What skill perks do you take and why?

Okay, so not all skills are created equal, some are clearly more powerful while some are only more powerful for specific play styles. So, my question to everyone: What perks do you take and why?

Here's what I took:

Farming: Tiller/Artisan. Because 40% bonus to everything I sell sounds like a really good idea. Anything processed gets this bonus, so everything from Wine to Mayo.

Mining: Miner/Prospector. I go big for industrial processing, so I need the extra ores and coal to fuel my infrastructure. Kegs are a copper and an iron bar each, and Jars are eight coal each.

Foraging: Gatherer/Botanist. Does anyone really do anything else? Okay, maybe tracker, I guess, but other than that, there's really no other viable option here.

Fishing: Depends. If I'm wanting to do a 'serious' play through? Fisher/Pirate, for the extra artifacts. If I'm being more casual? Trapper/Luremaster. Passive collection every day. Trash items are actually quite valuable when recycled.

Combat: Fighter/Brute. Your opponents cannot hurt you when they are dead. Getting them dead faster gives them less chance to hurt you. The crit line seems useless IMO.

 

Oh, good discussion topic. My choices are most often made for convenience rather than profit.

Farming: Tiller/Artisan (I used to always pick Rancher and either Coopmaster or Shepherd but then I realized those really only benefit you until the animals are at full hearts) - since I make a lot of artisan goods, might as well go with the matching perk.
Mining: Geologist/Excavator. I like to collect gemstones so these help me get more gems and geodes. Finding shinies keeps mining interesting for me.
Foraging: Gatherer/Tracker. It's ALL about those yellow arrows. lol I hate having to walk the whole map looking for stuff, I'd rather just be told where it is.
Fishing: Trapper/Mariner: Because I like not getting junk in my pots.
Combat: Fighter/Brute: I just like to hit harder. ;D (Your reasons were good too though, better to take them out fast and be done with it.)

 

All profit. I'm a profit monkey at heart.

 

I take the same perks except fishing. You see...well...I really dislike fishing. If I ever happen to get to level 5 (it occured twice so far) I take the fisher perk.
In the past I thought that one extra chunk of ore or coal isn't that much and gems are good to sell. Now I know that gems are best put into a crystallarium and the extra chunks of ressources really help reducing the time spent grinding the mine.

 

Farming: Tiller/Artisan (I focus mostly on farming, also 10% less time in crops is useless for me because it takes too much extra calculation...)
Mining: Geologist/Excavator (for more variety)
Foraging: Gatherer/Botanist (both level 10 gatherer buffs are worth it imo, so I just choose alternatively between trades. This play through I picked botanist)
Fishing: Trapper/Mariner (I mean my map is riverlands, so Trapper was extremely helpful. Also, I picked mariner because my fish in pots mostly goes toward recipes.)
Combat: Scout/Desperado (no reason why, just cuz lol)

 

Tiller/Artisan: Well, the money is an obvious perk, but I don't base my decisions on pure profit. In this case it's the clear winner from a Role Play perspective, because it means my products are of high quality, reflecting the growth of my skills in creating wines, etc. That's a character development advantage to me.

Geologist/Gemologist: Another Role Play choice for me; Lillian is supposed to be a geologist by avocation. I gave excavator a try once and the flood of extra geodes drove me up a wall, down the other side, and up a neighboring wall to the delight of many local children. If you could process them yourself it might not be so bad, but hauling /stacks/ of them to Clint, putting them up for cracking, running out of inventory room and having to put stuff in chests, rinse, repeat... ugh. No, thanks. Excavator was so frustrating to me that it became my one and only case of saved-game editing to get rid of that skill. I'll take the cash bonus on gems and be done with it.

Gatherer/Botanist: Yup, another RP choice, the idea of Lillian learning to hunt for wild mushrooms and know all the local plants is irresistible to me. Tracker is /tempting/ but the fact that Botanist is really an inventory space-saver (Everything you pick up is the same quality and stacks? Yes, please.) makes it the clear winner for my sanity.

