riklaunim
Sodbuster
Beach farm has a lot of land on which sprinklers won't work which makes cultivating crops hard. It's good for animals but building and maintaining multiple coops, barns or fish ponds take ages, not to mention the processing time needed to make mayo and other stuff. So having a large plot of land how do you make big money without putting in all those hours? The answer is mushrooms and the Mushroom Log. Every 4 or fewer days it makes mushrooms we can sell, dehydrate, or use for life elixir - even more chill Skull Cavern or Mines farming. For best results, it needs mature wild trees around it and moss-covered trees for higher quality.
The plan
You start the farm as normal and for most of the spring it will be normal - you run some crops, do as much fishing as possible, go to the mines to then upgrade your axe and pickaxe... But also starting from day 2-3 when you get Foraging 1 - start collecting wild tree seeds - clear the ground around trees on your farm and daily after plant watering go around and pick them up. You will need a lot of tree seeds.
Spring fishing in the rain
In the second half of spring get a steel axe and start cutting down trees - cut down all of Cindersap Forest, cut down all hardwood stumps and logs on your farm, and also try to do near-daily trips to secret woods for more hardwood - you will need 300+ hardwood for green rain in summer. You will have A LOT of wood and bonus tree seeds. Go to Robin and buy a few cheap wooden flooring recipes that look nice - for better decorative effect.
By the end of spring start planting, if you use Stardew Predictor you can do it later if the green rain is later than the first week of summer... but the sooner the better.
This is my layout 2 grid columns (or rows) of trees separated by 3 tiles followed by a second grid of trees and repeat. Each mushroom log looks for trees with 3 tiles in any direction so it will see 2 columns of trees to its side and on the opposite. It's not the maximal bonus it can get but it's the most convenient to just have mushroom logs placed in a solid line. The more optimal layout would be one tile gap and mushroom logs placed in-between trees but that's a bit crowded ;) I used stone paths which look nice but cause severe stone deficit :D so wood is better, especially when you get excess wood from all those trees cut down.
You need mostly Pine Cones for Chantarelle which is most profitable but also a bit of Oak and Maple if you want life elixirs (and tree tappers).
Mahogany seeds were planted separately and aided by tree fertilizer to grow quickly and then drop seeds to start collecting a bunch. It's important to start this as daily trips to secret woods soon will become annoying and not so efficient. Early mahogany seeds Secret Woods drop (from stumps and slimes) help a lot. I got 140 hardwood from the first batch of mahogany trees to then replant seeds in 3 rows for even more hardwood.
First batch of Mushroom Logs day after green rain - 32 logs (320 hardwood, 320 moss) was more than enough to get two lines of logs in the first alley and few on the second one. More Mushroom Logs to follow after the Mahogany Trees cycle.
Excess seeds were used on the train station for bonus wood and moss.
Putting candles on the path in-between trees gives nice illumination while trees hide the candle (and you can walk through)
Decorating, illuminating, tree multiplying...
This is summer year one and most of the farm already looks like a multi-year decorated/prettified farm ;) from a certain point of view...
Money making
The full field with blueberries (patch where sprinklers work) is 30K when sold raw. This is already better before all trees grow up and when you stop collecting moss. Low-quality mushrooms could get dehydrated, but with time there will be less and less of them, so if you want to go coopmaster or rancher you can do so easily.
----------------------------
Farming Hardwood
As mentioned early on you have to visit secret woods near-daily to get some hardwood and seeds. Forest Farm has it much easier, Beach farm from non-respawnable stumps gets around 170 hardwood so you need the second half from Secret Woods, and then start planting mahogany seeds on your farm. Use tree fertilizer on them, then wait a few days for bonus seeds, cut down, plant, fertilize repeat. Soon you can have a few hundred hardwoods per cycle.
-------------------
Farming Moss
The first major batch of moss will be the summer green rain event - take your scythe and go hard on all weeds on your farm and in Cindersap Forest. You should get around 300 moss so 30 mushroom logs. Beach farms due to their size (and probably other big farms if cleared on large patches) will spawn a lot of weed giving in a total of up to 400-500 moss if you manage to cut it all down before the end of the day.
