First summer crop choice: an experiment

[Squigglyruth]

I'm going to try an experiment to help me learn which summer crops and strategies work best for me: I will play through summer from the same save file making different base choices.

Why?
This is how I got good at doing spring. I played through it a few different ways and compared the outcomes of my choices. After that I had something to work from and refine.
I'm pretty confident I have spring sorted now - my current (fairly relaxed) play-through has me entering summer with 66 quality sprinklers and more than 90,000 GP of produce or fish ready to sell, plus farming 10 already (with the Agriculturalist perk).
But this is where I always run out of expertise. What crops (or other infrastructure) should I actually spend my money on? There are lots of guides out there, but I think it's worth properly trying some options out. I will post my results in this thread.

The options:

• Lots of hops (up to 5 per sprinkler) and fill in with a variety of other crops from Pierre's. This has always been my go-to strategy, simply because I read a guide once that said hops are really profitable, and it seemed to work when I gave it a go. However, it is a lot of work harvesting. Also, I have run crop fields of 300 or more hops in the past, and it really does take a while to build up the processing infrastructure to turn all of those into pale ale. On the plus side, I would have spare money to start setting up ranching right away as well as planting my fields. On the down side, there is a lot of work involved.
• Fill the field with wheat on summer 1, harvest it on summer 4 and replace as much as possible with deluxe-speed-gro starfruit. This involves buying the vault bundles, but I will want to do that soon anyway - Skull Cavern is beckoning. I might get 150 - 200 starfruit down in the first planting, with two more plantings to come later in the season. In the meantime, wheat is surprisingly profitable even without processing, so my fields will be making me a good return on my money.
• A combo of these two strategies - however many hops fit in the field (just under 300 if they're going to be easy to harvest), minimal other crops for community centre bundles and gifting, and fill the rest with wheat on summer 1. Unlock the bus and buy as much starfruit and deluxe speed gro as I can afford as I can on summer 4. Could this be the best of both worlds, or will it end up a horrible mish-mashed mess?
• Other strategies suggested by people in this thread. I am willing to give other things a go! These three look like the best options to me from running the numbers, but numbers can't replace actually trying it out.

Other relevant info

• I am playing with the Stardew Valley Expanded mod this game. I haven't really explored the extra stuff yet - just bumped into random extra people. I don't think it changes anything with crop selection, so my findings ought to be relevant to the un-modded game. They will probably be far from optimal for the modded game :-) Please don;t spoil me for the mod.
• I am only at level 85 in the mine because I stopped at 80 and mined ore (which got me down to 85 once by accident).
• I have a steel pickaxe that I plan to upgrade to gold at the very start of summer. My backpack is at 24. I have a fibreglass rod. No other tools have been upgraded.
• I am decent but not spectacular at mining and combat. I guess I am quite good at fishing because I can land all fish and got all the iridium legendary fish in my last play-through. But I know for sure that other people are a lot better.
• I am on farming 10, fishing 9 (nearly 10 - needs half a day), mining 7, combat 4 and foraging 3. The foraging needs upping before lightning takes out my ancient fruit plant...
• I have attached a screenshot of my farm. I will be moving three of the scarecrows slightly and putting 3 more quality sprinklers down, so all available plots will be watered and protected. There is also a bunch more space that I will probably develop as the season progresses.

I hope some of you will find this an interesting experiment, and will make your own suggestions or ask questions about what I'm doing. Feel free to make and justify predications about which strategy will work best. However, please avoid stating absolutes on that - and bear in mind I have already run all the numbers behind the scenes :-)

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Honestly, it depends on what you want to do. Hops are amazingly profitable if you brew them into Pale Ale, but if you don't want that much work, Starfruit is no bad choice if you can get Oasis unlocked in time.

Melons aren't as profitable as Starfruit, but they are (if you will pardon the pun) low-hanging fruit in terms of availability. But I think blueberries deserve a special mention. You can turn them into Preserves to triple your profits, but what might be even better is running them through Seed Makers. You'll still make more money (on average) than selling the blueberries themselves, and it is one way to grind out an Ancient Seed since you're likely going to want one for the greenhouse anyway.

Hops with infill of starfruit is generally the most profitable, but melons with blueberries can also be useful, if not as profitable.

Your idea of wheat can be made to work, sure, but that's an awful lot of work you're looking at. Then again, brewing it into Beer is pretty profitable. It's not Pale Ale, but it's still good solid profits.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

Sounds fun! Biggest thing which may impact things: How many kegs do you have, and can you liquidate any other resources to increase your starting capital? Also, how many oak resin are you getting per week, if any?

