Min-Max Guide / Optimal Play

[Werbenja]

See: https://github.com/Zamiell/stardew-...an-fishing-spot-to-mountain-lake-fishing-spot

Given this link, I am assuming you meant buying the training rod at 9am on day 2 and then go to the mountain. After reaching level 2 fishing, do you go back to the beach to buy the fiberglass rod? Sounds like a lot of walking.

My initial thoughts are that 15 iron ore early is pretty steep. You could also get screwed if you don't get any rain days.

The thing is that you won't need to buy a metric ton of regular bait from Willy if you plan on crafting the bait maker. Your guide mentions that you should buy upwards of 500 bait on day 3, thus 2.500g (I don't remember how much I bought last time I followed your guide). But, if you buy only 100 bait, it should be more than enough to last you days 3 and 4 and it saves 2.000g, to be used to buy the materials for the bait maker (of which you only need one).

And I don't think the bait maker is only worth it for rainy days, as long as you craft it early. Basically, you sacrifice your first largemouth bass to almost guarantee that your next 5 to 10 catches are also basses. Of course, it's even better on catfish.

so investing a huge amount of time/effort/money into Fish Smoker seems like it wouldn't necessarily pay off.

That's what I am leaning towards to. Time will tell.

 

[GeistInMachine]

In regards to the Fish Smoker, catching the Legend on the first rainy day at Fishing 10 immediately pays for itself when smoked. Any fish after that, smoking is just upside.

Additionally, you get a smoker for free on riverlands farm, which is basically a free 10,000g.
Worse for starfruit down the line, but maybe it means earlier ginger island on a joja run.

Desert Festival has a few perks.
1. Three more days of Traveling Cart, consecutively
2. Jas has a MRC in the shop, and i think its also a possible reward for doing skull caverns, and Calico Egg trader has one guaranteed on the 17th. This can make bootstrapping skull cavern runs very easy, using the festival days as low depth prep days. Other villagers have handy items for early bundles, like nautalus shell
3. Skull Caverns without 120 in the mines means more time fishing to hit the cash for the vault bundle. Mines can be finished later with better equipment, faster, and getting MRCs from the festival means super efficient days once you get the key

Couple other observations:
1. Meadowlands farm chickens means you can buy less kale since the chickens give farming xp, and the mayo itself gives extra cash. Can double down with buying two more chickens early.
2. You can get a prize ticket day 1 through chair hopping, to get carrot seeds. Thats free farming xp, a quick crop, and carrots have a huge energy to gold ratio. So more money there.
3. Dehydrator increases the value of mushrooms from the cave. Mushroom logs can be added to any tree farm to get extra yields. Combined, thats a lot of extra cash floating around
4. Willy sells random fish specific bait daily, if you get a good one like catfish or bass thats a big upside
5. If you get early Tiger Trout in traveling cart, the bundle gives 30 deluxe bait
6. 2nd prize ticket reward is a fruit tree, can get that with 1 ticket as above and three help quests
7. You can now buy from clint while he works on a tool. This can smooth out when you spend money to snowball more efficiently

 

[Werbenja]

In regards to the Fish Smoker, catching the Legend on the first rainy day at Fishing 10 immediately pays for itself when smoked. Any fish after that, smoking is just upside.

That is a huge upside indeed, but also a gamble. Not only you might not get any more rainy days as Zamiel pointed out, you might simply fail at catching the Legend when it rains (or at least I might). Of course, the latter is not a problem if you don't mind resetting the day.

The earlier you can craft the fish smoker, the better your chances in this gamble. However, with the desert festival here to incentivize fixing the bus as soon as possible, I just can't justify spending any money on anything that is possibly only going to pay for itself after the festival. I could spend the eve of a post-festival rainy day gathering the jellies to make the fish smoker and then use to smoke the Legend or catfish the following day, but then I am spending two days for this, which seems excessive.

By the way, does anyone know if it is possible to rain on Spring 15th, 16th and 17th now, the days of the desert festival? It never rains in the desert, so it might be possible.

Desert Festival has a few perks.
1. Three more days of Traveling Cart, consecutively
2. Jas has a MRC in the shop, and i think its also a possible reward for doing skull caverns, and Calico Egg trader has one guaranteed on the 17th. This can make bootstrapping skull cavern runs very easy, using the festival days as low depth prep days. Other villagers have handy items for early bundles, like nautalus shell
3. Skull Caverns without 120 in the mines means more time fishing to hit the cash for the vault bundle. Mines can be finished later with better equipment, faster, and getting MRCs from the festival means super efficient days once you get the key

All of these are very nice, even if I'd like to avoid using the random vendors to minimize the variance of my runs. It would be hard to resist taking candy from a child, though...

