Desert Change, Solar Panel, and Fairy Dust (1.5)

Shart

Planter
This post cointains 2 unrelated stuffs: the change in desert item placement and solar panel mechanic.

For those who doesn't know what I'm talking about, basically you can put any machine item outside your farm. However, if those items block the npc's path, they will get destroyed. Read this if you want to know where you can place your items safely: https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Crafting#Crafted_goods_outside_the_farm

Previously you can put whatever machine items (furnaces, jars, etc) in the desert wherever you want because nobody ever went to Calico desert.
This patch, however, introduced seemingly small change but has massive effect to min/max-ers who use skull caverns to maximize their profit:
Emily now visits Sandy to celebrate Sandy's birthday on Fall 15.
Because of this, you no longer can place those machines safely in the desert.

1st picture: Fall 15 morning, before Emily came
1.png


2nd picture: in the afternoon, Emily is celebrating Sandy's birthday nearby the pond
2.png


3rd picture: Fall 16, after the dust has settled
3.png


Yup, that's quite a mess.
Those who like to put machine items in the desert like me have some options now:
1. Arrange it so that the items are safe
2. Remove the items temporarily for 1 day and then return it the following day
3. Go to bed before Emily comes to the desert (around 11:30 AM)

Now I'm gonna talk about solar panel. First of all, solar panel recipe can be obtained by finishing Caroline's special order quest (Island ingredients)
I've done some testing and this is what I found. I might be wrong, so feel free to correct me
1. Solar panel can be placed anywhere outdoor (your farm, Ginger island, forest, desert, mountain so on). If you place it inside, it won't produce any battery pack
2. It takes 8 sunny days to produce the battery pack.
For example: Summer 1-5 are sunny days, summer 6 is rainy, summer 7-8 are sunny, summer 9 is rainy, summer 10 is sunny (5+0+2+0+1 = 8). In this case the battery will be ready on summer 10
3. Since 1.5, there are 2 weather updates: Pelican town area and Ginger island area. The panels in the farm may be ready earlier than the ones in the island despite both being placed at the same time. It all depends on the weather of each respective area
4. You can put your panel at the desert and the weather depends on Pelican town's weather. If it's raining at the town, the panels at Calico won't be charging eventhough it always looks sunny there.
5. Snowy is not rainy. The panels are still working as if it's sunny day. This means you have 28 sunny days in the winter unless you use rain totem

Now let's move on to Fairy dust. This new item can be used on machines to finish processing. I have only tested it on a few items and it's quite intuitive. Place it on keg and your wine will be ready immediately.
If you use it on cask, you can upgrade the quality of the item one step (normal wine -> silver wine). This means you need to use it 3 times if you want to get iridium wine from normal wine (normal > silver > gold > iridium). Probably the most effective is when you use it to upgrade from gold quality to iridium quality. I didn't do any math, but I doubt it is profitable to use fairy dust compared to letting it age normally.

One interesting interaction of fairy dust is on solar panel. Normally you need 8 sunny days to produce battery, but with fairy dust, you only need 1 sunny day AFTER you use the dust.
Example: Today is spring 17 and is raining. I placed a new solar panel and then immediately use the dust. If spring 18 is sunny, the battery pack will be ready then. If spring 18-19 are raining and spring 20 is sunny, then it will be ready on spring 20
This is a reliable way to farm battery packs. You can reliably get up to 28 batteries in a season if you chain it non stop (harvest > dust in the same day > harvest again in the following day > repeat this process over and over again)

Like I said in the beginning, if I made any mistake feel free to correct me. Thanks for coming to my ted talk
 

fortyseven

Tiller
Sorry for necroing this thread but I just wanted to thank you for posting on the fairy dust solar panel combo. I havent seen it discussed elsewhere and no one commented on what you shared.

This is the only method I have found to reliably farm batteries allowing you to build crystalaria en masse. Getting batteries the old way with lightning rods was a total pain, because its so unreliable and very difficult to scale up. So I wholeheartedly recommend this apporach to anyone who wants to farm gems in industrial quantities.
 
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