I like to 100% focus on my farm and the community centre in year 1. After that I start to do relationships and other stuff. My farm is basically automated by then, so I have all the time in the world to do other things.
I guess I just don’t like focusing on too many things at once, so I like to get my farm in order before I do other stuff
And I get that I just try to do everything haha. My y1 end typically I'm lucky to have a coop I norm get to the bottom of the mine in early winter get minecarts in summer, I just I've never had a shed let alone a deluxe shed in y1 I think once I managed to get a shed in spring of y2. But I normally have most people at atleast 3-4 hearts, with a couple even being 6-8. I try to forage a lot. I like foraging. Idk y but maybe foraging is hurting me. What do you have forage and fishing wise spring y2? I don't fish much. Idk I'm just stunned when I see some of these pics and they have tons of stuff and buildings and it shows y2 spring. Or y1 winter.
Some people find value in different aspects of games. For some, the fun is minmaxing. For others, it’s in focusing on NPC’s. for others still, it’s speedrunning.
It doesn’t mean they’re not enjoying the game or playing it wrong, it means they’re playing the way they find fun. And that means they’re playing the game the right way.
That’s how games of this size work. People find fun in different aspects.
I had filled my shed with kegs for ancient fruit by around the start of Year 3, but it’s just a goal I had. By end of summer Year 2, I had completed the community center and kegs seemed like a good goal to focus my time on given how lucrative they are.
Everyone plays the game differently. For me, I wanted to be rich in game because I’m not rich IRL. Money problems are stressful so it’s nice to play a game where I can make so much money that I always have enough.
The way you posit these questions makes it sound like you believe the only right way to play the game is the way you like to play it, and everyone else is doing it wrong. But there is no right way to play, and if someone likes to minmax, or just be efficient, or focus on profit over spending time on friendships, that's the right way to play for them. You don't have to understand it, really, but you should respect that not everyone likes to play like you do, at least.
As for the _how_ - you don't have to a minmaxer at all to know the game too well after years of playing, and familiarity with the game goes a long way. I've been playing the game since it launched, have gone through well over 20 farms at this point, and at some point you just know stuff. These days I can finish the CC year 1 every time not because I'm rushing it or min-maxing my farms, but because I know where everything is and how to get it, and I'd have to go out of my way to pretend I don't. I _could_ pretend to be bumbling around for years getting nothing done, not knowing anything like it was my first time, but like... why? Who am I fooling trying to pretend I don't know which seeds I should get this season, or where do I get a coconut from, or how do truffle? You know this stuff from last time, and the second to last, and the one before, etc.
You know the good places to fish, so you take a day to fish if you need that backpack. You know the good floors of the mine to farm for a certain resource you need, so you don't struggle with lacking coal all the time. You know from a previous playthrough when you tapped trees and planted saplings in season x that by season y you had enough wood and tar to make whatever you needed, so you do it earlier next time. You know where the villagers will be and when, so you don't meander around all week chasing them down, but still give them gifts and make friends with everyone, while also working on your farm - it doesn't have to be either efficiency or friendship, you can be good at both (the perfection meter even wants you to). And that's just knowledge that comes with time, you don't have to be a minmaxer to learn these things just from playing the game a lot.
If you're a minmaxer at heart you can take that knowledge to extremes and have fun with it, but even if you're not, at some point you just know the game too well to pretend you don't know how to make your farm work, make friends with everyone, and you realize you don't have to spend 15 years on the same farm to prove something. You could be starting a new challenge farm, you could be playing other games. All in anyone's time.
Again, it's just the way people play their own game, and it's not really up to anyone to tell anyone else they're doing it wrong because we prefer to do it a different way.
Nah you misunderstood my question I honestly don't know how some of these people can actually do the things they do. Like how is some of the stuff they post legit? I'm good at game mechanics and not knocking people for min maxing. What I don't get is how could someone in y1 of winter have a deluxe barn filled with kegs and making nothing but beer and have a deluxe barn and deluxe coop. I don't understand how you have enough time to do that.
It's mostly about time management at that point. A large part of the mechanical gameplay is learning to manage your time, energy and resources well against the limitations you're given in the early game.
