Beets, an economic alternative to Cranberries for Year 1?

This post has been rated N for Number Crunching. This post contains scenes of graphic optimization and explicit math which may not be suitable for all audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.​

Okay, so it has been definitively proven that Cranberries are your number one go-to crop for Fall. However, they are *expensive*. At 240g each, they are in fact one of the most expensive crops around. Granted, they also produce results like crazy, but hey, we already knew that. But for a 160 plot bed, you're looking at 38,400g in costs. That's a Deluxe Barn upgrade right there. So, what might be a cheaper option?

Beets.

Yea, I've kind of bagged on them plenty of times before, but I'm giving them a new look, and things are actually turning out... less bad than I feared. You see, beets are stupidly cheap, like 20g per each. So for every cranberry you purchase, you could instead purchase 12 beets. So if your money rolling into fall is short, it isn't a bad 'backup strat'. Mind you, it's still better in the long run to do Cranberries, but let's see how you'd do with Beets.

Cranberries gets five harvests per season, even with Deluxe Speed-Gro, at roughly 2.1 (guaranteed 2, with a 10% chance of a third, modified by Luck) berries per harvest, nets... call it 10 berries per season per plot, to provide a better conservative estimate and to make it a nice round number. Obviously, we're sandbagging a bit, but just to give us a ballpark assuming you always have horrid luck. Cranberry Preserves (or, if you prefer, Cranberry Sauce, all things considered) sells for 280g/ea, assuming Artisan (by Fall, you should have it), for a seasonal production of 2800g. Subtract the cost of 240 for the seed, and we come out with a seasonal net profit of 2,360g. Of course, you're going to get higher than that, due to the 10% chance of ending up with a bonus cranberry, but that's the base number.

Beets, on the other hand, are a weekly crop. Which means we can shave a day per harvest and squeeze in a fifth harvest if we use Speed-Gro, and can do yet another harvest if we use Deluxe Speed-Gro. In effect, they have the same growth timers as Potatoes. Each harvest produces one and only one beet. The good thing is that beets only cost 20g/ea, so they're dirt cheap, and since they are a vegetable, they get the pickle bonus for a total of 350g/ea assuming Artisan. Subtract out the 20g investment, and that's 330g/ea net profit. So for using no fertilizer, four harvests yields 1,320g seasonal. Using Speed-Gro (assuming you make it yourself instead of buying from Pierre, for no additional cost) yields seasonal yield of 1,650g. Using Deluxe Speed-Gro (again, assuming you craft it yourself instead of buy it from Pierre, since you can't actually buy it from him until Year 2) yields seasonal profit of 1,980g.

Let's also have a look at pumpkins, by way of comparison, shall we?

Pumpkin seeds cost 125g/ea, which is kind of on the pricey side of things when you consider you're going to have to buy two or three crops worth. So if you can't afford Cranberries, you probably can't afford very many Pumpkins either, since you can only get two pumpkins per cranberry. But let's run the numbers anyway, shall we?

Pumpkins, also being a vegetable, also do quite well as pickles, ringing in 966g/ea, assuming Artisan. Subtracting out the seed cost, and you end up with a net 841g/ea. You normally only get two harvests of Pumpkins per season, just like Melons and Cauliflower, which brings up seasonal profit to 1,682. Assuming you can get a third harvest with Deluxe Speed-Gro, however, it comes out to 2,523g/season.

In Conclusion​

In short, Beets aren't... horrible. They're not an amazing profit maker, by any means, but they can quite reasonably be used to fill an otherwise empty plot on the cheap, since any crops are better than no crops. Got an extra forty or so plots you need filled on a budget? Beets will do that for 800g. Compare that to Pumpkin's 5k price tag or Cranberry's near 10k price tag (9,600 to be precise).

So while Cranberries are clearly the optimal choice for yield per season due how spam-happy they are, and they will keep your jars humming merrily through the winter, beets are a 'backup plan' in the event you find yourself short on cash-on-hand on the first of Fall and just need to fill spaces or completely waste them.

 

Oh crap... I have to get my abacus!

 

Too much maffs 4 me. Don't even have many preserve jars, working on kegs and casks. I like the less frantic farm work - stuff in kegs and forget it.

