The new and improved Greenhouse setup!

This thread is rated C for 'Number Crunching', and is not intended for all audiences. This thread is likely to include large quantities of Math and calculating profits, as well as space optimization for purposes of maximizing profits, which some may find to be offensive. Viewer discretion is advised.

So, with all the changes that have happened with 1.1 and the Great Nerf, Ancient Fruit is no longer the most profitable thing that can happen in your greenhouse. In fact, it's not even the second most profitable. So, if you want to maximize your greenhouse profits, and no longer want to spend hours with your seed makers trying to get that ancient seed, or spend hours in the mines with your hoe desperately looking for that ancient seed artifact, there's viable alternatives now.

Yea, it's pretty much a shame that ancient fruit are now relegated to a 'filler' crop in your greenhouse, but them's the breaks.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the new and improved Greenhouse!

Cute, eh? Let me explain to you what is going on, and also where I messed up in this image.

Money growing on trees​

First off, the single most valuable crop to have in your greenhouse, by far, is going to be either Peach or Pomegranate trees. It produces a fruit each day. Even without kegs, that means 140g/d or 980g/week or 3,920 for the season. When brewed into Wine, however, it comes out to 420g/d or 588/d with Artisan. Which comes out to 2940g/w or 11,760g/season without Artisan, or 4,116g/w and 16,464g/season respectively with Artisan. Which, let's face it, if you're looking to optimize the Greenhouse like this, you've probably already GOT Artisan.

And there's 30 trees in total here. So, by themselves, with no other crops whatsoever, you're looking at (with Artisan, assuming you brew them) 493,920g/season. You will need 7 kegs per tree to do this (once for each day of the week), or 210 Barrels to keep up with demand.

Alternately, you can do Preserves jars, which, with Artisan, would come out to 12,936g/season/tree or 388,080 gold for the season for all 30, and only require ~ 60 jars. You lose around a hundred thousand for the season, but it also requires less infrastructure to get going. I'm sure someone can do a cost-break analysis, but that's going outside the scope of what I am trying to do here. I'm just crunching numbers and presenting them for peer review.

Ancient Fruit, by way of comparison, only goes for 550 each, per week, or a monthly income of 2,200 for the raw fruit or 2310 per wine (assuming Artisan) for monthly proceeds of 9,240 for the season. As you can see, on a per-plant basis, even peach or pomegranate preserves are more lucrative than ancient fruit wine. But they have to be spaced out, so what are we going to space them out with?

Hopping to it​

The next crop you'll see in abundance is Hops. Hops brews into Pale Ale at 420/ea with Artisan. Assuming you have the kegs to keep up with supply, that's 2940 for the week or 11,760 for the season. Again, piece-for-piece, still more profitable than Ancient Fruit. Of course, they are Trellis crops, meaning you can't walk through them, so you can't just spam them. I've got 72 Hops down in the figure shown. So, 11,760 * 72 = 846,720 per season. Combine this with the proceeds from your trees, and you get 1,340,640 gold for the season.

Let's compare this to straight Ancient Fruit. Normally, you can fit 116 ancient fruit in your greenhouse, at 9,240 for the season per each, that comes out to 1,071,840. Already, we've beaten what pure Ancient Fruit can do, and we're not even done yet!

You will notice I have a single ancient fruit still in the process of growing (and I can now absolutely confirm that speed-gro and Deluxe speed-gro DO in fact work on ancient seeds). I got it by accident when fall started and I had forgotten to buy more Hops Starters, and so was turning enough Hops into Hops Starter to get my Greenhouse going. As far as the rest, well, don't forget your 10 beets for THAT quest, but that's just temporary. While getting started, you can use Starfruit if you like. What you'll see on that right hand row, though, is Coffee. I'm trying to get enough coffee beans so that by the time Spring rolls around, I'll have a decent Spring crop to plant outside. But again, strictly temporary.

Oh yea, don't do this​

Fruit trees, when fully mature, don't care about what is around them. Unfortunately, they DO care about what is around them when initially growing. So I'm going to have to tear out about half of my hops, and carefully re-arrange a few of my sprinklers, for around a season to let all the trees fully mature, then re-plant the hops. By that time, the ancient fruit will have started producing fruit, and THAT whole thing will have started as well, meaning I can use that as my 'filler' crop for the remaining 20odd spaces.

Initial costs and support infrastructure​

So let's talk costs. Trees are expensive, yo, and Kegs aren't free either. What are we going to need to get this going, and keep it supported? Well, I'm glad you asked:

First off, 30 of either Peach or Pomegranate costs 6k/ea or a total of 180,000. Yeouch! That's going to be tight, but as you can see, entirely possible in the first year. The hops are cheaper at only 60/ea from Pierre's, which means only around 4320 gold.

Now for support. Assuming you Keg everything, you're looking at 30*7 (for the Pomegranate)+(72*2) for the Hops. So, 210 + 144 = 354 kegs in total. Plus whatever you'd want for processing your filler crop. Starfruit is processed in a 2:1 ratio, for every two starfruit, you'll need one keg, since starfruit takes two weeks to grow. Ancient Fruit is precisely a 1:1 ratio. Coffee Beans are a 1.2:1 ratio, since it takes 5 coffee beans to brew into coffee.

