Truffles vs Truffle Oil

[Giant Octopodes]

So this is the first of several threads I'd like to eventually do to evaluate how others think of things and what direction they optimize in. This is not at all meant to imply that anyone is wrong in how they choose to play the game, I'm just curious as to how folks look at things and why.

That being said, if you go for big barns and pigs at all, do you go for truffles, or for truffle oil?

In most cases, I'm a firm believer in the value of machines. Taking a product and turning it into a more valuable product for minimal effort is always a winning strategy, and when you combine that with the power of artisan, I tend to think that *everything* should be processed, as you're "wasting" future money by not doing so. However, I had my thinking on this challenged by a friend a while back, and for truffles vs truffle oil in particular, I think my mind was changed.

Look at it this way - assuming you're going the same direction I tend to go with your forage skills, you have a 30% chance of getting double truffles on pickup, and they're always iridium quality. This means you're getting 1250 per Truffle, and you can get a *lot* of them. Now, you can convert it to Truffle Oil, but you're *losing* money by doing so, knocking it down to 1065 by default. Of course, if you're using Artisan (as I typically am), it's 1491, so it is more. However it's "only" a bit less than 250 more. Across 100 truffles, that's an extra 25,000, which is not insignificant. However, those machines take time, space, and effort. Let's compare two scenarios:

Person 1 has 2 Big Barns full of Pigs (24 total). The Pigs have adequate space, and are happy, so they produce on average around 3 truffles per pig. We can account for the 30% chance of doubling by assuming that to be 4. They take all 96 of the Truffles they get, and put them in Truffle Oil machines. Then, when those are done, they sell them, making 143,136. Which is great!

Person 2 has 4 Big Barns full of Pigs (48 total). Similarly, they keep their pigs happy and provide them with adequate space, so they also get 3 truffles per pig, 4 after doubling. They take all 192 Truffles they get, and they just dump them in the shipping bin, getting 240,000.

Person 1 has to load those 96 truffles into 96 different machines, then harvest them all (192 interactions) plus the gathering of the truffles (72 interactions) plus probably petting their pigs (24 interactions), and then ship them all (1 interaction). That means each day they're performing 289 interactions to achieve their profit, probably consuming a large portion of their day. Person 2 is just gathering truffles (144 interactions), petting their pigs (48 interactions), and shipping them (1 interaction) for a total of 193 interactions. That's nearly 100 less interactions (so less time and effort), for way more profit, nearly 100,000 more per day.

Now there's lots of reasons why that might not apply to someone. Maybe they like selling truffle oil, not truffles. Maybe they have limited space, and thus can't double up on pigs, or have few enough pigs to where the amount of interactions needed to turn the truffles into oil is just not significant. Perhaps someone doesn't mind loading up machines, or has a mod which expedites the process. Maybe they go for different foraging skills, and as such the Truffles aren't iridium off the bat, changing the math on it. Tons of reasons, so where do you fall? What do you go for, between these two, and why?

 

[Cuusardo]

I like to go Artisan and make truffle oil. It's not a huge focus for me because I also use my oil makers to make cooking oil, so I usually get one pig. I might leave pregnancy on and get a second pig eventually. It's more lagniappe (a little something extra) for me.

 

[Cptldsilver]

So this is the first of several threads I'd like to eventually do to evaluate how others think of things and what direction they optimize in. This is not at all meant to imply that anyone is wrong in how they choose to play the game, I'm just curious as to how folks look at things and why.

That being said, if you go for big barns and pigs at all, do you go for truffles, or for truffle oil?

In most cases, I'm a firm believer in the value of machines. Taking a product and turning it into a more valuable product for minimal effort is always a winning strategy, and when you combine that with the power of artisan, I tend to think that *everything* should be processed, as you're "wasting" future money by not doing so. However, I had my thinking on this challenged by a friend a while back, and for truffles vs truffle oil in particular, I think my mind was changed.