 

[Squigglyruth]

Honestly, it depends on what you want to do. Hops are amazingly profitable if you brew them into Pale Ale, but if you don't want that much work, Starfruit is no bad choice if you can get Oasis unlocked in time.

Melons aren't as profitable as Starfruit, but they are (if you will pardon the pun) low-hanging fruit in terms of availability. But I think blueberries deserve a special mention. You can turn them into Preserves to triple your profits, but what might be even better is running them through Seed Makers. You'll still make more money (on average) than selling the blueberries themselves, and it is one way to grind out an Ancient Seed since you're likely going to want one for the greenhouse anyway.

Hops with infill of starfruit is generally the most profitable, but melons with blueberries can also be useful, if not as profitable.

Your idea of wheat can be made to work, sure, but that's an awful lot of work you're looking at. Then again, brewing it into Beer is pretty profitable. It's not Pale Ale, but it's still good solid profits.

I like the idea of running blueberries through seedmakers. I only have one ancient fruit down - it is about to fruit (I planted it spring 7), but that's still going to be a slow ramp-up unless I do something extra. Blueberries also make good gifts to many townsfolk...

I was surprised, when I ran the numbers, to find that wheat is better profit per day than hops for any given investment. Filling my field with wheat right now would cost about 5000gp and would net me more than 2000gp per day with no processing. It gets to silly numbers when run through kegs. It is also less work than hops - the harvesting every day gets to be hard work in my normal runs.

Hops seem to be second best (after wheat) without processing but drop below starfruit when processed. That's numbers with only two harvests of starfruit though - probably three harvests will take starfruit ahead. On the other hand, wheat seems to top out both charts - with and without processing - with the extra benefit of quick turn-around so I can re-invest any profits.

My money is on the wheat and starfruit strategy being the best option...

EDIT:
Adding some additional specific calculations based on my field size. I'm assuming 500 spaces because I will also want to grow some extra things for the community centre. Profit per day is based on a full field planted at farming level 10. Everything is assuming Agriculturalist, so the specific order may not apply for other farmers who don't have that yet.

Crop	Cost to fill field of 500 spaces (GP)	Profit per day assuming no processing (GP)	Profit per day assuming best processing (GP)
Wheat	5,000	4917	31,667
Hops	30,000	10,380	104,444
Starfruit with DSG	240,000+42,500 for bus = 282,500	55,654	110,625
Blueberries	40,000	17,763	43,400
Melon	40,000	12,363	27,917
Radish	20,000	10,671	19,000
Hot Pepper	20,000	7,307	19,231
Tomato	25,000	6,597	19,792

I guess this illustrates why it is useful to calculate for your own space and circumstances. There is no way I can afford to fill my field with starfruit, but I can certainly plant a large bunch of hops... That would also leave me money to do other things. But I can't actually plant 500 of them because they are a trellis crop. 300 seems reasonable.
For the remaining spaces, wheat will give me quick money before planting the starfruit (it nearly gives me my investment back each day without any processing!). That will save me the maximum amount to spend on starfruit on Thursday.
Maybe option 3 will pan out best?!

 

[Squigglyruth]

Sounds fun! Biggest thing which may impact things: How many kegs do you have, and can you liquidate any other resources to increase your starting capital? Also, how many oak resin are you getting per week, if any?

Aha, yes - you've got me there! Normally I tap a lot of oak trees by this point, but I was being relaxed this game and didn't quite get round to it. I do have a couple of oak trees tapped as of last week, and will be doing more soon. At this point it seems to make most sense to plant oak with tree fertiliser in the railroad and tap those. There are also a bunch on my farm I can tap in the next few days. So I could be up very high on that in a couple of weeks...

My starting capital is probably about 100,000 gp this time if I sell everything I don't need. I have definitely had higher at this point on previous run-throughs. But then squandered it by not investing wisely. Hence the experiment!

 

[Elenna101]

I was surprised, when I ran the numbers, to find that wheat is better profit per day than hops for any given investment. Filling my field with wheat right now would cost about 5000gp and would net me more than 2000gp per day with no processing. It gets to silly numbers when run through kegs. It is also less work than hops - the harvesting every day gets to be hard work in my normal runs.

