Min-Max-Guide Obscurities

[ThePerfectGarden]

I'm trying my hands at the Min-Max-Guid by Zamiell on Github. On Spring 2 (year 1 of course) I'm supposed to fish with the bamboo pole until 8:40, go foraging at the beach, sell all foraged items and fish and buy the training rod from Willy.
Now it says: When you have enough fish to sell to get up to 1800g and are fishing level 2, destroy the Training Rod, sell all the fish, and buy the Fiberglass Rod from Willy.
I got up to 1800 g in no time (started with more than 1500 g), but according to my save file, I'm still on fishing level 0, and there's no fiberglass rod in sale, of course. Wiki says that getting to lvl 2 needs 380 XP which is an equivalent to 30 sardines!
It seems impossible to me to get 30 sardines within the whole day, but even if so, it only adds up to fishing lvl 2 - and the guide wants me to get to lvl 4 at the end of the day!

Did someone do this guide, so they can say me, whether I got something wrong ... or what?

Also, how do you "destroy" a fishing rod? (the guide says to do so)
Also - on Day 1 of Spring, first of all I had to chop 9 trees to get to foraging lvl 2 in order to get silver star spring onions. I got to lvl 2 all right, but the onions where without stars.

Edit: I did it. As soon as I noticed that the uplevelling is immediately shown in the inventory (not waiting for the message the next morning, as I thought before), and I was already at level 2, I started the day anew and, as a matter of fact, made it to level 4 the next morning.
The last 2 questions hold good though.

 

[Ereo]

You can throw away fishing rods by pulling them over the garbage bin in your inventory.

the quality of spring onions or any other forage is random, but the higher your level the higher the chance to get better quality. The wiki has a list of the probabilities in the foraging article.

 

[ThePerfectGarden]

Thanks. Okay, "throw away" is more intelligible than "destroy".

 

[ArtifactSpot]

Wow! That’s a fast paced game guide. I hope it works for you. . Thanks for sharing that link though it’s got some good tips. Also yes throw away versus destroy I’d think. You can also change spring onion quality restarting days and having full inventory you can know the quality of ones your about to pick but it’s very time consuming and at that low of quality in that early of game play it would not be worth it imho. I never could get fishing skill leveled up so quickly. I’m lucky to make it to 2 or 3 before mines open and loose interest. I try to get the fiberglass rod and if I’m lucky crab pots by Friday the 5th though otherwise it’s weeks before I have any desire to fish again. Not my favorite skill. I am a mining addict lol.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

Just to clarify a bit for those who are unaware, the secret is perfect catches. They give 2.2x the XP of a regular catch, and at fishing level 1 the training rod bar is a full 1/3 (ish) larger than the normal one since its size is the same as if your fishing level is 5. That allows you to rapidly skill up as long as you get those perfect catches consistently, then the fiberglass rod with its bait lets you really accelerate the pace of fish catching and thus XP and gold gain. If you aren’t able to get a perfect catch with the training rod at least 1/2 the time you’ll struggle to keep pace with the guide but if you can get them consistently it’s highly doable.

 

[ThePerfectGarden]

Wow! That’s a fast paced game guide. I hope it works for you.

Thanks. I don't have the ambition though to keep up with their pace, you know. I'm a very unhurried person who gets stressed easily, that's why I hate speedruns and rather refrain from doing them. I mean they promise 4 millions g by day 1 of summer 1 - if I can get 2 millions by then, I'll be a more than happy gardener. But it's very interesting for me to see how many things in the game I just don't know or didn't think that far outside the box, even after more than 4 years of playing it.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Just as general info, that guide is help as an absolute joke by the min max community due to its inconsistencies and highly opinionated views on choices the player can make that don’t really affect anything.

There are many videos on YouTube and vids twitch by more reputable sources that give the beginner information that you’ll find more useful and digestible. To start I’d recommend videos by brandiganbtw, he has a guide to making the most out of spring that is a marvelous introduction to stardew optimizations. There are even communities on discord for min mac that you can ask people who really know what they’re doing about.

 

[One More Day]

the Min-Max-Guid by Zamiell on Github

I remember reading this guide. After a quick skim to refresh my memory, I recall it suggests spending six days to grow a few kale just to reach Farming 2, then after that spending an enormous amount of both time and energy to gather over 200 pieces of copper and iron ore for crafting about two dozen basic sprinklers, that will only be used once to grow more kale to reach Farming 6. Not sure if I'd want to do that myself, as it also consumes a significant amount (at this stage) of precious coal that I reckon could be put to much better use. Also, hoeing out the pattern of plots for basic sprinklers is a massive PITA.

I prefer to just get all the necessary kale seeds for the jump straight from Farming 1 to Farming 6 ASAP in one go and plant it all at once, then leave it outside for as many days as possible to be rained on, and then hand-watering from about Spring 23 or so for however many necessary remaining days, so it can be harvested on Spring 27 to place the quality sprinklers on Spring 28, ready for Summer 1. I reckon this strategy wastes far less time than getting raw materials for virtually useless basic sprinklers, when you could be making progress down the mines. With a bit of practice, you can be deep in the mines by the time that guide suggests even getting started on descending. Oh, and no need to waste thousands of g on buying iron and gold ore either, to upgrade tools, when that can be mined for free too.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

I remember reading this guide. After a quick skim to refresh my memory, I recall it suggests spending six days to grow a few kale just to reach Farming 2, then after that spending an enormous amount of both time and energy to gather over 200 pieces of copper and iron ore for crafting about two dozen basic sprinklers, that will only be used once to grow more kale to reach Farming 6. Not sure if I'd want to do that myself, as it also consumes a significant amount (at this stage) of precious coal that I reckon could be put to much better use. Also, hoeing out the pattern of plots for basic sprinklers is a massive PITA.

I prefer to just get all the necessary kale seeds for the jump straight from Farming 1 to Farming 6 ASAP in one go and plant it all at once, then leave it outside for as many days as possible to be rained on, and then hand-watering from about Spring 23 or so for however many necessary remaining days, so it can be harvested on Spring 27 to place the quality sprinklers on Spring 28, ready for Summer 1. I reckon this strategy wastes far less time than getting raw materials for virtually useless basic sprinklers, when you could be making progress down the mines. With a bit of practice, you can be deep in the mines by the time that guide suggests even getting started on descending. Oh, and no need to waste thousands of g on buying iron and gold ore either, to upgrade tools, when that can be mined for free too.

Basic sprinklers are incredibly underrated and really good, you can get hundreds of their base materials really fast, they smelt fast, and you only need floor 40 of the mines (probably a little deeper for fest sprite resetting)

imo they are far better than quality early on and definitely worth going for. You are t even losing efficiency early on because you can keep expanding.

 

[Tom]

Did someone do this guide, so they can say me, whether I got something wrong ... or what?

I actually forget how exactly I did this, but if you register at github and figure out how to submit a pull request, Zamiell will review your edits and pull them into the guide when okay. Using this workflow, I helped a bit with the guide a couple of years ago. I wasn't too excited about how it focuses on getting to the Skull Cavern to make iridium bars for profit. But I found the fishing path helpful. And I helped refine the "meet all the villagers" path.

I failed to convince him that mere humans may have a hard time getting to Fishing Level 4 on Spring 2. I failed to convince him that getting a Fiberglass Rod on Spring 2 is not a slam dunk for some clutzy people like me.