Mr. Qi's Fruit Challenge - SPOILERS ARE NOT HIDDEN

[DesertBoots]

***edit to add: As noted in the first comments, my math is off - pessimistic or underestimating. Next time I'll take actual notes, but please chime in with your own strategies!***

I've played this challenge three times (PC) now, so I've come up with some interesting insights and information.

1. Try to get this challenge early in the month. Be willing to sacrifice your month's crops and much of anything else you were doing.
2. Know your "grows fast/costs little" crop like wheat for Summer/Fall. You'll want this to hold your fertilizer. Have at least 10-20 fertilizers of the 25% faster or 33% faster on hand for day 1 if possible. (Did you invest in bone mills and grind bones regularly? You should!) Go stock up on up to 500 fertilizers if you don't have it on hand or already on each plot- you want your crop growing in 3 days instead of 4.
3. Most of the people playing this challenge are end game. Assume that my advice is inherently biased to horded resources and plenty of cash on hand.
4. I wear a luck enhancing ring. I eat lucky lunch and/or other luck enhancing buffs. I use the farming buffs. I hit the mines harder on good luck days.
If you clear the greenhouse (and are using max throw 7x7 sprinklers) you have 116 spaces there.
If you have the same max throw sprinklers outside, you can set aside 8 of 7x7 sprinkler units, which nets 384 outside and gets you exactly 500 spaces.
If you are using the 5x5 sprinklers you'll have 114 greenhouse spaces and will need 16 plots of 5x5 outside (also nets 384) which totals 498.

If you think you are going to try this challenge when you get it next, let the dig site build up. Same with coconut trees and mussels rocks.

When you start this challenge - preferably the first or second Monday of the month - your goal is to max the number of Qi fruit seeds the first three days. ALL your production, petting animals, gathering anything goes to the wayside. Then you try to add 10-20 more new beans each day. I'm showing a pretty conservative start. If you get a lot more the first few days, compounding interest will pay off a LOT faster.

1. I first start with that horde of geodes I've been saving for this occasion. Go whack those out with Clint and score the Qi beans. If you have a stack of 300, you may get 30 beans.
2. Then I fish for an hour or two... not all day long. But I have Pirate enabled and used all the treasure chest enhancing options- the bug bait, the proper hook (it's red).
3. I shake all the palm trees with coconuts. Always good for at least 3-4 beans. Clear all the mussels. Dig any spawn site!
4. I go clear the dig site. Cherry bombs are great here, but watch out if you have a chest parked somewhere too close!
5. Next I go load up on bombs and whack through the Volcano. Qi beans seem to spawn more frequently there than the regular mines. I can't say how Skull Caverns ranks as I just don't like that place much. I have a slime ring and ignore the slimes and massively eat cheese/magma shrooms to run around and blow the place up fast.
6. Make sure you leave early enough to get back to your farmland so you can prep and plant.
7. I usually score somewhere around 15-20 seeds on day one (besides the geodes)
8. Make sure you save a bomb or two to clear some crops (grab your sprinklers first!)
9. Plant out, fertilize and water the Qi beans and your cheapo cover crop before you go to bed the first night.
10. Repeat each day. Use your seed makers to the max as your first day's crop matures.
11. Sacrifice that cover crop to plant the extra seeds you've generated each day. Be careful with the pickax to not remove your fertilizer.

Here's some probable math, not based on code, just my experience:
Predicated on all crops growing on 25% faster fertilizer which turns the crops in 3 instead of 4 days and the fruit producing seeds at a 1.4 multiplier:
Day 1: 25 crops will mature on day 4
Day 2:+15 crops on day 5
Day 3:+15 crops on day 6
Day 4: seedmaker gives you about 45 seeds to replant. Add another 15 "new" ones. 60 to mature on day 7. (In the ground you have 15+15+60=90)
Day 5: seedmaker/22 plus 15 new = 37 day 8 (ITG = 15+60+37=112)
Day 6: seedmaker/23 plus 15 new = 38 day 9 (60+37+38=135)
Day 7: seedmaker/85 plus 10 new = 95 day 10 (37+38+95=170)
Continuing... keep planting all the seeds you can make and find:
Day 8: 50+10 = 60 will mature on day 11 (38+95+60= 193)
Day 9: 50 +10 = 60 will mature on day 12 (95+60+60= 215)
Day 10: 135 +10 = 145 will mature on day 13 (60+60+145=265)
Day 11: 84+10 = 94 will mature on day 14 (60+145+94=299)
Day 12: 84+10 = 94 will mature on day 15 (145+94+94=333)
Day 13: 200 will mature on day 16 (94+94+200=388)
Day 14: 130 will mature on day 17 (94+200+130=424)
Day 15: 130 will mature on day 18 (200+130+130=460)
Day 16: 240 will mature on day 19 (130+130+240 =500) ONLY make enough seeds to fill the 500th plot. At this point you will have exceeded 500 fruit when they all mature
Day 17: collect at least 130 fruit
Day 18: collect at least another 130 fruit
Day 19: collect the last fruit of at least 240
Have some fun making a little extra jam or wine with your excess fruit. Jam is worth more!