The multiple sources of magic rock candy are especially nice, but I am skeptical about being able to reach the 55 egg rating required to get the candy from Gil. I don't know how common are the Calico statues, but without them, you'd need to reach floor 275, which is just not happening on Spring 17th or earlier. With the statues, it is possible that the negative effects are just going to severely limit your iridium mining capabilities. The "food is half as effective" debuff sounds particularly nasty. But it is also possible that sacrificing the iridium of the three first runs (where you won't have megabombs, explosive ammo or the galaxy sword anyway) is more than compensated by three magic rock candy runs later in the season.

2. You can get a prize ticket day 1 through chair hopping, to get carrot seeds.

You can? Oh well, now I'll have to decide if I'll allow myself to use chair hopping. Seems like a big help early on, and the perfect thing to do on Spring 1st when there is nothing else to do.

4. Willy sells random fish specific bait daily, if you get a good one like catfish or bass thats a big upside

This one is another big source of shop randomness that can elevate a run to premium status. I think checking his store for catfish bait on both the 2nd and the 3rd is pretty much mandatory now.

I need to play more to test all the new stuff, and write less without the experience behind it.

 

[Zamiel]

> Given this link, I am assuming you meant buying the training rod at 9am on day 2 and then go to the mountain.

No. You buy Training Rod the moment that it becomes available at 9 AM. Then, you continue fishing until you get enough money for Fiberglass Rod. Then, depending on what time it is, the link helps you determine whether or not it is optimal to continue the rest of the day fishing at ocean OR running to lake and fishing at lake.

> And I don't think the bait maker is only worth it for rainy days, as long as you craft it early. Basically, you sacrifice your first largemouth bass to almost guarantee that your next 5 to 10 catches are also basses. Of course, it's even better on catfish.

Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, it's definitely worth trying. Let me know how your next run goes.

> You can get a prize ticket day 1 through chair hopping, to get carrot seeds.

Using exploits to get outside of the world isn't intended by the developer and thus is banned in this ruleset for the same reason animation canceling is.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

I’m actually running a custom money run (money for an accompanying challenge) and just had an amazing day 2-3

This was my progress by 6:00 on day 4 morning.
Day 2 I almost got level 6 fishing without using special reach tiles and hit level 8 late into day 3 after many catfish in the earlier hours and popped a taco I had seeded for to get the legend.
Took many hours of resets over the last 2 days for this day 3 rng though.
Day 2 level 5 fishing isn’t too bad, level 6 I’ve only ever seen done once without major bubble usage. Day 3 level 8 was next to impossible and I only hit it at like 1:40 and clutched for the legend (though a run through of day 3 had died here before)

 

[Werbenja]

This was my progress by 6:00 on day 4 morning.

40 catfish on day 3?! That's insane, congratulations.

---

So I started a run this weekend to try some of the new stuff. I played poorly, but I was still able to reach the desert on Spring 15th, in time for the the first day of the desert festival.

Here's how I deviated from Zamiel's guide:

1. I only bought 100 bait on day 3, which saved me a little less than 2000g (2500g after Fisher perk). This is very important for the massive spending I did on day 6. You can probably get away with buying even less bait.

2. I shipped all had on the beginning of day 5 (instead of doing it on day 4) and then mined until 2am. It was enough to get copper ores for 5 bars and 3 furnaces and to reach floor 25 of the mines. I did this so I could try fishing for cave jelly on floor 20 (which I never ended up doing) and to quickly smelt 3 iron bars on the next day for a bait maker as soon as possible.

3. I don't remember how much money I had on day 6, but I know it was enough for 300 wood (3000g), backpack upgrade (2000g), enough potato seeds for farming level 2 (a little less than 1000g), 40 iron ore (6000g) and pickaxe upgrade (2000g), bought in this order. Then I went to the tide pools. Since day 6 is a Saturday, the eve of forage reset, I was pretty much guaranteed to find at least 3 coral and 1 sea urchin. In the pier, I smelted 3 iron bars while fishing and crafted the bait maker as soon as the bars were done, immediately making flounder bait.