Look at it this way - assuming you're going the same direction I tend to go with your forage skills, you have a 30% chance of getting double truffles on pickup, and they're always iridium quality. This means you're getting 1250 per Truffle, and you can get a *lot* of them. Now, you can convert it to Truffle Oil, but you're *losing* money by doing so, knocking it down to 1065 by default. Of course, if you're using Artisan (as I typically am), it's 1491, so it is more. However it's "only" a bit less than 250 more. Across 100 truffles, that's an extra 25,000, which is not insignificant. However, those machines take time, space, and effort. Let's compare two scenarios:

Person 1 has 2 Big Barns full of Pigs (24 total). The Pigs have adequate space, and are happy, so they produce on average around 3 truffles per pig. We can account for the 30% chance of doubling by assuming that to be 4. They take all 96 of the Truffles they get, and put them in Truffle Oil machines. Then, when those are done, they sell them, making 143,136. Which is great!

Person 2 has 4 Big Barns full of Pigs (48 total). Similarly, they keep their pigs happy and provide them with adequate space, so they also get 3 truffles per pig, 4 after doubling. They take all 192 Truffles they get, and they just dump them in the shipping bin, getting 240,000.

Person 1 has to load those 96 truffles into 96 different machines, then harvest them all (192 interactions) plus the gathering of the truffles (72 interactions) plus probably petting their pigs (24 interactions), and then ship them all (1 interaction). That means each day they're performing 289 interactions to achieve their profit, probably consuming a large portion of their day. Person 2 is just gathering truffles (144 interactions), petting their pigs (48 interactions), and shipping them (1 interaction) for a total of 193 interactions. That's nearly 100 less interactions (so less time and effort), for way more profit, nearly 100,000 more per day.

Now there's lots of reasons why that might not apply to someone. Maybe they like selling truffle oil, not truffles. Maybe they have limited space, and thus can't double up on pigs, or have few enough pigs to where the amount of interactions needed to turn the truffles into oil is just not significant. Perhaps someone doesn't mind loading up machines, or has a mod which expedites the process. Maybe they go for different foraging skills, and as such the Truffles aren't iridium off the bat, changing the math on it. Tons of reasons, so where do you fall? What do you go for, between these two, and why?

Gold per click, or gold per interaction as you put it is what i use to evaluate late game gold generation. The problem I have with pigs is that theirs inefficiencies because of all the extra walking between truffles. So you can't really count 1 truffle picked up as 1 interaction since you have to do all the extra walking between truffles. Compare this to gathering crops, loading kegs, and gathering crystalariums where everything is more or less in a straight efficient line.

If you're really intent on doing pigs for money then I think the truffle oil is the way to go since loading a oil maker is way faster than gathering a truffle. You can also count loading the machine as just one interaction since you can load and gather at the same time. The only way it wouldn't be worth is if you valued your time at higher than 241 per interaction, and if you're doing pigs you probably don't.

 

[Ereo]

I don't go for optimizing money, as I find money accumulates anyway.

Currently, my setup features one big barn and seven oil makers. I collect the truffles when I see them (I only actively check for truffles in the last day of a season as they would disappear). I chuck all of them in a chest next to the oil makers. When I pass them in the morning, I take out seven truffles to make oil. If I run past in the evening and they are done, I do another load over night. This year (only year two so not all pigs were present and happy all year) I ran out of truffles halfway through winter. If I still had truffles left at the end of winter, I would sell them like this.
Sometimes when I want to empty my inventory I will also sell a stack of truffles instead of running back to the chest.

 

[Zen_the_Ogre]

Since truffles count as a forage item getting purples kinda detracts from the value of the machines. It's not the only item that falls into this. When you factor in the purple star items many items lose any value of further processing. As the amount of space needed extra time is sometimes not worth the increased time. Cooking is also another field in which this happens especially sashimi but yeah your right the fact that truffle oil sells for 1065 and the purple truffles sell for 1250 is the worst case example

 

[Worblehat]

The Pigs have adequate space, and are happy, so they produce on average around 3 truffles per pig.

