Day 5 Coffee Bean worth it?

Hi all. I'm mostly a lurker, but I started a new game, and there's something I just can't figure out.

I am on Year 1, Spring, Day 5. around 3200 gold in my pocket. Since it's a Friday, I checked the Traveling Cart, and lo and behold, TWO Coffee Beans for sale. 1 for 1000, and the other for 2500. By catching a couple of fishes and selling them to Willy, I could probably afford both Beans.

My problem is, should I? I don't have ANY kegs to create Coffee, I won't be able to recoup the 1000 G unless I plant all the subsequent Beans (probably) from that single Coffee bush. Every 4 new bushes will have less time to grow as well. And I have the Egg Festival (Strawberry Seeds!) to think about.

In short, should I get that 1000 Coffee Bean and plant it? Maybe even the other 2500 one as well? What do you guys think?

 

I wouldn't get it yet. If you're planning on mining, you're gonna get loads of them as drops from the dust sprites. I'm in year one as well and I bought my first bean, but quickly got like 4 more from the dust sprites. All you need is one to start a plant, you'll get TONS of beans off of it as you harvest.

 

Aye, coffee beans will become a common commodity, once you get a bit deeper down the mines. I'd instead recommend that you buy a few cauliflower seeds for the money, or some upgrade of sorts.

 

You're probably past that day but:

BUY THE ONE FOR 1k!!!!

If you keep replanting what they produce you have 5 plants @ Spring 17, 9@19, 13@21, 17@23, 21@25, 41@27, 77@Summer 1st, 132@Summer 3rd.

If you stop then - i did the math quickly for you xD - you will have 4.848 coffee beans which you can make into coffee (4k beans is 1000 coffee which is 150k, a nice money return for 1k, dont you think? ^.~). It brews really really fast - 2 ingame hours to be exact - so you only need ~15-20 kegs to easily get rid of it until next spring. Keep like 150-200 beans for next year, tho!

To this day i still use coffee as filler in summer around my hops trellis circles (i plan that out in spring already) - it's a really nice filler, doesn't take any additional maintenance b/c i harvest my hops everyday anyways.

And the biggest advantage: If you harvest that many coffee beans every second day - your farming level will go up like crazy. Add that to the blueberries and hops you'll probably get in summer and you will be Farming 10 in no time.


Happy harvesting ('-')/

 

HAIL HYDRA. ('-')/

 

That'd be \('-')

But to be fair, thats the same movement a gymnast makes before starting to perform as sign for his/her readiness <.<

 

The only problem with that theory though is that you can't even make kegs until you're farming level 8. And then you have to harvest tons of oak resin to start getting a good amount of the kegs, and that can take some time as well. In the end, I don't think it'll make too much of a noticeable difference if you just wait and get the beans from the dust sprites, but then again, you could have terrible rng and not get tons of them like I did. I dunno, it all depends on if you want to take the risk I guess. There are easily a lot of other things you could use that 1000g on.

 

As i said in my above post: Farming lvl 9-10 in mid-end 1st Summer is not hard to get if you have that many re-harvestable plants. The only factor limiting you would be the oak resin. Especially for a player new to the game that's probably the biggest stepping stone as building a sap farm is something you usally don't do in the course of the game.

And let me remind you: even if you only get 10 kegs, as long as you're on your farm you can refill that 6-7 times a day, which will eat your bean supply in 12-13 days. 4k beans (and 800 coffee out of it) out of one that cost you 1000g, that's a return of 12,000% - yes you did not misread - nothing in this game is able to do that this easily.

I got my first bean at day 6 in spring b/c i really really reaaaally pushed hard after it opened on the 5th (and got very very lucky with very happy spirits and rain on the 6th) to 50. Got 2 to drop and made an easy million in the first year without going all too crazy about it. It definitly helped me getting the basics down and enough money left for 500 starfruit seeds in 2nd summer

But having 100+ coffee plants, in addition to other crops, is eating your time away in summer. It's definitly not something you should do in your first year if you don't want to be watering/spa/watering every single day

('-')/

 

You're getting waaaay more into the numbers than I ever go, so if you say it's better to buy the bean now, I'll just trust you on that. I personally wouldn't because I'm not farming that big yet, I'm in late summer and I'm still having trouble getting past level 7 farming (I think once my second harvest of melons ripens I might be able to finally push past it) so I don't even have kegs yet. I did, however, do tons of mining all spring and summer, so I was able to get several coffee beans just from the dust sprites alone, and I sorta wished I hadn't bought one from the traveling cart. That was the reason for my suggestion to the op in my first post. (It's probably worth mentioning though that I use timespeed so I'm able to spend a lot more time in the mines, thus increasing my chances of getting the dust sprites to drop the coffee beans.)