Fisher/Pirate: Has been my usual go-to, but lately I've been itching to give the crab-pots a whirl. Given I'm only mildly interested in the fishing side of the game, I don't really have any strong opinions on this one way or another.

Scout/Acrobat: The special moves are underwhelming but /so easily triggered/. I'm saluting with my sword at least fifteen times an hour, sometimes. Aside from that, the sword blocking defense really can be rather fun to play with, you feel like you're dueling your enemies. Also, from a RP perspective I am not inclined to be a brute. I prefer finesse to blunt force.

 

These are my go to perks:

Farming: Tiller/Artisan, because money, money, money
Mining: Geologist/Excavator, because I love geodes
Foraging: Gatherer/Tracker, to find the worm spots easier and thus increase my chances of finding artifacts
Fishing: Fisher/Pirate. This one's a tough choice because it's between loot (fisher/pirate) and money (fisher/angler) but I usually end up going with loot
Combat: Fighter/Brute, to increase the damage I do to monsters

 

Farming: Tiller/Artisan, because who doesn't
Mining: Miner/Prospector, because it feels like I always need more metal
Foraging: Gatherer/Botanist, it's good for inventory space, gifts, and like most people I would never sell wood/syrup so the other path is pretty useless
Fishing: Fisher/pirate, fishing money is irrelevant to me by the time i get to lv 10, and chests are just really fun.
Combat: Fighter/Brute, since healing is so easy and i don't trust my luck with crits

 

I actually am wholeheartedly against fishing irl, I just fish in-game for the sake of leveling up. Fishing is against my morals, so I hope something is made whether a mod or dlc where fishing is removed from the game and replaced with something along the lines of beach foraging, where you could collect sea glass and sea shells or something?

Along those lines, I hope more content is added to farming so I wouldn't need animals on my farm. Dairy and egg farming is against my morals as well irl, but I don't mind as much since the animal farming is portrayed as ethical ingame.

Of course, this is all a game so it really doesn't matter, but I would choose to be vegan ingame as well if there was more of an option.

edit: whoops, I just realized my farm is on the riverlands map, does that make my claim any less valid?

 

I picked different ones for different saves. I went with whatever made sense for the character.

 

On my main save:
Farming: Tiller/Agriculturalist - wish I had gone with Artisan, considering how my farm ended up
Mining: Geologist/Excavator - because cracking those geodes is just too satisfying to me
Foraging: Gatherer/Tracker - I sort of wish I hadn't picked Tracker, but at least it helps with the museum collection
Fishing: Fisher/Angler - cash money
Combat: Fighter/Defender - health loss scared me a lot early on

I've mainly stuck with these on my truffle farm, but definitely went with Botanist rather than Tracker. Inventory management would be reason enough for me.

 

I made different setups over the times and with many different farms. It may vary depending on your play style / interests in game.
I believe there's much more than one way of playing and people should try different build, especially since with multiplayer options opened some new farming avenues.

Farming
Tiller / Artisan. Making jellies, juices, wines, beers, cheeses is simply the most profitable way of making money, period. It's also the best way of experiencing a well rounded culture of about everything game-wise.
Tiller / Agriculturist. That where I believe multiplayer takes it's real place, by having an agriculturist managing the planting, another artisan can reap the goods "a bit" much faster for some seasons, that bring in sometimes 1 more reap per season in the case of ancient fruits (if you plant them outside). Solo, I wouldn't suggest it, but multiplayer opened the option for some.
Rancher / Coopmaster. Now I never tried that one. To optimize it, you have to know how the heart-mechanic works on animal (at what time to sleep in summer/winter in order to keep them happy for instance), but I can say it's viable considering a simple coop can host 12 animals. I suspect it's a very active way of playing it but could be hell of a fun, imagine a few duck feathers and rabbit's foots popping then and then, using hen and duck eggs for mayonnaise and selling it them, you have very stable revenues. Not only that, but iridium quality wool from rabbits is one of the very few items that exceed it's derived artisan product (cloth) final sale price (816g for wool VS 658g for cloth, even with artisan).
If you like farming the wool, having a sheep farm with Shepherd will allow you to shave your sheeps every day (rabbits shed theirs every 4 days).