Hmm, that doesn't sound right - my gold/day spreadsheet has hops at more than 3 times as much profit per day as wheat, when all being processed. Are you taking into account the fact that hops produce every day when grown? Kinda curious to see your exact calculations.
My math is as follows:
- Wheat sells for 200 when turned into beer, minus the 10g cost of the seed. Assuming no fertilizer, they take 4 days to grow, so profit per day is (280 - 10)/4 = 67.5
- Hops sell for 300 when processed into pale ale, minus the 60g seed cost. Over the course of the whole season you get 17 hops. So profit per day is (420*17 - 60)/28 = 252.9

For comparison:
- Starfruit sells for a whopping 3,150 when turned into wine, but it costs 400g for the seed and takes 13 days to grow. Profit per day is (3,150-400)/13 = 211.5
- Melons sell for 1050 as wine, cost 80, and take 12 days to grow. Profit per day is 80.8

I'm assuming you have Artisan, but if you don't that doesn't change the conclusions much.
I'm not including processing time in my spreadsheet because it assumes I can craft as many kegs as necessary - which I realize isn't the case in your situation. The processing time for pale ale and beer is almost the same. For starfruit (and melons), however, the processing time for wine is obviously longer, but you get a lot less total starfruit than you do hops or wheat, so the total processing time is less.

So that makes it look like hops are the best money-wise. As you mentioned, though, the time taken to harvest/keg them is a big investment, and you could be doing other profitable stuff in that time. The exact cost of that obviously depends on your playstyle and how much you dislike spending large amounts of time harvesting/kegging. But basically if you have other stuff you could do with that time that make ~40g/day or more, that pretty much makes up the difference.
A couple other disadvantages of hops:
- You need a lot of kegs to process all the hops in a reasonable amount of time, which means that you need to wait to make money till you craft the kegs, which delays other stuff (especially annoying if you like doing year 1 CC). Of course anything you want to keg is affected by that a little. But if you only have, say, one keg, you'll make money faster if you're getting one starfruit wine a week rather than ~4 pale ale a week.
- If you want to replace the hops with something else partway through the month, then obviously the profit/day goes way down since you spent all that time growing it and didn't get the full number of harvests. Wheat is better if you think you'll want to replace it soon.

Also, the above numbers assumed no fertilizer. You can buy deluxe speed-gro from Sandy on Thursdays, which gives you three harvests a season of starfruit instead of two, which bumps the profit of starfruit up to almost match hops, for a lot less effort. If you spend some of that saved time doing something profitable, starfruit will definitely become better than hops with DSG.
Unfortunately, this requires getting to the desert on Spring 23 at the latest, because you have to buy it before planting the starfruit, but Pam's doctor visit is Spring 25 (the last Thursday of spring) and the 24th is a holiday, so you have to have a desert warp totem from an earlier visit to go there on the 25th. So it's not really relevant to your current run. But if you have the materials to craft a few DSG, that... might be worth it, although I suspect you're better off using the oak resin for kegs.

Melons and blueberries are certainly also options if you don't want to spend the time harvesting hops and you can't afford starfruit.

TL;DR: Hops are better money-wise for a full season, but they take a lot more effort, and take longer to process. So it depends how much you want money early, how much you value your harvesting/kegging time, and whether you want to replace them partway through the season.
Also, if you can get to the desert by Spring 23 and afford DSG and starfruit, just do that and save yourself the hassle of hops.

Side note: Writing this post caused me to notice an issue in my spreadsheet where I was multiplying the prices of wine/pickles by 1.4 if Artisan was taken, but not multiplying the prices of wine/beer. So thanks for the help on that! Apparently hops are a lot more competitive compared to starfruit than I thought they were, lol.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

One thing I'll toss out there is this: Products such as Hops and Blueberries Really benefit in terms of gold per day or profit calculations from the assumption they get to run their course over the entire season, and as such are pretty exclusionary. Having 500 hops is great (not really because of the difficulty moving or harvesting but you get what I mean, and there are space-consuming ways around that), but then you can't do anything else with those tiles, and as you can see Starfruit just Annihilates everything else from a profitability standpoint. So I'd imagine the optimal strategy has Starfruit "expanding" across the rest of your fields as you get enough money to plant more of them, and that is counter synergistic from the end of month boost to profitability Hops or Blueberries has. Think of it this way - if you replace Hops on day 20, you are getting 13 Hops instead of 21, which cuts back on your overall profits by about 40%. Most other crops you're dealing with more like a 30% loss in profits.

