A Money Making Strategy to Test

[Boo1972]

Hey fellow farmers! This past week, YouTuber Wickedy Chickedy released a video detailing how to make money selling tea saplings. If her math is correct (and I’m sure it is) turning wild seeds into tea saplings is the most profitable way to handle them- even better than turning crystal fruit into wine or jelly. I was hoping the forums would be willing to test her strategy out in a play through and see if it’s worth listing in the Guides section. I’ll briefly describe it here, but for more details look up her video.

First, get Caroline up to 2 hearts. Gold star veggies work well as gifts. This should take between 2-3 weeks if you speak with and gift her consistently.

While you get your friendship with her to 2 hearts, collect wood and fiber. Collect forage, turn them into seeds, plant them and repeat.

Once you are at 2 hearts with Caroline, head into the door in the back of her kitchen. A cutscene should trigger. Once you see the cutscene, Caroline will send you a recipe for tea saplings in the mail.

Turn your wood, fiber and wild seeds into tea saplings. Sell for 500g a piece. The best thing about this method is it should not interfere with long term money making plans.

I know @Lew Zealand is currently trying this method out. I hope others will give it a try and post their impressions on this thread.

Thanks y’all!

 

[Lew Zealand]

Hey fellow farmers! This past week, YouTuber Wickedy Chickedy released a video detailing how to make money selling tea saplings. If her math is correct (and I’m sure it is) turning wild seeds into tea saplings is the most profitable way to handle them- even better than turning crystal fruit into wine or jelly. I was hoping the forums would be willing to test her strategy out in a play through and see if it’s worth listing in the Guides section. I’ll briefly describe it here, but for more details look up her video.

First, get Caroline up to 2 hearts. Gold star veggies work well as gifts. This should take between 2-3 weeks if you speak with and gift her consistently.

While you get your friendship with her to 2 hearts, collect wood and fiber. Collect forage, turn them into seeds, plant them and repeat.

Once you are at 2 hearts with Caroline, head into the door in the back of her kitchen. A cutscene should trigger. Once you see the cutscene, Caroline will send you a recipe for tea saplings in the mail.

Turn your wood, fiber and wild seeds into tea saplings. Sell for 500g a piece. The best thing about this method is it should not interfere with long term money making plans.

I know @Lew Zealand is currently trying this method out. I hope others will give it a try and post their impressions on this thread.

Thanks y’all!

As @Boo1972 said, I'm doing this strategy right now. But casually of course! It seems that Fiber will be your shortage early on. Some details:

Level 25-29 in the Mines typically have a lot of Weeds to scythe for Fiber, keep reloading them
Leave one or 2 Weeds unscythed in each spawn location on the Map (Farm, Cindersap, Train Crossing, Town Parks) and it grows back faster
Caroline loves Daffodils, even better than crops so this'll cost you less profit

I'll add more here if I think of it.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

So a quick breakdown on the mathhammer side of things:

Each set of 4 (Leek, Horseradish, Dandelion, and Daffodil) makes 10 seeds. If we're assuming this is to be a sustained money making strategy, we'll presume 4 of those seeds go to replanting, and 6 go to Tea Saplings. Of course the likelihood is that the 4 don't give you a perfect set, but we can also assume you're doing more than just 4 at a time and either math will even out, or you'll forage the missing components in the wild. Regardless, then, for each 4 you grow, you get the materials to replant, and enough extra wild seeds to make 3 saplings. The fiber and wood are not insubstantial costs, but fiber can't be bought and as such we'll presume it has no value at the moment. The wood you can buy, the 15 wood needed for those 3 saplings is valued at 150 in Y1. So you're looking at 1350 profit off of 4 seeds growing for a week.

Previously I'd been converting to Spring Seeds and selling those on their own, as it's still way more valuable than the baseline materials. So at Bare Minimum, this is insanely much more profitable than that. Is it worth growing 20+ wild seeds a week? Yep, sure is. Converting into the metrics used to evaluate other crops, we're looking at:

Gold Per Day: Average of 48.21 per planted tile, assuming no Speed Gro. For reference the Strawberry when planted on Spring 1 offers 20 GPD, and the "very profitable" Strawberry planted on the day of the Egg Festival with Speed Go gets you around 15. Starfruit and Ancient Fruit don't even get substantially above this mark.

Gold Per Energy: Again assuming no Speed Go, we're looking at 24 Gold Per Energy. This is higher than Early Fishing can hope to do other than Catfish, which don't really compete. It's crazy rates.

The only downside is that you're not advancing your farming skill and as such aren't moving towards better sprinklers. However folks underestimate basic sprinklers, and I really feel this may be more profitable than Starfruit or Hops in Summer, but available in Spring. I've got to give this a whirl but honestly this looks like busted profit levels. Will report back.