Mining
Geologist / Gemologist, If you don't like to go spelunking. Make a shack full of crystalariums with diamonds and just reap the benefits every 5 days.
Miner / Blacksmith, If you like to go spelunking now, like to go in Skull cavern, go deep, then fast bomb farm those iridium nodes to make easy money selling the iridium bars, it's another more active way to go.
Instead of going Prospector, since coal can be a hard resource to come by, I suggest making that achievement where you have to kill 500 dust sprites (which have a high coal drop rate) and get the burglar's ring from Gil (it double the drops, sometime up to 2 coals by sprites). You can even manage to run a black slime hutch farm (which have 100% coal drop rate) with this ring to farm coal much faster.

Foraging
Forester / Tapper. If you like passive incomes from trees and not having to worry having crops rotation constantly, this is a very zen way to go. All production is constant all year round and unaffected by winter and is great with an orchard type farm.
Gatherer/ X or Y . Gatherer is great for foraged items, especially truffles from pigs, and affect even those planted wild seeds during winter, it is by far, the most useful skill of the whole tree. Sad part, most foraged items are always more profitable as transformed artisan good, and since the transformation process ignore the quality of the items (whines, juices, jellies and pickles), there's no need to use Botanist. Botanist also doesn't affect crops not taken from ground, so nothing good coming from the mushroom trees or mushroom cave. As strong as this appears, it is very poorly optimized end-game as most valuable stuff is mostly grown/farmed and it's only use is that all foraged items will take only 1 stack of your inventory (considering you don't mix them with mushrooms picked somewhere else...). Tracker is also a very poor choice, but with a horse it ensure you don't waste too much time looking for artifacts. Imo, there's no good skill to pick from as specialization, pick Gatherer for truffle farms and other depending on your situation.

Fishing
Fisher / Pirate. To get those water exclusive artifacts.
Fisher / Angler. If you're reaaaaaaally the fishing type and living out of it. I like to farm lava eel with this. It has the difficulty of a legendary fish, but you can farm it over and over and is quite valuable (1500g with Angler).
Trapper / Mariner. My favorite way of passive income. Just use your daily baits form 2-3 worm bins and put these 100% great loot crab pots right next to the pond in your farm for foods like sashimi or Fish Stew (the latest gives the best fishing food buff in-game).
Luremaster can easily be compensated by a few worm bins.

Combat
There's no reason to not go Fighter / Brute, plain and simple. End your fights the earliest possible and relying on critical hit "chances" is not an option.

 

Farming: Tiller/Artisan. Because artisan. Money. Enough said.
Mining: Geologist/Gemologist, mostly by elimination. People recently found out that Prospector is actually mostly useless, as it only affects rocks outside the mines, so basically you're only getting the extra coal from rocks in the quarry or any debris you haven't cleared yet. It goes from a 3.5% chance to a 7% chance of a coal drop from those rocks. Honestly, how often are you even breaking any rocks outside the mines?
Blacksmith could be useful if I were in the habit of selling iridium bars, which I'm not, I tend to be a bit of a hoarder in game. I can imagine it being good passive money from just selling the bars from the Statue of Perfection, though. Excavator is just a pain, I'm not a fan of spending tons of time opening geodes.
Foraging: Gatherer/Botanist. The Forester skill tree is pretty much useless to me since I never sell wood or syrups, and hardwood can be easily gotten from the secret woods. Tracker could be nice if I were going for museum completion, but I'd rather have the inventory space from Botanist. Also, iridium truffles are nice.
Fishing: Fisher/Angler changing to Fisher/Pirate late game. I like fishing and usually get that skill up early, so the extra money is nice. Once money stops being an issue I switch to Pirate, partly for the loot and partly just because I find catching treasure chests fun.
Combat: Fighter/Brute for the same reasons as everyone else. The critical hit chances are tiny either way and killing things fast is good. One note that the club has a fun exploit where, if you use the special attack and then immediately mash left click and/or 'c', you get a powerful multihit attack. This does have extra knockback, but if you can pin the enemies against a wall or something you can kill them super quickly. I could see this being a reason to pick Scout/Acrobat, maybe, but by the time I get to level 10 combat I'm almost certainly using the galaxy sword or at least the obsidian edge instead, so it doesn't matter.