Again, it just comes down to the money factor - if you're doing enough to earn money in early game, 1000g might not be too hard to part with and buying the bean wouldn't really be a big deal, if it helps you toss out the worry that you won't find one in the mines.

 

Sorry for the late response, that'll teach me to post something just before dinner.

On the one hand, like Luthien said, I don't have access to Kegs until Farming level 8 which is a looong way off, and Coffee Beans are really only worth it when you can make em into Coffee. Getting my Beans up and running takes time and energy, and I won't see any returns on them until I get Kegs.

On the other hand, I could get terrible RNG in the Mines (also, I never seem to go very far very fast in the Mines). Getting a headstart on the amount of Beans I can plant at the start of a season, like 144 (6 fields worth of Iridium Sprinklers), instead of just 1, would make a big difference as well. And, as Magistrella said, my Farming would level like crazy with Coffee Beans.

But you know what? I'll go for it. I'll treat it as an experiment, since I've never done this before in any of my playthroughs. After 1.1, I never bothered with the Bean until Year 2.

I think I'll go with planting that first Bean on the 6th (I'll have access to Basic Fertilizer then), and on the 16th, plant the 4 harvested Beans, plant the next 4 Beans on the 18th, for a total of 9 Bushes. The first batch of 4 will have 2 harvests, and the second batch will have just one harvest. So 68 Beans on 28th of Spring. 9 Bushes are...manageable.

Thanks for the input!

 

Erm, you know they carry over to summer, right? If you keep on planting until summer you can have an easy 130-200 plants out of 1 bean if you get it on the 6th

But then, as i said, all youll do in summer is water your crops, run to the spa to regain stamina (or eat all that salmonberries you got in spring ^^"), and come back to water the rest

Don't take it lightly, i wasn't in the town in summer once outside of the rainy days.... ><

 

Personally, I'd buy the 1K bean. You may not be able to get a return any time soon, but if you harvest all those coffee beans and stick them in a chest, eventually you *will*. I mean, 1K is a pretty cheap price for a coffee bean and there is nothing wrong with spending money now and making a lot of money later. Think of it like an investment. Coffee plants will last Spring and Summer, and it's Spring 5, so you'll get a lot of coffee beans really early. Again, personally I'd buy it.

On the otherhand, you can get into the ice levels in the mines and possibly get a coffee bean for free. Possibly. And by the time you do, Summer may be over, and you'll have to wait until next year to even harvest once. All you'd really be doing by going this route is saving yourself $1000 which, honestly, isn't a lot of money.

 

I did that once, aside from one Ancient Fruit plant, I had the entire Greenhouse full of Coffee bushes. Even with Iridium Sprinklers, harvesting took a massive chunk out of every second day. And since I only had like 10 Kegs, making Coffee and working away the backlog was a neverending chore. Never again. My thought was "9 bushes, exactly the radius that you can water with a basic watering can".

I know Coffee Beans carry over into Summer, but keeping it at 9 and not planting more gives me the time and energy to plant the stuff for the Community Center Bundles. The Beans will be the extra. Maybe I'll go for 13 or 17 Bushes. What I definitely need to do is go into the mines and get Copper for Tappers. Gotta start the Oak Resin production early! I ALWAYS forget them...

 

I know how that feels xD

Except for my newest save i always forget to plant a tree farm early on in the game so i dont have to tap random trees anywhere on the farm... The forest map made it easier tho, as the bits where you dont have farmland are predestined to be used for a sap plant ^^

 

Coffee beans are a wast of time unless you want coffee to drink. 20 gold per bean and 150 for a coffee which is 5 beans in a keg after 24 hours.

