What Professions Do You Choose?

For farming I chose tiller and artisan
For mining I do miner and blacksmith
For foraging I do gatherer and botanist
For fishing I do fisher and angler
For combat I do fighter and defender
Here are the skills page on the Stardew Valley Wiki if you want to see the professions
 

imnvs

Local Legend
Tiller, agriculturalist (I farm for ingredients. I'll make money.)
Miner, prospector (I don't sell ore/bars. They are ingredients. I need coal to make the bars.)
Gatherer, tracker (until I get all the artifacts collected) then botanist
Trapper, mariner (I have so many lobsters and you don't.)
Fighter, brute (I don't need defense/hp when I have food.)
 
Farming: Tiller/Artisan. There really is no viable alternative if you care at all about profits. Agriculturalist does have niche uses, if you are planting an annual crop of Ancient Fruit, heading down to the sewer to swap out for Agriculturalist for the planting day on the 1st of Spring can be nice, at a cost of 20k (10k to swap to Agriculturalist, 10k to swap back).

Mining: Miner/Prospector. You don't sell bars, you use them in making things. That's why you're going down into the mines and gathering them in the first place. Gems sound nice, but they'll be a drop in the bucket compared to the millions per season you could be making once your infrastructure is in place. In particular, now that Prospector has been fixed (used to never actually work), you get to spend less at Clint's usurious prices when you want to make another batch of preserves jars.

Foraging: Gatherer/Botanist. I suppose an argument can be made for Tracker if you're of the 'gotta collect 'em all' types who wants to finish their entire museum display. Early game, there's even a case to be made for Forester now that it doesn't suck. An extra 25% wood from chopping trees is more wood I don't have to buy from Robin, after all. And it isn't like you're locked into it for all time. So... maybe starting off with Forester/Lumberjack, then switching to Gatherer/Botanist once the gains from Forester start to wane.

Fishing: Does it really matter? Ugh, fiiiiine, let's do this. Ahem. Fishing is probably the most obnoxious thing about this game (until the atrocity that is the late-game slog of a grind introduced in 1.5), but if you're going to fish, you may as well do it proper. If you care about collecting All The Things, then go with Fisher/Pirate. Otherwise, go with Trapper/Luremaster. Mariner is a *TRAP*. You actually WANT trash items to recycle into useful things like Refined Quartz, Cloth, Coal, and other useful things. If all you do is fish for cash (a viable strategy, I must admit), go Fisher/Angler, I suppose.

Combat: Fighter/Brute is the only practical option. Due to how crit chances multiply, you're basically multiplying a fraction to a fraction to get a marginally larger fraction. For example, let's say base crit chance is 1% chance. The 50% boost makes this a 1.5% chance. That's... marginal at best, and not worth chasing. Ever. And as far as Defender goes, it represents a minor increase in health by the time you get to it, whereas the damage multiplier is calculated against an ever increasing base damage from ever more powerful weapons, and can help you kill enemies more quickly, thus taking overall less damage.
 
Miner, prospector (I don't sell ore/bars. They are ingredients. I need coal to make the bars.)
Mining: Miner/Prospector. You don't sell bars, you use them in making things. That's why you're going down into the mines and gathering them in the first place. Gems sound nice, but they'll be a drop in the bucket compared to the millions per season you could be making once your infrastructure is in place. In particular, now that Prospector has been fixed (used to never actually work), you get to spend less at Clint's usurious prices when you want to make another batch of preserves jars.
Thanks for the tip :smile:
 

imnvs

Local Legend
You actually WANT trash items to recycle into useful things like Refined Quartz, Cloth, Coal, and other useful things.
...but, I've gone Mariner in every save, and I never run out of refined quartz, and I have never even once put a single quartz or fire quartz into a furnace to get refined quartz the "traditional" way. And by the time I go Mariner, I have all the cloth I could want, and I'm already a Prospector. I mean, early game the recycling is a must, I will agree wholeheartedly, but later game, I don't need it any more. I'd rather get piles and piles of lobster.
 

rippytrippy

Planter
farming - rancher, shepherd
mining - geologist, prolly gemologist but i haven't gotten that far
foraging - gatherer, botanist
fishing - fisher, angler
combat - scout, desperado (but i havn't gotten that far)
 

Elenna101

Farmer
Farming: Tiller/Artisan, because money. What Shneekey said, basically. Agriculturalist can be good for money late game if you hoard all your stuff and then swap to Artisan to sell them all at once. My issue with Shephard/Coopmaster is that you'll still be processing most animal products (to get cheese, mayo, wool, etc) so even if you're doing a lot of animals, Artisan will still be giving you a big profit boost. I guess if you have a ton of rabbits, Coopmaster might be good because iridium wool has a chance of giving multiple cloth?

