Beets, an economic alternative to Cranberries for Year 1?

I'm so so on beets in general, but I love blackberry cobbler, wheat for flour and beets for sugar, albeit not for Year 1. For me it's that I'll never brew wheat, I just always seem to have something better to put process further instead. So if I'm growing wheat or beets it is for ingredients for blackberry cobbler -- because that is quick and easy to make.

(flour and sugar come from the mill which is "drop it in and forget it until the next morning to pick it up" and then making the cobbler is just a handful of five-clicks and I'm entirely done w. it -- frankly, if not for cobbler I probably wouldn't bother picking blackberries at all, takes a lot of my day to wander over the whole valley picking blackberries)

{edit: I guess that's my long way of saying that I think Lilliput is right, there are a lot of ways to enjoy this game. Jinkies!)

 

Not to veer the thread away from beets any more than I already have, but the idea of spending the whole day wandering the valley and picking blackberries is part of what I love most about them. A brisk Autumn day in the woods going blackberrying? Sign me up. I dote on things like that when I play.

Honestly I don't think I've ever milled much flour, mainly because I seldom grow wheat except for the CC bundles. The crops you need a scythe to harvest always seemed like a lot of hassle to me.

 

Also, I'd like to point out that I'm speaking purely from a profit perspective, and that I fully expect others to have other priorities. There's absolutely nothing wrong with doing things your way, and one of the beauties of the game is that you can play it any way you want to with no real consequences.

As @Lilliput said, different strokes for different folks.

Also, I never said Beets were the optimal strategy, I simply now see them as a 'backup strategy' if I don't have the cash to buy as many Cranberries as I'd like to have come the first of fall. To this goal, Pumpkins, again speaking purely from profit perspective, has the same problem that Cranberries do... they are too expensive. If you have empty spots, you're wanting to fill that volume with something that will at least make a profit that you CAN actually afford to fill in with, and with those metrics in mind, assuming you have already unlocked the Bus one way or another, Beets are a viable strategy.

Grapes aren't a bad idea, but they're a Trellis crop, which can make harvesting problematic if you have to fill a significant size. But if you can make the spacing, they aren't bad. Eggplant isn't horrible, but not particularly profitable. Wheat might be viable if you want to brew it into beer, although it'll compete with your Hops left over from Summer's crop. Still, not a bad thing to keep your profits rolling toward the end of winter.

And no, I'm neither an accountant or a banker, although I've worked for a Stock Transfer Agency for a time. Having said that, I've always been something of a powergamer and math has always been a hobby of mine.

 

Maybe I have no vision, but I don't see it.

Basically I see the same crop space producing roughly 1 pumpkin or 2 beets in the same period of time.

beets
days 6
seed 20
base 110 - seed = 90 x 2 = 180
pickles 350 - seed = 330 x 2 = 660
sugar 50 x 3per x 2 = 300

pumpkin
days 13
seed 100
base 352 - seed = 252
pickles 966 - seed = 866

The beets require twice the effort to produce, and twice the jar time if you want pickles. You'd have to do some creative math to even have beets beating pumpkins, as I see it. That's just figuring what's possible if you get the bus mid-fall. To have any competition between beets and cranberries you've got to have the bus before fall 1, and if they can't beat pumpkins over 2 weeks, I can't imagine them beating cranberries over a whole month.

What am I missing?

 

Keep in mind the bus costs 42,500... that money could buy a cart load of cranberry seeds. If seed price is a deciding factor, getting the bus early doesn't seem economical.

EDIT: The price of the bus will buy 177 cranberry seeds, or 425 pumpkin seeds.

 

Sometimes, just for fun because it's not really the most profitable way to do things, I'll buy what I can (strawberries for instance), plant them, and then seed maker half of them to get more and jar/keg the rest. I still get profit, and I get more seeds without spending the money on them given the growing time and then jar/keg time to get the money to buy more and plant and hope to harvest in the same season. I think it only take 10 minutes (maybe 20) to get seeds from a crop. Since it doesn't matter what star level the item is that you throw in the jars/kegs, I'll use the silver and gold star produce to put in the seed maker. It seems the higher the star level, the more seeds you get from a single item.

That's how I pretty much did my ancient fruit/strawberries/starfruit. It seemed to work pretty good. Like I said, it may not be the most profitable way to do it, but it does kind of make me feel like I'm more self-sufficient. It's also what I do with my winter seeds. Any Winter Root goes into the seed maker to replant, since the aim is Crystal Fruit which makes a decent selling wine.

 

@BouncingCactus and @ShneekeyTheLost, thanks for those breakdowns. I'm in an anomalous situation - recycler gave me 3 bolts of cloth on the very same day the Traveler's Cart had wool. I figured it was my chance to see how having a mill changed my early game.

Yeah, I was trying to be brief & ended up being completely unclear. The mill processes a whole stack of beets at once, which suggests leaning into it is about time. I've been approaching sugar/cobbler as a way to moderately increase the value of my beets while continuing to put more valuable crops in my jars. It doesn't feel very satisfying though, and I'm starting to wonder if leveraging the mill is even possible.