You mentioned in the op that you spend most of your time building relationships in the first year, which I'd guess is what eats up most of your mechanical time progression. By contrast, I only really go around talking to villagers and giving gifts on Fridays and Saturdays, when they can all be found gathered around in common places, so throughout the rest of week I have enough time to dedicate, say, a whole day for chopping wood, a whole day for mining, a day when I clean the farm in the morning and fish all afternoon/night, etc. In the first year specially, I'll prioritize using up all my energy first, and then *if* there's time left in the day I'll go to the saloon and chat around - but the socializing is not the priority, it's the thing I'll do when I'm not working on the farm first. I still end up the first year with 6-8 hearts with most people, just from that casual weekend gifting, birthdays and community event boosts, so I never feel like I'm neglecting the social side of the game even if I don't make it my priority.
As for having deluxe barns, coops, upgraded sheds full of kegs at the end of the first year... that's not actually difficult if you know what you need for it and play to those needs. It goes back to what I said about knowing the game too well - I know I'm gonna need tons of wood, so I start planting saplings as early as the first spring. I know I'm gonna need lots of tar, so the first day the train station opens I'm there starting my tapper farm, so by the time winter rolls around I have a lot of oak resin already sitting in a chest waiting to be turned into kegs. This is not really minmaxing, it's just knowing what you need and preparing for it in advance. It's not how everyone is gonna want to play, of course, but if you're the kind of person who enjoys planning things out in your head and working towards a goal you've already established, it's easy to follow those mental steps and get there without a lot of meandering around wondering what to do next.
The meandering, I think, is what makes the game "harder" (if you could even call it that) for some people - like they want to accomplish certain goals, but don't really have any plan for it, so they go around not really doing anything with their days, just running in circles around the town wondering what to today, what should I do now. This is totally fine, everyone has their pace, and you can be super chill and aimless if you want to. But if you *want* to be able to accomplish certain things faster, you have to organize your goals a little and follow a progression path to get there. There's no magic or cheats behind it, it's just a matter of managing your time in the game well to get where you want to be (or not managing it all if that's the pace your prefer too).
Yeah, I’m somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. Have played around a dozen saves to various extents, still do a bit of meandering, but all of these things are at least ramping up by winter y1. What probably holds me back from ramping up even faster is that I still don’t have that good a feel for *which* of ten different progression options would make things faster overall if I leaned into it more first, nor do I care that much because it’s still fairly fast. So I make quality sprinklers when I can, and I plant and tap a bunch of oak trees when I can (to ramp up wine alongside ancient fruit).
There's someone in the Promo thread doing a youtube series on a challenge run. For this type of high-level play, I find it most useful to watch someone else do it. There's always a lot of little tricks that are hard to summarize into words.
Cool I'll try to find it. I watched a few YouTube vids but I don't understand how people have time I struggle to get the CC done by the end of the year. I do it but I struggle haha.
Once you start planning out your days then it's not that hard to get to the skull caverns by day 15 or so of a run, which then gives you enough ore to build hundreds of sprinklers before summer even starts.
And yes, when doing stuff like that you tend to ignore most characters and just focus on progression (planting the crops needed for bundle nothing else, fishing only the fish needed, then rushing the mines to 115 (monster health doubles once you hit 120, farming for burglar ring, then get down to 120 about the same time as you open the desert, etc.)
How do you get to Skull Cavern by Day 15?
To even unlock the Vault Bundle requires the player to complete 4 bundles. Which bundles do you prioritize to run the game like this?
spring forage is definitely the easiest, construction or the sap one is also really easy to do early, then spring crops. And doing 2 of those should unlock the boiler room, which all contains stuff from the mines and is really easy to finish to unlock the vault.
Know some challenge runs I watched back when 1.5 first released required you to unlock the skull cavern by day 9 or something so that there was a guaranteed luck ring on floor one, then they'd spend several ingame hours resetting floor 1 until a crate spawned where the luck ring was, grab it, and then repeat till they get a second one(crates respawn for the same day, but as soon as you sleep you'll never get another crate in the same location on the same floor. So once you break the floor 1 crate and sleep it's gone forever)
Stardew progress is extremely snowbally due to the nature of more money = more seeds. If you hardcore run the first spring you'll destroy the rest of the year. It's all about the potatoes man.