 

[Lew Zealand]

So a quick breakdown on the mathhammer side of things:

Each set of 4 (Leek, Horseradish, Dandelion, and Daffodil) makes 10 seeds. If we're assuming this is to be a sustained money making strategy, we'll presume 4 of those seeds go to replanting, and 6 go to Tea Saplings. Of course the likelihood is that the 4 don't give you a perfect set, but we can also assume you're doing more than just 4 at a time and either math will even out, or you'll forage the missing components in the wild. Regardless, then, for each 4 you grow, you get the materials to replant, and enough extra wild seeds to make 3 saplings. The fiber and wood are not insubstantial costs, but fiber can't be bought and as such we'll presume it has no value at the moment. The wood you can buy, the 15 wood needed for those 3 saplings is valued at 150 in Y1. So you're looking at 1350 profit off of 4 seeds growing for a week.

Previously I'd been converting to Spring Seeds and selling those on their own, as it's still way more valuable than the baseline materials. So at Bare Minimum, this is insanely much more profitable than that. Is it worth growing 20+ wild seeds a week? Yep, sure is. Converting into the metrics used to evaluate other crops, we're looking at:

Gold Per Day: Average of 48.21 per planted tile, assuming no Speed Gro. For reference the Strawberry when planted on Spring 1 offers 20 GPD, and the "very profitable" Strawberry planted on the day of the Egg Festival with Speed Go gets you around 15. Starfruit and Ancient Fruit don't even get substantially above this mark.

Gold Per Energy: Again assuming no Speed Go, we're looking at 24 Gold Per Energy. This is higher than Early Fishing can hope to do other than Catfish, which don't really compete. It's crazy rates.

The only downside is that you're not advancing your farming skill and as such aren't moving towards better sprinklers. However folks underestimate basic sprinklers, and I really feel this may be more profitable than Starfruit or Hops in Summer, but available in Spring. I've got to give this a whirl but honestly this looks like busted profit levels. Will report back.

Once you're in Summer, the Seed cost is even lower as Summer Seeds only take 3 Foraged items to make instead of 4, so relative profit compared to direct Forage selling is even larger, though obviously the same relative to just selling Summer Seeds.

And defo +1 that you aren't making any Skill advances with this technique but in my current playthrough, I just planted my 30 Summer Seed reward from the Community Center Bundle next to my regular crops, and after harvesting those, I'm still burning through that Forage harvest (plus map Forage) as I come across more Fiber in late Fall. They'll last you a while if you're doing this as an additional moneymaking strategy, as opposed to Min/Maxing Tea Saplings.

I really don't have the constitution for Min/Maxing anything, I envy all of you who do.

 

[Boo1972]

I definitely think this strategy could slow your farming skill progression. More so for newer players though, which is one reason I was hoping a bunch of people would try it out. I see it like Lew Zealand, as a source of extra income as opposed to the main focus of your farm.

But, I paid for a deluxe barn and 8 pigs just with stuff I had laying around on an established farm- money I made in seconds. Granted, it was winter and I always grow fiber and winter seeds on my farm, but still it was pretty awesome.

 

[Lew Zealand]

But, I paid for a deluxe barn and 8 pigs just with stuff I had laying around on an established farm- money I made in seconds. Granted, it was winter and I always grow fiber and winter seeds on my farm, but still it was pretty awesome.

Yeah, this is just how it played out for me, I just bought different stuff!

It's kind of like rummaging through the couch cushions and finding an inheritance check from Great Aunt Myrtle for $€£15,000 and then every few days after that searching for and finding another one for €£$2,000 every time.

Can't complain!

 

[imnvs]

Planting spring seeds? Not great for farming experience... and the faster you get farming experience, the faster you can get to the seed maker, and then you can turn excess of certain forageables into seeds too. Winter roots found in the mines, for example are really good for making winter seeds. Common mushrooms found in a mushroom cave or in the island's mushroom cave are good for making fall seeds. Since this is a slower build scenario, potentially, in Summer the spice berries can be turned into summer seeds.

Sure, you won't be making quite as much quite as early, but you will expand fast if you also push farming.

Just something to consider.

 

[FarmerJoJo]

I uncovered the tea sapling route a few weeks ago - was surprised it wasn't more widely known and tried it on my second SDV run. I had already planned that run to include a minimum of watering with a goal of Farm 6 by Summer 1, so didn't plant any Spring Seeds. I probably netted about 15K from the strategy. Made the start of the game much more relaxed, easy to get the backpack upgrade and gold pickaxe. I'm on 1.4, so the lack of Fiber Seeds makes the strategy more difficult to fully exploit.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

I uncovered the tea sapling route a few weeks ago - was surprised it wasn't more widely known and tried it on my second SDV run. I had already planned that run to include a minimum of watering with a goal of Farm 6 by Summer 1, so didn't plant any Spring Seeds. I probably netted about 15K from the strategy. Made the start of the game much more relaxed, easy to get the backpack upgrade and gold pickaxe. I'm on 1.4, so the lack of Fiber Seeds makes the strategy more difficult to fully exploit.

To be fair Fiber Seeds won't really come into play for this early game anyway. Though there's certainly the possibility of continuing this strategy into Y2+, it does become substantially less attractive over time thanks to the larger availability of preserves jars / kegs later on, since you can't process these to increase profits at all prior to sale. In Y1, you can't get Fiber Seeds on 1.5 until the task board arrives on the 1st of Fall and you then complete a quest, so Fall week 2 at the Earliest and potentially not until Winter or later if, like for me, the quest isn't one of the early ones which comes up.

