So, some things you can do to increase your profits:
* I like to start with a 40 parsnip opening, not necessarily for the profit, but for the xp gain. Basically, you dump all your starting cash into, you guessed it, more parsnip seeds. It takes a bit more stamina, you may have to go get some Spring Onions to keep yourself going, but 40 is exactly how many squares a copper pail can water before running out. Assuming no misclicks (we won't discuss how many times I've done this... >.> <.<), this lets you maximize your first harvest. Also remember Day 3 is a guaranteed rain day, so that's a whole day you don't need to water. Sure, the crows will eat a few. That's fine, and expected. Most of them will be there to sell to Pierre.
* Potatoes and Kale are excellent money makers in your first spring. Planting 40-80 of them will hamper your mining excursions, but will net you profit and farming xp, because the sooner you unlock your preserves jars, kegs, and mayo machines, the sooner we can start really making money.
* Strawberries are also very profitable, you get two harvests (there's technically a very specific method for getting three, but it is well outside the casual advice I'm offering), they sell well. If you have any preserves jars and/or kegs yet, that's even better, but you probably won't yet. However, DO NOT save back any seeds for next year. By next year, you should be planing Ancient Fruit in the spring, strawberries won't be able to compete with that. And you desperately need the short-term income to start building infrastructure so you can snowball faster.
* Don't forget your spring bundle crops, at least one of each. However, if you can do early mining and collect five minerals, you can return to Gunther and he'll give you a whopping nine Cauliflower seeds. If you can do this in time to plant before the end of the season, it's a huge bonus.
* Speaking of mining, one of the reasons I like hitting farming so hard in the early game is to get Quality Sprinklers. Which need Gold. Which is pretty deep in the mines. Slow but sure progress is key to hitting at least level 80 before the end of Spring. Getting five levels a day for sixteen days will get you there. If you can do more, that's bonus. There's a whole other guide on this topic.
* Don't forget an oak tree stand. You're going to want 20-30 oak trees planted ASAP, and put tappers on all of them. The key limiting factor in making Kegs is Oak Resin. You can buy wood from Robyn. You can mine Copper and Iron to your heart's content. Oak Resin, however, is gated behind tapped trees. This is a first week priority. Once you get Foraging level 1, shake every oak tree you pass by to see if a seed pops out. This will be mission critical in the summer.
* Fishing can be absurdly profitable in the early game. Here's a tip to make it more profitable and also in line with everything else you are doing: Carp don't sell for much, it is better to eat them to recover stamina so you can continue fishing. Especially if you spent a bunch of stamina at the beginning of the day watering an enormous crop plot.
* A chest inside the mine will never be trod upon, and can be extremely valuable in storing loot between dives. Especially before you have an opportunity to purchase a backpack upgrade, a mine chest can be used as a 'dump chest' for your hard-won loot, then go back down for more. Every five levels, you can take the elevator for free. This can really help you push ten or even fifteen levels in a day.
* Likewise, a chest near your preferred fishing location can be used to store useful but not immediately relevant things you fish up, especially chest rewards. And extremely useful if you haven't gotten your first backpack upgrade just yet.
* IF you are good at the fishing minigame, Day 3 is a guaranteed rain day and can be used to fish up Catfish.
* If you can safely kill bugs in the early parts of the dungeon, they have a 1% chance of dropping an Ancient Seed. Take it to Gunther, who will give you a plantable version and a recipe to convert them. Getting a spring Ancient Seed can be HUGE going forward. Plant it, water it, protect it, for it will be the key to millions in seasonal profits later. It's not strictly required, but it's something to keep an eye out for. Ancient seeds are surprisingly difficult to see, so make sure you have an inventory slot open. See previous tip about a chest in the mine cave.
* By summer, you should have enough money for the following: 40 Melons (you'll need gold-star melons for the quality bundle, plant them on Fertilizer), 40 Blueberries (solid money maker and backup method of attaining ancient seeds), 40 Hops (gold-tier money maker), and the rest can be an assortment of quest requirements (don't forget the sunflower for the dye bundle) and 8-16 Corn on fertilizer for the quality crops bundle. If you got five gold star parsnips in Spring, great, otherwise you're going to have to wait for the gold-star pumpkins in the fall.
* Blueberries go into a Seed Maker. Which has a 0.5% chance of producing an Ancient Seed. However, the blueberry seeds it produces sell for more than the actual blueberries would have. Unless you already have a significant number of Preserves Jars to triple your Blueberry profits, it's better than selling them straight. And even then, you're not going to have enough preserves jars to process ALL your blueberries, so it's still profitable and can net you that all important and extremely valuable ancient seed.
* Melons go into kegs. Remember in the spring we talked about tapping oak trees? This is the start of why.
* Hops take keg priority. Pale Ale, with the Artisan perk, sell for 420 EACH. And Hops produce DAILY. This is why I was so insistent about getting an oak tree stand up and going ASAP. This is printing money right here. Let's do the math:
40 hops * 420g/ea = 16,800g/DAY for over half of the season. Assuming you have enough kegs. Which, let's be honest, you probably won't... yet? But you save your hops and brew them as kegs become available, and you keep pounding those kegs. Talk to Robyn about getting a Shed together to store them in. Maybe two sheds. And eventually upgrade them to Big Sheds.
* You should probably also have a Coop down by Summer. Mayo sells well, and also gifts well. Probably should also have a Barn as well. Cheese is an amazing food to take with you into the mines. It recovers a fantastic amount of health and stamina, which will make diving mines much easier. And also sell well. But prioritize getting your kegs down.
* Make sure to buy Hops starters before the end of summer if you want them in your greenhouse, where they produce daily and are one of the most profitable crops (barring peach and pomegranate trees) you have access to in the greenhouse before post-CC content. However, they are also micro-intensive, requiring you to harvest them on a daily basis.
* By fall, you should pretty much have your groove going. One or two sheds full of kegs, with more coming on a weekly basis. At least a shed full of Preserves Jars to handle leftover Blueberry and incoming Cranberry processing. Kegs that are finishing up processing leftover hops and melons, and will be working on Pumpkins once that is done.
* Casually, the earliest you can reasonably expect to unlock the Greenhouse is mid-fall. From there, you're going to have to make a choice: Do you want to do the super casual method of filling it with Ancient Fruit, or do you want to do the more micro-intensive strategy of creating a hops maze interspersed with trees and ancient fruit lining the paths? The super casual method brings in roughly a million per season once fully up and running. But iterating ancient seeds through a Seed Maker can take a while. Which is why an early spring seed is such a boon. Each Ancient Fruit you harvest before the end of the year is pretty huge in how fast it takes to start propagating. It can shave weeks off of a full propagation setup. Hops go up quicker, if you aren't trying to intersperse trees (which have to have the area around them bare for them to grow), so assuming you have enough kegs to support them (something like a hundred and forty plus), you can start generating a TON of cash by the end of the year. If you want to intersperse trees, it takes a full season for them to grow, significantly retarding your timeline, but is long term more profitable per day.
* Keg ratios: You want one keg per ancient fruit, as they both produce weekly. You want two or three kegs for every Hops you have. Pale ale takes less time to brew than most others, but they produce daily. For a casual player, definitely make that three, because you aren't going to be hitting the perfect timings which are theoretically possible on a spreadsheet but not particularly practical in the field.
* Preserves ratios: You'll want roughly two or three preserves jars per fruit tree if you have them. Other than that, however much you need to process everything that isn't in the greenhouse.
It is technically more profitable to keg pomegranate and peach, but the infrastructure cost to support that is insane. Start out by preserving them, while you are building up your keg numbers to support your hops and/or ancient fruit.