4. Sadly, the bite ratio of flounder with flounder bait was not that impressive, hanging around 50 to 60% (by the approximate math I did by the end of the day). Halibut, on the other hand, was the only thing I fished while using halibut bait for the rest of the day, but I think I was just lucky. So I ditched the beach and went back mountain fishing from the 7th to the 11th. I actually kept a tally for the bite rates of largemouth bass (until 07pm) and bullhead (after 7pm) during these days (using the targeted baits, of course), and both were a little bit over 90%. However, I forgot to factor in trash and algae, so the bite chance might straight up be 90%, which the wiki lists as a cap (although who knows if this applies to targeted bait).

5. With my gold pickaxe in hand and a streak of bad luck on days 12 to 14, I was only able to reach floor 80 of the mines while still mining ores for the 20 or so basic sprinklers I needed. I bought the Joja membership on the 12th (because the egg festival prevents you from doing it on the 13th) and fixed the desert bus on the 14th, while also buying the last backpack upgrade and the first batch of kale seeds for farming level 6. Sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but that is what the bait maker does to you (and I had no rain between the 4th and the 14th). Its only "downside" is that you won't have a huge stack of iridium chubs to sustain your cavern dives, but that was remedied by a stop on the saloon to buy salads on the 14th.

6. Days 15 to 17 were skull cavern days. The first day was rough, since I had no obsidian edge (thank Yoba for the Neptune's glaive I fished, otherwise I'd still be using the steel smallsword) and no mining level 5 for the miner perk, but I was still able to attain an egg rating higher than 25 by activating every calico statue I saw. I got a prismatic shard on the 15th and was disappointed to learn that you cannot get the galaxy sword while the desert festival is active. Let's hope it's a bug. Days 16 and 17 were easier, with bombs and megabombs respectively. However, an egg rating of 55 seemed impossible to me --- the highest I got was 32, I think. But maybe I just suck. It is still probably worth to go for the calico statues though, as the triple shot espressos from Gil are very welcome. Just be careful with the curses, those angry mummies are nasty. Other than that, I got around 200 iridium in the three days, not too shabby for so early in the run. The chef's dishes are sublime.

7. By the end of the 17th, among cavern dives, Marlon quests, Gil rewards and the desert scholar, I had almost 1400 calico eggs, enough to buy a magic rock candy and 11 woodcutter's weekly. This got me to foraging level 6 and then some, and I hope clearing the farm is enough to reach foraging level 7. Another possible bug is that the skull cavern dives you do while the desert festival is active do not count towards Qi's Challenge of reaching floor 25. I didn't even get Qi's mail about the challenge, possibly because I never had the skull key in the first place. Good thing I already had the last backpack upgrade, because in previous runs I would always use the 10000g reward from this quest to buy the upgrade.

8. Day 18, after a quick stop at the desert to get my galaxy sword (I only found 2 prismatic shards on the last three days, so no additional magic rock candy for me), I went back to the regular mines to get the skull key, and reaching floor 120 from floor 80 was a breeze with spicy eel and espresso.

Run should resume as normal from day 19th onwards. As I said, I played sub-optimally, not even even reaching fishing level 6 on day 3, but the bait maker is so good that it didn't matter.

The first two weeks can definitely be made more consistent. For example, the first backpack upgrade can be postponed if one doesn't have as much money on the 6th, and less frolicking around town to buy joja membership and salads would make floor 90 on the 14th easily achievable. If I saw that rain would fall any day between the 6th and the 11th, I would have tried to fish cave jelly on floor 20 of the mines to try and make fish smokers. But since it didn't rain, I figured the time and money investment wouldn't be worth the hassle.

Another thing that would be interesting to route is mastery. In particular, both the Heavy Furnace and the Statue of the Dwarf King from the mining mastery have the potential to make later skull cavern dives considerably more profitable. After that, farming mastery would be nice for that sweet Iridium Scythe harvesting. However, as of now, foraging level 10 seems to be the bottleneck, as every other skill should be leveled up to 10 naturally by following the guide, probably sometime in the first summer. Assuming foraging level 7 by the end of spring, you would still need around 10200 foraging exp, which means 850 felled trees or 408 stumps broken. Yikes.

 

[Maboi]

I'd like to add that after eating Sea Jelly you can temporarily buy Fiberglass rod while being only level 1 fishing, provided you've got the money. It means you technically can by Fiberglass rod at 9:00. From my perspective it puts you slightly closer to getting level 5 fishing on day 2. Probably not a game changer but a nice little addition that may affect your gameplay.

 

[Miketsukami]

Really good and indepth guide.

What do you think about dehydrators for a minmax run?

