Things you wish you knew as a new player...

Get into the mines early to start mining ore, but don't do too much each day.

Don't turn all of your ore into bars, there are later uses for raw ore (I have hundreds of copper, iron and gold bars but had to go mining just for the raw ore to build bombs).

Linked to point one, get into a good daily rhythm and be ready to switch to a 'rainy day' routine to take advantage of not having to water your crops and better fishing/mining yields.

Prioritise and don't do too much too soon - things like animals and crafting are not essential and certainly shouldn't take valuable early time/energy away from farming crops.

Learn routines of NPCs and merchants, as well as gifts that NPCs love - a loved gift on a birthday is worth the same friendship points as talking for 32 consecutive days so you can build relationships without constantly having to hunt people down to talk to them.

 

After the first upgrade of your house you get a kitchen. Back in a days I didn't knew that there's a refrigerator which could be used as a storage box. More of that, the things you put in is considered as ready for the cooking, so you don't really need to have them in backpack to cook.

 

Do NOT put rare or valuable fish in the fridge. There are a few cooking recipes that use "Any fish", and they pick a random one from your bag or fridge.

 

Like really early game when you don't have much of any income (before you've gotten any sprinklers on your farm), I found that chopping wood is great for making money to buy your first seeds. You can sell all the Wood and Sap to earn about 300 gold a day with the energy and tools you have at that point. It's something you can do everyday while your first crops are growing, aside from heading down the mines.

Also, you need to clear all the trees on your farm anyways in the beginning so you're doing something productive while earning money.

 

That's the great thing about this game: There are dozens of different ways to approach your farm, and they're all valid.

I would never do this. I clear as little of my farm as possible, about 1/6 to 1/4, in the area around the house and cave, and allow the trees and grass to grow wild.

When I've got some silos built, I start harvesting grass for hay, and to allow even more trees to grow in.

If I need wood, I'll cut a few trees, just enough for whatever I need. Once I've got my Lumberjack profession, I'll start harvesting trees. This lets me get extra hardwood, which is difficult to obtain quickly, since there's only 12 guaranteed pieces per day after clearing the stumps and logs on the farm.

In the early parts of the game, I'll take my fishing pole up to the Mountain Lake and catch carp until I'm out of energy. I might even eat a couple fish for energy to continue, if I have time left. You can make just as much and probably more than you would selling the wood. And you'll need that wood later.

But as I said above, neither way is inherently better. Whichever best suits your priorities is the best choice.

 

• One of the first craft recipes you get is being able to turn sap into fertilizer. Save your sap for this. It's low-grade first-tier fertilizer, but it's great until you can afford the higher-tier stuff. And with all the trees on your farm, basically free.
• There's an early quest to get animals. Don't. They're a money and time sink - time you need to set up and water your crops, make friends, work on fishing, mine, etc. Money you'll need to upgrade your pack and your house. Wait until the second year to get a coop and a barn. Maybe, if you have the spare cash and resources, buy a silo or two in your first year so you can stockpile hay.
• Get the house upgrade early (summer at the latest), as it provides a refrigerator (free storage) and somewhere to cook. Cooking results in dishes that are better at recovering energy and health than any raw ingredient.
• Everyone likes pizza. If you don't know what to give someone as a gift (for their birthday or un-birthday), you can buy one from Gus at the pub. Later, you can learn to make one yourself - save your tomatoes!
• Quality levels only matter for selling and eating. Gold and silver-level items lose their quality modifiers when they're cooked, brewed, or preserved. I highly recommend selling them off and using the base-quality items for recipes.
• Don't worry about strawberries your first year. You probably don't have much cash for the seeds anyway. If you do manage to buy any, save them for next year, when you can plant them on Spring 1 and take advantage of the full harvest.
• Use your hoe in the mines to sift through the dirt patches. It takes a lot of energy, and you'll go slower in the mines for it, but it will reward you with a lot of clay and cave carrots.

 

You can actually leave a housing upgrade till you actually get dem recipes, and ones you can actually have ingredients for. Till then kitchen is just an expensive decoration.

And Strawberries, buy it and plant it at Y1. You still going to get two harvests from them, and you should be able to get a seed maker in the first year, so if you save your first / second harvest and turn it to seeds later, and only sell other harvest, you will both get seeds to plant at Y2Sp1 and avoid locking a portion of your money down for a whole year.
Besides, if you go parsnip to potato for your first and second planting, you'll have a nice little sum ready a couple of days before the festival.

 

One other thing I've found that I haven't seen mentioned here yet...

Pretty early on Demetrius mentions he's found some new exciting discovery and wants to use the cave in your farm. He says he can either do mushrooms or fruit bats, your choice. The fruit bats will give you fruit out of season, but the mushrooms are a better choice financially. You will get 6 mushrooms of various types every few days if you go with the mushrooms. Either I've got lazy bats or the bats just drop fruit fairly rarely - certainly much less than the mushrooms. If you like the fruit bats, there's nothing wrong with it, just know that the mushrooms are more profitable.

 

As far as I can tell, the main differences between the two are these:

Mushrooms - You get more, faster (guaranteed 6 every 2 days). Does NOT count as forage.

Fruit - Get random amounts, generally only a handful a week. Counts as forage.

Personally, I always go fruit since A - the bundles that require mushrooms are much easier to get early than the fruit ones, B - I constantly forget to check things, so having it slowly accrue items rather than just a set amount that you have to gather is better for me, and C - I always go gatherer/botanist, and those bonuses only apply to the fruit, not the mushrooms.