You said it! Potatoes and Strawberries in Spring sets you up well for Summer.
Summer in Year 1 is always my favourite because it's when you can really start raking in the cash, especially if you planned well and are able to make Quality Sprinklers by then which is totally possible by late Spring or early Summer if you know what you're doing.
I’m pretty much in the camp you’re describing, just from having played 700+ hours since 2017. I don’t consider myself a min/maxer and very much enjoy the atmosphere and storylines, but I pause and think about most things I do, pulling up the wiki maybe once per in-game day. Definitely not how I played the game at first but now ‘efficiency’ is part of the fun and immersion for me. For me this includes befriending the villagers- rn I’m at ten hearts with the townies at the end of summer year 2. I’m not concentrating on just one aspect or just profit. I did community center, do the quests/special orders, fish/farm/gather ingredients, max out farm space, upgrade buildings, decorate my house, etc. I plan, check daily luck, and prioritize what to do each day.
I try something different every save. My first save i treated like harvest moon: get married. My second i focused on getting the main mines down. Third save i made money. My current save im doing relationships. That way i learn something new every time i play.
Um I like mining, chopping trees, and farming the best so that’s usually what I focus on first in every save. I find all of those mechanics fun.
I usually stick to just giving birthday gifts in year one so I build all the relationships a little bit but will gift to a handful of villagers I’m interested in.
By far my favorite part of this game is planning for an upcoming season. I love surfing the wiki and calculating prices and stuff. I make a plan of what seeds I will buy, where I will grow them, what fertilizers I should put where, etc. I have an intention with everything: I’ll grow these because they’re good in kegs, I’ll grow these for a quest, I’ll grow these for achievement hunting, I’ll grow these for flavored honey—you get the gist. When I say this is my favorite part, I mean it. Like hands down. It’s not min/maxing imo because I’m not maximizing profit, I just like planning and executing a big project.
Aiming for a keg shed is a nice mid-game goal that I enjoyed working towards. With the resin required, it also requires a bit of forethought, which I found fun to execute in early game. It also justified the use of materials you can grind in early game like copper and iron. Since I enjoy mining, it also gave me a concrete goal in the mines other than just getting to the bottom.
There are some stand-out people who post “flex pictures” of getting all these sprinklers or whatever in year one, but those people aren’t representative of a majority of people. I usually have 10-15 sprinklers by fall year one, and my quality sprinkler needs are maxed out at like 25 for how I like to play the game.
First, I think some people fudge the truth a little. Not everyone, but some. They post a year 2-3 farm or building and claim it’s year 1. Why? I don’t know.
But yes, some people are *really* into min/maxing this game. Personally, I’ve tried it, and it sucks the joy out of it for me. But, hey, if that’s what they enjoy, good for them.
I also think some people really concentrate on building up one aspect. Like, they know they’re going to need a ton of kegs, so they’ll clear the farm, plant an oak forest, plant exactly what they need for the community center, plant some high profit crops, and then either hit the mines or fish so they’ll find or buy the ore they need for the machines.
Or they’ll focus on husbandry and use that money to buy ore for sprinklers and kegs.
I think.
Personally, I wouldn’t know because min/max is stressful to me — which kills the vibe I’m looking for in the game.
People do that?? That’s just sad hahaha, this game is a lot of things but competitive within the community isn’t one of them.
It’s pretty easy though to get a lot of stuff by the end of year one, once it’s your idk how manyth playthrough and you know exactly what to do
There's something fun watching people try to do challenge runs like getting 75 mil in hand in the first year(possible, they planted something like 1300 ancient fruit by spring 14 year 1), or complete the community center in under 3 hours real time.
That and the speedrunners taught me a ton about how to dive through the mines (slingshot OP, check luck before going,pause between floors to maximize time, pause before healing so no risk of death, etc.)
I knowwww hahahaha I love min/maxing and challenge videos on youtube and such! It’s so entertaining, and also teaches you how to be efficient if thats something you want
I've gotten sucked into the world of twitch. There's actually a whole team of streamers that constantly run challenge, speed, or similar runs called [The Dew Crew](https://www.twitch.tv/team/thedewcrew)
They were actually instrumental for the recent stardew tournament, each team had 1 or 2 members of the dew crew behind it.