After that you will have to patrol Cindersap Forest, the Train station for moss-covered trees... but the forest planted on the farm will also give 40-60 moss every few days - I collect the mushrooms then take the scythe and use the path in-between trees to go down and use the scythe to get all moss (that is hard to see due to tree proximity to each other). Just note that if there are still trees at the early growth stage the scythe will destroy them so be careful. The more trees the more moss. When you don't need more you may stop collecting it as moss increases mushroom quality.
------------------
Late game options
Mystic Trees cause purple mushrooms to spawn on the logs so even better money maker. If you can get 500 of each wild tree seed (including mahogany) then 100 mystic trees could be an insane addition to the farm...
Moss farm can be used to make Challenge Bait (moss + bone fragments) to then 3x fish caught.
Large Mahogany plantation can help with early stables and home upgrades to then have a wood chipper/charcoal kiln setup if you need lots of coal.
---------------------------
Synergies
As you will be cutting lots of trees you can dump excess wood into coops/barns. You can also go Rancher and not get Artisan without much impact. Could be combined with a large dinosaur coop setup using the Treasure Appraisal Guide to make their raw eggs sell for 3x more (still not as good as chickens or barn animals but zero processing and very low maintenance).
-----------------------
Farm maps
- Beach Farm: a lot of land for trees and then whatever buildings you want to add.
- Forest Farm: lots of early hardwood, but less space for large tree setup combined with some building/farming space
- Meadowlands Farm: early coop setup but the forest would encroach on land that could be used for even more coops or barns (but it takes time to build, upgrade and then manage them, get autograbbers and autopetters)
- Standard and 4-corners: lots of areas to collect seeds from, 4-corners could look nice with organized tree sections
========================================================================================
Some numbers
I finished spring with Farming 7 / Mining 7 / Foraging 6 / Fishing 10 / Combat 5 - initial crops, fishing, then strawberries and mines/fishing till the end of the season. Axe and Pickaxe steel. 113 oak, 86 maple, and 104 pine seeds. Total Earnings 84,4K
Summer was quality sprinklers on the small patch that allows for them - combined with blueberries for around 30K+ per harvest sold raw. Green rain brought a record 450 moss so I had more moss than hardwood but after the first mahogany cycle, I'm almost out of excess moss and will start collecting from the farm and train station as soon as leftover small trees grow up to be scythe-safe. I also got a big coop with dino hatched and void egg in the incubator... Few more moss/hardwood cycles for 50+ logs and it will be filled. Then either adding more pine / placing logs on the train station or investing more into animals.
The plan
You start the farm as normal and for most of the spring it will be normal - you run some crops, do as much fishing as possible, go to the mines to then upgrade your axe and pickaxe... But also starting from day 2-3 when you get Foraging 1 - start collecting wild tree seeds - clear the ground around trees on your farm and daily after plant watering go around and pick them up. You will need a lot of tree seeds.
Spring fishing in the rain
In the second half of spring get a steel axe and start cutting down trees - cut down all of Cindersap Forest, cut down all hardwood stumps and logs on your farm, and also try to do near-daily trips to secret woods for more hardwood - you will need 300+ hardwood for green rain in summer. You will have A LOT of wood and bonus tree seeds. Go to Robin and buy a few cheap wooden flooring recipes that look nice - for better decorative effect.
By the end of spring start planting, if you use Stardew Predictor you can do it later if the green rain is later than the first week of summer... but the sooner the better.
This is my layout 2 grid columns (or rows) of trees separated by 3 tiles followed by a second grid of trees and repeat. Each mushroom log looks for trees with 3 tiles in any direction so it will see 2 columns of trees to its side and on the opposite. It's not the maximal bonus it can get but it's the most convenient to just have mushroom logs placed in a solid line. The more optimal layout would be one tile gap and mushroom logs placed in-between trees but that's a bit crowded ;) I used stone paths which look nice but cause severe stone deficit :D so wood is better, especially when you get excess wood from all those trees cut down.
You need mostly Pine Cones for Chantarelle which is most profitable but also a bit of Oak and Maple if you want life elixirs (and tree tappers).
Mahogany seeds were planted separately and aided by tree fertilizer to grow quickly and then drop seeds to start collecting a bunch. It's important to start this as daily trips to secret woods soon will become annoying and not so efficient. Early mahogany seeds Secret Woods drop (from stumps and slimes) help a lot. I got 140 hardwood from the first batch of mahogany trees to then replant seeds in 3 rows for even more hardwood.