This right here is where you lose me. In my experience, with one pig for the three seasons it could go outdoors, a mostly empty farm covered in grass, petting every day, maximum happiness, the pig averaged around 0.5 truffles/day (not counting the Foraging skill doubling chance, since I don't recall how often it procced). As I understand it, although in theory a pig is almost guaranteed to find at least one truffle, "Importantly, truffles cannot be produced on tiles that contain debris or other objects" (quoting the wiki page) and apparently grass counts.

Presumably players who go for pig farming make arrangements with fences and little patches of grass under statues or whatever, such that there's just enough grass available for pigs to eat but little or no grass area for them to wander around on looking for truffles. I have no interest in doing that so to me pigs are pretty near worthless and only acquired to the extent needed for the CC. When/if I start Second Farm I'm sure I'll sell that one mandatory pig much sooner, probably less than one season after it reaches adulthood.

 

[imnvs]

If you have Botanist and get iridium quality truffles but you do not have Artisan, putting truffles in the oil maker is losing you money. It's simple math.

That said, I need some for rain totems.

 

[Boo1972]

This right here is where you lose me. In my experience, with one pig for the three seasons it could go outdoors, a mostly empty farm covered in grass, petting every day, maximum happiness, the pig averaged around 0.5 truffles/day (not counting the Foraging skill doubling chance, since I don't recall how often it procced). As I understand it, although in theory a pig is almost guaranteed to find at least one truffle, "Importantly, truffles cannot be produced on tiles that contain debris or other objects" (quoting the wiki page) and apparently grass counts.

Presumably players who go for pig farming make arrangements with fences and little patches of grass under statues or whatever, such that there's just enough grass available for pigs to eat but little or no grass area for them to wander around on looking for truffles. I have no interest in doing that so to me pigs are pretty near worthless and only acquired to the extent needed for the CC. When/if I start Second Farm I'm sure I'll sell that one mandatory pig much sooner, probably less than one season after it reaches adulthood.

Just this past week my 4 pigs produced over 70 truffles. I’m not a particularly attentive pig farmer but I do tend to give my animals a lot of room on the southern end of my farm. There is really no need to gather your truffles every day as they’ll hang around. I do not process truffle oil because all I can think about is Lewis and Marnie and how, and possibly where, they are using my precious oil. I shudder just thinking about it.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Converting Truffles to Truffle Oil is what I use to keep myself busy on the Farm when there is free time or I'm going from here to there. The Oil Makers (and Coffee Kegs) are positioned where I pass by them many times per day so I keep a pile of Truffles in my far right hotbar spot (next to the Coffee Beans) to slap in there as I'm passing by. Don't need to do it every time but with Botanist and Artisan, I have have the choice of a merely great option or an even better one, depending if I process them or not.

But Winter is the Truffle accumulator's paradise because you can spend your theoretically larger free time processing those Pig diggins while the lazy swine spend 4 warm weeks in the Barn. Or sell the Truffles if you come up with Big Winter Plans away from the Farm. Like spending the entire day with Sandy or chasing Parrots with your Sling.

 

[Cuusardo]

Pig diggins

HAH! I love it!

 

[Cptldsilver]

Converting Truffles to Truffle Oil is what I use to keep myself busy on the Farm when there is free time or I'm going from here to there. The Oil Makers (and Coffee Kegs) are positioned where I pass by them many times per day so I keep a pile of Truffles in my far right hotbar spot (next to the Coffee Beans) to slap in there as I'm passing by. Don't need to do it every time but with Botanist and Artisan, I have have the choice of a merely great option or an even better one, depending if I process them or not.

But Winter is the Truffle accumulator's paradise because you can spend your theoretically larger free time processing those Pig diggins while the lazy swine spend 4 warm weeks in the Barn. Or sell the Truffles if you come up with Big Winter Plans away from the Farm. Like spending the entire day with Sandy or chasing Parrots with your Sling.

Doesn't sandy just sit behind the counter all day.