It's also worth noting that they have different machine resource requirements to obtain those optimal processing figures, as well. As an example, you need 7 kegs for every 10 melons you have to hit optimal processing, while you need 20 for every 10 hops. Since you don't have a crazy amount of kegs to start with, I suspect you'll find it difficult to process enough hops early enough to make them really shine.

Here's my prediction on what will end up being closest to optimal:

You get access to the desert, but you put down wheat everywhere. You start cranking on as many trees as you can tap to pump out oak resin. Once the wheat is harvested, you haven't sold anything from this season yet, but you have had a few days. You buy as many starfruit as you can while being able to fill the rest with melons. As soon as you have kegs, you start pumping out beer. When the melons and starfruit finish, you do what you need to do to buy as many starfruit as you can, ideally without selling your initial starfruit, or at least not regular quality ones. You once again ensure you have enough cash left to fill the rest of the spaces with melons. You get any starfruit wine going you can, filling the rest of the kegs with the rest of the wheat to keep those cranking until you run out of wheat, hopefully after the second batch of starfruit / melons has come up. You again do what you need to do to be able to buy as many starfruit as possible, while trying to minimize the sale of starfruit so you can keep cranking on starfruit wine. By now ideally you can get a full 500 field of starfruit, you finish off the season with it, and then laugh maniacally at your million+ in resultant profit once those starfruit are all sold as wine, especially if you switch over to artisan before selling it and then switch back afterwards.

That's my prediction! I'll be eagerly anticipating seeing how it plays out for you though, and what you find works well and what does not! Best of luck and I hope it's a blast.

 

[Boo1972]

I’m really curious to see how this experiment turns out. Summer is not my favorite season. I do like starfruit and red cabbage once it’s available (more for aesthetics than profit) but starfruit is a lot of upfront costs. I find hops too needy to be fun, but my default is usually pale ale and blueberry jelly in summer. A new strategy would be very welcome!

But you’ve already saved me a huge headache. I got the dreaded home cook bundle and was collecting cloth to build a mill so I could donate 100 bags of flour. I’ll just turn the wheat into beer, use the profits to buy 100 bags of flour and still end up ahead. This is why I need conversations like this- they force me to think outside of my comfort zone.

 

[Tom]

I just use Hops and assume I will be working daily for my pay through the end of the year. Why?
1. I don't generally have a lot of gold on Summer 1st. Hops Starters are cheap.
2. There's been a lot of back and forth here, but nothing available at that time beats Hops (Pale Ale) profit per tile per day if you have enough Kegs.
3. I generally prioritize Foraging, Wood, and Tappers early.

 

[Squigglyruth]

Also, the above numbers assumed no fertilizer. You can buy deluxe speed-gro from Sandy on Thursdays, which gives you three harvests a season of starfruit instead of two, which bumps the profit of starfruit up to almost match hops, for a lot less effort. If you spend some of that saved time doing something profitable, starfruit will definitely become better than hops with DSG.
Unfortunately, this requires getting to the desert on Spring 23 at the latest, because you have to buy it before planting the starfruit, but Pam's doctor visit is Spring 25 (the last Thursday of spring) and the 24th is a holiday, so you have to have a desert warp totem from an earlier visit to go there on the 25th. So it's not really relevant to your current run. But if you have the materials to craft a few DSG, that... might be worth it, although I suspect you're better off using the oak resin for kegs.

I have Agriculturalist, so the starfruit option does get three harvests - I can buy DSG along with my starfruit seeds on summer 4. So the idea is to plant wheat on summer 1, harvest on summer 4 and plant as much DSG starfruit as I can afford. I am expecting that to be the best option!

Hmm, that doesn't sound right - my gold/day spreadsheet has hops at more than 3 times as much profit per day as wheat, when all being processed. Are you taking into account the fact that hops produce every day when grown? Kinda curious to see your exact calculations.

I will double-check my spreadsheet when I have time this evening. It could easily have a mistake in it.

EDIT: The spreadsheet seems right. I think the difference is down to whether you look at profit for a field of a given size or for an investment of a certain amount. Wheat tops the table for return on a given amount of money. Starfruit with three harvests tops the table for a field of any given size. Neither measure is definitely better for this circumstance - I can't afford to fill my whole field with starfruit, but can certainly spend more than the 5000gp it would take to fill it with wheat. That's why I'm wondering if a combination of the two might work quite well.

 

[Squigglyruth]

But you’ve already saved me a huge headache. I got the dreaded home cook bundle and was collecting cloth to build a mill so I could donate 100 bags of flour. I’ll just turn the wheat into beer, use the profits to buy 100 bags of flour and still end up ahead. This is why I need conversations like this- they force me to think outside of my comfort zone.

