OldMcKeg
Cowpoke
So this is actually more complicated than it appears because I believe pigs produce more truffles than usual after a rainy day. I'm...not actually sure what the algorithm is, but that's why I'd originally not accounted for them.
Min-Max Guide / Optimal Play
- Thread starter Zamiel
- Start date
OldMcKeg
Cowpoke
If we're petting the pigs daily though we're probably getting very rapidly closer to like 2 truffles per day, which combined with gatherer is a BIG money boost. But I agree that the numbers are sufficiently close for this that we'd need an actual algorithm to make reasonable comparisons, or to test both methods experimentally.
Zamiel
Sodbuster
That isn't listed on the wiki.
Zamiel
Sodbuster
I don't think there would ever be a situation where you would not have a staircase for an infestation level. (To clarify, I am referring to the period where you go from floor 20 --> 120, not the period where you go from floor 0 --> 20.)
Squigglyruth
Planter
I've tried it both ways, and I have to say it's tricky to ignore those ghosts... It's certainly less of a problem if you do the mine runs later in spring after upgrading the pickaxe. If you just have the steel sword they are a real pain. (I don't have unlimited healing - how do you have that? Is there something I'm missing?)
You have to level up your combat in the end, I think, in order to deal with Skull Caverns.
BlaDe
Farmer
I see no evidence of this in the code.
A pig will always try to find a truffle regardless of friendship. The pig trying to find additional truffles is tied to friendship.
Zamiel
Sodbuster
I have around 100 Iridium-quality Chubs at that point for eating. Ideally you don't want to eat too many, since you can sell them, but ghosts deal such little damage that I don't think it matters much.
I'm just trying to envision you sitting in the mines and swinging at a ghost with Steel Smallsword 16 times in a row. It doesn't sound very productive. =p
Absolutely not! In the Skull Caverns, you do the exact same strategy that you do in the mines - ignore all enemies. You can't really ignore Serpents though, so you end up killing them. But note that killing Serpents is pretty fast, whereas killing Ghosts is excruciatingly slow. So you should be picking more wisely which enemies that you are killing for XP.
OldMcKeg
Cowpoke
Huh. I had heard it, but indeed it may not be true. How are you looking at the code? Can you link it to me?
There's actually one other issue -- getting the money for the pigs before summer 1 is a pretty big order, but building the barn or part of it in spring is not. It might end up being a significant amount of extra production.
Squigglyruth
Planter
Yes, mining speed is clearly my area to improve on. In spring, I probably average 15 levels a day - bear in mind that those are not full days, though - I water a bunch of crops first. A full day can be much better. But then rainy days get lost to fishing.
I also agree. But it the time spent dodging the ghosts adds up. I don't have enough food early in spring to just take their hits.
So normally I just mine... I used to get the steel pickaxe first, but after very very many spring runs I find I do better just mining with the normal pickaxe until a rainy day comes up or I know I will be spending a whole day planting. It's good to get the steel pickaxe asap, but I'm not sure it beats out 70 strawberry seeds that you don;t have to water...
Zamiel
Sodbuster
Getting 192K by Summer 8 isn't a big deal if you don't buy any Starfruit Seeds and just focus on exclusively doing Skull Cavern from Spring 15 to Summer 7.
OldMcKeg
Cowpoke
Thank you for the link. I may have been unclear: what I'm saying is that you could get the barn and pigs running earlier than Summer 8, which is probably what you would do.
Getting 192K by Summer 8 isn't a big deal if you don't buy any Starfruit Seeds and just focus on exclusively doing Skull Cavern from Spring 15 to Summer 7.
Squigglyruth
Planter
Right, so I fish less than you do, and that leaves me on about 20-30 iridium chubs at the point where I hit the ghosts... Just enough to get far enough through the mines in time for making my quality sprinklers. I don't see that as infinite energy, but I see how your version would be different.
No, it isn't! :-) But it doesn't normally happen. Normally I get a better weapon, which makes a huge difference. The odds of getting a Forest Sword or even a Neptune's Glaive are really quite high.
I obviously never want to sit there swinging with a steel smallsword. But if it's just for one level, and there are dustmites, bats and grey slimes to kill at the same time, it's not so awful. If you are on spring 7 or 8 and haven't upgraded your pickaxe, it can be a thing...
I would never choose to kill ghosts for xp. I kill them because otherwise they get in my way whilst I'm trying to break rocks. Which is down to me being earlier in spring than you and having upgraded my pickaxe less. A choice I stand by, I think.
My comment about combat xp was based on the fact that you said I should get combat 10 in order to get large amounts of money from skull cavern. So in that case I can't ignore all monsters.
When would you expect to get combat 10?
Zamiel
Sodbuster
I get level 10 combat "naturally" towards the end of Spring after having done around 10 Skull Cavern runs or so. As I said, I kill as few enemies as possible, since virtually all of the revenue is coming from Iridium Ore, and not from any monster drops. Some notable exceptions:
- You kill Serpents for the most part, since they are hard to dodge.