 

[Boo1972]

Doesn't sandy just sit behind the counter all day.

Visit her in the desert on her birthday.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I generally can't be bothered with truffle oil. With Botanist, truffles are 1,250g/ea, with Artisan, Truffle Oil is 1,491g/ea, so for just shy of an extra 250g. By the time you have pigs, this is not a considerable sum of money, and is a considerable waste of time to process them all.

Time is money in Stardew Valley, I've got better things to do than to babysit Truffle OIl making.

 

[One More Day]

So this is the first of several threads I'd like to eventually do to evaluate how others think of things and what direction they optimize in. This is not at all meant to imply that anyone is wrong in how they choose to play the game, I'm just curious as to how folks look at things and why.

That being said, if you go for big barns and pigs at all, do you go for truffles, or for truffle oil?

In most cases, I'm a firm believer in the value of machines. Taking a product and turning it into a more valuable product for minimal effort is always a winning strategy, and when you combine that with the power of artisan, I tend to think that *everything* should be processed, as you're "wasting" future money by not doing so. However, I had my thinking on this challenged by a friend a while back, and for truffles vs truffle oil in particular, I think my mind was changed.

Look at it this way - assuming you're going the same direction I tend to go with your forage skills, you have a 30% chance of getting double truffles on pickup, and they're always iridium quality. This means you're getting 1250 per Truffle, and you can get a *lot* of them. Now, you can convert it to Truffle Oil, but you're *losing* money by doing so, knocking it down to 1065 by default. Of course, if you're using Artisan (as I typically am), it's 1491, so it is more. However it's "only" a bit less than 250 more. Across 100 truffles, that's an extra 25,000, which is not insignificant. However, those machines take time, space, and effort. Let's compare two scenarios:

Person 1 has 2 Big Barns full of Pigs (24 total). The Pigs have adequate space, and are happy, so they produce on average around 3 truffles per pig. We can account for the 30% chance of doubling by assuming that to be 4. They take all 96 of the Truffles they get, and put them in Truffle Oil machines. Then, when those are done, they sell them, making 143,136. Which is great!

Person 2 has 4 Big Barns full of Pigs (48 total). Similarly, they keep their pigs happy and provide them with adequate space, so they also get 3 truffles per pig, 4 after doubling. They take all 192 Truffles they get, and they just dump them in the shipping bin, getting 240,000.

Person 1 has to load those 96 truffles into 96 different machines, then harvest them all (192 interactions) plus the gathering of the truffles (72 interactions) plus probably petting their pigs (24 interactions), and then ship them all (1 interaction). That means each day they're performing 289 interactions to achieve their profit, probably consuming a large portion of their day. Person 2 is just gathering truffles (144 interactions), petting their pigs (48 interactions), and shipping them (1 interaction) for a total of 193 interactions. That's nearly 100 less interactions (so less time and effort), for way more profit, nearly 100,000 more per day.

Now there's lots of reasons why that might not apply to someone. Maybe they like selling truffle oil, not truffles. Maybe they have limited space, and thus can't double up on pigs, or have few enough pigs to where the amount of interactions needed to turn the truffles into oil is just not significant. Perhaps someone doesn't mind loading up machines, or has a mod which expedites the process. Maybe they go for different foraging skills, and as such the Truffles aren't iridium off the bat, changing the math on it. Tons of reasons, so where do you fall? What do you go for, between these two, and why?