 

[Lew Zealand]

The Tea Sapling seems to be a Year 1 good profit item, and especially for Winter. The Fiber Seeds recipe addresses the problem of being perpetually short of Fiber, but this is in turn dependent on the Special Requests Board in Fall and getting the proper request (I don't know if you always get the right one). I did get and fulfill it in my current playthrough.

Even with that, the Fiber Seeds recipe depends on an item you will accumulate (Mixed Seeds), but has a low drop rate, and you will be tempted to consume earlier in-game, as I did in Fall. That said, I ended up accumulating enough of these by Winter to plant a decent patch of Fiber and got about 700 Fiber from it, plus enough to replant 28 more Fiber Seeds. With that I raised a decent sum of:

Which will pay for some nice stuff. I've of course been making Tea Saplings all along, so this is a fraction of the total Tea take-home. And I didn't use all the Fiber as I also want to Fertilize some Trees, planning the Farm map for the Spring, but this is most of that Fiber harvest. Anyhow, IMO it's not a Min/Max strategy but an easily manageable, nice g producer on the side while you're playing through a regular paced game.

 

[Boo1972]

The Tea Sapling seems to be a Year 1 good profit item, and especially for Winter. The Fiber Seeds recipe addresses the problem of being perpetually short of Fiber, but this is in turn dependent on the Special Requests Board in Fall and getting the proper request (I don't know if you always get the right one). I did get and fulfill it in my current playthrough.

Even with that, the Fiber Seeds recipe depends on an item you will accumulate (Mixed Seeds), but has a low drop rate, and you will be tempted to consume earlier in-game, as I did in Fall. That said, I ended up accumulating enough of these by Winter to plant a decent patch of Fiber and got about 700 Fiber from it, plus enough to replant 28 more Fiber Seeds. With that I raised a decent sum of:

View attachment 8186

Which will pay for some nice stuff. I've of course been making Tea Saplings all along, so this is a fraction of the total Tea take-home. And I didn't use all the Fiber as I also want to Fertilize some Trees, planning the Farm map for the Spring, but this is most of that Fiber harvest. Anyhow, IMO it's not a Min/Max strategy but an easily manageable, nice g producer on the side while you're playing through a regular paced game.

That’s the feeling I’m getting too. It’s a pretty easy way to make extra cash as you play; I would definitely say it made my early game easier. I upgraded all of my tools my first spring without having to make any trade-offs. I even bought coal in my first spring. I never have the extra cash for that. I think selling Tea Saplings could help new players who are struggling with cash flow.

I also didn’t see any of my skill levels suffer, except fishing. My tea sapling farmer has kegs going, sprinklers watering and just married Haley. His first summer isn’t even over yet.

 

[Lew Zealand]

That’s the feeling I’m getting too. It’s a pretty easy way to make extra cash as you play; I would definitely say it made my early game easier. I upgraded all of my tools my first spring without having to make any trade-offs. I even bought coal in my first spring. I never have the extra cash for that. I think selling Tea Saplings could help new players who are struggling with cash flow.

I also didn’t see any of my skill levels suffer, except fishing. My tea sapling farmer has kegs going, sprinklers watering and just married Haley. His first summer isn’t even over yet.

I haven't seen any of my Levels suffering either, though I'll have to check Fishing. I usually give up on it about Level 8 or so as PJarring and Kegging take over as the moneymakers. I know this because every time I get that Worm Bin recipe, it's just at the time I don't need it any more. Though this time with extra runs to the Mines for more Fiber harvesting, I got lots of Bug Meat at the same time so this strategy also relieved that resource pressure. Knocking the Big Rocks at the same time has also avoided any Stone shortage and I've had zero days of not enough Stone. It's worked out pretty well!

Also I got another 20,000g the following day with Tea Saplings as the Fiber Seeds planting was staggered. It's only mid Winter and with the number of Fiber plants I have left, I will likely end up with ~100,000g made in Winter Y1 on Tea Saplings alone.

This is very nice.

Edit: I'll probably put the final tally for the month here but I'm up to 86,000g from Tea Saplings alone in Winter by the end of Winter 21.

 

[hexnessie]

,Common mushrooms found in a mushroom cave or in the island's mushroom cave are good for making fall seeds.

And tapped mushroom trees that you can have as many as you like, and that often drop brown mushrooms. I think they are available as a random event even before you go to the :spoiler location:

 

[Tom]

So a quick breakdown on the mathhammer side of things:

Would you be willing to review my attempt at this here? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...tgrp0vgXuJqLaCP2xJ3LaV8gbU/edit#gid=966175274

I'm not sure how close I got or what I neglected.

 

[susb8383]

I love the tea sapling method early on. By using it I can make enough money to unlock the desert and buy Starfruit seeds by summer year 1.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

I love the tea sapling method early on. By using it I can make enough money to unlock the desert and buy Starfruit seeds by summer year 1.

Yeah I personally don’t use it but I think it’s an awesome way for newer players to get into using more advanced strategies. It’s a bit of a shame in my opinion that it’s getting nerfed as I really thought it wasn’t all that amazing.