I'm planning a true perfection run while eventually maxing out passive gold income meaning ancient fruit wine. After reading through the thread I found a post by Squigglyruth talking about planting 200 parsnips and watering manually to get farming to level 9 before planting strawberries and skipping normal sprinklers only crafting the quality ones for 300 strawberries. So I was wondering since dehydrators are really cheap to craft and only a few are needed as they take 5 itens as input instead of 1 and take only 1 day to process. With that info I find that I only need 15 dehydrators for 300 strawberries (300 / 5) / 4 = 15 and since strawberries take 4 days between harvests I can fully process not only both harvests. Lets assume all strawberries are normal quality the unprocessed strawberries by themselves are worth 50k per harvest which is not that much and after processing them into dried strawberries they wouldn't go up in value by much 59.4k but by the time I finish the second and last harvest I should get farming to level 10 and by getting artisain profession it would it would increase the value of a batch of dried strawberries from 59.4k to 83.160 and a total of 166.320 if I wait to sell both batches only after getting to level 10.

This way I could get more out of the crops since I'll already be less efficient by skipping the normal sprinklers so might as well at least get a bit more out of the crops specially considering it wouldn't set me back on keg crafting. While crafting normal sprinklers first would be more efficient to make gold faster I consider them a waste of resources and not only that normal sprinkler layouts are so ugly I can't stand looking at them to the point I would rather go manual. I belive it shouldn't set me back on skull cavern farming buy more than a day or 2 which means I should still get enough gold for 400 starfruit seeds unless there is something wrong in my calculations.

 

[Werbenja]

I'd like to add that after eating Sea Jelly you can temporarily buy Fiberglass rod while being only level 1 fishing, provided you've got the money.

The "provided you got he money" part is the problem for me. I usually only have the money for fiberglass rod + enough bait by the time I hit fishing level 2 naturally, anyway. But this is interesting, nonetheless.

What do you think about dehydrators for a minmax run?

Not sure how you're going to have the money to buy 300 strawberry seeds while still unlocking the desert in the third week (while also watering 200 parsnips a day and farming ores for the strawberry sprinklers). Of course, if you don't mind delaying the desert bus until after the first strawberry harvest, then it's all good. You probably won't have enough money to go nuclear with starfruit on summer... If you also don't mind that, then just go nuclear with blueberry instead, which should synergize nicely with the dehydrators (and get no extra benefit for deluxe speed-gro, if you already have the farming level 10 agriculturist profession from all the strawberry). But then again, if your long term goal is ancient fruit, you might as well place all the blueberry on seed makers (which, believe it or not, increases the net worth of the blueberries on average), for that 0.5% chance of ancient seeds. Given the absurd amount of berries you should be getting each harvest, you should consistently get ancient seeds, because the seeds makers is very fast at processing. I did this once on patch 1.4 and I was able to plant a little more than 1500 ancient seeds on the first day of year 2, with enough kegs to ferment them weekly.

---

I would like to hear from anyone what is their strategy to max out the second starfruit harvest on Summer year 1.

My first starfruit harvest is on the 11th (planted on the 2nd), which should be duly replanted on the same day. I'm planning on selling part of this first harvest unprocessed (ideally only the gold-quality fruits) to fund the seeds for a considerably larger planting on the 12th (which should be ready by the 20th, together with the replanted ones on the 11th, because of agriculturist). I want this planting to be at least as the large as the first one, better if bigger. Because of the Luau on the 11th, all the deluxe speed-gro (DSG) for this must be bought considerably earlier, on the 4th. All money accumulated from cavern dives between the 4th and the 9th should go to replant the seeds on the 11th, plus ores to craft the massive amount of quality sprinklers covering the seeds to be planted on the 12th.

The first problem is limited time to accumulate enough money until the 11th. Although the first few skull cavern dives in mid-spring were less efficient than all the ones I can do on summer, there is considerably less time now: I had 11 days of cavern dives before the first planting, but only have 6 days before the second planting (given I spent all my money on DSG on Summer 4th). This should give me just about enough to replant on the 11th, but not much more to craft sprinklers.