Mining: Miner/Blacksmith, because I like Skull Caverns, iridium bars sell for lots of cash, and there's really not all that much you can craft with them so after a while there's really nothing better to do with iridium bars (at this point I'm getting 70ish bars per run). Even if Prospector gave me enough coal to craft all the bars (which it wouldn't), the extra 500g per bar from Blacksmith is still worth more to me that the 250g cost of buying coal from Clint.
If I wasn't doing SC, I'd probably go Miner/Prospector. An extra guaranteed ore per node is really nice when farming for ore, and Blacksmith is completely useless if you're not selling iridium. (IIRC it's either better or equal money to just sell raw ore instead of smelting it, if you're selling copper, iron, or gold.)
Excavator can be useful if you need more geodes to finish the mines (especially now that Sandy no longer sells infinite omni geodes).

Foraging: Gatherer/Botanist, because I like having all my forageables in one stack each, and iridium quality berries are nice Skull Caverns food. But honestly this whole skill tree isn't super important to my playstyle. Forester/Lumberjack might be nice for the extra wood, maybe I'll try that sometime. I guess Tracker would be nice if you really need more museum artifacts, but the one time I used it I found I wasted almost as much time trying to figure out where the arrows were pointing as I would have running all over the map. Maybe I'm just bad at using it. Tapper is pretty bad IMO, I can't imagine many people sell significant amounts of syrups.

Fishing: Fisher/Angler for the money I guess, maybe switching to Pirate late-game if I still need some artifacts that can be found that way. I've never done many crab pots, don't really enjoy the chore of collecting and re-baiting them every day.

Combat: Scout/Acrobat. There's this cool thing you can do with a hammer, where you do the special attack (right-click on PC) and then mash the regular attack (left-click or C on PC) and you get a bunch of strong area-of-effect hits. (And no, this isn't a glitch IMO, CA knows about it and deliberately hasn't taken it out, he referred to it as "the club quirk" in update 1.4.1 and specifically removed some animation bugs caused by doing it.) So if you get Acrobat, and then enchant the hammer with Artist, you can do this almost once a second and it makes fighting a lot easier. I agree that Scout is pretty awful, though. The improvement to the dagger's special attack means they're actually decent now, but IDK if any of the "high crit chance" daggers are actually good enough to fight strong enemies with.
If I wasn't doing the hammer thing for some reason, I'd probably go with Fighter/Brute for the reasons Shneekey said.
 

TruePurple

Cowpoke
Something to be said for Geologist/Excavator perhaps? Like pirate, more free stuff that can be good is nice, some things go beyond money, right?

As far as Prospector goes, one can make their own coal, not sure why that's necessary.

...but, I've gone Mariner in every save, and I never run out of refined quartz, and I have never even once put a single quartz or fire quartz into a furnace to get refined quartz the "traditional" way. And by the time I go Mariner, I have all the cloth I could want, and I'm already a Prospector. I mean, early game the recycling is a must, I will agree wholeheartedly, but later game, I don't need it any more. I'd rather get piles and piles of lobster.
I've seen it argued that not needing bait means even if you just toss your results instead of recycling, you still haven't lost anything. So for lobsters, Luremaster sounds better.
 
Last edited:

imnvs

Local Legend
I've seen it argued that not needing bait means even if you just toss your results instead of recycling, you still haven't lost anything. So for lobsters, Luremaster sounds better.
Bait is dirt cheap. Long before you get to mariner you will have worm bins. 4 of them means you will never run out of bait for 10 crab pots, and with 10 crab pots I will catch about 9 lobster in a week. In the same amount of time and with the same number of pots, a luremaster will catch 2 on average. I lost nothing of any value. Neither did you.
 
I've chosen different professions depending what I'm planning and what materials I'll need.
I enjoy foraging and usually level up quickly, and I really like botanist. Not only beach and regular forage, but berries, cave fruit, wild seeds crops, and truffles are always iridium quality.
One game I wanted a dinosaur egg so much. I chose pirate and used the magnet, caught one right outside the mine, in some bubbles! I had 10 dinosaurs eventually, and loved them!
And one time I just wanted to make jam. Everything about the game was jam. I filled the sewer with a giant jam factory. So glad I chose artisan!
The various options all have their benefits. Trying different paths and play styles adds fun ways to play a new farm another game.
 

Cuusardo

Farmer
Farming: Tiller -> Artisan
Mining: Geologist -> Excavator
Foraging: Gatherer -> Botanist
Fishing: Fisher -> Pirate
Combat: Fighter -> Brute
 

TruePurple

Cowpoke
With luremaster, you can skip some extra steps related to bait though,(not sure not gotten that far) but I suppose less trash means less time messing with recycling if you don't feel recycling gives you enough.
 