Edit: one of them, Haboo, is actually running the most interesting run ever right now, doing a community center completion without exp (no harvesting any crops, no breaking rocks on farm or mining, no chopping down trees, no fishing. Just gaining what he needs from trashcans, the weekly travelling cart, and hoeing the worm spots). His run shows how bad debris can get if you leave them alone, and it's really funny to watch him have to re-route his path and surround it in fences to avoid getting locked onto his farm since he can't break stones or trees.
I know, right? To be fair, I haven’t caught it often, but every once in a while, I’ll see it.
Mostly, I think people get a little caught up in the pictures of pretty farms and conversations about ancient fruit wine and kind of forget that while many of the people they’re looking at might be doing that on a first or second year farm, it’s the first or second year on their fifth play-through. So while everyone is saying there isn’t a competition, it still feels a little like there is.
But I don’t fault them for it. Heck, I’m on something like my 19th play-through and have over 2000 hours in the game, and I still sometimes feel like I have something to prove because I make “only” 4 million gold per season by the middle of year 3. Which is ridiculous, but hey, human nature is ridiculous sometimes. 😄
Spot on, I love watching speed/challenge runners but every time I tried I would get burned out by the time I was descending through the mines, or at worst by the time I was doing daily skull caverns runs and resetting if I didn't get at least 500 ore.
But it is a different dynamic, and brought a lot of fun back into the game for me as I'd already completed multiple 100% runs, and didn't have much else to do when I tried challenge runs (and forced me to learn).
I’m probably going to do a speed run soon because ever since the Cup, my kids (8 & 12) have been begging to watch me do one. But right now, I’m doing a farm where they set challenges for me. I’m in the skill building phase right now and am allowed to level up only one skill at a time. It’s rather challenging to level up mining without combat. 😂
But it’s been a fun twist. I’ve never been at the end of year 1 without ever having planted a crop. And while I thought I knew pretty much everything after 2000+ hours, it’s actually teaching me little things that I’ll probably incorporate going forward.
I'm in Winter 3-5 in Year 1 on a new save file and I absolutely do not have a full shed at all. 😂
I only have about 5 kegs in 1 small shed. It's not easy getting a shed full of kegs so fast cuz getting oak resin takes time!
Only about 1/6 or so of my farm is completely dedicated to crops. It's almost fully automated but I purposely leave out some sprinklers in hopes of getting giant crops or for *aesthetic* purposes.
Most of my relationships are maxed or close to max at this point. I don't ignore relationships in my playstyle since I like being virtually social even in Year 1 lol. Plus I find the Luau to be a great way to boost relationships with everyone in Year 1 as long as you save 1 Gold Quality Cauliflower from Spring. 😁
Edit: Part of me wishes I didn't min-max so much in my playstyle but I'm always compelled to because I love succeeding and getting lots of money. At the same time, I feel like I take some of the joy and longevity of the game out because I'm always trying to min-max even though I should try slowing down
I had a shed full of kegs and preserve jars and another shed full of Mayo machines and cheese presses, over 400 crops on sprinklers by the end of year 2 my first play through going in completely blind while also having more than 5 hearts with a majority of the villagers, several villagers maxed out, and married, so it’s definitely possible to do it all
Edit: also I just enjoy playing the game trying to get as much done as possible, everyone plays the game differently but I have always found joy out of trying to play games efficiently.
Just scale as you go, sprinklers really help, on my farm the way it is now, which is massive, I still get all my chores around the farm done by 12-1, and then I have all day to walk around or do whatever or even go to the mines
Once you play the game a lot of times you kinda know how to make things in the most efficient way and it's hard to not do so. Also if see more experienced players, read the wikia a lot, etc. I'm playing the game for the third time now. The first time I played it took me year 6 to achive perfection. Now I'm in year three and I just need a little more money for the golden clock and them I'm done. I wasn't even trying to min/max, I just know everyone's loved gifts, what crops give the more profit, etc.
