TheLastBaron

Stardew Valley

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I gotta say, the worst part of this game is the cooking, not only do you have to farm your own ingredients, there doesn't seem to be any kitchen upgrades and you can't experiment. In some Harvest Moon games, you couldn't just figure out how to make every dish (Gee, I wonder what will happen if I put an orange in the juicer?), but in Stardew Valley? I just found I have to befriend EVERYBODY for recipes.... 

 

Otherwise, this game is excellent... except I'm kinda not into grinding monsters for a reward.... 1000 slimes? OUCH!

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Hmmm, maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I've found the game kinda unengaging. Maybe I'm just not making enough money to keep things opening up?

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I picked up Stardew despite fearing I won't have time for it. I think I'm going to try to play it in "real" time and see if it sticks. So far it's really cute.

I made a terrible hipster in a too small T-shirt with a purple undercut and sunglasses. Fit into the lore at the start surprisingly well.

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I made a black lady and my grandfather was white.

 

I laughed but I also cried.

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I kinda like that this game limits presents to two a week, that way you only have to spend two days chasing everybody to give them presents. I'm just giving them eggs and milk until I figure out their favorite.... which is probably a dish I can't make or a bloody diamond. XP

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The game feels really slow, constantly walking the same path wasting a large portion of the day. It annoys me that I cannot press on.

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I made a black lady and my grandfather was white.

 

I laughed but I also cried.

 

Yeah this happened to me too, shame the game doesn't account for race in that cutscene. Was not the best first impression, but at least it was just once cutscene and I was able to forget about it pretty fast. Still wouldn't mind if that got patched though.

 

I found this game really hard to get into at first, and I only really persisted because it had such a good reputation. It seems a little dry at first I think, but the more colourful stuff becomes more apparent as you play. There are some really cool festivals, and some good dialogue and scenes with the characters as you get to know them. I kinda wish the relationship system was more complex than just feeding gifts to people ("I've given you many diamonds, love meeeee"), but still.

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The game feels really slow, constantly walking the same path wasting a large portion of the day. It annoys me that I cannot press on.

The only time I ran into this feeling was in winter. But even then, if you plan carefully, you can actually still farm.

 

During any given day, you can:

- fish

- farm crops, which includes watering, tilling the ground

- forage

- chop wood

- mine

- mingle with townsfolk / give gifts

- go to the bar and play an arcade game

- gather things up for the community center bundles

 

You don't have to squeeze doing everything into a day. I often just handle my watering needs and then pick something to do for the rest of the day. Chopping wood can be a bit of a pain if you run out of trees. The answer is to start a tree farm! Trees will always drop one seed on chopping down. On rare occasions, you'll get a second seed. And more often than not they will drop seeds around them slowly over time, which you can leave in the ground to grow or dig up with a tool to replant elsewhere. Wood doesn't make a ton of money if you find yourself not needing to build things; just 2 gold per block (3 gold if you take that experience route). But it is something to do.

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I meant walking to an activity takes a long time, and is tedious as fuck. I usually do one thing a day.

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I just unlocked 

a slime ranch? What am I supposed to do with the slimes? They are too aggressive, like normal ones and slime drops aren't that good, right?

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I meant walking to an activity takes a long time, and is tedious as fuck. I usually do one thing a day.

Build a stable. Hop on your horsey, which you get to name, and ride around going "wheeeeeeee."

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I don't have the horse, but the mine carts unlocks I guess I don't need it? 

 

I'm not sure how you are only able to do one activity per day, unless you made a giant field to attend to with just the basic tools. Every at the start after attending to the farm I had more than enough time to hit the mines or go fishing. Then again, I've played so many Harvest Moon games I'm not surprised I have almost everything unlocked by the end of the second summer. ^_^;

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I actually started over last night because I felt like I was being wildly inefficient, and I got back to day 12 and had so much more stuff.  I'm not trying to min/max every day per se, but I'm getting a lot more into each day than I was on my first save.  I foolishly prioritized getting the first backpack upgrade on my first save, which really put a huge dent into how much farming and stuff I could do by blowing that money on a quality of life improvement instead of investing it into things that would return a profit. 

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Well, you should get the backpack upgrade by the time the mines are unlocked or you'll never make a profitable trip.

 

I don't think you can really mess up this game unless you die in the mines and lose important items or are stubborn and work yourself sick and have to pay a bill and wake up tired. If you faint from exhaustion in the mines you get charged more than from just fainting in the farm. 

 

I'm only missed TWO items to complete the community center's quest, the just gave me a greenhouse that I'll fill with ancient fruits unless I think of a better idea.

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I've restarted a couple times. The first after one season, just learning the basics of this particular game's mechanics, and then the other was after year one. Like Bjorn it's an efficiency thing (without min-maxing).

 

I'd say above all else, the first week or two when you start should be based on farming. Clear enough land to plant seeds, plant them, buy more seeds, clear enough land, plant, etc. Just get that landslide income off hard-worked-on crops, and you'll be able to afford a backpack upgrade fast. The initial inventory size is pitiful.

 

Actually, scratch that - first thing you should do is chop down wood for 50 pieces, and build a chest ASAP.