TruePurple

Cowpoke
Mining: Miner/Blacksmith, because I like Skull Caverns, iridium bars sell for lots of cash, and there's really not all that much you can craft with them so after a while there's really nothing better to do with iridium bars (at this point I'm getting 70ish bars per run). Even if Prospector gave me enough coal to craft all the bars (which it wouldn't), the extra 500g per bar from
Not even Deluxe fertilizer? Seems worth using with rare seed. Or I suppose you just get so many that you can make deluxe fertilizer for all your rare seeds as you wish?
 

imnvs

Local Legend
Not even Deluxe fertilizer? Seems worth using with rare seed. Or I suppose you just get so many that you can make deluxe fertilizer for all your rare seeds as you wish?
You can sell iridium bars for 1.5k as a Blacksmith. Is Deluxe Fertilizer on a rare seed worth that much? Possibly. If you get it to iridium quality that's worth 3k over basic... but are you only going to get a basic quality Sweet Gem Berry? You were going to get some of some quality, and then even Deluxe doesn't guarantee iridium quality. If all you're getting is a gold quality instead of basic... that's 1.5k, so you're breaking even. If you were going to get gold but got iridium... again, 1.5k increase, so you're breaking even. If it should have been normal but you got silver or if it should have been silver but you get gold, that's only an increase of 750, though so a loss. The only real increase is if you're going from basic quality to iridium. So... for most of them you'll break even, but for some you'll take a loss or get a gain. The gain is larger than the loss. It all depends on how lucky you are. I'd be inclined to figure you'd break about even.

I'd go with Quality Fertilizer. So much cheaper that any increase is a gain.


Edit: Oops... my numbers were a bit off. I forgot you got 5 Deluxe Fertilizer per bar, and I just realized that. Cost per Deluxe Fertilizer is then only 300. Deluxe Fertilizer is worth it. Now why am I going to sell iridium bars? Yeah, I'll stick to prospector like I said before. 😅😂🤣
 
Last edited:

Elenna101

Farmer
Not even Deluxe fertilizer? Seems worth using with rare seed. Or I suppose you just get so many that you can make deluxe fertilizer for all your rare seeds as you wish?
Oh, I actually forgot that used iridium. Hadn't really looked into deluxe fertilizer much, since I'm mostly kegging/jarring stuff, but that's a good point about rare seeds.

According to the wiki, deluxe fertilizer gives an average 1.67 times base price at level 10, and basic fertilizer gives an average 1.32 times multiplier. So the average difference is 0.35*3000 = 1050, and you get 5 per iridium bar, so yeah, that's definitely worth it. Good to know!
Doesn't look like there's any other crops for which it's worth it, although starfruit comes pretty close if you're selling it unprocessed. I might also put some deluxe fertilizer on my flowers just for the fun of getting iridium flowers.

(That being said, I usually only plant like 12-24 rare seeds because putting them through a seed maker is boring and also doesn't seem like a good use of money. Even if I plant 100 flowers a season, that's only <25 bars, I'd still be selling a lot of bars.)
 

imnvs

Local Legend
But is prospector really worth it? You can buy coal, find coal often enough and even make your own coal from regular wood. Wouldn't the gem side be much better?
I find lots of gems, and eventually I'll start a crystalarium farm and have all the gems I'll ever need. They're such a small part of my income, though. I need just SO much coal. I need so many ore bars to make all the kegs and coal for the preserves jars I build. (My 4-Corners farm has a few big sheds, 4 for just wine, 1 for preserves, 1 is 1/2 and 1/2 kegs for other things and more preserves jars.) I have another big shed just for crystalariums. Another for Statues of Endless Fortune. I really don't need gems to build this wine and preserves empire.
 

TruePurple

Cowpoke
I find lots of gems, and eventually I'll start a crystalarium farm and have all the gems I'll ever need. They're such a small part of my income, though. I need just SO much coal. I need so many ore bars to make all the kegs and coal for the preserves jars I build. (My 4-Corners farm has a few big sheds, 4 for just wine, 1 for preserves, 1 is 1/2 and 1/2 kegs for other things and more preserves jars.) I have another big shed just for crystalariums. Another for Statues of Endless Fortune. I really don't need gems to build this wine and preserves empire.
Can't you just buy the extra coal using the extra from gemologist? (or from selling what evers in the extra geo of excavator)

Also, once you've build that stuff, you don't need to keep building more, eventually you got enough?
 
Top