Good thinking on the home cook bundle!

Update now I have actually started the experiment:
I'm trying the wheat and starfruit option first. Just entered day 4 with buses already unlocked. If I sell the wheat I just harvested I will have 83,335gp, 500gp of which will go on a bus ticket. That would buy 173 DSG starfruit - not enough to fill my field yet of course (I have 448 clear plots right now because I didn't quite manage to water all the wheat on Monday). So the question is which crop to combine with it...

I could get 167 DSG starfruit and fill the rest of the field with wheat (I have a few wheat seeds spare already).
Or I could use melons for the rest of the field. In that case I could afford between 120 and 125 starfruit, depending what I do with my spare wheat seeds.

Assuming I replant the wheat in three days' time, that field will net me 148,706 from unprocessed starfruit, plus 28792 from unprocessed wheat, for a total unprocessed crop worth 177,498. Enough for 443 starfruit seeds in my second crop (without factoring in fishing etc in the mean time).

The melon option would get me 88,716gp from the melons, 106,855 from the starfruit, and 7080 from wheat on the plots that aren't ripe yet. This makes a higher total - 202,651gp - *but* the melon won't be ready to harvest in time for the next star fruit planting.

I think wheat and more starfruit is the better option because of the timing. But I might try another run where I plant some melons on summer 1 so they are ripe and ready in time to replace with starfruit for the second planting.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

The melon option would get me 88,716gp from the melons, 106,855 from the starfruit, and 7080 from wheat on the plots that aren't ripe yet. This makes a higher total - 202,651gp - *but* the melon won't be ready to harvest in time for the next star fruit planting.

Not sure what you mean by this, melons with DSG + Agriculturalist take 7 days to grow, Starfruit take 8. So not sure why the melons wouldn't be done in time.

 

[Squigglyruth]

Not sure what you mean by this, melons with DSG + Agriculturalist take 7 days to grow, Starfruit take 8. So not sure why the melons wouldn't be done in time.

I costed them without DSG. Buying DSG for the whole field at this point is quite expensive - it only leaves me 47,000 ish gp. I realise I will want a lot more DSG by next planting, so it isn't a straighforward choice. Maybe I will try both ways from this point!

EDIT: I've backed up the save file in case. In for a penny, in for a pound with the experiment!

EDIT 2: I found some spare money down the back of my parsnip chest... Turns out I hadn't sold my gold or silver parsnips, crystal fruit or spring seeds! Looking at spending 95,395 at this point.

EDIT 3 (last one): I ended up putting DSG on the whole field, planting 130 starfruit and the rest wheat. I will plant 49 melons tomorrow (on the wheat that hadn't ripened yet) and, because of the DSG, they should harvest in time to replace them with starfruit. I wonder how many starfruit I can get down at second planting?

 

[Elenna101]

I costed them without DSG. Buying DSG for the whole field at this point is quite expensive - it only leaves me 47,000 ish gp. I realise I will want a lot more DSG by next planting, so it isn't a straighforward choice. Maybe I will try both ways from this point!

In case you were wondering, I just did the math and confirmed that buying DSG for the whole field and then buying more melons instead of starfruit is worse than using wheat. :P

EDIT: for this particular harvest, at least. But as you said, it saves on DSG for the next harvest *shrug*

 

[Squigglyruth]

In case you were wondering, I just did the math and confirmed that buying DSG for the whole field and then buying more melons instead of starfruit is worse than using wheat. :P

EDIT: for this particular harvest, at least. But as you said, it saves on DSG for the next harvest *shrug*

Yes, it's not straightforward at all because I would be buying the DSG at some point soon. The extra money I found convinced me to just do the whole field in it now. But then I mostly bought wheat :-) It does double my wheat profits... Probably not optimal, but let's see how it plays out!

 

[Honeywell]

Squigglyruth I always enjoy reading your posts and I'm looking forward to reading how you make out!

For me, I grow for the number of kegs and jars I have. I usually start summer with 5-10 jars and 20 kegs. So my crops look like this:

I grow 20 hops on the speed grow you get from the Spring crop bundle so hops are ready on the 10th.
I grow 50-100 melons total. Just enough to keep the few preserves jars full until I start harvesting pumpkins.
I plant 100ish wheat to fill the 20 kegs I have until hops are ready. (When the wheat comes up on the 5th I replace it with startfruit on DSG.)
I plant whatever I need for the community center and then fill in with as much starfruit as I can afford and/or have space for and keep planting starfruit through out summer. If I'm short on money I still buy as much starfruit as I can and then fill in with wheat for the rest of the sprinkler space.