 

Plus... pickled beets are delicious. They are, in fact, the only Stardew Valley crop that Real Life Me would actually be happy to eat in pickle form. Which is enough reason for ME to plant them (since I only indulge in number crunching and optimizing for maximum profit to the bare minimum necessary for achieving other in-game goals, and not just for it's own sake.)

 

Not to nitpick the numbers, but shouldn't the overall cost of working beets into year one include the 42,500 G required for the Vault Bundles to repair the bus in order to unlock the desert? (Or 40,000 G if you're going the Joja route?) That's a considerable chunk of money to get by the end of your first Summer-- I know you'll argue that it's a necessary expense, and that most players will be already making progress towards finishing the CC/Joja improvements, but the money still needs to be taken into consideration for the idea?

 

There's other reasons to already have the Vault Bundles/Joja Bus completed by fall. Not the least of which being completing the Qi quest (10 beets to Lewis's fridge), but also exotic foraging bundle, simple gifting for several individuals including Hailey, the Skull Cave for iridium for Iridium Sprinklers for the greenhouse to be unlocked shortly, and the simple fact that forage in the Oasis is pretty dang profitable most days. Hell, I generally try to get to the Oasis by mid-summer so I can get at least one batch of Starfruit completed before the end of the season.

So while I understand your position, I can't simply amortize the cost of unlocking the bus into the prospect, as you have too many other reasons to already be there.

 

To offer a different point of view, when I see numbers like this all I can think about is the time and resources it takes to plant and process high yield, low profit crops like this. Planting crops just to plant something isn't the best use of your time or money from a min/max perspective - if you're already at level 10 farming it's busy work.

When I crunch numbers it goes like this: I'm looking to make 15k from crops what do I need?

I'd need to grow, process and sell (roughly):

59 cranberries (256g each) - 10 plants/full season
45 beets (330g each)
17 pumpkins (866g each)

Low yield, high profit crops take less work (and preserves jars) which means you have more time - something that's always in short supply that first year.

Hands down, pumpkins are a better Fall cash crop. #teampumpkin

 

As Velma...errrr Lilliput already mentioned, the BIG problem is the cost to get the Bus up in order to harvest the beets. While it's possible to shell out the money needed by Fall 1, I would still factor in cost of Bus repair against the first year's profit of beets

Plus, I don't play the game with the intent to be rich, but rather "have fun first". I usually get the bus unlocked in fall, because there's enough other things that require $$$ that I hold higher priority first. *shrug* BUT lots of money isn't a major motivator for me. both in RL and in Stardew Valley!

 

pumpkins are 100 gold...low cost seeds are not worth it..in my first year i did cranberries, because they make you alot of money. Also, as pointed out before, you need alot of money to get the buss repaired..however, beets are cheap, so it won't hurt you..and cranberries are worth more...because you sell them, nobody will invest early in presserve jars...they need 8 coal each, which is hard to come by...

Also, i think your math is wrong..you invest 100 gold for beets (more harvests)

 

Something tells me that you have a slightly higher baseline assumption of progress than the average player, Shneekey. With that I mean your benchmarks of what is achievable within a certain time frame is probably on the high end. I have no doubt that it is manageable to meet those benchmarks within the time frame you mention, but I expect a bit of a disconnect compared to the average player.

For example, while I don't think the argument "nobody will invest early in preserve jars" hold much water*, I do agree that getting a lot of coal is a bit of a hassle earlier on. The mines have a decent bunch, especially given Dust Sprites and the bags littering the place. Charcoal kiln is also not terribly hard to get early on, but wood is needed for a lot of infrastructure.

*I have a pet peeve regarding those sorts of statements. Making definitive claims about every single person playing the game and their priorities and reasoning seems a bit presumptuous.

 

Actually, I have too many reasons not to have any interest in unlocking the bus, as I've detailed on another thread in the past describing my aversion to the entire desert location in general. Everything you've described is purely optional, based on one method of playing the game. But even supposing the average player wants to open up the desert, that 40,000~ isn't free and if you are calculating profit/loss by season, is a legitimate expense to tally into the total.

