Max Skills in One Month?

[DanaBee]

Hi ! I’ve been playing around with the MouseyPounds Predictor and wanted to try to max all my skills in one in-game month; documented here is my first attempt. I did this run over a month ago on seed 84652.

For farming, I got the first skill with the starting parsnips, relied on the crop fairy on the 9th to grow my community center crops plus a few extra cauliflower, and then used the post-calico festival rain (and a couple rain totems) to grow kale - the western half of my farm was entirely kale. I know in the end I had more than enough - I think in the realm of 40 extra? Side note: why doesn’t the crop fairy spawn on Day 2? I played with a few different world seeds a few times each where she was supposed to come Day 2 and never did. I know rain never happens Day 5 because of the community center, so I’m wondering if there’s some other block I’m not aware of.

Fishing skill was focused for Days 2-4, and then the rain days before the calico festival. The map predictor was used to find bubble spots, although the bubbles for the first two days weren’t fantastic. Catfish and Largemouth Bass were sold, but a lot of the other fish were eaten raw for sustenance.The biggest struggle was balancing out my need to eat with my need to unlock the bus before the calico festival.

Mining skill was focused on at the calico festival. Most of my eggs were spent on bombs. I didn’t get to floor 120 in the main mines until after the festival. I’m not sure if the post-120 difficulty bump affects the Skull Cavern monsters, anyone know? After the festival, I got the skull key, galaxy sword, and a bunch of warp totems and ground out the mining skill and almost all the combat skills in the mines. Didn’t quite make max combat skill :( Maybe it’s karma for using the map predictor to whiz through the mines.

Foraging was the farthest behind as you can see. I picked the forest farm for the respawning stumps. In retrospect, I think I should have gotten to the secret woods earlier and visited more regularly, but that alone wouldn’t have been enough for me to catch up. I also struggled to manage the kale empire’s need for space with tree planting. Trees were planted in community spaces; north of the carpenter's, along the backwoods, in the desert after the festival.

If I do this again, I think I need to figure out how to use explosive ammo, keep better track of my farming exp, and figure out if some farm space can be dedicated to wild seeds. I might think about using other maps, although I won’t consider the four corners map since it seems a bit cheesy to use the giant multiplayer map for a challenge run. I also didn’t get any skill books from the traveling cart or the book seller. I don’t know if buying a bunch of books from the cart is in the spirit of the challenge…but this game seed didn’t have any for sale. Any thoughts about how to optimize the run would be appreciated! Maybe a seed with a Day 3 crop fairy :P

 

[Yvi]

Whoa, that's crazy impressive!!

 

[Gardening Spirit]

That's an awesome achievement, well done

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Nice run, I were to offer any help as someone who's roughly routed but not run the same thing you just did:
1. The biggest thing - Get all (or most) foraging xp from Woodcutter's weekly bought during the desert festival. It requires 6000 calico eggs (~2000 a day) to get all the xp but is basically the best way to get foraging xp by FAR, and also raises combat and mining xp in the meantime. It does require being pretty good at skull cavern but by getting to floor 200+ you can pretty reasonably get the 55+ egg rating, netting an additional 500 eggs a day as well as a magic rock candy (the first and second used on the 2nd and 3rd day, and the last can be used whenever, probably for grinding combat or smt).
Foraging is by far the biggest time drain in the whole run and this allows streamlining it with the other skills, leaving a lot more time for combat which is really the only difficult one outside of foraging
2. Focus on crops last. I would plant small patches of parsnips or something to get to level 2 farming, then basically ignore it until past the desert fest stage. Then just place down a bunch of basic sprinklers gotten from sc iron/coal. You could even just do repeat runs in sc to force rain totems and plant a massive field of crops, farming xp isn't a big deal though
3. Farm combat xp in the mines. Reset 105,95,85 and kill shadow brutes and shamans. Not only do these guys give a load of combat xp, you can also find diamonds as you're killing them and make a decent amount of cash per day, which is just generally useful in your prep for the desert festival as well as buying the seeds for farming and salad/coffee


Also just some quick things I wanted to add:
1. four corners isn't a "giant multiplayer map" it's smaller than standard, more annoying to move around, and not really useful for you but for a different reason than you stated
2. yes, the 120 floor does affect skull cavern monsters. Honestly, I would not reach floor 120 at all during this run, the boost is too large and you'll want to be using the mines for farming combat xp anyway
3. I wouldn't consider buying books from the cart cheating, but it's all really subjective. You're already seeding which is one thing some may stray from if already considering buying the books to be outside the spirit of the challenge but in all honesty it's completely subjective, do what makes you happy
4. I wouldn't upgrade any tools outside of the pickaxe which I would get to iron or at least copper, while upgrading just continue void farming and potentially dust sprite farming but that's up to you.
5. Definitely pick up the savage ring, ideally you get some magnet ring or craft a glowstone ring, and that should be gear enough for sc with some bought salads and coffee. Dust sprite farming I mentioned above would be to get a quick spicy eel in the first sc run which is the hardest (getting to 55 egg rating without MRC)

Otherwise your strategy of early fishing works, I would fish for decent cash until the 5th or 6th then hard focus the mines, get to 105 asap and start void/diamond farming for cash and combat xp. You'll have about 10 days to get as ready as possible for SC dives on the 15th-17th which will be the hardest part of the run but the most necessary.

Ask if you have any questions, I'm generally considered to be quite good at sc (I've done the 6000 eggs in spring 1 before for a test run so I have knowledge for this in particular) and did create a route for this (mastery in spring 1), but never really completed a full run

 

[MogBeoulve]

y'all are nuts! Awesome work.

 

[DanaBee]

Wow, thanks so much for the feedback! Especially just using the main mines for combat, that makes a lot of sense. I've take another look at the experience different enemies give and shadow brutes and shamans are definitely the way to go.

Woodcutter's Weekly at the festival is also a really good idea, way better value than the bombs in retrospect. My skull cavern skills are still a work in progress since I used to play on mobile, but I think with practice I can probably get in the realm of 6000.

I'm hoping to do a successful run in December, I'll definitely be factoring in your advice!