First batch of Mushroom Logs day after green rain - 32 logs (320 hardwood, 320 moss) was more than enough to get two lines of logs in the first alley and few on the second one. More Mushroom Logs to follow after the Mahogany Trees cycle.
Excess seeds were used on the train station for bonus wood and moss.
Putting candles on the path in-between trees gives nice illumination while trees hide the candle (and you can walk through)
Decorating, illuminating, tree multiplying...
This is summer year one and most of the farm already looks like a multi-year decorated/prettified farm ;) from a certain point of view...
Money making
The full field with blueberries (patch where sprinklers work) is 30K when sold raw. This is already better before all trees grow up and when you stop collecting moss. Low-quality mushrooms could get dehydrated, but with time there will be less and less of them, so if you want to go coopmaster or rancher you can do so easily.
----------------------------
Farming Hardwood
As mentioned early on you have to visit secret woods near-daily to get some hardwood and seeds. Forest Farm has it much easier, Beach farm from non-respawnable stumps gets around 170 hardwood so you need the second half from Secret Woods, and then start planting mahogany seeds on your farm. Use tree fertilizer on them, then wait a few days for bonus seeds, cut down, plant, fertilize repeat. Soon you can have a few hundred hardwoods per cycle.
-------------------
Farming Moss
The first major batch of moss will be the summer green rain event - take your scythe and go hard on all weeds on your farm and in Cindersap Forest. You should get around 300 moss so 30 mushroom logs. Beach farms due to their size (and probably other big farms if cleared on large patches) will spawn a lot of weed giving in a total of up to 400-500 moss if you manage to cut it all down before the end of the day.
After that you will have to patrol Cindersap Forest, the Train station for moss-covered trees... but the forest planted on the farm will also give 40-60 moss every few days - I collect the mushrooms then take the scythe and use the path in-between trees to go down and use the scythe to get all moss (that is hard to see due to tree proximity to each other). Just note that if there are still trees at the early growth stage the scythe will destroy them so be careful. The more trees the more moss. When you don't need more you may stop collecting it as moss increases mushroom quality.
------------------
Late game options
Mystic Trees cause purple mushrooms to spawn on the logs so even better money maker. If you can get 500 of each wild tree seed (including mahogany) then 100 mystic trees could be an insane addition to the farm...
Moss farm can be used to make Challenge Bait (moss + bone fragments) to then 3x fish caught.
Large Mahogany plantation can help with early stables and home upgrades to then have a wood chipper/charcoal kiln setup if you need lots of coal.
---------------------------
Synergies
As you will be cutting lots of trees you can dump excess wood into coops/barns. You can also go Rancher and not get Artisan without much impact. Could be combined with a large dinosaur coop setup using the Treasure Appraisal Guide to make their raw eggs sell for 3x more (still not as good as chickens or barn animals but zero processing and very low maintenance).
-----------------------
Farm maps
- Beach Farm: a lot of land for trees and then whatever buildings you want to add.
- Forest Farm: lots of early hardwood, but less space for large tree setup combined with some building/farming space
- Meadowlands Farm: early coop setup but the forest would encroach on land that could be used for even more coops or barns (but it takes time to build, upgrade and then manage them, get autograbbers and autopetters)
- Standard and 4-corners: lots of areas to collect seeds from, 4-corners could look nice with organized tree sections
========================================================================================
Some numbers
I finished spring with Farming 7 / Mining 7 / Foraging 6 / Fishing 10 / Combat 5 - initial crops, fishing, then strawberries and mines/fishing till the end of the season. Axe and Pickaxe steel. 113 oak, 86 maple, and 104 pine seeds. Total Earnings 84,4K
Summer was quality sprinklers on the small patch that allows for them - combined with blueberries for around 30K+ per harvest sold raw. Green rain brought a record 450 moss so I had more moss than hardwood but after the first mahogany cycle, I'm almost out of excess moss and will start collecting from the farm and train station as soon as leftover small trees grow up to be scythe-safe. I also got a big coop with dino hatched and void egg in the incubator... Few more moss/hardwood cycles for 50+ logs and it will be filled. Then either adding more pine / placing logs on the train station or investing more into animals.