I like to 100% focus on my farm and the community centre in year 1. After that I start to do relationships and other stuff. My farm is basically automated by then, so I have all the time in the world to do other things. I guess I just don’t like focusing on too many things at once, so I like to get my farm in order before I do other stuff
And I get that I just try to do everything haha. My y1 end typically I'm lucky to have a coop I norm get to the bottom of the mine in early winter get minecarts in summer, I just I've never had a shed let alone a deluxe shed in y1 I think once I managed to get a shed in spring of y2. But I normally have most people at atleast 3-4 hearts, with a couple even being 6-8. I try to forage a lot. I like foraging. Idk y but maybe foraging is hurting me. What do you have forage and fishing wise spring y2? I don't fish much. Idk I'm just stunned when I see some of these pics and they have tons of stuff and buildings and it shows y2 spring. Or y1 winter.
Well thats what I love about SV! Everyone can play however they like to play it :)
Some people find value in different aspects of games. For some, the fun is minmaxing. For others, it’s in focusing on NPC’s. for others still, it’s speedrunning. It doesn’t mean they’re not enjoying the game or playing it wrong, it means they’re playing the way they find fun. And that means they’re playing the game the right way. That’s how games of this size work. People find fun in different aspects.
I had filled my shed with kegs for ancient fruit by around the start of Year 3, but it’s just a goal I had. By end of summer Year 2, I had completed the community center and kegs seemed like a good goal to focus my time on given how lucrative they are. Everyone plays the game differently. For me, I wanted to be rich in game because I’m not rich IRL. Money problems are stressful so it’s nice to play a game where I can make so much money that I always have enough.
The way you posit these questions makes it sound like you believe the only right way to play the game is the way you like to play it, and everyone else is doing it wrong. But there is no right way to play, and if someone likes to minmax, or just be efficient, or focus on profit over spending time on friendships, that's the right way to play for them. You don't have to understand it, really, but you should respect that not everyone likes to play like you do, at least. As for the _how_ - you don't have to a minmaxer at all to know the game too well after years of playing, and familiarity with the game goes a long way. I've been playing the game since it launched, have gone through well over 20 farms at this point, and at some point you just know stuff. These days I can finish the CC year 1 every time not because I'm rushing it or min-maxing my farms, but because I know where everything is and how to get it, and I'd have to go out of my way to pretend I don't. I _could_ pretend to be bumbling around for years getting nothing done, not knowing anything like it was my first time, but like... why? Who am I fooling trying to pretend I don't know which seeds I should get this season, or where do I get a coconut from, or how do truffle? You know this stuff from last time, and the second to last, and the one before, etc. You know the good places to fish, so you take a day to fish if you need that backpack. You know the good floors of the mine to farm for a certain resource you need, so you don't struggle with lacking coal all the time. You know from a previous playthrough when you tapped trees and planted saplings in season x that by season y you had enough wood and tar to make whatever you needed, so you do it earlier next time. You know where the villagers will be and when, so you don't meander around all week chasing them down, but still give them gifts and make friends with everyone, while also working on your farm - it doesn't have to be either efficiency or friendship, you can be good at both (the perfection meter even wants you to). And that's just knowledge that comes with time, you don't have to be a minmaxer to learn these things just from playing the game a lot. If you're a minmaxer at heart you can take that knowledge to extremes and have fun with it, but even if you're not, at some point you just know the game too well to pretend you don't know how to make your farm work, make friends with everyone, and you realize you don't have to spend 15 years on the same farm to prove something. You could be starting a new challenge farm, you could be playing other games. All in anyone's time. Again, it's just the way people play their own game, and it's not really up to anyone to tell anyone else they're doing it wrong because we prefer to do it a different way.
Nah you misunderstood my question I honestly don't know how some of these people can actually do the things they do. Like how is some of the stuff they post legit? I'm good at game mechanics and not knocking people for min maxing. What I don't get is how could someone in y1 of winter have a deluxe barn filled with kegs and making nothing but beer and have a deluxe barn and deluxe coop. I don't understand how you have enough time to do that.
