What are your top tips?

[Lew Zealand]

I'm not sure why you'd waste ancient fruit in a preserves jar when you can keg them for more profits. I mean, they take a week to grow, it's like it was made for kegging. So instead of roughly 600k per season, you're going to be making a literal million plus per season.

......

tl;dr: Money is easy. By the time the price hike hits you, money is no longer a concern for you. You'll be making a million per season by the end of Summer, possibly sooner if you get lucky with an early Ancient Seed drop and plant it quickly enough. Trying to compare it to growing crops the hard way is a fool's errand at best.

It wasn't about maximizing money, more about relative cost of different ways of getting wood for projects. Which concluded that farming and buying wood seems to work out better than chopping it (except the first few weeks), even with the simple and limited setup described.

Answering some of the questions about the options I chose: Preserves Jars are available at Farming 4, but you need Farming 8 for Kegs, so I stuck with PJs in the example for simplicity and early-game accessibility. By the time anyone has volume Ancient Fruit, Kegs are pretty inexpensive and return more money for a slightly longer wait. You also need Farming 8 for Deluxe Speed-Gro. You need the Seed Maker to amplify the Ancient Seeds, but you get that at Farming 9, even later, though that matches with the likely time one might get an Ancient Seed.

Simple Sprinklers are available at Farming 2, but I've never used them because of my perception of the cost vs. benefit, which seems high. But I've never tested going for them early, I probably should. Otherwise, that means waiting until Farming 6 for Quality Sprinklers and low effort farm expansion.

With the simple strategy I suggested, adding Quality Sprinklers but not Simple ones, you get these things at these times:

Simple Sprinkler, Farming 2: Mid Spring
Preserves Jar, Farming 4 : Mid Spring (with a few extra crops)
Quality Sprinkler, Farming 6: End Spring

Keg, Farming 8: Mid Summer (with expanded crops due to the Quality Sprinklers)
Deluxe Speed Gro, Farming 8: Mid Summer
Seed Maker, Farming 9: Mid or Late Summer, depending on how many sprinklers you make

So that leaves volume production of Ancient Fruit with the Seed Maker in the Greenhouse until Year 2 which was my assumption, though filling that Greenhouse takes a bit longer than I'd anticipated.

 

[imnvs]

I highly recommend tea bushes to replace most fences. Animals, NPCs and you can not go through them. They don't need repair like actual fences. The reason I say most is because gates don't work properly without fence posts on either side, it seems, but his means a maximum of 2 fence posts per gate... and when you get married and your spouse does some fence repair, that gets all of them (provided you aren't putting gates all everywhere and only at key points). Then, if you use hardwood fence posts that means you'll never need to personally repair or replace them again.

 

[Gutsy Giraffe]

When you have 24 hungry animals it takes some preparation. Let your farm fill with grass before harvesting hay; more will grow that way. When you harvest leave small patches of grass everywhere so it will quickly grow and cover farm again.

 

[Rhiannon]

When you have 24 hungry animals it takes some preparation. Let your farm fill with grass before harvesting hay; more will grow that way. When you harvest leave small patches of grass everywhere so it will quickly grow and cover farm again.

This has been my strategy as well. As soon as I could afford barn and coop, I created two separate areas as "pastures" with fences and gates to direct the animals to them alternating when one field gets low. I also have a field just for growing grass for the silos. I have never had to buy hay for my animals. Marnie sends me some on a regular basis as a gift and I keep it tucked away for emergencies. But so far, in 7 game years, it's not been needed.

 

[Gutsy Giraffe]

This has been my strategy as well. As soon as I could afford barn and coop, I created two separate areas as "pastures" with fences and gates to direct the animals to them alternating when one field gets low. I also have a field just for growing grass for the silos. I have never had to buy hay for my animals. Marnie sends me some on a regular basis as a gift and I keep it tucked away for emergencies. But so far, in 7 game years, it's not been needed.

How do you get the animals to eat grass that is outside their barn or coop? Do they not need to eat from the silo-fed tables inside the barn or coop when this happens?

 

[Ereo]

Open the gate next to the door. When it's sunny and not winter, the animals will come out and eat grass. They will not eat hay from the silo if they find grass.

This also raises their happiness.

 

[poinapel]

You can restart the day by exiting to title, then going back onto your save. Has saved me from mistakes so many times and I wish I had known about it sooner

 

[Odin]

Everything should be under sprinklers by the end of your first Spring, early Summer at the absolute latest.

That's great if you can get to that point that quickly, but I guarantee 98% of players don't have everything covered by sprinklers that soon. Maybe on a second or third playthrough, but even then it's definitely not most people. It might help people to explain how you get to that point. Keep in mind the vast majority of players have no experience min/maxing the game.