Help with getting my farming level up fast

[NotSoSnarky]

Hello everyone. I want to start off by saying that I'm not a newcomer, I'm someone that regularly likes to check the wiki, and restart a game. I'm actually one of the people who like to fish. The foraging and fishing levels usually get pretty high pretty fast. The one that I have trouble with is farming.

I know you have to plant enough crops to get your farming level up, but I'm bad with the math portion. How many crops per farming level?

I know that Kale, Parsnips and the new crop Carrots take the shortest amount of time to grow (In Spring), and that's good with getting fast farming level. But, I was also wanting to profit from my crops as well, while I waited to get to Preserve Jars or Kegs.

I usually don't get to farming level 8 until sometime in the Summer, or even Fall, depending on what I'm busy focusing on.

Any help, tips or advice would be appreciated. I know I need to grow more crops, that's really the only major way. I'm wanting to know how many per season to get my farming level up fast.

I try to get coop and barn fast, but it's usually sometime in Summer when I'm able. (Unless I start out with the Meadowlands farm which gives you a free coop and two free chickens).

 

[Grumples]

As far as how many crops per season: I'd say as many as you feel you can handle. The more you plant, the more xp you get. I don't think there is a magic number anyone can give you.

Since I like doing other things, I usually plant a ton of ther most expensive crops every season. They have the longest growing time and I don't have to spend as much time harvesting/replanting every few days. I assume you're planning for early game, so cauliflower/strawberries in spring, melons in summer, and pumpkins in fall. Then for the profit, you turn those into juice/wine.

If you don't mind more micromanaging, there are a lot of crops that give better xp ratios than the crops mentioned above. Strawberries are still the best, but potatos are good as well for spring. In summer, hops, poppies and hot peppers are good. And in fall, cranberries, grapes and bok choy.

There is a table on the wiki that shows how much xp is needed for each farming level. You can also see how much xp each crop gives per harvest. Figuring out how many of each particular crop you'd need to grow should be easy to figure out, once you know what you want to grow.

 

[MateoOfRiverwood]

For planting crops, it’s energy management, and money management. You want to plant as much as you can, but still have some energy left over, or, money (and Time!) enough leftover for lunch at the Saloon.

• Spring year 1, I try to stay around 60 plots. It makes money and raises skill, but leaves me enough to go for a mines run or a fishing run most days.
• Summer year 1, I’m mostly watering with the copper water can, might be the Steel can by late summer. Any watering can upgrade is huge, allowing me to water way more crops before I need to chow down at the saloon.
• Fall year 1, I try to start cranking out Quality Sprinklers.
• Year two and on, i can plant as much as I can before I pass out in my fields.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

It largely depends on the crops as each give differing amount of xp based on a few factors but generally based around how long they take to grow (which makes regrowing crops very powerful as they're mostly scaled to initial growth rather than averaged over a season).

Generally your best bet is to plant a few crops as you do other stuff like your previously mentioned fishing, then getting up basic sprinklers which are actually very good for their price and how early you access them (need only ~10% the xp to get to compared to quality sprinklers). As there really isn't a very good spring crop (at least a reasonable one for most year one), the main objective in spring is in levelling up farming passively, so there's no real need to go overboard. Kale is a good option and harvests incredibly fast as well as having a good turnaround, which makes for an easy transition to quality sprinklers perhaps in the mid-spring/end of spring area depending on how vigorous you were with the basic sprinkler setup (though generally it should be quite sparce, you don't need a whole lot to get level 6/8 farming and you can get 10 with the much better summer crops which is when you'll start processing anyway and only then need artisan).