Rare Seed

[LRangerR]

I've been thinking about this strategy as Rare Seeds are very expensive for early game and spending on them for a big late Fall payout means fewer things to buy otherwise. Do you Fish or similar to grind for g to make up the difference or do you just accept that you may need to delay the Coop or Barn upgrades to finish the Community Center, for instance?

Honestly it might just be your prioritization of things (i just noticed crystal said the same thing, so i'm glad we're on the same track). In a sense you're just condensing all your gold into a future investment, but when you buy that seed, (to put it in an economist's terms) there is also the opportunity cost of not being able to spend that money in the time that you're waiting for fall to come around. I've never even given this strategy a thought for early game, but is an interesting thing to ponder. I think the next time I play I'm only going to sow ancient seeds that i get as artifacts, and ban ancient fruits from the seed makers. They're too much of an ez-win button and way too easy to abuse (not saying you shouldn't in this case, just saying it is, and there are so many other ways to get good money in SDV).

In fall fishing is good though, if i remember correctly (i've been off of the game for a bit but no biggy) the fishing is really good, so it's easy to make a heap of income from it. Summer to, but to a lesser extent because the good fish there are usually pretty hard to catch, but there are exceptions there as well. If you're worried about not having the cash, the real question here is, how often can people buy the seeds from Spring 1 to Fall 1, and how much money do you have leftover at the start of fall after buying all those seeds?

 

[Lew Zealand]

Honestly it might just be your prioritization of things (i just noticed crystal said the same thing, so i'm glad we're on the same track). In a sense you're just condensing all your gold into a future investment, but when you buy that seed, (to put it in an economist's terms) there is also the opportunity cost of not being able to spend that money in the time that you're waiting for fall to come around. I've never even given this strategy a thought for early game, but is an interesting thing to ponder. I think the next time I play I'm only going to sow ancient seeds that i get as artifacts, and ban ancient fruits from the seed makers. They're too much of an ez-win button and way too easy to abuse (not saying you shouldn't in this case, just saying it is, and there are so many other ways to get good money in SDV).

In fall fishing is good though, if i remember correctly (i've been off of the game for a bit but no biggy) the fishing is really good, so it's easy to make a heap of income from it. Summer to, but to a lesser extent because the good fish there are usually pretty hard to catch, but there are exceptions there as well. If you're worried about not having the cash, the real question here is, how often can people buy the seeds from Spring 1 to Fall 1, and how much money do you have leftover at the start of fall after buying all those seeds?

Yeah, I mentioned Fishing as in a test Farm I was trying to Min-Max some very early parts of the game to see if there was some magic combo of Min-Lazy-Max which appealed to me. I was surprised at how OP Fishing was in early game g accumulation as I simply had not accounted for the buying power that extra g had. It could very well be used to buy a Rare Seed whenever possible while maintaining the other parts of the Farm in a typical fashion. At that point it becomes Time and Energy conservation exercise. In fact I think when I realized that, I got bored and put the idea down. Not like Old Yeller, mind you, I still have the Farm save.

However I do like the idea of a no-seedmaker run to temper the overkill embodied by the hallowed Ancient Fruit, that gamebreaker of Stardew Valley balance. Hmmm, need to come up with a good Farm name for that...

 

[Giant Octopodes]

IMHO Rare Seeds are NOT worth it, basically ever, beyond the first one, which has a whole different kind of value. That's because it's not just about profitability or money per energy or any of that. One of the easiest things to overlook in these conversations is opportunity cost. As Lew pointed out, early game fishing is insanely good (I never fail to have fishing 10 by the end of Spring Year 1), because of the extra buying power it provides. That's because money is more valuable the earlier you have it, and the more you can invest it in other things which will in turn make you money. Let me provide an example:

Person 1 buys a Rare Seed every TC they can, spending 2,000 per week to get 16 seeds by the end of Summer year 1. They plant them all in Fall, using Fertilizer, and get 6 Gold, 7 Silver, and 3 Regular Sweet Gem Berries. They've now made 62,250, a profit of 46,250, or 289% of the original investment. Pretty great, right?

Person 2 buys Melons with the 8,000 they didn't spend in Spring, getting 100 extra Melons. They get 1 Giant Crop and thus harvest around 110 Melons, getting say 22 gold, 33 silver, and 55 regular, for a total of around 32,000. They reinvest 8,000 in another batch of Melons and put the rest into a Big Barn. The second batch is even more profitable, but regardless they use it to get 2 pigs, who are then getting Truffles for them all fall. Giving them time to grow, and accounting for rain days, let's assume they get 14 days of finding truffles, and find an average of 1250 worth of truffles per day each, which is 2 normal quality truffles. That's pretty conservative, but that would lead to them pushing out 70,000 worth of truffles by the end of the season.

So you have more money, plus a big barn and two pigs, fully grown and well on their way towards loving you, plus a TON of foraging and farming XP, instead of those sweet gem berries. This isn't even accounting for using preserve jars, truffle oil makers, and so forth.

Now, at some point, time and energy will be your main limitations, and in that respect, from year 2 onwards, if you have an excess of money and not enough time and energy to use it all, then sure Rare Seeds are a good "dump" because they use minimal amounts of either while giving a decent return. However even then, the time investment to go to the TC every week and obtain them is not insignificant, and the 46k per year prospective profit matters less and less. So from Year 2 onwards, if I'm at the TC already, I'll grab them because why not. In year 1 though I think their "profitability" is a trap which distracts from reinvesting that money into things with far more immediate returns.

 

[Worblehat]

However I do like the idea of a no-seedmaker run to temper the overkill embodied by the hallowed Ancient Fruit, that gamebreaker of Stardew Valley balance. Hmmm, need to come up with a good Farm name for that...

Seems like "Fruitless Farm" is a decent choice. Interesting idea, I'll definitely keep that in mind for my second farm...

Re: Giant Octopodes opportunity cost argument - depends very heavily on play style. I'm way too lazy to plant 100 melons, let alone doing so twice. I think my peak outdoor crop count was somewhere in the 80s. That's why I look at the Beach map and don't see any limitation or down side at all.

I do agree with the general outline, though. I bought 3-4 Rare Seeds in Year 1, most of the Rare Seeds in Year 2 (because I had the money, but not so much money that $46k was negligible), nothing in Year 3 (now it is negligible).

 

[LRangerR]

Re: Giant Octopodes opportunity cost argument - depends very heavily on play style.

To be fair, the entire concept of "opportunity cost" depends on "playstyle" if you think about it.

 

[Cuusardo]

I buy them from the traveling cart whenever I find them there, although I admit I don't check the cart every time it's in town. When I've gotten a small collection I grow some in my greenhouse. It's a decent profit.

 

[Sockpuppet]

I've been thinking about this strategy as Rare Seeds are very expensive for early game and spending on them for a big late Fall payout means fewer things to buy otherwise. Do you Fish or similar to grind for g to make up the difference or do you just accept that you may need to delay the Coop or Barn upgrades to finish the Community Center, for instance?

I save up to buy the iridium fishing rod after getting the free fishing rod from Willy and place a chest at every fishing spot, then fish as much as possible and sell everything except the fish I need for the community centre. I get the silo, coop and barn in year two.