Shneekey is a min-maxer, a number cruncher, a would be accountant. He plays the game like an economic simulation-- which is a perfectly legitimate way to play, and that's the beauty of sandbox games. Never let someone else's way of playing make you feel like you've got to 'keep up' or do things you don't find fun. Because that's really the key to any game, are you having fun with it. Shneekey enjoys setting numerical goals and achieving them. I enjoy setting aesthetic goals and slightly ignoring them. Everyone pays the same price of admission to the game and gets to do things their way!

Jinkies!

 

Don't get me wrong dear Lilliput, I have absolutely zero issues with the way Shneekey does things, I'm familiar with him from a Dungeons and Dragons forum about min/maxing where I also was a member. I can enjoy a good bit of number-crunching from time to time, depending on context. Nor does that hinder or diminish my own enjoyment of this game the way I play it.

What I was trying to do was to point out that perhaps the innate assumptions that governs in-game decision making is quite different from the average player. That is not to say it's wrong by any means, it was more a nod towards the possibility that the way he's weighing his options each season have a bit more thought towards efficiency put into it. Not only towards Shneekey, because I'm quite certain he already knows this, but also to the rest of the people reading the conversation for additional context. Similarly, at the same time I want to back him up on his claims because I trust his judgement in what is possible to achieve within a certain amount of time.

It's mostly a matter of reflecting on basic assumptions as a whole, as I've seen many conversations that would do well with a bit of that. Many misunderstandings based purely on "Well this is how I did it, I can't possibly see how you'd manage that in time" (personal experience) on one end and "But, why wouldn't you obviously do it this way, it's better?" (ran the numbers) on the other. I find that if people reflect on stuff like that a bit beforehand, they keep a bit more of an open mind.

It could also very well be that I was meddling unnecessarily due to being quite tired at the time of posting and going "You know, maybe I can write something to make people think about some stuff" in my head when I should just have left it alone. I've been known to try and preemptively apprehend unnecessary confusion and arguing*, a sometimes good and sometimes bad habit I picked up from growing up around people who couldn't communicate with each other particularly well. It wouldn't be the first time.


*Arguing in the sense of it being closer to fighting than debating

 

No worries here about it. As someone who doesn't take the time to crunch the numbers, I have an appreciation that someone else around here does. If I do sometimes gently chide Shneekey for his play choices, I'm certain he has similar reservations about mine! Again, that's what I love about sandbox games-- there's no 'right' way to play them, you get to get whatever experience out of it that you like.

On this thread, I have a slight disagreement as to whether the initial cost of the bus repair should (or should not) be taken into consideration when calculating the profit/loss ratio of the first year crops. But I've never suggested that Shneekey's calculations aren't worth looking over if you're concerned about maximizing profits, and I've linked several of his past threads to new players looking for hard data on the best ways to do just that.

I do agree with your philosophy-- saying 'this is how it should be done', even by implication, tends to limit how people want to play the game. They may feel like they've fallen short if they don't make someone else's target goal by a certain time. Now, if they're the sort who enjoys a challenge game and /want/ to strive for that target goal, then that's all well and good, but no new player should come into an open-ended game thinking they're supposed to hit X by Y. (I know that's not Shneekey's intention, of course, that's just how some new players might think.)

The idea of 'this is how it should be done' is only valid when two people have /exactly/ the same goals and expectations, and even there, they might disagree on the most efficacious way of going about it. When two people have entirely different expectations about a game, then anything goes. I don't think you've started any kind of argument. Keep on bouncing!

 

Getting the bus by Fall is hard. If you're going for all the bundles done first year, it's almost impossible, since you need a Deluxe Barn and Coop by Fall if you want to get the truffles and any hope of finding a rabbit foot from your rabbits. I've just started a new file to try that challenge out, and I'm not planning to get the Bus until Winter. Quality Sprinklers are good enough to do some big crops in the field, and you don't need the iridium sprinklers for the Greenhouse until you actually unlock it, which requires a few winter foragables that might take you a couple days.
The cost of the bus tickets should be taken into account, too. And like... Jeeze man Idk. I just think "hey, if you don't unlock the bus, you can... Just afford cranberries. Why not just do cranberries?"

