A Powergamer's Build Order for your first Spring

I have finished my first spring season on my orchard farm (run). I used the guide until day 21. After that I tried to powergame as I thought best. So I watered and harvested my crops until my second strawberry harvest. During this period I didn't plant any new crops so that I had more time for mining. (I reached level 100)

http://upload.farm/1Cyulr

An estimate:
- 14k gold in cash + 10 strawberry jellies (2,9k gold) on summer 2nd plus another 10 strawberries waiting
- 13 quality sprinklers + bars/ores for 4 more on 1st of summer
- copper pickaxe and copper watering can
- inventory upgrade 1 (the one for 2k gold)
- 10 preserve jars
- 5 tree tappers (3 on oak trees)
- one beehive
- Haley on 3 hearts because I missed her birthday and couldn't dance with her

@ShneekeyTheLost notice me senpai
What helped me most was the advice to not buy the early inventory upgrade and buy 40 strawberry seeds instead. I would never have thought of that on my own.




My plans for the future:
- get some animals for early greenhouse -> sell them afterwards
- get large amounts of cash until winter
- build three sheds
- plant massive amounts of fruit trees in winter
- produce jelly and wine in large quantities from 1st of spring year 2 on
- at the end of year 2 have a farm full of fruit trees and some sheds...nothing else

 

Little update one week later (8th of summer):
- got the copper axe
- build a silo and the coop was ordered (the picture got it wrong)
- foraging level 6 was achieved this very day
- planted 40 melons, 10 wheat, 16 pepper, 16 corn, 32 hops, 32 blueberries, some flowers and tomatoes.
- boiler room was completed

http://upload.farm/1CyxdA



No further farm updates from now on until the orchard is "complete". It will take much time and I will post it into the "show off your farm" thread, I guess.

 

Wow, how'd you get so many sprinklers by the end of Spring? That's quite impressive!

 

Well Filmstudy posted this:

He then posted a guide which relyed heavily on mining. I did agree so far that reaching level 80 and gold ore is the key to great numbers of sprinklers. But because of his later post where he posted his earnings by winter year 1 I think that he overdid the powergaming
So as I said earlier, after day 21 I harvested my potatoes and my second batch of spring seeds without planting anything new. After the second harvest of my strawberries I didn't water them again because they couldn't be harvested a third time. That enabled me to go mining all day and do little else. Of course I had reached level 60 already and descending further was easy with all the salmonberries I gathered before.
The last day of spring I spent smelting and plowing.

 

Very happy someone is taking note of mining approach and glad to see you did so well in month 1.

If you don't mind me asking:
How many pickaxe upgrades did you go for in month 1?
What was your combat rating when you got to level 80?
How long did it take you to get the Insect Head and Burglar's Ring?

 

I'd love to know how to upload the picture of my final farm from this River game. I've seen them, but don't know where to go to make one.

I now just play until Grandpa's evaluation at the end of year 2. Here are screenshots:

This first gets at "hotshedding" approach I have started using to maximize throughput while maintaining as much farmland as possible. Wine sheds with 66 units each (I like a chest in each) can be stacked against walls/water (no access) on the south edge and swapped in as needed for collection/re-fruiting. The shed on the right is taking up prime farmland, but that's OK during Winter.



Winter 28, waiting for evaluation. First time I was able to purchase the gold clock in year 2.



Thanks, Grandpa!

 

- my pickaxe was a copper one and I am currently at level 105 still with just that
- combat skill was 3 or 4. If you click on this link http://upload.farm/1Cyulr and look under the skills tab, it was 4 on level 100
- I did not get any adventurers guild achievements.
As I said I followed ShneekeyTheLost's guide which includes mining but your post got me thinking. So I sacrificed farming output for faster sprinkler progression. I mentioned in this thread before that I am no try hard powergamer, but I wanted a fast and efficient start for my orchard farm run.

If you want to make "screenshots" of your whole farm go to upload.farm and upload your savefiles. Your saves are in your appdata directory.

