Giant Octopodes
Farmer
Greetings!
I figured it would be fun to do challenge runs where you are a "pure" farmer / forager / fisher / miner. The idea of the challenge is that you must maintain 0 XP on any skills other than your chosen one. Any activities which grant XP of a type other than the assigned one are strictly forbidden. The goal is to get the Community Center done as early as possible. For obvious reasons this requires going the Joja route, and for hopefully obvious reasons I'd consider RNG / Seed Manipulation based runs to be a separate category from runs which don't utilize those tools.
So I am going to fire up those challenges sometime this week or next, but before I do, I wanted to gather insights from folks regarding potential strategies, and map out potential stumbling blocks.
So first, what are the forbidden activities?
Farming - Unless you're on a "farming only" challenge run, you can't harvest any crops (note that wild seeds grown produce foraging XP, not farming XP). You can't pet, milk, or shear any animals, or pick up any animal products inside a barn or coop (note that Truffles provide foraging XP not farming XP, as they are outside the barn or coop not inside).
Foraging - Unless you're on a "foraging only" challenge run, you can't chop down any fully grown trees, stumps, or logs with an axe. You can't pick up any forage items from the ground, including Fruit in the Fruit cave, Mushrooms in the Mines, Beach items, Truffles, or items grown from Wild Seeds.
Mining & Combat - Unless you're on a Mining and Combat only run, you can't break any rocks nor kill any monsters. Note that I combined these because having them separate would be too dumb for even me to tolerate. And yes, seriously, no rocks broken in any way under any circumstances.
Fishing - Unless you're on a "fishing only" challenge run, you can't use the fishing rod or crab pots. It's basically that easy, just don't touch those things and you won't run into trouble.
What notable things ARE allowed?
Picking up Gems doesn't grant forage XP, as long as you don't choose the skill which gives a chance for double gem drops.
Mushrooms in the Mushroom cave don't grant XP, nor do Salmonberries or Blackberries.
Chopping up the sticks on the ground and cutting weeds doesn't grant XP.
Going through people's trash.
Digging up the ground in general, including but not limited to worm spots.
Smelting Ore (note that Clint will give you the furnace recipe if you buy some ore from him).
Talking with people, giving gifts, doing quests, etc.
How can you check if you broke the rules?
Open your save file. Start from the top and search for "exp" to find the Experience Points flags. If more than 1 (or 2 for mining and combat) as a value above 0, you messed up.
All told then, here are my thoughts on each:
Farming - This seems like the "easy" one, but remember, you can't chop down any trees or break any rocks! As such free space to do things will be somewhat limited. I'm not certain whether or not the standard map is the best option, it'll warrant testing. It's the only one which will gain access to sprinklers or animals though and definitely will play closest to a standard run. Space will be at a premium and as such proactively stopping trees from spreading (you can dig the acorns out of the ground or scythe down sprouts, you can even chop down tiny trees, just can't chop them once they're fully grown) is likely to be priority 1.
Foraging - This is likely the *actual* easy one, especially with the Tea Sapling strategy which has been identified. You don't have to just break sticks for wood for chests, you can easily clear space on the farm (still no rocks though) and you have free income from the beach (on both sides) as well as access to the Fruit Bats while everyone else is stuck with the mushroom cave. I predict this one will be smooth and simple.
Fishing - The profit early on will likely be the absolute best of any of them. The trouble will be continuing that rate of profit as you move forward. The only option for "reinvesting" is crab pots, which cost 1500 and return (without Mariner) 30 G per day in profit (paying for themselves after 50 days). It may well be worth getting Mariner instead of usual fishing profit related benefits, as with that the crab pots are averaging 60 gold per day. That may still be worse than just baseline fishing though. It'll be interesting to see regardless.
Mining and Combat - For those who RNG manipulate, this would definitely be the preferred one. You can do some sick things with Geodes I'm sure. Otherwise, I still think it'll be pretty solid as folks tend to underestimate how much bars of ore and monster parts sell for (probably because normally they like me just hoard them all and don't ever actually sell them).
I'm very interested in any tips or tricks anyone may have, or results if someone has tried this previously. I'll use this thread to post my results, which definitely won't be super optimized but at minimum it should be fun to see which one emerges on top, and how wide the gaps are between them.
