This was my progress by 6:00 on day 4 morning.
40 catfish on day 3?! That's insane, congratulations.
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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.