Day in the life of a work boots scavenger

[sameperson_differentfont]

I've been farming in the valley for 12 years now and let's just say I've learned the ways of the land. I'm not here to boast about my 200 million profit farm or what some have called the farm of *perfection* (their words, not mine), I'm here to talk about the legendary work boots. You see I'm a bit of a fashionista and over the past couple of years I've collected all the clothes Pelican town and the Desert have to offer. Except for the work boots. The legend is that they can only be caught from fishing chests. Hours and hours, days and days- I've fished for the boots with the hopes of finally completing my collection... but to no avail. I wanted to show y'all what I end up doing in a day to try to find these 1 in 8333 (0.012%) chance boots.

I start off my day by greeting my wife before once again apologizing that I'll have to be gone for the whole day (it's around the 50th time).

I then grab a quick cup of coffee and an omelet to fill up for the morning. I also cook up some pumpkin stew for both lunch and dinner with the milk my goats make. I used to eat magic rock candy and ginger ale in copious amounts when I would go fish, but that ended up being too unhealthy.

The last thing I do before leaving the house is craft both the treasure hunter tackle and magnet bait. I used to buy this bait, but it's so more environmentally friendly to craft them yourself after destroying all the ore in the mines. These buffs make it so (added with the base fishing chest % and my pirate buff) with every fish there's a 50% chance of getting a fishing treasure chest- excluding any daily luck or luck from food. I also have a nifty rod that perseveres my bait so it lasts longer.

I go to my favorite fishing spot just North of the farm: Mountain Lake! I eat the pumpkin soup and get to fishing! I grind this out for the whole day until around 1 am. I've caught 5400 fish according to Qi ahem- someone and keep in mind that probably only around 3,000 of these fish have had a chance for a fishing chest. Even though I now have around a 50/50 (excluding luck) chance for a fishing chest before when catching my first few thousand fish I had a lower chance without all my buffs. So statistically, I still need to open around 5,000 fishing chests... yikes...

I end up catching 50-65 fish in a day, but the loot is very variable. Below is all the loot I've gotten since deciding to look for the work boots (split up into 3 chests). And also all the fish I've caught since then.

This is where I would put my work boots... if I had them:

Meanwhile my animals starve and my crops are left neglected... just like my two children...
But that's the cost of grinding for the work boots.

 

[Flutterdoc]

epic

 

[Lew Zealand]

Sooo much dedication and sooo many Fishes... and Dolls! But I'd summarize your quest as being a larger pile of Carp than I was expecting.

Good Luck!

 

[sameperson_differentfont]

Sooo much dedication and sooo many Fishes... and Dolls! But I'd summarize your quest as being a larger pile of Carp than I was expecting.

Good Luck!

 

[Slimeglasses]

Wow. Now, this is dedication.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

So, there IS another way to obtain these boots!

When starting a new save, you can select under Advanced options 'remixed mine rewards'. It now is a chance of being your level 10 reward instead of the leather boots

 

[sameperson_differentfont]

Yep, I know!

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Fun post, I do have a little advice that might help though

The last thing I do before leaving the house is craft both the treasure hunter tackle and magnet bait.

You'll probably be better off buying magnet bait from the casino seeing as you're still in 1.5, I would eat a bunch of luck buffs, play the slots for a couple hours and you'll be able to buy a few thousand magnet bait, potentially saving you thousands of bars. In 1.6 this isn't possible to the same extent so use it while you can and stock up ideally.
Magnet bait is a 5% boost but you'll get more chests on average per day with a dressed spinner, and you can always cancel out of the minigames.

Building off that last point, you're probably best off canceling out of the minigames if you don't see a chest. they generally appear pretty early into the minigame and you can probably speed up your whole process by 10-15% by just canceling out of minigames.

You'll also be better off NOT casting as far as you can reach, the work boots can appear in treasure chests in zone 2 and higher which means all but the very shore tiles can have them in their chests. Since the chance doesn't scale with cast depth you will want to cast basically only to zone two, this can potentially save a fair bit of time, from casting to reeling in every single time, it's absolutely add up over thousands of casts.

Lastly, a tip for 1.6, you do NOT want to get the fishing mastery, while the new rod may seem like a boon, the greater disadvantage lies in the golden treasure chests which have chances to turn regular loot into "better" loot (not in your eyes though), it will dice your overallchances for the workboots by a whole third and is greatly detrimental.

Hope this helps out, when you're doing something for so many thousands of times it's good to know the little optimizations, they save so so so much time in the long haul

 

[Benhimself]

Have you considered a few sea cucumber fish ponds and upgrading to daily lucky lunches instead of pumpkin soup?

 

[NetworkerC]

What happens when sp_df finds Work Boots? Do the Vogons wipe out earth?

 

[Giant Octopodes]

Fun post, I do have a little advice that might help though

You'll probably be better off buying magnet bait from the casino seeing as you're still in 1.5, I would eat a bunch of luck buffs, play the slots for a couple hours and you'll be able to buy a few thousand magnet bait, potentially saving you thousands of bars. In 1.6 this isn't possible to the same extent so use it while you can and stock up ideally.
Magnet bait is a 5% boost but you'll get more chests on average per day with a dressed spinner, and you can always cancel out of the minigames.

Building off that last point, you're probably best off canceling out of the minigames if you don't see a chest. they generally appear pretty early into the minigame and you can probably speed up your whole process by 10-15% by just canceling out of minigames.

You'll also be better off NOT casting as far as you can reach, the work boots can appear in treasure chests in zone 2 and higher which means all but the very shore tiles can have them in their chests. Since the chance doesn't scale with cast depth you will want to cast basically only to zone two, this can potentially save a fair bit of time, from casting to reeling in every single time, it's absolutely add up over thousands of casts.