- If there are a bunch of mummies, you stack them all together and kill them for the Solar Essence. (You need to build up to 100 Solar Essence for your two Iridium Bands.)
- You kill Iridium Bats if it won't waste too much time, since they can drop batteries, which need to be crafted into Crystalariums as soon as possible for more Jade.
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DJModulo
Sodbuster
You realistically need at least 2.000G by 5pm Spring 2 (Fiberglass Rod + Training Rod + 35 Bait).
Roughly estimated, this is how you get there:
-500G (starting income)
-100G (Introductions + gifting Willy)
-~300G from selling Fiber (1G each; there's enough weeds on your farm/in the forest to get there, plus the scythe doesn't use energy)
-~100G from selling Sap (2G each; you'll chop quite some trees for Foraging 1 and wood anyway and each tree gives 10G worth of Sap)
-~400-500G from forage (day 1 forage (including food from trash cans) + day 2 beach)
-~500-600G from selling fish/getting Bait from treasure chests (~8-9 hours worth of fishing)
You should also sell any Clay (20G each) you get day 1 as well as turn in most artifacts you find (250G; there's some outliers like Elvish Jewelry that are technically better to sell if obtained day 1); both of these help a lot but are not reliable (unless you use exploits or the Predictor). Selling Coal (15G each) or Geodes (50G each) gotten from rocks is debatable; the latter is always worth it if you already found an artifact, the former might be necessary to spiral out of control even though you need to buy tons of coal later.
Another possibility is crafting Spring seeds and selling these to Pierre if you found at least 1 of each forageable; this nets an extra 170G over selling them raw (assuming no quality) but takes detours both on day 2 as well as later (you'll need to find those forageables again).
Finally, there's the option to not plant the 15 parsnip seeds day 1 and sell them instead; that's an extra 150G early but means missing out on early farming 1 as well as food for the day 5 mines.
Missing the Rod day 2 basically equates to half as many fish for about half a day of fishing; you'll also probably miss getting Fishing 4 on day 2, which is fairly crucial (Fishing 4 generally means a bump in fish quality due to the additional cast distance, plus it makes catching Catfish much more consistent). Trout Soup can mitigate fishing 4 to an extent, but compounds the loss of money from only having half the fish; and less money early tends to worsen over time in min/max runs.
Roughly estimated, this is how you get there:
-500G (starting income)
-100G (Introductions + gifting Willy)
-~300G from selling Fiber (1G each; there's enough weeds on your farm/in the forest to get there, plus the scythe doesn't use energy)
-~100G from selling Sap (2G each; you'll chop quite some trees for Foraging 1 and wood anyway and each tree gives 10G worth of Sap)
-~400-500G from forage (day 1 forage (including food from trash cans) + day 2 beach)
-~500-600G from selling fish/getting Bait from treasure chests (~8-9 hours worth of fishing)
You should also sell any Clay (20G each) you get day 1 as well as turn in most artifacts you find (250G; there's some outliers like Elvish Jewelry that are technically better to sell if obtained day 1); both of these help a lot but are not reliable (unless you use exploits or the Predictor). Selling Coal (15G each) or Geodes (50G each) gotten from rocks is debatable; the latter is always worth it if you already found an artifact, the former might be necessary to spiral out of control even though you need to buy tons of coal later.
Another possibility is crafting Spring seeds and selling these to Pierre if you found at least 1 of each forageable; this nets an extra 170G over selling them raw (assuming no quality) but takes detours both on day 2 as well as later (you'll need to find those forageables again).
Finally, there's the option to not plant the 15 parsnip seeds day 1 and sell them instead; that's an extra 150G early but means missing out on early farming 1 as well as food for the day 5 mines.
Missing the Rod day 2 basically equates to half as many fish for about half a day of fishing; you'll also probably miss getting Fishing 4 on day 2, which is fairly crucial (Fishing 4 generally means a bump in fish quality due to the additional cast distance, plus it makes catching Catfish much more consistent). Trout Soup can mitigate fishing 4 to an extent, but compounds the loss of money from only having half the fish; and less money early tends to worsen over time in min/max runs.
DJModulo
Sodbuster
Huh. TIL, I guess.
Do you happen to know whether this already was the case in the inaugural version (since I do believe I had gotten day 1 geodes before)?
Ferror
Newcomer
It seems that I have severely underestimated the power of weeds and fiber. Thanks for the thorough reply.
Wmark
Cowpoke
Cool guide, found a lot of useful
stardew-valley/Min-Max_Guide.md at main · Zamiell/stardew-valley
Contribute to Zamiell/stardew-valley development by creating an account on GitHub.github.com
Jourilalom
Cowpoke
Thank you so much! This is really cool guidestardew-valley/Min-Max_Guide.md at main · Zamiell/stardew-valley
Contribute to Zamiell/stardew-valley development by creating an account on GitHub.