 

Tiller/Artisan: 'cause it's best.
Gatherer/Botanist: 'cause purple stars make me feel good.
Fisher/Angler: 'cause money.
Miner/Blacksmith: Miner, 'cause I want the extra ore early on for sprinklers and Blacksmith 'cause I have dreams of having enough iridium bars to sell, some day.
Fighter/Defender: 'cause those are what I need the most help with.

 

Tiller/Agriculturist - make the most of the increased crop growth rates from Agriculturist, then use the statue in the sewers to switch to Artisan on Winter 26. I then sell everything on Winter 27 to claim the bonus 40%, and on Winter 28 I switch back to Agriculturist again to take advantage of faster growth from Spring 1, Year 2. It only costs 20k for the two switches, a drop in the ocean compared to the extra profit. Rancher branch is just lol

Gatherer/Botanist - the Forester branch is totally worthless, seriously doubt anyone sells either wood or tapped products, and the extra hardwood from Lumberjack is almost non-existent. OTOH, double forage plus iridium is hugely rewarding. Gatherer/Tracker is a good option for museum completion, and unless you're doing a themed pig farm or forage seeds farm, it might be worth switching to after the early part of the game.

Fisher/Angler - money, money, money. I've done themed farms where the crabpot options made more sense, cooking themed ones in particular, where you not only want to get the crabpot items but also need to keep the fish anyway, but generally fish are for selling for cash flow in the first week or so.

Miner/Blacksmith - as has already been mentioned, Prospector doesn't work in the mines, so it's basically useless. OTOH, iridium bars can be sold for heaps of money to provide a good source of income for everything else, and 50% bonus is an extra 500g for every single bar. Gems aren't common enough for getting 50% extra gems to generate meaningful income, so the Geologist branch is basically dead.

Fighter/Defender - extra HP and extra damage dealt is just so far ahead here. Scout is basically useless, because 50% extra on almost nothing is still almost nothing.

 

Is that legal???
Is that for speed running star fruit? I had never looked at the numbers on that. DSG + Agriculturist will produce starfruit in 7 days, which isn't enough time for 4 harvests, but it's enough for 3 harvests, after buying DSG on Summer 4 'cause Pam flakes off on Spring 26?
I'm curious where else that 10% might shoehorn in an extra money crop?

 

I never will have organization to do this

I believe that it's better to focus on one playstyle rather than try to do all at once, so:

For Tiller: Artisan
For Rancher: Shepherd, because I dislike to sell my animals for Coopmaster and the lack of auto-grabber for chickens is a instant NO for me.

Mining: Miner and Prospector, after you're done with iridium upgrades change to Geologist/Gemologist for the museum completion.
Foraging: Gatherer/Botanist, because Botanist is to powerful, I can make a argument for Tracker, for museum completion.
Fishing: Fisher/Pirate, for museum completion, unless you're a pure fisherman then get Angler, take care of the crab pots is a job that get boring for me very fast.
Combat: Fighter/Defender, you don't get in fights in skull cavern for justify the other jobs, not to mention that Acrobat and Desperado require specific rings other than Iridium bands.

 

Only on Fridays and Sundays

Yes, it's mainly for speed running starfruit. They actually take 8 days with DSG + Agri., not 7, and 9 days without Agri., so no, there isn't an extra harvest on starfruit grown outside. But it does give you a bit more leeway on planting them.