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Hmm, I'm midway through the first summer. I have a copper axe and watering can, upgraded the first backpack, have a few small buildings on the farm (Recycler, Preserves Jar, Furnace) and just built my coop. My daily grind is pretty much watering my 40 or so crops, then being down to like 1/3 of an energy bar and doing fishing, various collecting, community center work. I feel like I basically get nothing done in a given day because of my energy bar, but I feel like the cost to buy food to refill it is so high that I'm never going to get the rest of my tool upgrades if I keep paying for it *shrug*

 

Maybe I picked the wrong stuff to build with my tiny bit of iron I've gotten so far? I just don't know how I'd be making more money right now. Nothing seems to sell for much and prices of everything interesting are in the two to four thousand range.

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I was right there until I noticed the field snack crafting recipe, it's one of each of the three tree seeds for a decent-enough food source. I have never spent any money on food, and now that I have a kitchen I'll have to see if cooking is worth it. I just did nothing but fishing after crop-watering for most of the summer. Once you find a good spot (location and time do matter, which is sweet.) and you level up your fishing a bit you should be able to have a baseline fishing income of slightly less than a thousand per day, more if you go to the beach to collect shells and unlock the tidal pools to collect coral in the morning. It's a bit of a drag making money from most things until you can consistently get silver or gold crops or fish.

Save money for the fall, it's the most profitable time of the year for planting. Cranberries rock and make delicious and profitable jelly. 

This would have been a handy tool for preventing my farm looking like a confusing mess: https://stardew.info/planner/# 
What I really want is a crop planner, with growth times and regrowth times and seasons.

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I'm just a poor simple fisherman who can't get a wife, on account of only ever giving fish to the people of the town.

At least I have you, Linus. 

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Yeah the energy bar thing was frustrating to me too, especially with a larger field.  Until I discovered the field snack recipe that Neonrev noticed - pine cones, acorns, and maple seeds are easy to come by and it only takes one of each to turn them into a field snack.  I also started paying attention to which foods replenish energy in general - berries generally restore around 30 energy, and maple syrup (which you get every few days from a maple tree with a tapper applied) gives you a lot of energy too.

 

I restarted my game after about two weeks into spring and concentrated on saving up funds to sink them all into strawberry seeds at the egg festival (the only time of year you can buy them!), and had a huge cash crop to get me going pretty fast.  Built a silo before building a coop or doing much clearing, so all the grass I clear out of my field becomes hay, and I can sell the surplus hay to Marnie.  Mayonnaise makers are cheap and easy to build and mayonnaise sells for four times as much as an egg does.

 

I'm super cheesed at myself right now though because first day of summer, I planted an apple tree, and then forgot what it was when I was clearing fields.  NOTE TO SELF: put up a fricking fence around any trees I want to keep so that I don't accidentally chop them down.  That thing was expensive and now it's too late to have an apple tree ready by the start of fall!

 

I also have basically no interest in talking to people which isn't making me popular in town.  Too busy spelunking.

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Until you get a kitchen, foraging is also a good way to get energy back. Have you unlocked the sauna? It unlocks after an earthquake.

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Once berries started appearing halfway through spring, my energy problems more or less disappeared.  They're plentiful and fill up a decent bit of energy, enough to let me get some more clearing done in the evening after foraging and talking to folks. 

 

I felt the earthquake but hadn't figured out what it did yet.  I think I have an idea of where to look now though!

 

Getting fishing leveled up is the worst.  I haven't even hit level one yet, because I've only successfully caught one fish, the rest keep getting away.  Are there easier places to fish to get it leveled up?

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Let's see, the first quake unlocks the mines, the second the sauna/hot water bath, which is above the carpenter's house I think... And then there's the 

meteorite that crashes in the farm... which only has some Iridium ore.

 

As you level up, the bar grows and they get easier to catch, have you unlocked the area east of the beach? I know the fishing is more profitable there, not to mention you can get a lot of coral there. It kinda sucks that the more expensive fish are harder to get, but you'll get there eventually.

 

I think there is an easier fishing mod out there too. 

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Energy problems tend to disappear from the game entirely when you have enough level ups in skills, especially after you increase your energy max once or twice (out of a possible six times, I think).

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Oh, I thought the field snacks required a kitchen. That's something at least.

 

I read about the earthquake thing when the spa was mentioned in this week's Idle Thumbs epidsode thread. I can't remember if I had an earthquake or not. I did check a while back and that path was still blocked. I guess I expected a more ceremonious opening of that path so I haven't checked again since.

 

Some of the foraging stuff is so valuable that I've been selling most of it. In the end, it's difficult to balance how much money a full energy bar is worth in this game. It's worth probably more than I think, but my response to feeling poor all the time is to sell every single thing I get my hands on, which might be hurting my future profitability.

 

Edit: After hearing how into it Dan Ryckert is, I'm definitely going to give it another shot, if I can ever pull myself away from Black Desert, which has some similar farming type tasks in it, but in more of an economic empire sort of way.

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Do you need a specific skill or tool to get seeds out of trees? I've felled a bunch in the first couple weeks of the game with the starter axe and only seem to get sap and wood out of them. 

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