A few thoughts about the workload you're assuming here

1) If you're spamming pigs, or any animal for that matter, you're probably going to want to use autopetters, rather than chasing after them every day. Compared to the almost 250k it'll cost you to build each deluxe barn and then fill it with pigs, plus the 600/day cost of buying hay, autopetters are a relative pittance at only 50k each. BTW, you're buying hay rather than growing grass, because all that grass reduces the spawning area for truffles, which is bad, and one extra spawn per barn per day is worth more than twice the daily cost of hay for the entire barn. Also, time spent petting will then be approximately zero, and you can supplement the autopetter by just petting whichever animals you happen to run past, without going out of your way at all. It'll still add up to friendly pigs quite quickly

2) The chance of a double forage with Gatherer is only 20%, not 30%, and overall, a theoretically perfect pig with the full 5 hearts of friendship will produce 3 truffles per sunny day. In reality, experience suggests it'll be a bit less than that, because there is only a finite area in which pigs can produce. So, 2 full barns might yield somewhere around 65 truffles per day, worth approximately 81k as is, or 97k as oil, and doubling those numbers for 4 barns yields ~130 truffles, selling for 162k raw and 194k processed. The gap between processing 2 barns worth into oil and selling 4 barns worth raw is therefore about 65k, not 100k

3) A big shed with an optimal machine layout can hold 136 machines, and it takes about 1.5 hours to unload and reload the whole thing, which means even if you want to process 4 full barns worth of truffles, you can do it in a single big shed in one cycle per day, taking just 1.5 hours. If you only have 2 barns, you can fit enough machines into a regular sized shed, and do it in 40-50 minutes. So, with processing, you're getting around 20k per hour for your effort. Is that the best possible hourly in the game? No, you're far better off stuffing starfruit into kegs, which is worth around 6x as much per hour, but it's still not bad, and from a purely financial standpoint, once you have the truffles, personally I'd say it's worth processing them, but only you can decide if it's worth it for you. If loading machines simply isn't your thing, don't do it - ultimately this is a game for fun and enjoyment, and there aren't really any mistakes.

 

[Luceat]

At some point you have so much money.. you can feed your pigs with it ;) (>A german speech style)

 

[benjellyman]

My first thought when I sold my first iridium quality truffle: STONKS ('=')

 

[OoDex]

No, you're far better off stuffing starfruit into kegs, which is worth around 6x as much per hour, but it's still not bad, and from a purely financial standpoint, once you have the truffles, personally I'd say it's worth processing them, but only you can decide if it's worth it for you. If loading machines simply isn't your thing, don't do it - ultimately this is a game for fun and enjoyment, and there aren't really any mistakes.

How do you add this together, that it's worth more? Starfruits only grow in Summer or in the Green House and take 13 days to grow. Another 7 for processing in Kegs so 20 in total.
The wine then sells for 3150 vs 1491, but each Starfruit takes 20 days to process while each Truffle can be processed on the same day and even multiples per machine (considering 6h processing time).
The only month that would bring dent this a ton is summer, but then you have to do an insane amount of interactions by clearing the entire farm (I'd assume using bombs, so it hoes them), hoe the spots leftover, plant them and 13 days later harvest them. This will also take 7 rain totems, and you'll need the Scarecrows to support them.

The calculation average for pigs is 3.5 Truffle per day, but that requires enough empty spots. So I agree that reality is closer to 3 or even less, but only without the 20% bonus foraging. A barn takes 7x4 for 12 Pigs and we need at least 36 spots for them to hit the calculation, but no average is made with the average being the max, so let's say another 56 (7x8) for the pigs. In total this would end up with 84 spots used for 36 truffles. For processing we assume they are build in the Barn itself, where you have to walk either way to pick up the Truffle and doesn't require a Big Shed to waste space. In total we expect 36 Truffle to be produced.

Starfruit is now a bit more complicated as we can't just simply take 84 Starfruit plants and math it out. We will need Kegs to process them as well and for the sake of simplicity I will buff the processing time to fit the Starfruit growth (so down to 6.5 instead of 7 days).
This means we need half the amount of Kegs that we have in Starfruits or in other words 2x+y=84.
This will end up with 28 Kegs and 56 Starfruits to represent the same space a Big Barn and 12 Pigs would take up.

36 Truffle will end up with 720 Truffle Oil, but I'll also consider your given average of 30 just to have both cases, which is 600 Truffle Oil. That multiplied with 1,491 is 1,073,520 or 894,600 in 20 days.
Now let's look at Starfruits and Kegs.
We determined we will get 56 Starfruit and process that in 28 Kegs twice. The 56 will be multiplied with the selling price of 3,150 and you end up with 176,400. Compared to over 1 million and close to 900,000 that's a really poor result.