Neither are going to provide you with much in the way of money, though, so the main reason is that it makes completing bundles easier with fruit.

 

A handful a WEEK? Damn, I must have lazy bats then, I've only gotten two total over the course of about 30 days...

It's also possible that the fruit-drop is based on RNG, I'm not sure. However, the bats dropped so few fruit that I thought it wasn't worth it and restarted.

*ponders getting Abigail over her fear of bats and then having her lecturing the fruit bats to not be so damn lazy*

That's one other thing, don't be afraid to start over. There are things that you won't know the first time around and think *yeesh I should have kept this/not done that* and when you start over, you remember *OK, Jodi wants a cauliflower, so I need to save one...* and such.

 

Handful is like 2-4. I check really sporadically (another big reason I prefer the fruit to the mushrooms), so take what I say with a grain of salt. The most concrete answer I could probably give on this one is that on the two playthroughs I've chosen fruit at the end of the first spring, I've managed to get the artisan pantry bundle in the first week or so of fall. That's 4 random fruit tree fruit (with one jelly and one honey is how I generally complete the bundle) over the course of 4-6 weeks, and the fruit tree fruit spawn more rarely in the cave compared to forage stuff.

 

Parsnip is great until you've filled out your desired level of plots. It also let's you skyrocket your farming level.
Potato will be the king for the rest of the season. You can hit 25k for the cave in the first season with 100 plots, and some others for the bundles and spring seeds for gifting.

Plants from Spring seeds count as foraging, so you don't need to use fertilizer to get silver and gold quality.

Combat and mining in the cave when you have good luck. Makes descending and getting ores much more easier.

 

-You don't need to learn how to build a trestle to plant the crop. It just means you can't walk through the plant.

- You can't demolish the ruined building.

- Haley hates veggies.

 

a some less widely publicized tips:

• selling via the box will get you the same money as selling to the shops. box takes most things, shops only take related things. but shops get you money immediately.
  
• pierre is closed on wed. sometimes it might be better to not harvest crops on wed so you dont have to re-hoe and re-fertilize the area when you finally get the seeds on thurs.
  
• check the wallpaper and flooring selection at pierre's every day. check jojamart on tuesday because pierre is closed on wed. wallpapers dont repeat till 2 years later. flooring, 1 year.
• tap the wild trees if you need space on your farm.
• you can plant fruit trees where wild trees grow. just cut down the tree before planting your fruit tree on its spot. check to make sure the surrounding spaces are clear of bushes.
  
• different fishing spots(even along the same body of water) will give you different qualities of fish. some will always give you normal fish, some can always give you gold if you have a high enough level.
  
• 99 stone gets you a staircase. aside from its obvious use, it also puts u next to the ladder out of the mine once you go down it. good for escapes if you find yourself in a pinch.
• sunday recipes have a fixed order that is 2 yrs long. wednesday recipes choose from all the recipes that have already been passed in your game. good if you miss a few early on, but if you miss the 2nd last sunday, good luck getting that on wed.
• you can put things like furnaces and kegs in barns and coops.
• leave a 2x5 space near your door for the stables.
• if you have a sprinkler/scarecrow on a flooring tile, axe will remove both. pickaxe will not remove the flooring till you hit it a second time.
• the horse (when you get it) is not slowed by crops, but has trouble fitting into 1 sq wide spaces vertically. It will always fit into fence gates so dont worry about that.
• if a crop grows on a trellis, you will not be able to walk over it.
• the gypsy can sometimes sell iridium sprinklers. even during the first spring. they can cost up to 7k tho....
• tools take 2 nights to upgrade. if the tv says its raining tomorrow, take the chance to upgrade ur watering can. it will be ready the day after the rain, just in time to water your plants again.
• fetch quests and birthdays count as gifts, but can exceed the 2 gifts a week limit. give your normal gifts early so these can be an extra gift that week.
• you can shake wild trees for a chance at seeds. its free.
• you can also dig in trashcans. but you loose rep with NPCs within 10 sq.
• crabs and crayfish from crabpots count as fish for recipes.
• a jojamart membership will destroy the town hall, but offer the same unlocks for money instead. you monster.
  
• You do not get the achievements if you switch to a jojamart membership after already having unlocked things with bundles.
• fertilizer can sometimes not be worth the cost. But it definitely FEELS worth the cost. You're playing a game to enjoy yourself right?
• crops die when the season changes. but leaving a cheap crop unharvested (even just the seeds) will save you the trouble(and evergy) of having to re-hoe ur field.
• achievements unlock hats at the mouse shop.

 

"pierre is closed on wed. sometimes it might be better to not harvest crops on wed so you dont have to re-hoe and re-fertilize the area when you finally get the seeds on thurs."

When Pierre is closed, it's OK to shop at Jojo Mart. It's his fault he isn't open anyway. Also... and this might save you some time... when you have enough cash, just build a chest, call it your seed dispenser. Buy seeds in bulk and store them in the chest. When it's time to rotate the crop, just use your seeds in the chest.

 

Screw that/ I am not going to Joja Mart- I'll just prebuy my seeds.

 

The experience table from this thread

 

Here is another one There is only one Developer of this game as of yet

 

"shop at jojamart on wed"

they do charge slightly higher prices though. so its your call.

 

When you begin, Get ASAP 300 Woods to fix the bridge on the beach, you'll gain access to the Coral reef and they give you a good extra money in the beginning, go there everyday to pick up loots, speacially in rainy days!

Hope I helped a little!