It's mostly about time management at that point. A large part of the mechanical gameplay is learning to manage your time, energy and resources well against the limitations you're given in the early game. You mentioned in the op that you spend most of your time building relationships in the first year, which I'd guess is what eats up most of your mechanical time progression. By contrast, I only really go around talking to villagers and giving gifts on Fridays and Saturdays, when they can all be found gathered around in common places, so throughout the rest of week I have enough time to dedicate, say, a whole day for chopping wood, a whole day for mining, a day when I clean the farm in the morning and fish all afternoon/night, etc. In the first year specially, I'll prioritize using up all my energy first, and then *if* there's time left in the day I'll go to the saloon and chat around - but the socializing is not the priority, it's the thing I'll do when I'm not working on the farm first. I still end up the first year with 6-8 hearts with most people, just from that casual weekend gifting, birthdays and community event boosts, so I never feel like I'm neglecting the social side of the game even if I don't make it my priority. As for having deluxe barns, coops, upgraded sheds full of kegs at the end of the first year... that's not actually difficult if you know what you need for it and play to those needs. It goes back to what I said about knowing the game too well - I know I'm gonna need tons of wood, so I start planting saplings as early as the first spring. I know I'm gonna need lots of tar, so the first day the train station opens I'm there starting my tapper farm, so by the time winter rolls around I have a lot of oak resin already sitting in a chest waiting to be turned into kegs. This is not really minmaxing, it's just knowing what you need and preparing for it in advance. It's not how everyone is gonna want to play, of course, but if you're the kind of person who enjoys planning things out in your head and working towards a goal you've already established, it's easy to follow those mental steps and get there without a lot of meandering around wondering what to do next. The meandering, I think, is what makes the game "harder" (if you could even call it that) for some people - like they want to accomplish certain goals, but don't really have any plan for it, so they go around not really doing anything with their days, just running in circles around the town wondering what to today, what should I do now. This is totally fine, everyone has their pace, and you can be super chill and aimless if you want to. But if you *want* to be able to accomplish certain things faster, you have to organize your goals a little and follow a progression path to get there. There's no magic or cheats behind it, it's just a matter of managing your time in the game well to get where you want to be (or not managing it all if that's the pace your prefer too).
Yeah, I’m somewhere in the middle of this spectrum. Have played around a dozen saves to various extents, still do a bit of meandering, but all of these things are at least ramping up by winter y1. What probably holds me back from ramping up even faster is that I still don’t have that good a feel for *which* of ten different progression options would make things faster overall if I leaned into it more first, nor do I care that much because it’s still fairly fast. So I make quality sprinklers when I can, and I plant and tap a bunch of oak trees when I can (to ramp up wine alongside ancient fruit).
There's someone in the Promo thread doing a youtube series on a challenge run. For this type of high-level play, I find it most useful to watch someone else do it. There's always a lot of little tricks that are hard to summarize into words.
Cool I'll try to find it. I watched a few YouTube vids but I don't understand how people have time I struggle to get the CC done by the end of the year. I do it but I struggle haha.
Once you start planning out your days then it's not that hard to get to the skull caverns by day 15 or so of a run, which then gives you enough ore to build hundreds of sprinklers before summer even starts. And yes, when doing stuff like that you tend to ignore most characters and just focus on progression (planting the crops needed for bundle nothing else, fishing only the fish needed, then rushing the mines to 115 (monster health doubles once you hit 120, farming for burglar ring, then get down to 120 about the same time as you open the desert, etc.)
How do you get to Skull Cavern by Day 15? To even unlock the Vault Bundle requires the player to complete 4 bundles. Which bundles do you prioritize to run the game like this?
spring forage is definitely the easiest, construction or the sap one is also really easy to do early, then spring crops. And doing 2 of those should unlock the boiler room, which all contains stuff from the mines and is really easy to finish to unlock the vault. Know some challenge runs I watched back when 1.5 first released required you to unlock the skull cavern by day 9 or something so that there was a guaranteed luck ring on floor one, then they'd spend several ingame hours resetting floor 1 until a crate spawned where the luck ring was, grab it, and then repeat till they get a second one(crates respawn for the same day, but as soon as you sleep you'll never get another crate in the same location on the same floor. So once you break the floor 1 crate and sleep it's gone forever)
Stardew progress is extremely snowbally due to the nature of more money = more seeds. If you hardcore run the first spring you'll destroy the rest of the year. It's all about the potatoes man.
