Stardew Valley - Take Two.

Run-throughs 1-3 were all abandoned in year 1 as I figured out how best to approach the game.

#4 was serious, although it got drastically helped by fishing up a Neptune's Glaive on day 3. This allowed me to hammer through the early mine levels much faster. That game was my "achievements" game, and I finally got the last one (Museum collection) in Spring of Year 5 after spending three entire years trying to get the bone flute. That game currently has 45 million in cash after I spent year 4 farming nothing but ancient fruit and putting 300 of them into kegs every week.

#5 was the Joja route. A lot of fishing in Spring and a lot of blueberries in Summer. Raised the $135K before the end of summer and it was all over. (Never doing that again).

#6 has been the most interesting - this is my "1 year, 1 million" game. Currently at Summer 26 and have 280K total earnings. I currently have 35 preserve jars and am growing that every week. I have 15 oak resins already and should have the kegs blueprint soon. (Have been stockpiling wheat to make beer). I've had no special luck this time, but I've clearly improved my skills as I hit the bottom of the mine by Summer 18. (The secret to that is upgrade your axe to steel ASAP, carry lots of field snacks and always have enough stone to build a ladder in case time is running out and you only need one more floor for a lift level.)

 

First playthrough I stopped in year 3 spring for several reasons. I wanted the chance to marry Elliott as well as Harvey, I wanted to fix the mistakes I made when I was trying to figure out how to play the game, and I wanted to see if I could get a perfect rating from Grandpa at the year two mark.

I'm in year six right now and still playing it. I pleased Grandpa, and ended up making character two the one who was going to get all the Steam achievements possible. I'm not planning on stopping that playthrough anytime soon as the yellow strange doll is outstanding from the museum and she is one million off the ten million achievement.

I plan to start a new save when update 1.1 comes out. This one I'm going to do a few things differently from my second save: less animals, a smaller orchard, only one slime hutch and a fence full of slimes outside. But I'm still going to marry Elliott because it turns out he was the most hilarious and awesome husband.

And I'm not doing any save in which I go to Joja route. Screw you, Joja Member of the Year Achievement.

 

My first playthrough was a bumpy ride in year 1, but realized how lucrative mining over farming was in early game so I went for that. Until I could afford seeds and farming equipment, I switched over to sprinkler spam farming and kept on doing other skill related things, except fishing until year 2. Just barely managed to meet all the requirements for completion but it didn't feel right, as I felt that farming was so utterly profitable that I didn't have to do anything else, especially if i decided to switch over to the jojamart questline. Got lucky, got kinda cheap by re-entering mine floors to find resources faster and easier. So yeah a take two is a great idea, because farming is a career in itself, weather you chose it or not, makes a huge difference in profit and playstyle.

Since there is a special skill for Syrup for some odd reason, my second playthrough is specializing in Maple Syrup! My daily routine is pretty much:
- Check Tappers for Syrup
- Secret woods
- Chop Trees down South/Farm
- Plant Trees
- Mine for Copper
- Make Tappers
I'll probably stop mining in year 2, upgrade house, marry, haven't got that far yet.

 

Good for you, it's challenging to come up with new goals to keep yourself occupied once main quests are over. I had a couple test runs, 1 or 2 "completes" and am only now going for every achievement, optimal farm layout, etc. on my current run.

Edit: steam says I've logged 533 hours. Am I MLG yet? Lol.