 28, Sunday, the cabbage SEED shows up at the cart. No amount of Speed-Gro is gonna help that! Actually, even if the seed showed up on Friday 26 that still won't help any... gah!
Come on Cabbage!!!
haha

 

If the cabbage is the only thing you have left, you've won in my book. Crossing my fingers for you, nonetheless!

 

In my most recent playthrough I got the cabbage seed on Summer 5, so I stuck it in a chest and said "now I just need the greenhouse." It was the middle of the next week before I realized, It's Summer! Just plant the thing. Then it rained hard 3 times before it was ripe, and every crack of thunder I wished I had waited. I expected to wake up and see it bunt up. It would have been a lot less stressful to have just waited for the greenhouse. Minimanta does have a good point that the cabbage is kind of a ridiculous bottleneck in the challenge.

 

Also, in my initial response to the thread I said to try to get the Crimson fish, the Octopus and the Dorado during Summer, year 1. In my most recent playthrough, it was fall before I popped up the collections window and realized that I had bought the pufferfish from the cart, and never caught one myself. So this coming spring I'll catch the Legend, then wait a month to catch the puffer to fill out the fishes.

 

Welp, Winter 28 and the cart failed me. I had everything done, but came up short on the cabbage. Guess I failed.
I also am only the Skeletal Hand short of completing the Museum Collection in the first year as well. Bummer. No matter how many golden horseshoes this guy had up his backside, it just wasn't enough. Booooooo.... soooo close...
Also just short the two fish from the bug cave to complete fishing collection since that doesn't open until the second year anyway... or does it... I think it opens when you complete the CC, so I guess you could do that in the first year as well.
@^(@#! Red Cabbage!!
Ah well... it was a pretty good run. At least I'm only 15k away from my final house upgrade and I can get to casking my stored up goods. I should have that by the end of the day if I hit the fishing hard.
All my tools are Iridium so there's that at least.
Maybe I'll have better luck on my next save!

 

The void salmon and slime jack are available, at the soonest, the day after you finish the CC, so if you did get the cabbage on winter 28, those fish are still locked until spring 1 anyway.

Also, did you get the Legend your first spring? In my most recent save I got to thinking that might be possible, but have never gotten close to doing it myself.

 

I actually got 14 of them because of the bug (3 on Spring 22 I think it was, then it rained again on the 26th I think and I got the rest then). I also got all the others as well. Gotta love the +2 fishing food! The 14 Legends went a long way to helping me upgrade my coop and barn since most of them were gold star.

Just finished Day 1 of Spring Year 2. It never fails to make me go WOW when I walk outside on the first day of Spring and see all the green and other colours. Man oh man... Winter really seems to last 4 times as long as all the other seasons combined. You just think it will all be white until the end of time!
haha

 

Yeah I don't bother with the train. All it ever seemed to do was waste time that could be better spent with actual tasks. I think I got a geode once and a few stone and coal.

I have managed to get the community center done about mid way through the first winter. The only real strategy was planting about 50 parsnips to manage to get 5 gold ones without fertilizer or scare crows. the rest of it was getting very lucky with fishing treasures especially managing to get a Neptune's Glaive as one of my first treasures so that I could go much deeper into the mines much earlier and then also getting lucky with the traveling cart

I think that there is something to the rarely heard theory that some characters just have better luck than other characters

 

I sat up last night and did it. And I thought I was grinding the fishing before. Ended the spring with level 10 fishing and two Legends(only sold one.) total earnings of 77k, an upgraded house, a good start on the museum, the big pack, a short stack of Dish O' the Sea, Neptune's Glaive and the Mine Carts! Plus I managed to stay on schedule for getting my coop and barn upgraded in time for the Truffle and Rabbit's Foot. It's easily the best start I've ever had. I didn't realize, once the primarily gold fish kick in, how fast the money racks up.

The trains not too impressive. Plus you spend about an hour of game time watching it pass. And yeah, if you're looking for it, there are lots of places to see that the game's random numbers aren't really random.

 

Well, that went well. In the fishing focused save I got the cabbage mid-summer, completed the Master Angler achievement during the first week of winter, and completed the Community Center mid-winter because my duck just wouldn't drop a feather. I also passed another challenge that I had thought about before, but had never really attempted. I made it to the bottom of the mine without buying a sword. I had Neptune's Glaive down to the Obsidian Edge then pushed to the bottom and bought the Lava Katana. Neptune's Glaive made it fairly easy, but the Forest Sword plus various clubs and daggers that are found as drops should make it possible too. I still haven't dove into the Skull Cavern and haven't got a Prismatic Shard, but I can easily imagine playing the whole game without buying a sword.

Also, on the subject of the game's randomness, I ended up the year getting four Neptune's Glaives and probably a dozen Skeletal Tails, but still only have a little over half of the museum artifacts. Some will say "that's randomness" but from my experience, more often than not, the game's randomness is almost always skewed toward some items and away from others. I'm not complaining, I really like the game and I'm a lot like the game. I'm a master of randomness, just not in a good way.

 

I did this once, and will never do it again.

The amount of luck required with either the traveling cart, duck feathers, and rabbits feet is silly. You literally have to have the Red Cabbage spawn in the traveling cart, which it may very well never.

 

I actually frequently go the whole way through without buying a single blade. The key is combat avoidance.

You see, I typically want to hit level 80+ in Spring of the first year so I can get enough Quality Sprinklers down so I only have to water my crops on the first of Summer, and never again, leaving me free to do other things with my time and endurance. This also lets me skip upgrading the watering can because it won't be used after this period.

And so typically what I do as I progress downward is I try to minimize combat and maximize decent. I occasionally make judicious use of manufacturing staircases. Not frequently, generally either on combat levels or those spiral-shaped levels or when the mist shows up indicating a swarm is about to appear, or when I'm one level short of hitting an elevator level but still need to get home before passing out. I dodge monsters instead of confront them, especially slimes which just take too long to fight, and the extremely annoying ghosts.

First off, tilling the dirt outside the mines can net you a Femur which is in every way superior to the Steel Smallsword you pick up at level 20 in the chest. This is a sufficient weapon to get you quite a ways down. Obviously, if a Forest Blade or Mallet drop, you're going to want to switch to those. You can also try to fish up a Broken Trident to get you down to the Obsidian Edge.

Using this method, levels 81-89 are going to be the most dangerous because you're still using a fairly low-end weapon against some fairly high-end monsters (especially the Metal Heads and Shadow Brutes who are extremely resistant to knockback), so expedite your decent with at least a steel pickaxe by the time you hit these levels. Some explosives couldn't hurt either to speed up the process of finding a staircase, or failing that, bringing along some stone to make some.

 

You can do what I sometimes do for fun, if you've upgraded your pickaxe, is use IT as a weapon. It has a bit of knockback and does half decent damage. The hoe also works.
I found out this all by accident... haha

 

Yeah, I usually don't buy swords either. I work my way down to the Obsidian Edge with either the Steel Smallsword or whatever else Lady Luck gives me of better weapons and then I use the Edge in the skull cavern until I find a prismatic shard for the Galaxy Sword. Obviously getting this sword is my main focus on my first trip to the cavern

Also, another challenge - Try to reach the bottom of the regular mines with just the rusty sword. Tough, but doable. And fun!