Honey, and Mead (with the potential for bees)

[greentealeaves]

With the success of 1.6 and subsequent mini updates, one can only ponder towards "What If" questions for future content of the game. A few that came to my mind pertain to honey, mead, and potentially bees.



Honey

Albeit, there are different variety of floral honey in the game. What if the game included flowers from different things? A few real life examples are:

1. Clover Honey
   1. A lighter golden brown
   2. Harvested by bees from clover flowers (Trifolium repens)
      1. 
         
2. Acasia Honey
   1. A pale yellow hue
   2. Harvested by bees from Black Locust trees (Robinia pseudoacacia)
      1. 
         
         
3. Alfalfa Honey
   1. A light amber hue
   2. Harvested by bees from Alfalfa flowers (Medicago sativa)
      1. 
         
         
         
4. Buckwheat Honey
   1. A dark amber hue
   2. Harvested by bees from Buckwheat flowers (Fagopyrum esculentum)
      1. 

(Editor's note: I just realized that there is a 10 image limitation. Welp, I hope that this gets to paint the picture of what to go for: plant, the blossoms, and the difference in honey hue, and possibly different stat effects depending on the honey. There are other kinds that can be added: I would suggest looking at the link below for some ideas).

Additionally, NPCs could be given different kinds of honey as potential new way to gift and earn hearts.

Source for different kinds of honey





Mead



Similar to how different kinds of honey can be made (along with different player stats), what if mead could see an overhaul? Not only different types of mead from flora plants, but also from using fruits (such as apples, strawberries, oranges, melons, peach, black berries, blue berries, etc.)? But why stop there? What if players can create their own combination of meads, not limited to just fruit meads and flora meads, but a blending of both? Similar to how different gems can bring about different perks of stats for a player, by mixing different ingredients (fruits, flora, or both) players can reap the benefits of having a new option to tackle skull cavern, mines, or just even everyday usage.

In practicality, players would be able to pick a honey base, followed by a choice of flora to add, or fruits, (or as previously stated, both) before adding to kegs (or a new fermentation machine/device for players to make this plausible).

But I digress, this idea is more of a major update, perhaps one day it can be implemented.







Bees



This idea is more up in the air, but my take is that Bees can be individual workers that have a queen bee per hive. The queen bee would have a limit of how many bees can be around (constraint by the bee hive size). Bees can be limited to, or expand beyond farm boundaries to collect different kind of pollen from different flora of plants (as mentioned prior under Honey). Would it be a far off idea to allow bee keeping as a new perk? Or, to work in conjunction with foraging?

Reasons for making it a stand alone perk

• Can categorize honey production and mead production (though its arguable that you can even have mead under brew master or something similar. But I digress).
• Perks can boost honey efficiency (time to create honey, infusion of different meads with fruits and flora, etc.)
• Perks can also boost the efficacy of honey, and meads to the player (more than just scalar, but an additional boost. I guess now we can understand why the Black Bear in the forest loves this stuff).
• Potentially make room for having a bee tamer perk (having bees to fight along side you (for monsters spawning on the farm).
• Can boost selling price of honey related products.
• Potentially make a perk that allows players to transport bees from ginger island to the main farm for a whole new set of cultivated honey variety, and meads).
• Maybe, just maybe, (if it isn't too crazy) a pet bee that responds in buzzes and that will follow you along

Although it is valid to argue that it can be joined under Foraging, it would be cool to see Stardew Valley be able to expand, rather than to be limited to, perks that players can enjoy.




This is just a tentative idea, which I hope one day can catch ConcernedApe's attention.


(I should go back to my horticulture hw & projects. Thank you all for taking time to read this thread!)



-greentealeaves (Sam)

 

[FilthyGorilla]

While I think the addition and overhaul of flowers could be a lot to implement, we have something like 8 types of honey that could all totally have different colourations.

Mead however totally needs a rework, processing should never lead to a net loss of cash like it does, and making flavoured meads wouldn’t be all too intensive as all that would be needed are different meads for the honey placed within a keg.