Cptldsilver
Planter
Hello everyone, I thought I'd share some of my advanced min maxing techniques.
Part 1
Part 1
- Maximizing your geodes: Once you get into the skull cavern you will be swimming in omni geodes. To use them to their full extent you should use the stardew predictor to see how many treasure chests, golden pumpkins, pearls, and ancient seeds are in the next set of geodes in the artifact troves. Lets say you have 100 omni geodes to open and you have high value artifact troves at number 11, 15, 33, 38, 45, 55, 58, 60, 72, 75, 84, 90, 99. In this case you would trade 40 omni geodes for 8 artifact troves. This would give you 60 geodes to open and 8 high value troves to open. You would open omni geodes for numbers 1-10, 12-14, 16-32, 34-37, 39-44, 46-54, 56-57, 59, and 61-68.
- Foraging level: Getting to foraging level 7 ASAP is crucial if you want to set up an oak tree farm efficiently. At foraging level 7 you get wild tree fertilizer which makes your trees grow faster which means you can tap them faster which means that you can get oak resin faster which means you can get kegs faster. Maximizing keg production is key to a successful min max run. Getting to foraging level 7 near the beginning of summer, in my experience, usually requires you to clear the entire map of trees along with your farm and grab any forageables you see during your run. Mushroom levels can be a good source of foraging experience but are not worth spending time away from the skull cavern IMO. You could use spring or summer seeds as well but I don't have any experience with that and I question if its worth the time and farming space.
- Skull Cavern/Pickaxe: A steel pickaxe breaks skull cavern rocks in two hits which is the same as a gold pickaxe. In other words, you don't need to upgrade to a gold pickaxe before getting into the skull cavern. I haven't tried a copper pickaxe but I think it would take three hits.
- Crystalarium's: Crystalarium's are interesting. They have a huge cost associated with them but they can potentially return that cost. Their are 3 minerals/gems you should consider for the devices. 2 of these require trading with the desert trader.
- Diamonds take 5 days and provide 1 triple shot espresso. Coffee at the saloon costs 300 gold and is equivalent to 1/3 of an espresso so one diamond traded for espresso is worth at least 900 gold. Trading for espresso also allows you to not have to visit the saloon which is normally far away from your regular activities in a min max run. Diamonds are worth then approximately 180 gold a day plus the savings from not having to go to the saloon.
- Jade takes 2 days provides 1 staircase. Its hard to quantify how much a staircase is worth but lets just say that if you go into a skull cavern run with zero staircases vs 20 staircases. In my estimation you can get approximately 100 more iridium ore in the run with 20 staircases. That makes each staircase worth about 5 iridium ore. If you've taken the blacksmith profession and are buying coal from Clint's then each ore is worth 270 gold. That makes 1 staircase worth about 1350 gold. That means Jade is worth about 675 gold a day.
- Fire Quartz take 1 day. Replicating fire quartz can be useful because it allows you to save your coal and your regular quartz and provides you with the necessary refined quartz for your quality sprinklers. If we make some assumptions about the game situation we can put a dollar sign on it. If we say that every fire quartz replaces 3 regular quartz and that all of our coal is bought from Clint's then that means each fire quartz is worth 300 gold from coal savings plus the trading value of 3 regular quartz. 1 regular quartz is worth 1/5 of a bomb and 1 bomb takes 1 coal and 4 iron ore. If we place the value of iron ore at about 50 gold a piece then that means 1 bomb is worth 150+(4*50)=350 gold. 1 regular quartz is worth then about 70 gold. So 1 fire quartz is worth 300+(70*3)-510 gold. That means that fire quartz is worth about 510 gold a day. Keep in mind that once you no longer need refined quartz that the value of fire quartz drops dramatically.
- The cost of a crystalarium at the bare minimum is the value of all the materials required to craft it sold at blacksmith profession prices. We assume that we would otherwise not use these materials for anything other than selling. This assumption is probably not true when we need the gold bars to craft sprinklers so consider that as well when making your own calculations. 2 Iridium bars (3000)+5 gold bars (1875) +1 battery (500) + 99 stone (200)= 5575 gold. At this cost it takes 36 days to recover the cost with diamonds, 11 days for jade, and 12 for fire quartz.
- Summary on Crystalarium: I'm on the fence on whether or not you should craft early crystalariums. They are valuable but IMO the quality sprinklers and immediate cash for the iridium bars is too good to pass up especially in early summer. Once you have all your sprinklers crafted is a better time to use any batteries you have to create crystalariums.