But if you get the greenhouse up and running quickly, and you keep that filled that with starfruit too, and use DSG, it will get you another harvest before the end of the year, for an extra 300k+ profit

And having Agriculturist will also greatly boost the winter seeds, as they are cut from 7 days to 6. Paired with Gatherer/Botanist, a full field of winter seeds can bring in a million even without processing the crystal fruit.

IDK if you realise, but Prospector is quite literally worthless, because it actually doesn't work. As in, it's bugged. It only applies to stones broken outside the mines.

 

I didn't knew that, but for raising the farm I still would go for Miner, as soon that you get more ores and iridium ores the better, the mining skills aren't very appealing after the increase in difficulty of the skull cavern, make crystalariums isn't worth the trouble anymore and CA should have considered this when he ramped the difficulty of SC, this only shows how he still need to grow as a developer.

 

What's that, someone was asking for some number crunching?

DSG + Agriculturalist gives Ancient Seeds a 20 day growth cycle, giving you an extra two harvests per year if planted outside (and dramatically decreases the iteration value of populating growth in a greenhouse by dropping the iteration rate by three days over DSG alone). Granted, it won't do anything per additional harvest, but it does reduce the initial growth enough for it to possibly be worth it.

It will permit a sixth harvest from Strawberries in Spring without the use of Speed Gro, but any speed gro will give you the sixth harvest, and DSG+Agriculturalist won't give you a 7th. Still useful for not needing to cover the field in speed grow

Same with Blueberries. It will give you a fifth harvest by itself, but won't give you a sixth even with DSG.

It drops two days off of Hops full maturation, giving you two extra Pale Ale, and drops an extra day with DSG for a total of three extra pale ale per growth season. While the DSG might not be worth the extra single crop, the price of getting two more Pale Ale out of your Hops for effectively 10g for the whole farm plot seems profitable enough.

Cauliflower/Melon/Pumpkin/Starfruit: Agri + Speed Grow is a third harvest, instead of needing DSG, but will not by itself give any results nor will you get more out of Agri+DSG.

Potatoes/Kale benefit greatly from it. They go from 4 crops per season normally to 5 with Agri alone to 6 with DSG alone to 7 with Agri + DSG.

Wheat goes up dramatically. Normally you can get six harvests per season. However, with Agri alone you get 9 and with Agri + DSG you get 13, so over double your number of harvests! Brew all that into Beer and you have decent profit.

Those are the ones that immediately spring to mind.

tl;dr: Strawberries/Blueberries will let you get an extra crop without fertilization, effectively Speed-Gro on the entire plot for free, which can be worth the time and expense of not having to fertilize your entire field, and Hops nets you an extra two crops without fertilization or three with DSG. It will dramatically drop the initial growth time for Ancient Fruit, effectively netting you an extra Ancient Fruit by itself an a second one with DSG, as well as reducing iteration times for populating a greenhouse via Seed Maker. Wheat more than doubles its productivity when you use both Agri and DSG.

I will be making a more in-depth post breaking down the profitability of this idea in a few.

EDIT:

In any case in which you get a benefit from either Agri or Speed-Gro (same speed multiplier), you will save money by using the Statue trick only if your field size is 200 or greater. That's going to be Strawberries, Blueberries, Ancient Fruit, Hops, Potatoes, Kale, Beets, and Wheat.

If you are going to be using the Statue Trick, and your crop gains benefit from Agri + DSG over Agri alone (Ancient Fruit, Hops, and Wheat), then it makes sense to do that as well.

But after doing some number crunching, and almost going full-on spreadsheet mode in my guide, this is really a tactic only useful in bulk quantities. The math involved in calculating the difference in profitability in field sizes under 200 when comparing Speed-Gro vs Statue for Agriculturalist and comparing THAT to Statue for Agriculturalist + DSG gets... more convoluted. You're basically comparing two equations at that point, which is something that makes the majority of the population start having crossed and/or glazed eyes.

So suffice to say, this is a bulk tactic primarily, unless you are growing something stupidly profitable like Ancient Fruit, because you only need to have Agriculturalist on Day One for it to give you an extra harvest.