I'll process hops until the first starfruit harvest. Throughout Summer I keep adding kegs so the starfruit doesn't last long and I'll end up switching back to hops and wheat. By the time that's running out I'll be getting the first starfruit from the greenhouse.

I don't calculate gold per day but since making it a priority to unlock the desert in time for Summer 1 starfruit I've had money waiting when I need it.

 

[Squigglyruth]

For me, I grow for the number of kegs and jars I have. I usually start summer with 5-10 jars and 20 kegs.

That sounds like a well-planned strategy, Honeywell! I like the combination of quicker-growing crops for early processing along with the starfruit.

Update on my experiment:

The wheat and starfruit strategy worked well. After harvesting the 130 initial starfruit, lots of wheat and 49 melons, I was able to keep the normal quality starfruit back for processing and still afford to fill my field with starfruit and melons on the 12th - 293 starfruit, the rest melon. By 20th I could easily afford a whole field of starfuit, even with some added sprinklers. I think I will end up with 780 starfruit wine, which will sell for 2,457,000gp if I switch to Artisan! I'm currently adding kegs like crazy to process it fast.

Here is a picture of my farm on Sunday 21st - the fairy visited last night so I will be able to grow a few extra melons. The fish ponds are for the fish farmer bundle...

 

[Squigglyruth]

So, trial 2 in my experiment was the farm that relies on hops and fills in with other crops available in the valley.

The crops:
I bought 300 hops, but could have fit a few more without making extra sprinklers.
I also bought 20 blueberries, 10 hot peppers, 10 tomatoes, 20 corn (by accident - I held down shift - I was only going to buy 5!), 2 poppies, 1 sunflower, 2 summer spangles, 3 radish, and 135 melons.
Later on I refilled with melons where possible, then with wheat.

The result by fall 1:
142,200g in pale ale that I could sell now if I want (but I will probably wait and swap to Artisan).
Roughly 118,000g in melons and blueberries if I sell them raw. This will easily fund my crops for Fall. I also still have the 20,000 - 30,000g of fish I had at the start of the season. (Those probably smell by now!) And a bunch of gems.
5115 hops not yet processed - they will eventually net me 2,148,300g, but it will take a while! (If I build no more tappers, I can process 2,674 hops by the end of fall, and will be done with the full crop by mid-to-late winter. I will of course add tappers - I only have 36 so far.)
Various other vegetables (primarily tomatoes and hot peppers - oh, and corn) in high quantities, to be used as gifts or in preserve jars.
A large bunch of coffee beans.
A large barn with a cow, and a fish pond full of carp.
I have not yet unlocked the vault (because that was the point of this trial).
Mining 9 (nearly 10), combat 7, foraging 7. The other two stats were already at 10 at the start of summer.

Evaluation:
Despite my expectations, I actually found I had more free time in this hops-based playthrough than I did in the starfruit and wheat version. I think that's because I had to fish a lot in that version, to afford the starfruit seeds and deluxe speed-gro.
Extra time means extra kegs, so I am in a good place to process all my hops. I already have enough metal bars saved up to make the next two weeks of kegs - though I will be spending the copper bars on tappers at this point.
Money-wise, the two versions seem to be roughly equivalent. But in this version I haven't felt tight for money at any point, which I did in the starfruit trial. I should probably have invested in the barn sooner, and had it upgraded to deluxe this season. Then I could be getting truffle money too.
I think, all in all, I had more fun playing this version. There was less pressure to fish for money in early season. There was obviously more pressure to mine ore to make kegs, but I enjoy the mines so for me that wasn't a hardship.
I am definitely better set up for the future in this version, with a lot more tappers and kegs going into Fall.

Next up: The mixed strategy. Start with hops and melons, then replace the melons with starfruit.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

One thing to consider money wise, is that while Fall is never going to be a money month, if your kegs are accounted for until late fall or winter, you can’t process fall crops in the interim, which delays that income. That doesn’t matter if you don’t need that income before then anyway, of course, and pales beside the consideration of “what is more fun”, but just wanted to point it out.

Regardless, interesting stuff, thanks for keeping us posted!

 

[Honeywell]

I buy a shed of jars with part of my Summer money in order to process pumpkins. They're well worth the price and probably why it feels like I always have money when I need it now--nothing is sitting in a chest waiting to be processed.