And Pierre will even sell the stuff!

 

[DesertBoots]

Now... modify the above for "hitting it really hard" the first few days, and having a ton of geodes on hand:

Day 1: 45 crops will mature on day 4
Day 2:+25 crops on day 5
Day 3:+25 crops on day 6
Day 4: 63+18= 81 mature on day 7. (In the ground you have 25+25+81=131)
Day 5: 35 +18 new = 53 day 8 (ITG = 25+81+53=159)
Day 6: 35 +18 new = 53 day 9 (81+53+53=187)
Day 7: 85 +18 new = 103 day 10 (53+53+103=209)

Day 8: 53+12= 65 will mature on day 11 (53+103+65=221)
Day 9: 53+12= 65 will mature on day 12 (103+65+65= 233)
Day 10: 145+12= 157 will mature on day 13 (65+65+157=287)

Day 11: 91+12= 103 will mature on day 14 (65+157+103=325)
Day 12: 91+12= 103 will mature on day 15 (157+103+103=363)
Day 13: 220 will mature on day 16 (103+103+220=426)
Day 14: 144 will mature on day 17 (103+220+144=467)
Day 15: 144 will mature on day 18 (220+144+144=508) You'll max out your 500 spaces here, so there should be a few fruit left over today
Day 16: collect at least 220 fruit
Day 17: collect at least 144 fruit
Day 18: collect at least another 144 fruit
You've finished one day sooner.

 

[Salty1]

I haven't done this challenge a lot, but it just came up on my current farm on the first of winter in year 2 - I was feeling lucky, so I decided to try it. I managed to finish within 22 days (personal best thus far), despite having a bad first day (I only found five beans on that day, but I did find 35 and 28 or so on the second and third days, didn't really closely keep numbers for the rest).

These are my own observations to add:

- I didn't bother fishing until I felt secure with my numbers. Once I started leisure fishing to finish my fishing collection, it became evident this was a mistake. I did not have pirate, but could still get 10+ beans a day over an afternoon stretch with a simple high bite rate set up (dressed spinner and bait). I was honestly pretty annoyed with how many beans I was hooking before I got the glacier fish to show up.

- My experiences with the volcano echo true to DesertBoot's experiences, and if you have time to zig zag through Ginger Island then it's a good plan. Hit the volcano, clear the dig site, maybe cut down/shake some coconut trees all on the same trip as might be applicable.

- Artifact spots are always worth taking the detour for. No, they don't always produce beans, but they frequently produce several of them in one go. I'm not sure if it is because I had the bandit ring and luck ring on my combined ring sets, but I regularly would get 3-5 beans at once on till spots that also yielded several clay/bone fragments. Procs more often on ginger island, but can still occur with artifact spots on the farm/in town/etc.

- Doing other challenges is fine too, and might even be helpful. During week 2 I got the "harder mines" challenge and while I was doing that I brought home a minimum of twenty beans per day in addition to finding enrichers and extra qi gems as I deep dove (I did this challenge without a significant stack of staircases, for clarity's sake - started with six and converted all stone I generated during the challenge into more staircases, came out with more than I started with ultimately). Might not hold true on all runs, but I found the most beans in the 40-70 floor region.

- I will otherwise note that this was on the standard farm map (felt nice to go back to it for nostalgia purposes). I ended up building more sprinklers and made sweeping use of all my excess space, so that might also have affected my experience relative to others.

 

[imnvs]

Point of order: You are wrong about available space in the greenhouse.