The second problem is regarding the planting itself. On my first planting, I used the dead parsnip trick, where I planted parsnips in the end of spring to hold place and, most importantly, hold water from the sprinklers for the starfruit seeds. On Summer 2nd, I simply scythed the dead parsnip leaves and replaced them with DSG plus starfruit. I can't really repeat something like this for the planting on Summer 12th, as far as I see it. Since it's mid-season, I need to hold the spots with something that will be ready by the 12th, and the best candidate is wheat. However, even with DSG, the wheat would need to be first watered on the 9th, which means the sprinklers would need to be placed on the 8th, and there is no way I'll have enough of them by the 8th. The only other way I could guarantee the spots to be watered on the 12th is by using a rain totem on the 11th, but that would require praying for it to appear on a treasure room, as I won't have foraging level 9 either. Thus, it seems to me that the only consistent option would be to place the sprinklers and till the spots on the 11th, but defer the planting and fertilizing for 12th (where I'll have the money for the seeds), even if it means that some of them will be untilled and un-watered by then. I would then re-till these spots and re-water them by hand on the 12th, which sounds painful but doable. Remember that Summer 11th harvest should take a reasonable amount of time, so I figure I would need the iridium hoe for maximum efficiency, which is a considerable investment and cuts even more into my already shallow budget.

Has anyone been in this situation (or similar) before? What are your thoughts? Am I missing something silly that solves all my problems? For reference, I have planted ~700 starfruit seeds on Summer 2nd and bought ~1000 DSG on Summer 4th, and I would love to use it all on Summer 12th. Any input is appreciated.

 

[Odyssey]

Because of the Luau on the 11th, all the deluxe speed-gro (DSG) for this must be bought considerably earlier, on the 4th

Despite what the wiki says you actually can shop at the Oasis on the 11th, as I discovered recently when I thought I'd messed up by not buying my second-batch DSG on the 4th and went to the desert to check just in case. I was very pleased to find Sandy doing business as usual!

Whilst that doesn't help very much because you can't access Pierre to sell the Starfruit and get the money on the 11th, it does allow you to calculate how much DSG you need for the amount of Starfruit you can afford.

You could try planting the initial batch of Starfruit in parsnip-held ground on summer 1. Provided you can raise enough money from the caverns to replace the batch 1 seeds you could then harvest and replant them on Wednesday 10th and ship the gold quality fruit overnight to buy your batch 2 DSG and seeds on Thursday 11th, giving you an extra day for planting.

With that strategy you would be less likely to need an Iridium Hoe or plant wheat to have the ground ready, although you could still plant wheat with any sprinklers you do have ready in time to reduce the amount of tiles you need to prep before planting the Starfruit.

 

[Werbenja]

Despite what the wiki says you actually can shop at the Oasis on the 11th, as I discovered recently when I thought I'd messed up by not buying my second-batch DSG on the 4th and went to the desert to check just in case. I was very pleased to find Sandy doing business as usual!

Oh wow, I got fooled by the wiki then. Just tested this and it seems that Sandy works on all festival days, except for the newly added desert festival, which shouldn't matter for minmax runs anyway. The wiki, on the other hand, says the oasis is closed for "most festivals days", whatever "most" means here. I wonder if this has been changed silently in an update and the wiki is just showing outdated information. In any case, thank you for pointing this out. In the end it makes sense, poor Sandy never goes to any festival. She'll have to fill the emptiness of having no human interactions with all the money I'll give her.

I decided to plant the first batch of starfruit on Summer 2nd because it gave me one more skull cavern dive (on the 1st) to afford the seeds, and I definitely wouldn't have been able to plant as much as I did if it weren't for this extra iridium. But now I am wondering if planting on Summer 1st as you mentioned isn't better, for the extra time and resources it would give me for the second planting. This way, I would use all the money accumulated from days 2 through 9 cavern dives (8 in total) for replacing the first batch of seeds and for buying the ores. Tilling + fertilizing + planting + placing sprinklers can then all be done on the 11th, since the crops only need to be watered on the 12th at the latest. Having at least the gold hoe would still be necessary, methinks.

The question then becomes: do I max out the first batch or the second batch of starfruit seeds? Which would give more starfruit in hand by the end of the second harvest? Seems like something to be tested.

 

[Maboi]

Has anyone been in this situation (or similar) before? What are your thoughts? Am I missing something silly that solves all my problems?

I remember struggling with planting starfruit in time due to (what I later found) impractical way of planting (see, for example, Captain Canadia's 1.5 Summer 1-3 video). I came to the conclusion that we need something faster- and instead of planting SF for optimal scarecrow placement, I placed scarecrows for optimal (or sub-optimal at least) planting. I'm attaching the plan I made (and successfully used in one of my previous playthroughs). This layout seems easier to maintain and re-hoe or re-water. And it certainly saves you time on planting.

 

[Werbenja]

I came to the conclusion that we need something faster- and instead of planting SF for optimal scarecrow placement, I placed scarecrows for optimal (or sub-optimal at least) planting.