Compare with Ancient Fruit, which would've just needed around 116 kegs to keep up with a greenhouse full of it.

In conclusion​

Ancient Fruit is no longer Legendary. It's no longer Epic. It's no longer got that 'holy crap, awesome' moment when you find one. It's now simply 'solid, at best, but there are better options available', and a resounding 'meh'. If you find one, okay, whatever. Trees are your best option, with Hops as your secondary cash crop, and whatever else you want filling in the gaps. Since you've already beaten Ancient Fruit at this point, it doesn't much matter.

 

Weird. Didn't CA already patch the greenhouse so you couldn't plant trees on the tiles?

 

But.. But.. Walking into my greenhouse every single day is soo much work! >.<

 

In 1.0.7 he did, then in 1.1, he explicitly reversed that and permitted planting trees on tiles.

 

hmm.. Interesting. Why did he do that?

 

Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to... exploit the heck out of it

 

Well thanks for this guide, I might try it.

 

This is really awesome, thanks for the rundown.
Took me a bit longer than I'd like to admit to realize there are actualllyyy 30 trees in the picture..
thought you only had the ones on the outside for a second there.. xD

 

My guess is : he prevent the planting of tree off the farm, because it was causing bug. In comparison to entire orchard in forest, some trees in greenhouse aren't that powerful, so it was maybe a gesture to people liking growing tree.

 

Yep, there's 12 in the middle itself. In fact, if you don't have enough cash to buy all 30, I'd start with those 12, then plant around the perimeter as profits permit, because the sooner those 12 in the middle mature, the sooner you can get your Hops chiming in and getting your filler crops growing.

I'd also like to point out that this is going to be up and running significantly faster than Ancient Wine would, because you don't have to keep waiting for iterations. A month, and the trees are grown, another couple of weeks, your hops are producing. That's it. Ancient Fruit can take up to a year to get going, depending on how many ancient seeds you started with and how lucky you get with the seed maker.

It also requires roughly three times as many kegs, though. That's gonna leave a mark. However, if you use Starfruit or Ancient Fruit as your filler crop, you can go ahead and age it without too many problems, since you only have around twenty-something plants to age.

 

So wait a minute.

Pale Ale is worth more than Ancient Fruit Wine? Hard to believe after using it for so long pre-patch.

 

It is, if you're willing to harvest every day.

Do note that you can use 18/30 of those fruit trees mentioned above with pure Ancient Fruit setup as well, so by OP's math 116x Ancient Fruit wine + 18x Pomenegrate / Peach wine (w/ artisan) is 1,071,840 g / season + 296,352 g / season = 1,368,192 g / season. That seems to beat OP's trellis + tree combo and requires fewer kegs and harvest days.

 

Holy fudge. And my friends think I'm crazy for having spreadsheets to track my items and such in Harvest Moon. (No offence, of course.)

Might have to try this, though, sooner or later. I imagine setups like this actually pay off now, with the new endgame content.

 

Not quite, actually.

Here's the thing, Hops produces a pale ale per day, which comes out to 420 per day, or 2,940 per week or 11,760 for the season.
Ancient fruit produces 2310g per wine per week, or 9,240 for the season.

In no case will Ancient Fruit ever out-produce Hops on a plant-for-plant basis. It isn't the almost-twice-as-much that trees have, but it's still a better deal.

Also, only 12 are actually inside the growing area, and you are not taking into consideration the 32 'filler' spaces, which can be filled with whatever you like, including Ancient Fruit, if you so choose, making it, by definition, superior profits to plain ancient fruit.

If you just want to plant trees and ancient fruit, that's your decision. I'm not trying to tell people how to play the game, I'm just crunching numbers to show that Ancient Fruit is no longer the most optimal product to use in the greenhouse from a pure profit perspective. How much, or little, you care about such optimal conditions is entirely up to you.

When Ancient Fruit got nerfed, it got nerfed pretty harshly. Base fruit went down from 750 to 550, which meant base wine went from 2250 to 1650, and because Artisan got nerfed, your ultimate price went from 3,375 per week all the way down to 2,310/wk. So you are now losing, PER SPACE, 1,055 per WEEK by staying with Ancient Fruit.

For 116 plots, and a whole season, you're looking at 489,520g per season in lost profits.

It's time to look at alternatives.

 

ShneekeyTheLost for President.

 

I have know idea why he went back, but I'm glad he did. Especially on the "River" farm where space is extremely limited.

 

Hmm. Might be time to change from a straight winery to a brewery.... not sure if I have the motivation to add another daily harvest to my plate though, already have 400+ pots around the mine lake and town, 275 bee hives, 90 crystalriums, and 572 crops, plus the ancient fruits. Not sure I need more on my plate.

Cool advice though. Thanks for crunching the numbers man.

 

Great job with numbers! But can you please tell me, how many kegs do we need for greenhouse filles with hops and trees vs ancient fruit and trees?

 

Read the original post. It has this to say:

So, as I said earlier, you're looking at 354 kegs plus whatever you want to grow in the extra 32 spaces, versus 116 kegs for ancient fruit. Roughly a little more than double.

 

My eyes might be playing tricks on me, but I think you can get another hops tile on the very left tillable soil column

Also did some recounting and you have 73 hops, not 72

with the extra hops I mentioned, 74?