I figured it would be fun to do challenge runs where you are a "pure" farmer / forager / fisher / miner. The idea of the challenge is that you must maintain 0 XP on any skills other than your chosen one. Any activities which grant XP of a type other than the assigned one are strictly forbidden. The goal is to get the Community Center done as early as possible. For obvious reasons this requires going the Joja route, and for hopefully obvious reasons I'd consider RNG / Seed Manipulation based runs to be a separate category from runs which don't utilize those tools.
So I am going to fire up those challenges sometime this week or next, but before I do, I wanted to gather insights from folks regarding potential strategies, and map out potential stumbling blocks.
So first, what are the forbidden activities?
Farming - Unless you're on a "farming only" challenge run, you can't harvest any crops (note that wild seeds grown produce foraging XP, not farming XP). You can't pet, milk, or shear any animals, or pick up any animal products inside a barn or coop (note that Truffles provide foraging XP not farming XP, as they are outside the barn or coop not inside).
Foraging - Unless you're on a "foraging only" challenge run, you can't chop down any fully grown trees, stumps, or logs with an axe. You can't pick up any forage items from the ground, including Fruit in the Fruit cave, Mushrooms in the Mines, Beach items, Truffles, or items grown from Wild Seeds.
Mining & Combat - Unless you're on a Mining and Combat only run, you can't break any rocks nor kill any monsters. Note that I combined these because having them separate would be too dumb for even me to tolerate. And yes, seriously, no rocks broken in any way under any circumstances.
Fishing - Unless you're on a "fishing only" challenge run, you can't use the fishing rod or crab pots. It's basically that easy, just don't touch those things and you won't run into trouble.
What notable things ARE allowed?
Picking up Gems doesn't grant forage XP, as long as you don't choose the skill which gives a chance for double gem drops.
Mushrooms in the Mushroom cave don't grant XP, nor do Salmonberries or Blackberries.
Chopping up the sticks on the ground and cutting weeds doesn't grant XP.
Going through people's trash.
Digging up the ground in general, including but not limited to worm spots.
Smelting Ore (note that Clint will give you the furnace recipe if you buy some ore from him).
Talking with people, giving gifts, doing quests, etc.
How can you check if you broke the rules?
Open your save file. Start from the top and search for "exp" to find the Experience Points flags. If more than 1 (or 2 for mining and combat) as a value above 0, you messed up.
All told then, here are my thoughts on each:
Farming - This seems like the "easy" one, but remember, you can't chop down any trees or break any rocks! As such free space to do things will be somewhat limited. I'm not certain whether or not the standard map is the best option, it'll warrant testing. It's the only one which will gain access to sprinklers or animals though and definitely will play closest to a standard run. Space will be at a premium and as such proactively stopping trees from spreading (you can dig the acorns out of the ground or scythe down sprouts, you can even chop down tiny trees, just can't chop them once they're fully grown) is likely to be priority 1.
Foraging - This is likely the *actual* easy one, especially with the Tea Sapling strategy which has been identified. You don't have to just break sticks for wood for chests, you can easily clear space on the farm (still no rocks though) and you have free income from the beach (on both sides) as well as access to the Fruit Bats while everyone else is stuck with the mushroom cave. I predict this one will be smooth and simple.
Fishing - The profit early on will likely be the absolute best of any of them. The trouble will be continuing that rate of profit as you move forward. The only option for "reinvesting" is crab pots, which cost 1500 and return (without Mariner) 30 G per day in profit (paying for themselves after 50 days). It may well be worth getting Mariner instead of usual fishing profit related benefits, as with that the crab pots are averaging 60 gold per day. That may still be worse than just baseline fishing though. It'll be interesting to see regardless.
Mining and Combat - For those who RNG manipulate, this would definitely be the preferred one. You can do some sick things with Geodes I'm sure. Otherwise, I still think it'll be pretty solid as folks tend to underestimate how much bars of ore and monster parts sell for (probably because normally they like me just hoard them all and don't ever actually sell them).
I'm very interested in any tips or tricks anyone may have, or results if someone has tried this previously. I'll use this thread to post my results, which definitely won't be super optimized but at minimum it should be fun to see which one emerges on top, and how wide the gaps are between them.