Most definitely, the "optimal" 20 sprinklers per scarecrow is just too slow for my tastes. I already do something similar to your layout, using 12 scarecrows to cover the entire contiguous rectangle of 63 by 30 tiles in the middle of the standard farm map (between the ponds, the farmhouse and the greenhouse), thus sacrificing only 12 sprinkler-covered tiles. This gives me 1668 usable tiles, which is what I want to have planted by Summer 12th.

For the third planting (which should be massive), I plan to just place scarecrows on spots where I know no reasonable sprinkler placement would reach anyway. Or maybe just forego scarecrows entirely by that point, because fiber is in short supply and I'll need tons for tree fertilizer.

 

[Maboi]

@Werbenja let me ask you: do you make use of restarting the day? If so, does it apply to the 1st day, too, so as to get a sub-optimal seed for foragables etc? Because if so, nothing stops you from getting fishing lvl 5 day 2. In my current run I bought fish smoker recipe on day 5, after upgrading axe and buying kale seeds. I wonder if rushing smoker is sensible but so far there's been no real smoker strat (on when it's optimal to buy it) so let me propose that day 5 is not the worst for that. Keep in mind I went back to the mines and was about to go to floor 20, had it not been for an infested floor, so I stopped at floor 15. Currently on day 6, and I'm thinking of rushing mine jelly at floor 20. Following this strat, it seems more sensible to buy as little as possible until we can make a smoker.

I also don't water on day 2, with cauliflower being an exception (it seems more sensible to me to have a more reliable source of CC items for the minecart and vault) to save time for reaching level 5.

 

[Werbenja]

@Werbenja let me ask you: do you make use of restarting the day?

I allow myself to reset the day when my execution was lacking, buy not because of bad RNG. Thus, I do reset if I get knocked out at the caverns or if I forgot to bring an item somewhere, but I don't reset if I don't get many forageables on day 1, for example. Of course, it's not always so clear what is bad RNG and what is bad execution --- one might get few iridium because one didn't bomb correctly or because one didn't get lucky with shafts. It's subjective really, and I call my own faults.

Ultimately, I just enjoy developing and following consistent strategies, that should work no matter the several sources of luck in this game. This is why I assume fishing level 4 on day 2 --- I know level 5 is possible, but terribly inconsistent to assume on a generic game seed.

---

Regarding the fish smokers, I am assuming you mean crafting them before the bait maker, as I don't know where you'd get the money to have both by day 5. If that's the case, then I am convinced this is not a good idea, as the price increase of many fish does not compensate for the cost of buying coal, assuming 150g per piece of coal. Take spring mountain fishing with the angler profession for example: it is worth it to smoke high-quality (gold or iridium) largemouth basses and bullheads, but not worth it to smoke high-quality chubs or carps. This picture improves if you buy wood and use charcoal kilns (but require a little bit more investment to set them up, I believe 2 or 3 kilns should be enough). On the other hand, the picture worsens if you assume selling fish before fishing level 10, which will have to happen at some point.

Now, there is no problem if you can guarantee you are only catching basses... which is where the bait maker comes in. The bait maker not only requires less money to unlock (5700g if all iron, coal and wood is bought), but it also seems more reliably profitable. Not to mention it gives you fishing level 10 faster, because of all the basses/catfishes you'll be catching. Of course, after you craft the bait maker, the fish smoker just blows your profit out of the water (no pun intended).

But then there's the other issue... Good luck fishing cave jelly on floor 20. I tested a few times and, more than once, spent the entire day fishing on level 20 without getting any jelly. I have gotten it, just very rarely so. Daily luck does not seem to affect this, but luck buffs do. Thus, for non-RNG-reseters like me, this is just a no-go. But let me know how it goes for you --- I just hope you remembered to save a few sea jellies from day 2.

Of course, I would love to be proven wrong on anything I wrote here. The fish smoker is an exciting addition to the game and I am a bit sad that I couldn't fit it in my strategy.

 

[Maboi]

Good luck fishing cave jelly on floor 20. I tested a few times and, more than once, spent the entire day fishing on level 20 without getting any jelly. I have gotten it, just very rarely so. Daily luck does not seem to affect this, but luck buffs do

This is probably just my incredible luck but it didn't seem this hard. All I can suggest is going for the minimal cast - if it lowers the chance for fish, it should improve the chance for rubbish, with jelly included. As for the die icon: it's a mod that shows daily luck. It's a neutral luck day (not that it matters). This in no way proves you wrong of course. My objective was to take Captain's 1.6 attempt to the extreme and get fish smoker ASAP. On my second thought, though, I am positive bait maker is in fact more reliable.