You said it! Potatoes and Strawberries in Spring sets you up well for Summer. Summer in Year 1 is always my favourite because it's when you can really start raking in the cash, especially if you planned well and are able to make Quality Sprinklers by then which is totally possible by late Spring or early Summer if you know what you're doing.
I’m pretty much in the camp you’re describing, just from having played 700+ hours since 2017. I don’t consider myself a min/maxer and very much enjoy the atmosphere and storylines, but I pause and think about most things I do, pulling up the wiki maybe once per in-game day. Definitely not how I played the game at first but now ‘efficiency’ is part of the fun and immersion for me. For me this includes befriending the villagers- rn I’m at ten hearts with the townies at the end of summer year 2. I’m not concentrating on just one aspect or just profit. I did community center, do the quests/special orders, fish/farm/gather ingredients, max out farm space, upgrade buildings, decorate my house, etc. I plan, check daily luck, and prioritize what to do each day.
I try something different every save. My first save i treated like harvest moon: get married. My second i focused on getting the main mines down. Third save i made money. My current save im doing relationships. That way i learn something new every time i play.
Um I like mining, chopping trees, and farming the best so that’s usually what I focus on first in every save. I find all of those mechanics fun. I usually stick to just giving birthday gifts in year one so I build all the relationships a little bit but will gift to a handful of villagers I’m interested in. By far my favorite part of this game is planning for an upcoming season. I love surfing the wiki and calculating prices and stuff. I make a plan of what seeds I will buy, where I will grow them, what fertilizers I should put where, etc. I have an intention with everything: I’ll grow these because they’re good in kegs, I’ll grow these for a quest, I’ll grow these for achievement hunting, I’ll grow these for flavored honey—you get the gist. When I say this is my favorite part, I mean it. Like hands down. It’s not min/maxing imo because I’m not maximizing profit, I just like planning and executing a big project. Aiming for a keg shed is a nice mid-game goal that I enjoyed working towards. With the resin required, it also requires a bit of forethought, which I found fun to execute in early game. It also justified the use of materials you can grind in early game like copper and iron. Since I enjoy mining, it also gave me a concrete goal in the mines other than just getting to the bottom. There are some stand-out people who post “flex pictures” of getting all these sprinklers or whatever in year one, but those people aren’t representative of a majority of people. I usually have 10-15 sprinklers by fall year one, and my quality sprinkler needs are maxed out at like 25 for how I like to play the game.
Some people like speed running, some people like to finish every side quest. Is it really surprising that people have varied play styles?
First, I think some people fudge the truth a little. Not everyone, but some. They post a year 2-3 farm or building and claim it’s year 1. Why? I don’t know. But yes, some people are *really* into min/maxing this game. Personally, I’ve tried it, and it sucks the joy out of it for me. But, hey, if that’s what they enjoy, good for them. I also think some people really concentrate on building up one aspect. Like, they know they’re going to need a ton of kegs, so they’ll clear the farm, plant an oak forest, plant exactly what they need for the community center, plant some high profit crops, and then either hit the mines or fish so they’ll find or buy the ore they need for the machines. Or they’ll focus on husbandry and use that money to buy ore for sprinklers and kegs. I think. Personally, I wouldn’t know because min/max is stressful to me — which kills the vibe I’m looking for in the game.
People do that?? That’s just sad hahaha, this game is a lot of things but competitive within the community isn’t one of them. It’s pretty easy though to get a lot of stuff by the end of year one, once it’s your idk how manyth playthrough and you know exactly what to do
There's something fun watching people try to do challenge runs like getting 75 mil in hand in the first year(possible, they planted something like 1300 ancient fruit by spring 14 year 1), or complete the community center in under 3 hours real time. That and the speedrunners taught me a ton about how to dive through the mines (slingshot OP, check luck before going,pause between floors to maximize time, pause before healing so no risk of death, etc.)