 

Sorry to burst your bubble there but:

A coffee plant planted on spring first (without Speed grow) will produce 10 harvests in spring and 14 harvests in summer, a total of 24 which are 96 beans or 19,2 coffee. That is 2880 gold or 51.42g/day
With fertilizer you get one more harvest or: 100 beans which equals 20 coffee or 2920g, which is 52.14g/day.

Not a single plant can return that except if you have an army of kegs to make them into juice, wine or ale - even plain selling of speed grow fertilized ancient fruit will yield you less g/day

Youre wrong on a second point too: a normal quality bean is only 15g, if it was 20 you could just sell the gold beans to make the same money as coffee but in fact only returns 115 instead of 150.

Aaand you're wrong on a third point: Coffee is made in 2 in-game hours, i.e. you can make 6-7 loads a day, which in return means you don't need many kegs to get rid of all your beans. 10 is enough to get rid of 300-350 beans a day.


So... well - yeah, coffee isnt THAT bad actually, it made a huge load of my first mil which i reached before mid 1st winter ^.~

 

Quick question ! How many cups of coffee did you drink that you didn't sell ? But yeah I double checked the math and yup you got it right coffee is a good investment crop if you are smart enough to store it away until you get the kegs as for me as soon as I could I devoted one day to mining each week to prep for tappers for when I got them so I could get a head start on being ready for kegs. With the kegs I had and beans I had I made enough to say. "Yeah Coffee is the new profit." But also now factor in if you choose the artisan skill that extra 40% oo man...I'm to beat to do the numbers but just think it about it. 150 +40% = 210 per coffee using your numbers of 20 coffees thats about 4200
Now if we go into detail 4200 is if I read you right is just one plant from spring to the end of summer now if you add in like me who did 12 plants that's 50,400 divided by 2 for the seasons that's 25,200 for spring and summer not adding in the other crops and items sold. Alright now I've done the math ! I hope your happy ! *goes back to profiting off his 12 plants *

 

Sadly coffee doesn't get affected by the Artisan Perk, so all you'll ever get for it is 150g :/

Im keeping 10% of the coffee i make which i will use up over the course of the year. From the frequency i drink it in the Skull Cavern i'd say thats roughly 300 cups. So another 90k i didn't have to spend buying them from Gus x.x

 

Here's the thing about coffee:

1) Coffee beans are seeds. So you can exponentially grow them throughout the season.
2) Coffee beans grow in both spring and summer. If you grow them in the spring, the summer harvest is the single most profitable non-keg thing you can do (hops in kegs still kicks it to the curb). It easily out-grosses Blueberries on a per-plant basis since you get four seeds every other day.
3) Kegging coffee beans only roughly doubles your profit margin. In the first year, it is entirely profitable for you to just sell the raw coffee beans. You get 15 each, * 4 beans per harvest = 60g every other day, or 30g/d, which stomps pretty much every other crop in both spring and summer, assuming you don't have any kegs or jars yet.

On the downside:

1) 2500 is a HUGE investment in your first week, and can very easily cripple your ability to continue forward if you aren't careful. Unless you are exploiting fishing for profit, you likely won't be able to afford both this and your other staple crops.
2) The best thing to do with an early coffee bean is to plant, then as more coffee beans come in, plant them as well. This means you'll see virtually zero profit from your coffee beans in Spring, at a fairly significant cost in upkeep and maintenance in endurance. This will likely not be to your benefit in your first spring, which is when endurance is at a premium already
3) You can get them from Soot Sprites down in levels 40-79. Also found at that level is the Iron you will need for the Quality Sprinklers to keep them passively watered so they don't eat your endurance. This is a much better entry point to Coffee than your Spring 5 purchase from the vendor.

Ultimately, what you do is up to you. If you think you can afford not only the coffee bean but the upkeep and maintenance on the geometrically growing coffee bean plantation, then go for it. However, don't cripple yourself to snag it for 2500 in your first week when both cash and endurance are a very strictly limited resource.

 

The OP had a chance to purchase 2 coffee beans, one for 1000 and one for 2500. Purchasing a bean for 1000 is mighty tempting. I'd do it.