On top of that, I can think of several other things available at Pierre's that are almost as good as beets that have very cheap seeds. Grapes, Eggplant, and Yams are all quite decent. Eggplant especially is REALLY cheap, and is a repeat harvest crop, which is awesome. The time investment into crops that you have to re-plant is also a huge consideration. Like, if you're doing something like 300 beets, which isn't unreasonable since they're cheap, you're gonna need not only a TON of sprinklers, but you're gonna have to spend a ton of time every week or so harvesting then re-planting. That time could be spent fishing or could be extra time in the mines. I just don't think beets are worth it. If you want a bunch of cheap crops that will make you decent G/D, Eggplant are probably it. You can even go middle-ground and go for grapes instead. Grapes are insanely profitable if planted day 1 of Fall with Speed-gro. In fact, I'd highly recommend Grapes with Speed-gro. They're almost as profitable as cranberries, getting you more harvests, but less berries per harvest. They're great to have alongside your cranberries, worth an extra 10 gold as jelly, they're good as the first things going into your preserves jars, letting the cranberries build up so you can keep fueling them through winter.

Don't even get me started on pumpkins. Pumpkins are amazing. If you get a mega-pumpkin, it's super satisfying. Of course, since you don't have iridium sprinklers yet it's probably gonna cost you a good chunk of time to water a pumpkin patch if you want a mega pumpkin. I always grow at least a few pumpkins though, they're perfect for the Fall Festival, gold star pumpkins are the most valuable vegetable in the game. Pumpkins are also nice because you can use them as your second crop. Once your first harvest of cranberries comes in, you may have enough to unlock the Skull Caverns, and head down there for a bit of iridium so that you can make a 4x8 pumpkin patch that will be ready before the end of Fall. Pumpkin Juice is pretty valuable.

 

Interesting. Any thoughts on beets + mill vs. beets + jar? I've been growing beets for sugar on the assumption that the opportunity cost with pickled beets (i.e., jars not available for other veg) balances out the lower profit margin on blackberry cobbler. Haven't crunched the numbers, though.

 

Interesting. The thing about this comparison turns out depends a lot on the finicky nature of preserve jars. Mills make 150 gp per beet per day, with the ability to process as many beets as you can jam into it. It also depends a bit on how much thought you want to put into opportunity cost. This will turn into semi-flow-of-consciousness-nonsense I am certain.

Pickled beets without artisan is 250 gp, with artisan it is 350.
Processing time is 2-3 days.

A quick overview will tell us that artisan + 3 days of processing is the same as if you did three days worth of beet-milling. So the only way to make pickled beets more profitable is to manage to cut down the processing time to 2 days instead of 3. However, to do that you'd have to sleep for 20 hours* each day, maybe 21 for some margins. That is most certainly too high of an opportunity cost given it cuts away a lot of time you could be working. Before you have Artisan, sugar is for sure better.



The initial investment of setting up a Mill isn't that awful, given that you only ever need one to process any number of beets/wheat.
Hrrm... that makes me wonder... Potentially wheat should probably be used for brewing beer rather than making flour, unless you find a good recipe**.
Seed cost for 1 wheat and 1 beet is 30 gold. It also requires you to both know the recipe and be able to make it due to upgraded housing.

During summer, available kegs should be used for hops more than wheat, pale ale is better than beer. This is, if you are not already using them for fancier wine if you're at the stage where you are considering available harvesting space to be an opportunity cost. So presumably, it'd only be worth cooking for profit with sugar and flour in the Fall. Actually, beets are planted in Fall so obviously that's going to be that, derp.


Blackberry Cobbler sells for 260 and needs 2 blackberries. So let's look at what we need.
2 Blackberries.
1 Beet (that makes 3 Sugar).
1 Wheat for 1 Flour.
Investment cost of seeds: 30 gp.

Option 1:
Cobbler sells for 260 gold, you have 2 spare Sugar for another 100. Minus investment cost, that is 330 gp profit.

Option 2:
Blackberry Jelly or Wine + Mill products.
If you made jelly of it, that'd go for 125 x2 with Artisan, or possibly up to 168 in Wine depending on quality. Since Wine is only better at Gold quality or higher, let's go with the jelly. 250 gp as well as 150 for selling the sugar and 50 for wheat flour, minus 30 for investment cost. Profit of 420.