Now it's true that you have for example the Cellar and you could make this more efficient by that, but even without a single Keg BUILD and we pretend it turns into Wine automatically after 7 days you still only end up with 84x3,150=264,600. So even in the best case scenario it's a quarter or less than a third.

Crystalariums with Diamonds beat anything either way as their effort is the least (one interaction every 5 days) and make the most profit, but Truffle Oil fights with them depending on drop rates and map layout.

 

[imnvs]

How do you add this together, that it's worth more? Starfruits only grow in Summer or in the Green House and take 13 days to grow. Another 7 for processing in Kegs so 20 in total.
The wine then sells for 3150 vs 1491, but each Starfruit takes 20 days to process while each Truffle can be processed on the same day and even multiples per machine (considering 6h processing time).
The only month that would bring dent this a ton is summer, but then you have to do an insane amount of interactions by clearing the entire farm (I'd assume using bombs, so it hoes them), hoe the spots leftover, plant them and 13 days later harvest them. This will also take 7 rain totems, and you'll need the Scarecrows to support them.

The calculation average for pigs is 3.5 Truffle per day, but that requires enough empty spots. So I agree that reality is closer to 3 or even less, but only without the 20% bonus foraging. A barn takes 7x4 for 12 Pigs and we need at least 36 spots for them to hit the calculation, but no average is made with the average being the max, so let's say another 56 (7x8) for the pigs. In total this would end up with 84 spots used for 36 truffles. For processing we assume they are build in the Barn itself, where you have to walk either way to pick up the Truffle and doesn't require a Big Shed to waste space. In total we expect 36 Truffle to be produced.

Starfruit is now a bit more complicated as we can't just simply take 84 Starfruit plants and math it out. We will need Kegs to process them as well and for the sake of simplicity I will buff the processing time to fit the Starfruit growth (so down to 6.5 instead of 7 days).
This means we need half the amount of Kegs that we have in Starfruits or in other words 2x+y=84.
This will end up with 28 Kegs and 56 Starfruits to represent the same space a Big Barn and 12 Pigs would take up.

36 Truffle will end up with 720 Truffle Oil, but I'll also consider your given average of 30 just to have both cases, which is 600 Truffle Oil. That multiplied with 1,491 is 1,073,520 or 894,600 in 20 days.
Now let's look at Starfruits and Kegs.
We determined we will get 56 Starfruit and process that in 28 Kegs twice. The 56 will be multiplied with the selling price of 3,150 and you end up with 176,400. Compared to over 1 million and close to 900,000 that's a really poor result.

Now it's true that you have for example the Cellar and you could make this more efficient by that, but even without a single Keg BUILD and we pretend it turns into Wine automatically after 7 days you still only end up with 84x3,150=264,600. So even in the best case scenario it's a quarter or less than a third.

Crystalariums with Diamonds beat anything either way as their effort is the least (one interaction every 5 days) and make the most profit, but Truffle Oil fights with them depending on drop rates and map layout.

Well, first off, are you going to fill your entire farm with sheds full of crystallariums producing diamonds?

Second, it was a comparison. You can easily do a lot more than 56 starfruit. You can get 3 harvests per season with DSG, first off. Second off, you aren't limited to 28 growing at a time. You can't just assign the big barn's space as the space you are allowed to grow in. You need space for the pigs to actually find truffles too. That's additional space that could be used for growing.

 

[kartoxa21]

I believe that truffle oil will be more profitable, especially with the profession of "golden hands"

 

[OoDex]

Well, first off, are you going to fill your entire farm with sheds full of crystallariums producing diamonds?

Second, it was a comparison. You can easily do a lot more than 56 starfruit. You can get 3 harvests per season with DSG, first off. Second off, you aren't limited to 28 growing at a time. You can't just assign the big barn's space as the space you are allowed to grow in. You need space for the pigs to actually find truffles too. That's additional space that could be used for growing.