My other issue is whether you should upgrade pickaxe to gold or iron. 10 000 is a lot early on and unlocking the SC (or at least the bus on 15) seems like one of major goals to me, and gold pickaxe seems to stand in my way. Any thoughts on it will be much appreciated.

 

[Werbenja]

This is probably just my incredible luck but it didn't seem this hard.

Or maybe I'm just incredibly unlucky. Am I jealous? Of course not, imagine that.

Seriously though, is this day 6? If so, with this amount of total earnings, you probably have had the money to buy the materials for the bait maker on day 5 too. In fact, given your copper axe will only be ready on the 7th, you could even delay the fish smoker recipe until then.

Regarding the pickaxe upgrades, here's a table of the needed amount of swings on the most relevant skull cavern nodes:

​

Pickaxe​	Brown node​	Copper node​	Iron Node​	Gold node​	Iridium node​	Diamond node​
Starter​	5​	3​	4​	8​	16​	10​
Copper​	3​	2​	2​	4​	8​	5​
Steel​	2​	1​	2​	3​	6​	4​
Gold​	2​	1​	1​	2​	4​	3​
Iridium​	1​	1​	1​	2​	4​	2​
Powerful iridium​	1​	1​	1​	2​	3​	2​

By "brown node", I mean the most common brown rock type in the skull cavern. This does not include the gray rocks, which I believe can be broken with one hit even by the copper pickaxe (needs testing). By "powerful iridium", I mean the iridium pickaxe with the powerful enchantment from the forge, but I guess that's irrelevant for minmax runs.

Comparing steel and gold pickaxes, the biggest difference is the amount of hits needed to break iridium nodes, which is what you want to break the most. Two more hits per node is a lot, especially if you're not animation canceling. Other than that, it's nice to be able to break iron nodes with a single swing, since this is the ore I always need to replenish to craft bombs. I don't find myself breaking gold and diamond nodes by hand very frequently, but those are faster with the gold pickaxe also. Are these privileges worth 10000g + 5 gold bars? If you're going to ignore isolated iridium nodes, only ever bombing large quantities of rock, then perhaps it's not worth it. I certainly don't ignore isolated iridium nodes that are close by, thus I feel I'm making the most out of my gold pickaxe. But that's certainly open to debate.

By the way, looking at this table now, it's sad how little of an upgrade the iridium pickaxe is, at least when it comes to the skull cavern. I guess breaking brown rocks in a single swing while you're waiting that bomb to detonate is nice, but that's about it. Now, for radioactive nodes, that's another story.

 

[Maboi]

Seriously though, is this day 6? If so, with this amount of total earnings, you probably have had the money to buy the materials for the bait maker on day 5 too.

I'm positive it's not only my run per se. Day 4, imo, is preferably the one when you want to ship everything to buy whatever you find most important. Before I recognised bait maker as of high priority, I aimed for smoker. Before 1.6, it was to buy enough iron ore (and coal, if needed) and 16 kale seeds, plus upgrade the pickaxe. Now I'm unsure whether it's better to upgrade axe first and spend some time in the mines to hit lvl20/farm copper or if you still should focus on pickaxe. Upgrading pickaxe means fishing until 2am day 5 and it's a good thing but for the fact you have little time to catch basses. That said, leaving lowest quality bass from day 4 is preferable if you're planning on getting the bait maker on day 5. It's also not a bad idea to make some bullhead bait for 7pm-2am, and since you're going to spend time fishing mostly in the lake and the river, the surplus of river jelly may be used for energy restoration, partly covering chub shortage.

On my last playthrough I lacked sea urchin and I started again and here comes my question: would you go on with your run on day 1 even if you had no foragables in the forest (spring onions included) or is resetting day 1 (by this I mean making more characters/saves) more reasonable and thus you'd just make another file?

 

[Werbenja]

On my last playthrough I lacked sea urchin

That is unlucky. When did you check the beach? The wiki says you get an average of 1.2 tide pools forageables per day (but I believe it's closer to 1.4 per day, given the explanation at the bottom of the page), 1/5 of them being sea urchins. Checking on day 6 should them give an average of 1.44 sea urchins (or almost 1.7 with my math).

would you go on with your run on day 1 even if you had no foragables in the forest (spring onions included) or is resetting day 1 (by this I mean making more characters/saves) more reasonable and thus you'd just make another file?