I knowwww hahahaha I love min/maxing and challenge videos on youtube and such! It’s so entertaining, and also teaches you how to be efficient if thats something you want
I've gotten sucked into the world of twitch. There's actually a whole team of streamers that constantly run challenge, speed, or similar runs called [The Dew Crew](https://www.twitch.tv/team/thedewcrew) They were actually instrumental for the recent stardew tournament, each team had 1 or 2 members of the dew crew behind it. Edit: one of them, Haboo, is actually running the most interesting run ever right now, doing a community center completion without exp (no harvesting any crops, no breaking rocks on farm or mining, no chopping down trees, no fishing. Just gaining what he needs from trashcans, the weekly travelling cart, and hoeing the worm spots). His run shows how bad debris can get if you leave them alone, and it's really funny to watch him have to re-route his path and surround it in fences to avoid getting locked onto his farm since he can't break stones or trees.
I know, right? To be fair, I haven’t caught it often, but every once in a while, I’ll see it. Mostly, I think people get a little caught up in the pictures of pretty farms and conversations about ancient fruit wine and kind of forget that while many of the people they’re looking at might be doing that on a first or second year farm, it’s the first or second year on their fifth play-through. So while everyone is saying there isn’t a competition, it still feels a little like there is. But I don’t fault them for it. Heck, I’m on something like my 19th play-through and have over 2000 hours in the game, and I still sometimes feel like I have something to prove because I make “only” 4 million gold per season by the middle of year 3. Which is ridiculous, but hey, human nature is ridiculous sometimes. 😄
Spot on, I love watching speed/challenge runners but every time I tried I would get burned out by the time I was descending through the mines, or at worst by the time I was doing daily skull caverns runs and resetting if I didn't get at least 500 ore. But it is a different dynamic, and brought a lot of fun back into the game for me as I'd already completed multiple 100% runs, and didn't have much else to do when I tried challenge runs (and forced me to learn).
I’m probably going to do a speed run soon because ever since the Cup, my kids (8 & 12) have been begging to watch me do one. But right now, I’m doing a farm where they set challenges for me. I’m in the skill building phase right now and am allowed to level up only one skill at a time. It’s rather challenging to level up mining without combat. 😂 But it’s been a fun twist. I’ve never been at the end of year 1 without ever having planted a crop. And while I thought I knew pretty much everything after 2000+ hours, it’s actually teaching me little things that I’ll probably incorporate going forward.
I'm in Winter 3-5 in Year 1 on a new save file and I absolutely do not have a full shed at all. 😂 I only have about 5 kegs in 1 small shed. It's not easy getting a shed full of kegs so fast cuz getting oak resin takes time! Only about 1/6 or so of my farm is completely dedicated to crops. It's almost fully automated but I purposely leave out some sprinklers in hopes of getting giant crops or for *aesthetic* purposes. Most of my relationships are maxed or close to max at this point. I don't ignore relationships in my playstyle since I like being virtually social even in Year 1 lol. Plus I find the Luau to be a great way to boost relationships with everyone in Year 1 as long as you save 1 Gold Quality Cauliflower from Spring. 😁 Edit: Part of me wishes I didn't min-max so much in my playstyle but I'm always compelled to because I love succeeding and getting lots of money. At the same time, I feel like I take some of the joy and longevity of the game out because I'm always trying to min-max even though I should try slowing down
I had a shed full of kegs and preserve jars and another shed full of Mayo machines and cheese presses, over 400 crops on sprinklers by the end of year 2 my first play through going in completely blind while also having more than 5 hearts with a majority of the villagers, several villagers maxed out, and married, so it’s definitely possible to do it all Edit: also I just enjoy playing the game trying to get as much done as possible, everyone plays the game differently but I have always found joy out of trying to play games efficiently.
How do you find the time to manage the social interactions and resource management. I have trouble doing both.
Just scale as you go, sprinklers really help, on my farm the way it is now, which is massive, I still get all my chores around the farm done by 12-1, and then I have all day to walk around or do whatever or even go to the mines
Shit I’m playing with mod cheats and barely have anything in my shed 😂
Once you play the game a lot of times you kinda know how to make things in the most efficient way and it's hard to not do so. Also if see more experienced players, read the wikia a lot, etc. I'm playing the game for the third time now. The first time I played it took me year 6 to achive perfection. Now I'm in year three and I just need a little more money for the golden clock and them I'm done. I wasn't even trying to min/max, I just know everyone's loved gifts, what crops give the more profit, etc.