I think you missed my point there. If you compare different options you don't need to calculate it for every little space you might do it for. All you need is to compare the space they take as a minimum and then see how much effort goes into that and how much value comes out of it. Since Pigs are the one that have a minimum requirement with space it's the easiest denominator out of both. If you had to plant Starfruits in e.g. 50 pieces at once, then we would need to get to a point where the spaces of 50 Starfruits equal the spaces of Barns and Truffle spots meet up.

And since we figured out that on the same space Truffle makes 1,073,520 or 894,600 Gold while Starfruit makes 176,400 there is no reason to continue.
What I do agree on though is that I completely ignored speeding up growth time. But given the discrepancy that won't change a lot. Even on the lowest earning of 894,600 for the Truffle you'd need 4 times as many Starfruits as I calculated. So unless the Growth time is sped up by 80%, allowing 4 additional harvest, that won't do the trick.

>Well, first off, are you going to fill your entire farm with sheds full of crystallariums producing diamonds?

If someone would talk to me what's the real money maker then yes, I would do it. But there is no reason to do so. If a single tile produces more with one thing than the same tile with something else, then it's more profitable, wouldn't you agree? And since Big Sheds can be used for Crystalarium and on 21 tiles with 137 Crystalariums inside, that means their single tile value is equal to 137/21=6.5. Now you just take the diamond value of 975 and processing time of 5 days times 6.5 and you end up with 6,337 per tile used, but keeping in mind that this also means 6.5 times the interaction and the gold per day is 1267 Gold.

Actions counted:
-6.5 per Crystalarium (to factor in Big Shed). That's it.

Starfruit on the other side requires 7 or 8 days to grow (not sure how the game rounds with 43%, combining 33% fertilizer and 10% growth perk) and 7 days of processing in the kegs for a total of 14 days minimum to produce 3150 gold. Per day this is equivalent to 225 Gold. Note that I again didn't add any Keg production space into this. Otherwise, this value would be way lower since you'd need to add a Big Shed to accommodate them. Yes, there are other spots on the farm that could be used, but if both ways could use the same things then it's no advantage to either one.

Actions counted: I will take out hoeing as I assume it was hoed, and we are in the middle of the process. I will also assume Sprinklers are used and Scarecrows as needed - if even applicable. So we have:
-1 for planting
-1 for harvesting
-1 for taking out and putting into the keg (you need 2 clicks, but I myself do not consider this 2 interactions because you can do it by just clicking with a fruit on it)
Edit: Technically there is astronomically way more because you also have to buy Starfruit seeds that you are able to replant them. So one for interacting with a chest, one for using a totem, x many to walk to Sandy, x to scroll and buy Starfruits, 1 for Totem back to farm, x to walk to the planting spot, but let's ignore all these things that would make this even worse for Starfruits)

So even if you calculate by interactions used we equal them out, dividing both by the amount of actions.

1267/6.5=194 Gold
225/3=75 Gold

I hope the point is understood that I calculated the value and effort PER TILE and per day for you. That means yes, you can do way more tiles and Crystalariums will beat Starfruit even harder in that regard since you can put way more Crystalariums on the farm than Starfruits, but the point is that you can directly 1 to 1 compare them.

>You can't just assign the big barn's space as the space you are allowed to grow in.

No clue what you are talking about. I said the Barn itself can be used to place the Oil Machines. No one was talking about outside of the Barn. And inside you can place them as you please. With 6 hours of growth time you COULD have 3 rounds of Truffle Oil production per Machine, meaning you need 36/3=12 machines inside of the Barn. But realistically you will have 36 or 18 inside.

>You need space for the pigs to actually find truffles too.

"so let's say another 56 (7x8) for the pigs" - What did you think was I referring to here, when I assigned the minimum size requirement for a barn to be an ADDITIONAL 56 tiles?