I guess I would start a new file if I didn't have 1800g by 5pm on day 2 to buy the fiberglass rod, simply because it would be too large of a setback. The reason for that happening would most likely be not enough forageables on day 1, but I would only know for sure the next day. Having said that, this never happened to me, but I am sure it will at some point.

Now I'm unsure whether it's better to upgrade axe first and spend some time in the mines to hit lvl20/farm copper or if you still should focus on pickaxe.

Humor me for a second, if you will. If you can guarantee a bunch of forageables on day 1 and fishing level 5 on day 2, can't you also buy 45 copper on day 3, enough for a furnace and 5 bars? Then you can upgrade the axe on day 3 (if you bought 1 copper on day 1 to have the furnace recipe), if you go for catfish in the town portion of the river and sell catfish to Willy. That would work if you can guarantee 5 coal by then, which you can get by breaking rocks on the farm. Then, if you can guarantee mines level 20 and 25 more copper by 3pm on day 5, you can upgrade pickaxe and go back to the mines to fish cave jelly.

I estimate you'd need around 20 000g to do all this plus have the money for the bait maker materials, iron for the pickaxe upgrade and kale seeds. You can get all that on day 6 easily, given your total earnings. Fishing with the bait maker on day 6 should then give you the money for the fish smoker recipe and maybe even the steel pickaxe.

Sorry for the many ifs. Have I gone too far? Much of this is in Seawolf's guide, which is outdated, so maybe it's even more doable now.

 

[Maboi]

When did you check the beach?

On the 6th. I got 5 corals and no urchins. Most likely my bad luck.

I guess I would start a new file if I didn't have 1800g by 5pm on day 2 to buy the fiberglass rod

And I respect that, it's also what I think I saw in Zamiel's guide as well. Let me challenge it a bit, though. I believe a sub-optimal day 1, not only in terms of execution but also foragables and trash bins, is a crucial part of a min-max run. I don't mean the absolute best possible start - over 20 spring onions, an artifact and some high value trash, with best daily luck, no. My assumption can be stated this way: "The player should be able to buy fiberglass rod as soon as they hit level 2 fishing, be it through a lucky sea jelly or good perfect-catch grind". In simple English, I'm more picky when it comes to day 1 foragables/money for fishing.

If you can guarantee a bunch of forageables on day 1 and fishing level 5 on day 2

Some info concerning my day 2, as this may come in handy:

1) I use "auto-pause on day start" mod. I also pick up bed, which makes you spawn right next to the doors (but still inside). When the two are combined, and you hold down (or S) you'll spawn outside, at 6:00.

2) I water only a cauliflower to save time. Best case scenario you would have a joja cola to reach the beach earlier.

3) If I have a surplus of money (around 1400) I SKIP giving Willy a rock to have more time to fish. I use max casts to the right.

4) Usually I get 1 perfect catch before 9:00AM, and when I buy the training rod, I already have level 1 fishing. My best beginning of the day contained 3 perfect catches and a non-perfect flounder chest, which was around 30-35% to level 2 fishing.

5) I ZOOM IN to 125% when fishing at first to make the fishing bar visually bigger. This lets me focus more on keeping the fish inside. This may be useful at times, though I'm sure it limits your vision. My previous computer used to lag a bit when I didn't zoom in on rainy days - and it was truly hard to catch catfish then.

6) My best 1.6 timestamps for fishing levels are: 8:00 for level 1, 10:30 for 2, 1:50 for 3, 5:30 for 4, 12:00 AM for 5. This was possible due to buying fiberglass rod at 9:10 (sea jelly).

can't you also buy 45 copper on day 3, enough for a furnace and 5 bars? Then you can upgrade the axe on day 3 (if you bought 1 copper on day 1 to have the furnace recipe), if you go for catfish in the town portion of the river and sell catfish to Willy. That would work if you can guarantee 5 coal by then, which you can get by breaking rocks on the farm. Then, if you can guarantee mines level 20 and 25 more copper by 3pm on day 5, you can upgrade pickaxe and go back to the mines to fish cave jelly.

This is true but only if I were to reset not only day 1 for optimal foragables, but all days up to 6 for the absolute best performance and luck. And this I simply find unpleasant.

My absolute wish would be to agree on one or two optimal (again - not perfect but not not bad either) seeds for starting a min-max run. Otherwise you're restricted to what you roll when making a character (unless you seed a different seed, which is fine but not for me, at least not when it's "official").