Lastly, a tip for 1.6, you do NOT want to get the fishing mastery, while the new rod may seem like a boon, the greater disadvantage lies in the golden treasure chests which have chances to turn regular loot into "better" loot (not in your eyes though), it will dice your overallchances for the workboots by a whole third and is greatly detrimental.

Hope this helps out, when you're doing something for so many thousands of times it's good to know the little optimizations, they save so so so much time in the long haul

I disagree, it's actually a wash from the way I'm seeing the math. So here's the way I'm figuring:

Without Fishing Mastery
30% (pirate) + 15% (magnet) +5% (treasure hunter) + Daily Luck (+/-5%) + Food (1% based on current selections, max 3%) + 1.25% (Special Charm) = 47.25% minimum 57.25% maximum
Each Chest is .012% chance for work boots
Total chance: 0.00567% minimum, 0.00687% maximum per cast

With fishing mastery
30% (pirate) + 15% (magnet) +10% (treasure hunter x2) + Daily Luck (+/-5%) + Food (1%) + 1.25% (Special Charm) = 52.5% minimum 62.5% maximum
Each chest has a chance to be converted equal to 25% +/- daily luck (up to 10%) + 2.5% (special charm), or 17.5 to 37.5%
So at minimum daily luck, it's 52.5% chance * 82.5% chance (not golden) * .012% chance + 52.5% chance * 17.5% chance (golden) * .008% chance = .00519 + 0.0007168 = .0059% chance per cast
At maximum daily luck, it's 62.5% chance * 63.5% (not golden) * .012% + 62.5% chance * 37.5% chance (golden) * .008 = .0047625 + .001875 = .006637% chance per cast

So at minimum daily luck it's a net positive, at maximum daily luck it's a net negative, and assuming an average distribution of daily lucks it's almost exactly the same odds overall. Now mind you, psychologically every time you get that golden treasure chest you might be wondering if one of the goods inside was a converted work boots and thus it might be worth skipping on that basis alone. But it's worth noting that the increased treasure chance is a balance for the reduced odds on specifically the golden chests and thus it's not actually a net negative, and certainly not by a full third overall.

 

[sameperson_differentfont]

Have you considered a few sea cucumber fish ponds and upgrading to daily lucky lunches instead of pumpkin soup?

I would if I had space on my farm left.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

I disagree, it's actually a wash from the way I'm seeing the math. So here's the way I'm figuring:

Without Fishing Mastery
30% (pirate) + 15% (magnet) +5% (treasure hunter) + Daily Luck (+/-5%) + Food (1% based on current selections, max 3%) + 1.25% (Special Charm) = 47.25% minimum 57.25% maximum
Each Chest is .012% chance for work boots
Total chance: 0.00567% minimum, 0.00687% maximum per cast

With fishing mastery
30% (pirate) + 15% (magnet) +10% (treasure hunter x2) + Daily Luck (+/-5%) + Food (1%) + 1.25% (Special Charm) = 52.5% minimum 62.5% maximum
Each chest has a chance to be converted equal to 25% +/- daily luck (up to 10%) + 2.5% (special charm), or 17.5 to 37.5%
So at minimum daily luck, it's 52.5% chance * 82.5% chance (not golden) * .012% chance + 52.5% chance * 17.5% chance (golden) * .008% chance = .00519 + 0.0007168 = .0059% chance per cast
At maximum daily luck, it's 62.5% chance * 63.5% (not golden) * .012% + 62.5% chance * 37.5% chance (golden) * .008 = .0047625 + .001875 = .006637% chance per cast

So at minimum daily luck it's a net positive, at maximum daily luck it's a net negative, and assuming an average distribution of daily lucks it's almost exactly the same odds overall. Now mind you, psychologically every time you get that golden treasure chest you might be wondering if one of the goods inside was a converted work boots and thus it might be worth skipping on that basis alone. But it's worth noting that the increased treasure chance is a balance for the reduced odds on specifically the golden chests and thus it's not actually a net negative, and certainly not by a full third overall.

Yeah I totally borked on the math, did the 3 second math in my head and didn't take into account the fact that only a fraction of the chests are actually turned into golden ones


That being said, it will be optimal to be fishing on high daily luck days, and even a small increase could have some benefit, both literally and psychologically as you said yourself, though luckily won't have a large downside if they decide they want to experiment with the new stuff on that save

 

[PerfectionWhaleFarm]

When I was working on this, I did what I did for Living Hat and just reset the day if I haven't gotten Work Boots to save up some money and prevent an unkempt farm and starving animals and un-kept slime population trying to create ungodly color combos (No, you guys stay pure Gold and Silver and White).

What was frustrating was sometimes at 1:50AM, I got greedy and thought one more fish, so I reared in my last fish with a treasure and comes 2:00AM, my character was forcibly put to sleep relinquishing the treasure forever unopened because it won't play the dialog to check the treasure afterwards.

For the remixed mines approach, if your old save has already selected the Remixed option [not possible for my original save on Year 22], then you can still force the game to spawn in Work Boots on FL10 on your old save by hotswapping your current seed. Not that OP may be interested, but for others as an information (until Eric patches it) if they ever come across this situation.

 

[sameperson_differentfont]

For the remixed mines approach, if your old save has already selected the Remixed option [not possible for my original save on Year 22], then you can still force the game to spawn in Work Boots on FL10 on your old save by hotswapping your current seed. Not that OP may be interested, but for others as an information (until Eric patches it) if they ever come across this situation.

Yeah I definitely tried this but I never had remixed mines to start with

 

[LRangerR]

The countdown begins.

I was always wondering what your grind was looking like, and I find it both humorous and impressive how well organized and catalogued it all is.

Also, I can't stop laughing at the TV remote sitting next to the couch