Without pressure nozzles, you can cover the entire greenhouse area with 6 iridium sprinklers (which is factually correct), and you say this means you'll only have 114 grow spots (which is not correct). You surely believe that 4 sprinklers without pressure nozzles will leave two columns of tillable soil uncovered, right? You are correct in assuming so, but you are incorrect when saying 2 more sprinklers will use up 2 more tillable spaces. Sprinklers do not need to be put down on tillable space. You can put them on the wooden border and they will water those spaces.

Additionally, if you're going to upgrade to iridium sprinklers with pressure nozzles, you really should be upgrading in such a way that you use fewer than 4 spaces, as that is already accomplished by 6 iridium sprinklers without the nozzles. With 4 sprinklers and pressure nozzles you could only be using 2 tillable spaces for sprinklers (2 on the wooden board either top or bottom), leaving 118. You could go even further, too. If you went 5 sprinklers with nozzles you could get by with only 1 tillable space used by a sprinkler (the same 2 on the top/bottom as with 4 sprinklers, but 1 on each side board and 1 in the soil in the middle).

You can see layouts on the wiki here: https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Greenhouse#Sprinkler_Arrangement

 

[Shiztastic]

Math is off in nearly all areas, but a good premise regardless. To achieve a 3-day growth cycle you only need a 10% increase, basic speed-gro will provide this, or switch your Farming skills for Agriculturalist’s 10% growth speed.

Seed Makers will, on average, provide twice the number of seeds per fruit. For farmland, Ginger Island provides more than enough space to reach 500 fruit by the 24th(assuming quest was accepted on the 8th), leaving an entire extra growth cycle of leeway.

Challenge is relatively easy from a casual standpoint. You could really go hard, achieving a 2-day growth cycle with Hyper Speed-Gro’s 33% or by combining Agriculturalist’s 10% with Deluxe Speed-Gro’s 25%, trivializing the number of days needed.

 

[DesertBoots]

IMNVS: I hadn't seen these layouts. Thanks for expanding my imagination!

 

[DesertBoots]

Math is off in nearly all areas, but a good premise regardless....

Thank you. I didn't realize there was that good of a turn on seedmakers. I did want there to be a thread for this topic, so despite my errors, hopefully it will be updated when either I or someone else can take better notes.

 

[DesertBoots]

I haven't done this challenge a lot, but it just came up on my current farm on the first of winter in year 2 - I was feeling lucky, so I decided to try it. I managed to finish within 22 days (personal best thus far), despite having a bad first day (I only found five beans on that day, but I did find 35 and 28 or so on the second and third days, didn't really closely keep numbers for the rest).

...

Thank you! I really appreciate your insights. Hopefully, despite my not terribly accurate scenarios, this post will encourage conversation about this quest.

I'm really enjoying most of the qi quests and have only avoided a couple, except when I co-op and have a friend help. Fighting in the mines is not my strong suit, but I appreciate that I am getting better at it.

 

[Xx_Aikra_xX]

Point of order: You are wrong about available space in the greenhouse.

Without pressure nozzles, you can cover the entire greenhouse area with 6 iridium sprinklers (which is factually correct), and you say this means you'll only have 114 grow spots (which is not correct). You surely believe that 4 sprinklers without pressure nozzles will leave two columns of tillable soil uncovered, right? You are correct in assuming so, but you are incorrect when saying 2 more sprinklers will use up 2 more tillable spaces. Sprinklers do not need to be put down on tillable space. You can put them on the wooden border and they will water those spaces.

Additionally, if you're going to upgrade to iridium sprinklers with pressure nozzles, you really should be upgrading in such a way that you use fewer than 4 spaces, as that is already accomplished by 6 iridium sprinklers without the nozzles. With 4 sprinklers and pressure nozzles you could only be using 2 tillable spaces for sprinklers (2 on the wooden board either top or bottom), leaving 118. You could go even further, too. If you went 5 sprinklers with nozzles you could get by with only 1 tillable space used by a sprinkler (the same 2 on the top/bottom as with 4 sprinklers, but 1 on each side board and 1 in the soil in the middle).

You can see layouts on the wiki here: https://stardewvalleywiki.com/Greenhouse#Sprinkler_Arrangement

If you are late game and not using deluxe retaining soil in your greenhouse and on ginger island, then you are doing it wrong.