Starting Professions and Starting Tools

[phantomhived]

Hello again! We invited a few friends over so we could play a game with 4 players and it was a blast!

One question I have for everyone: If you take the mining profession, is there any reason why you WOULDN'T take the pickaxe? Similarly with the fishing profession and the fishing rod? In the rule book where it gives you a sample layout of the game, I believe it shows the fishing profession starting with the pickaxe.

The only reasons I can think of are 1) just because it's fun and 2) maybe it helps to spread out what people are capable of; Meaning the fishing profession gives you perks for fishing, but you also have a tool to help when mining.

I used to play a lot of the Binding of Isaac board game and in that game whichever character you choose starts with a particular item.

Hope everyone is having as much fun with the game as we are!

 

[Odin]

I've only played the game once (on my own) and I picked farming as a profession and the hoe as a tool. Then it turned out that in single player mode, the profession you pick doesn't actually matter (to avoid limiting you too much). But next time I will definitely try a different tool just so I get a better sense of what all of them do. I know I could just read all the cards, but that feels a lot less fun.

 

[niclan7]

I asked myself the same question, and having played, my thoughts are:
-Yes, having the pickaxe on the miner, rod on the fisher just makes their job strictly better, ESPECIALLY when combined with their default profession cards.
-Swapping these around would basically just make some people good at multiple things, so that everyone could do anything.... but I think there's not much reason to do that, if one person can just be REALLY good at it, and they don't mind spending their time in one spot a lot of the time. Additionally, this feels more specific to fishing and mining than anything else, since the can and hoe feel less specialized, and anybody can kinda accomplish those things.
Additionally, the hoe feels... really weak? Maybe it was just because we were more focused on animals, but after a season or two of farming/fishing for money to buy the barn, we never really needed to stack tiles on the farming track. My best guess is that it makes farming crops more "safe from crows" during off seasons, say for instance we were trying to farm fall crops for a bundle but it had already moved on to winter, it would've saved us the hassle of possibly losing the entire game to a bad set of season tiles. Other than a niche instance like that, the can just feels infinitely better.

 

[phantomhived]

I asked myself the same question, and having played, my thoughts are:
-Yes, having the pickaxe on the miner, rod on the fisher just makes their job strictly better, ESPECIALLY when combined with their default profession cards.
-Swapping these around would basically just make some people good at multiple things, so that everyone could do anything.... but I think there's not much reason to do that, if one person can just be REALLY good at it, and they don't mind spending their time in one spot a lot of the time. Additionally, this feels more specific to fishing and mining

Yeah, that's kinda where I'm at as well. Even in our 4 player game when I had the Hoe, I never upgraded it. The can, pickaxe, and rod all feel infinitely better than the hoe. At some point though we'll play a game where we try to maximize the hoe and see how good it can be.

 

[linkmastr001]

I've played solo a few times, but with 2 Mats. I have picked professions/tools based on Grandpa's Goals. For example, if I see "Upgrade Tools" and "Build Buildings" goals without "Hit Floor 12", I might take Foraging with the Pick and Fishing with the Rod. If I had to hit floor 12, I'd probably take Mining instead of Foraging.

 

[doobykeebler]

Can u have more than one tool when playing with 2 people

 

[DJModulo]

Can u have more than one tool when playing with 2 people

Every player gets 1 tool.