Stock up on coal / wood / stone Year 1 ? Difference 1.5 / 1.6?

[Milemperio]

Hey there!

In 1.5 a lot of players (especially min-maxers) used to stock up on wood, stone and coal in year one, because of the low(er) price.

Do you know if this still makes sense in 1.6?

I'm at the end of year 1 now. Thanks to being pretty advanced + thanks to smoked fish, I've got some money I could spare
I mean I guess I'll buy some wood because it's super cheap. How much would you buy?

And what about coal? I'm asking because of the various new 1.6 oportunities to get coal + some opportunities to save some... so maybe the needs are filled?

 

[AguynamedBurt]

Hey there!

In 1.5 a lot of players (especially min-maxers) used to stock up on wood, stone and coal in year one, because of the low(er) price.

Do you know if this still makes sense in 1.6?

I'm at the end of year 1 now. Thanks to being pretty advanced + thanks to smoked fish, I've got some money I could spare
I mean I guess I'll buy some wood because it's super cheap. How much would you buy?

And what about coal? I'm asking because of the various new 1.6 oportunities to get coal + some opportunities to save some... so maybe the needs are filled?

I’m in spring year 4. If you use the desert as a tree farm wood is no problem. I used to make charcoal kilns at the desert forest for coal before 1.6… but with some things you unlock later, well… let’s just say I’m sitting on 5 stacks of 999 coal, around 300-500 bars of each ore (except iridium, I have around 800 bars of that). So I would just keep the money… buy Pam a nice house.

 

[NextXander]

The new coal nodes they added to the volcano in 1.6 are a good source of coal, but I guess depending on the scale of what you want to use it for you might still want to buy some or not.

 

[HaleyRocks]

With the crazy money you can start earning, post Artisan -> Kegging... Or, "industrializing" wild tree orchards + mushroom logs and "Dehydrating" en masse.

You can buy anything you wish to your heart's content.

Add animals in the picture and money spent on loads of resources, quickly becomes small change.

Or, you can always turn Lumberjack; on top of following the previous people's advice.

 

[MateoOfRiverwood]

Any strategy that works for you, makes sense, whether or not it is “optimal”.

Personally, I save the vast majority of tree seeds from chopping trees. As soon as the Railroad becomes available, I plant my own personal forest, south of the train tracks. I can generally fit fifty or so trees in there.

I occasionally harvest a row or two of trees and always replant. When Tree Fertilizer is available, I tag every tree still growing there with it. I’ve done that every time since my first Riverland Farm.

Coal or Stone I just always have plenty of, whether from Mines or Quarry.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Hey there!

In 1.5 a lot of players (especially min-maxers) used to stock up on wood, stone and coal in year one, because of the low(er) price.

Do you know if this still makes sense in 1.6?

I'm at the end of year 1 now. Thanks to being pretty advanced + thanks to smoked fish, I've got some money I could spare
I mean I guess I'll buy some wood because it's super cheap. How much would you buy?

And what about coal? I'm asking because of the various new 1.6 oportunities to get coal + some opportunities to save some... so maybe the needs are filled?

It absolutely does, there wasn't any considerable enough change to bulk resource farming that would merit rethinking the entire process.

What you buy depends on what you need going forward, in many of my own saves I buy often tens of thousands of wood, coal, and copper, and sometimes some iron, though I'll usually be fine on stone from deconstructors and I'll only buy iron if I'm really going all out on machines that need it.

 

[Milemperio]

With the crazy money you can start earning, post Artisan -> Kegging... Or, "industrializing" wild tree orchards + mushroom logs and "Dehydrating" en masse.

You can buy anything you wish to your heart's content.

Yeah I do realize that later in game I will have plenty of money. But still, I don't like the idea to buy wood or coal for way more then it's worth in year 1, if I already know I'll need it ^^ Like f.e. 1000 wood is 10.000g in year 1 but 50.000g in years 2+... 1000 coal is 150 000g year 1 and 250 000g year 2+^^

Any strategy that works for you, makes sense, whether or not it is “optimal”.

I know and I love that about the game that we all can play it however we want.

However, I'd like to be able to quick start a few things at the beginning of year 2.

It absolutely does, there wasn't any considerable enough change to bulk resource farming that would merit rethinking the entire process.

Thanks! That answers my question the best. :)

 

[Milemperio]

If anybody is curious, I made a small overview for me, to help me estimate how much I'd need. Just for coal and wood and not covering every single item. Not for the entire game, but like pretty soon, to have a good base to keep on going... So it's more like a minimum. Till now in this gamefile I've only got like maybe 1-5 of each craftable that's gonna appear in the list (appart of sprinklers).
(When a bar was needed for crafting, I counted it as 1 coal for now)

220 expensive fish are waiting to be smoked --> 250+ coal
10 Beehouses (1=40w, 9c) --> 400w, 90c
20 kegs (1=30w, 2c) --> 600w, 40c
10 preserve jars (1= 50w, 8c) --> 500w, 80c
20 tapper (1= 40w, 2c) --> 800w, 40c
10 crystallariums (1=7c) --> 70c
10 Mayo Machines (1=15w, 1c) --> 150w, 10c
10 cheese press (1= 45w, 1c) --> 450w, 10c
25 sprinklers (1=2c) --> 50c
Deluxe coop = 500w

This sums up to a whoopping 3400 wood and 640 coal!
Which, of course, one can gather.
If buying, it costs 34 000g in wood instead of 170 000g later, and 96 000g in coal now instead of 160 000g later.

 

[Antsy]

It depends on how you play, of course, and how fast you build/craft things. Personally I don't buy coal or other resources except in rare emergencies, only because I enjoy gathering resources myself. Notably, I find in 1.6 that coal is vastly more plentiful - more kinds of monsters drop it, it is more common in artifact spots than before, there are coal nodes in the quarry and other places, and of course you can get a lot the traditional way from dust sprites, especially with monster musk and the burglar ring. In 1.5, at the beginning of the game I used to find coal to be scarce, but never do now in 1.6. So it is popping up more often just in the course of normal activities than it used to. I don't think there's any change to wood or stone resources though. Definitely, if you are going to buy resources, it still makes sense to stock up in year 1.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Yeah I do realize that later in game I will have plenty of money. But still, I don't like the idea to buy wood or coal for way more then it's worth in year 1, if I already know I'll need it ^^ Like f.e. 1000 wood is 10.000g in year 1 but 50.000g in years 2+... 1000 coal is 150 000g year 1 and 250 000g year 2+^^

It absolutely can be worth that much.

Value is dependent on what it can get you back or saves you in time. The first is rather hard to calculate but generally if you're putting it into jars/hives (two of the most coal expensive machines), you're getting your coal value back in a week or two, tops, which is absolutely amazing. The second is also hard to calculate as it depends on what you're up to, but generally most people can grind out about 200-300 coal in a day with a burglar ring, which is worth 30000g-40000g or 50000g-75000g (year two) a day. If you can make more than that doing literally anything, it's a better use of your time to do that, and to just buy the coal, and then it's more than worth the cost.

You usually want to upscale as fast as possible early, as basically everything in this game is a guaranteed profit, and you're just trying to maximize the profit cut and snowball what you have, ideally, you're either saving for a big purchase or pretty consistently at the lowest livable g possible at all times.