Anyway, I didn't mean to hijack the beet discussion.

 

Here's the thing. As I have said, it's not that beets are especially profitable, it is that beets are profitable enough and dirt cheap, assuming the bus is already up and running. For every pumpkin, I could be planting *five* beets.

Beets are already a backup scenario because you don't have the money. And they only cost 20g/ea. If you could afford pumpkins, then just get more Cranberries and make more money than either. Beets are there as an option to fill otherwise empty space that has already been cleared and tilled so you can get at least *some* profit out of it instead of wasting the space.

Pumpkins are in that awkward place, too expensive to not spam, but not as profitable as Cranberries, which is why I never bother with them.

 

Sure, if the bus is already unlocked, plant beets. BUT, if you're unlocking the bus just to get cheap beet seeds you're better off just planting eggplant. Unless you're planting more than 713 beets the difference won't pay for unlocking the bus.

beets 13.33 g/d
eggplant 11.20 g/d

2.13 g/d
x 28 days
---------
59.54 g/month

42,500 / 59.54 = ~713

We all play the game differently. I'm not planting that many plants, and for me the 42,500 could be better spent early on.

 

For the new player in this situation (without money to plant a proper cash crop) know that not all crops need to be planted on the first day of the season. For example, you have until the 15th to plant pumpkins. If you want two harvests you have until the 10th if you use deluxe speed grow (since the bus is unlocked in this scenario).

Forty-five pumpkin seeds cost 4,500g and your preserved pumpkins will net 38,970g. That's a lot of gold for the small initial cash outlay and minimal work and preserves jars needed. It's worth it to take a couple of days to level your skills, socialize, do some quests and earn seed money while you're at it.

Minimize the work, maximize your return.

A couple rules of thumb (for the new player who might be reading, not anyone in this thread):
If you're processing crops in kegs or preserve jars you generally want to use low yield, high value crops like pumpkins. If you're selling your crops outright then that's where high yield, low value crops that earn high gold per day (like cranberries) really shine. Be sure to use fertilizer and eat +farming food on the day you harvest to maximize the number of gold star crops you get.

Also, I highly recommend this spreadsheet by eienshi09 that has all of the information you need to figure out what and when to plant: Crop Calendar

 

I dislike Beets, I'm a Pumpkin guy when I play. It makes sense to me to harvest three times instead of five with Cranberries, (60% effort, harvest while holding Pumpkin Seeds to replant at the same time) and process three times instead of ten times with Cranberries (30% effort) for ~90% of the total profit if both are kegged or ~97% if both are preserved. (Averaged with and without Artisan.) Pumpkin tangent aside, I do not know how many plants the typical person plants since huge, sprawling farms are highly enjoyable to me. However, I think it is reasonable to have 4 Quality Sprinklers by Fall if you have no desire to water and, even if you want to water with the Watering Can, 32 crops is not unreasonable. The initial outlay for 32 Beet Seeds and 32 Deluxe Speed-Gros from Oasis is 3,200g, which also seems reasonable, to me. Total costs in Fall for Beet Seeds and fertilizer is 6,400g for these 32 crops, yielding 198 Beets. These Beets, if thrown in the Preserves Jars without Artisan, have a net profit of 41,600g: throw in one more Beet plot to make up the cost of the Bus. Assuming the Beets are harvested on Fall 6 and placed in Preserves Jars the same day, there is time for nine or ten processings before any Winter Seeds would be harvested, (dependent on Deluxe Speed-Gro) meaning 20-22 Preserves Jars will pickle all of your Beets in that time. Anything extra is gravy. Gold per day difference between preserved Beet and Eggplant in this scenario is 16.79 or 470g per month per plot. This is 91 plots, which is small for me but, I'm sure, is large for others.

It seems unfair to place the amortization of a purchase on one season: doing this makes any animal housing or player house upgrade unsupportable. Unlocking the Bus also provides access to the Skull Cavern, new fish, and meeting new NPCs. How much is that worth? I would think this thread would benefit from a more explicit set of basic assumptions like if the player completely broke the bank to buy the Bus, how many plots the player is willing to water, goals for the playthough, etc. I often disagree with Shneekey but, like he said, Beets aren't terrible. For me, I would not plant them because I would not want to deal with six harvests and the extra processing.

Edit: because I can't math good and want to learn how to do other stuff good too.

 

@Shoukry I like Pumpkins too. I respect the point about placing the whole cost of the bus on the crops from one season. For me it isn't really about the cost, but when the cost is incurred. Even if the beets did pay for the bus, it doesn't recoup time lost if I have to put off building expenditures. I agree, beets aren't terrible, and they are better than eggplant.

I plan for 16 quality sprinklers at the start of summer. I usually don't have all of them, but I layout my planting such that I can just drop them into place as I get them, and shoot to expand that to 25 for fall. The cost of planting that split between pumpkin and cranberries has never been an issue for me. Usually, year one, I focus on decent fertilizer and just sell crops. For me speed grow and a wall of jars is a year two project.

I'm going to wargame this and see what I can do differently to get the bus earlier, but I can't let my barn/coop upgrades suffer.