 

Wow, very impressive to get that far with copper pickaxe. I'm looking forward to see how your orchard farm is laid out.

Finally figured out the image. Thanks for your help. Bare looking "Mordor-style" (no beautification or individual style, all animals slaughtered after their contributions to bundles complete) farm awaiting planting for Spring of Year 3, but you can see 1 place where I rotate sheds through for hotshedding. The 2 obelisks would have to be moved for more farming as would the shed closest to the farmhouse.

 

ConcernedApe explained how to find savegames here under General Info:
http://community.playstarbound.com/...-guide-for-solving-some-common-issues.110762/
You upload the first/top file in your farms directory. The picture of your whole farm will be on the bottom of the page which upload.farm creates. I recommend saving the url to that page if you want to find it again.

 

One more question...

If you didn't get the insect head, what weapon did you use down to level 80? Bone Sword?

 

I usually use what I find. So I used the Iron Edge until I got the Obsidian Edge.
http://stardewvalleywiki.com/Iron_Edge
For me fighting in this game is just good timing and positioning. The weapon only determines how many hits you nedd to bring down an enemy and even the Iron Edge hits fast enought that it doesn't take long. But the Obsidian Edge does make things a lot easier. Later in e.g. summer year 2 I will buy a Lava Katana from the guild. If I don't need a challenge or a prismatic shard I don't visit the skull cave. Everything you need to build quality sprinklers can be obtained in the mines. When money piles up and I want Iridium Sprinklers I just buy them from Krobus on fridays for 10k. Maybe on this playthrough I will change that behavior. Who knows?

 

What's your foraging skill at?

Also, see the Third Disclaimer: this is a farming optimization, and explicitly does not cover what else you do with your time, which includes mining.

 

It was at level 5. If you click on the upload.farm link and then on skills you can take a look at this:

Yes your guide is about farming but you also emphasize on going into the mine which I just did more enthusiastically. Going deeper has the advantage that you can produce a lot of sprinklers after reaching level 80 which was and always is one of my top goals.

 

This has got to be one of the funniest SV things I've seen, but now I really want to try it!!

 

I have read through most of the thread and have seen the argument on grow the foraging seeds. Just to look at this xp wise growing those seeds is the worst way to gain xp for foraging with them only give 3 when harvested. The best way to get xp for foraging is by upgrading your axe to iron in the first spring. This opens up the secret forest and hardwood stumps give 25 xp each. That is just 18-19 days to get to level 6 in forage just by cutting the logs from the secret forest. Actually just by starting on the Foraging map will give you 7 xp for each item pick up on your farm which is still better then growing the seeds from foraging. Foraging seeds from spring and summer should always be sold for profit and the foraging items turned into seeds and sold.

 

Agree. The forage crops are not energy efficient, but with scaleable quality sprinklers, they are a decent crop in Summer at 550 per seed bag. They are a poor crop in spring, even though the seeds can be acquired for free and sold for 350 per 10, because they cost so much energy to maintain.

Do you have a full list of forage experience by action?

 

it is on the wiki under skills. 3 for grow foraging crops, 5 for foraging items from your farm, 12 for chopping trees but not stumps, 25 for hardwood stumps, and I can't think of the rest off the top of my head.

 

To illustrate the point Magzie and I are making on spring wild seeds...

If you have a pack of 10, you can sell immediately for 350 and do something else with the money/energy or you can plant and harvest.

Sell: get 350 gold now, save 160 energy from hoeing/watering wild crops. If you simply cut down 5 trees (150 energy) you get 65 forage skill (as opposed to 30 from seeds), approximately 90 wood, 30 sap, and 5 seeds (total gold value 265). So the total gold return is 615, but it's frontloaded versus 700-875 (2-2.5 packs) you have to wait 7 days to get.

So the simple solution is to sell any wild seeds you acquire in packs and use the time and energy much more efficiently in the mines and on trees.

It's still good to forage sets of wild seeds, but they are a dog as a crop without automated sprinkling.

 

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...