So for Blackberries, it is better only if your jars are busy processing better stuff. Which is quite possible, since foraging tends to be "extra credit" that is added onto the normal plan.


*Based on the wiki note
"Processing time calculates differently while you sleep than while you are awake. 1 hour = 60 minutes when awake but = 100 minutes when sleeping. So if you sleep a whole day, a preserves jar would record 2400 minutes (100 × 24) of processing. If you work from 6:00AM till 12:00AM and sleep 6 hours, it will process 1680 minutes a day (60 × 18 + 100 × 6). If you work from 6:00AM till 2:00AM and faint 4 hours, it will process 1600 mins a day (60 × 20 + 100 × 4)."

**The chocolate cake might entice you with its "1 egg, 1 sugar, 1 flour" and potentially that's good. Unless you have mayo machines, in which case the eggs make better mayo. Wheat makes for good bread, if your kegs are busy so you can't make beer or your jars so you can't make... pickled Wheat? Yuck, I'd rather not eat that...
Those are the only ones involving wheat and sugar that I'm seeing here https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Cooking#Profitable_Recipes


Okay, I'm getting lost in where I am going with this. Hopefully this was helpful, maybe?


+++EDIT+++

Forgot to proclaim my love of Blackberries in general and how Blackberry Cobbler would be on my "Loved Gifts" status if I was an NPC. Blackberries are great. End of edit.

Second edit:
For some reason halfway through I forgot this was about beets and not blackberries, that was the other thread. Oh well, at least the start of my nonsense was about beets.

 

Blackberry Cobbler is a failing proposition regardless. Even without processing, Iridium Blackberries (from Botanist perk) run 40g/ea, Beets run 110g/ea for normal-quality (so gross lowball figure, but the only hard number to rely on), and Wheat can be brewed into beer in the same time frame as the preserves jars processing, but parallel to them, meaning you don't have the opportunity cost, other than the initial failure to plant something actually profitable, but the beer brewed runs at 280g/ea.

Consider the Blackberry Cobbler runs at a mere 260g/ea, the ingredients are massively more profitable than the result, and so you should just sell everything independently.

As far as Beets + mill vs Beets + jar... you're looking at 150g for 3x sugar vs 350g/ea for pickled beets. Hell, the beets themselves run for 110g/ea, so you're only making an extra 40g by processing in a mill. Heck, you'd be behind the game on Gold star beets, which are actually more profitable than the sugar.

And really, you want to talk about difficult, do you expect to have a Mill, which requires 4x Cloth to build. Considering getting even one cloth for the Artisan bundle is a challenge completed typically by spamming soggy newspaper and hoping for the best, but there's no way you're getting four cloth out of that method. The only way you'd have a prayer is by going Deluxe Barn and getting multiple Sheep, which means fewer pigs or cows, either of which are better off in the long run. Bunnies won't give you wool in the quantity you need to get your mill up and running in time. That's diverting resources you need to unlock the Bus as well as getting everything else in order for your one year CC completion achievement.

 

I think part of @wronghandle 's question may also have wanted to take into account the value of the time involved-- i.e., to process beets in the mill takes only a day (or more accurately, 'until the next morning') whereas preserve jars take two or three days. In theory you could process three batches of sugar from the mill in as much time as it takes to set the jars up for one pickling. Of course, that still has to involve the cost for the mill, as you observe... and in this instance mention the cost of the bus as needing resources. Which was sort of my original point all along...

I just wanted those quotes side by side to compare how people look at what they value...

 

Shneekey, you wouldn't happen to be an accountant/banker would you? Your penchant for calculations, and the fact you actually, in normal conversation, managed to use (properly I might add) the word amortize... just wow.

 

I just do whatever but I'll balk at certain things. Like "craft everything"...I could use the worm bin but I *HATE* worms (irrational fear factor). So the thought of handling that makes me cringe IRL.

Cranberries are another. I love cranberry sauce - with turkey. I'll eat dried ones for a bit but then the taste gets too metallic. So in-game, even tho they're cute, I stopped growing cranberries once I shipped gold ones.

Everyone has their foibles and weird things that change up their game from other people's.

ps. I loooove beets.