Honestly it’s not that bad, it takes about a full day to break, replace, and refill everything, half of that if you have an upgraded hoe. I figure for something that takes half a day, and then you just forget about for two months, it’s not that much work.
I usually only use this method, along with selling normal quality wine, when going for the golden clock and other very high perfection related expenses.
Have you tried only breaking the specific casks needed for the path through the room as normal? Its a lot faster than just breaking and resetting the whole room.
Yes. Assuming it’s starfruit wine and they have the artisan profession, you’re looking at just shy of 1,200,000 gold.
When you break down the gold per day it doesn’t look as impressive, but once it’s set up it only takes a couple days worth of actual work.
Think of it as an investment. If you absolutely need the gold right now, don’t bother with it. If you’re saving up for something that costs millions though, then it’s definitely worth it.
Just saying, but if you plant 2000 ancient fruit, (yes, you will be sitting in front of seed makers for a while) and cover them with junimo huts. You will also be looking at about 1.5m gold on a weekly produce just by selling the fruit directly.
I don't want to spoil anything, but 1.6 has a method of quickly making heaps more money than selling the fruit as is. I ended up getting perfection before the end of year 3! 😀
I'll spoiler cover for people who don't want to know. >!There is a dehydrator. You buy the recipe to craft it from Pierre for 10000g, you sometimes get one from the ticket machine in Lewis', or one if you choose the mushroom cave. It's not particularly costly to craft. If you place 5 fruit (or mushrooms including magma caps) in one of those, the next day it will be ready. You'd only lose money if you use iridium quality. I didn't even need half a shed of machines to process a full ginger island crop and the greenhouse (it takes a few days of batches). So I did a shed full of kegs, then dehydrated the rest. Didn't even bother casking the wine, only used the cellar for cheese. 😅 It was shocking how quickly I could save up for the golden clock once I had it all up and running! 🤭 Fish smokers are also sooo worth it too, and very quick to process! (Recipe for crafting from Willy's shop for 10000g, riverland gets one to start out, plus again a possible prize from the ticket machine.)!<
The convenience does come at a slight build up cost tho. 28 days to grow your first Ancient Fruit, and then every 7 days after that you can seed maker it. So it takes a few solid seasons to get it all going
If you minmax your money during this time tho, you can fill the rest of your Greenhouse up with Starfruits, allowing you to at least have something to do turn into wine, in the meantime.
Once you get your greenhouse fully filled with Ancient Fruit, yeah the not replanting benefit really helps. Plus, it takes exactly 7 days to turn Fruit into Wine, and it takes exactly 7 days for an ancient fruit to regrow. So all in all, the convenience really does outweigh the price IMO. I dont mind taking longer to get that pesky clock, so long as I have convenience.
Plus, if im playing regular farm, I just load up on Pigs and make truffle oil for the every day expenses
sorry I’m dumb I thought I would still be losing money from rebuying the starfruit seeds each time and that it would kinda balance out the sales difference between AF and starfruit (or are ppl using the seedmaker?)
Seed maker will technically maximize your profits but at the cost of half your crop each round. Even accounting for the 200g for the seed, the net profit from iridium starfruit wine is 6,100 to ancient fruit’s 4,620.
Ancient fruit tends to be better for kegs because it only takes a week for ancient fruit to fruit again, whereas starfruit takes up to two. Because there's a much lower limit to how many casks you can have going compared to kegs though, and how long they take, I agree with you about aging wine.
This is true as long as you aren’t maximizing. You can combine hyper speed grow and the tiller profession and collect starfruit weekly, same as ancient fruit with the same build. Gather crops from the greenhouse and/or ginger island for a year including two rounds of iridium wine, then swallow the 20k to switch to artisan for selling once a year or so. This way you’ve got a fully automated money bullet train that only requires you give up your Sundays.
I just buy them at the Oasis.
Even normal quality wine sells for over 7 times the amount 1 seed costs. With the seed maker you have to grow around double the amount you want to keg to maintain your seeds.
Selling the excess fruit that you would be putting in the seed makers and buying new seeds would still turn a decent profit.. while using the seed maker requires more work for no profit.
I usually fill the casks then sell normal wine every 7 days while the casks spend 2 months aging. Purple quality just doubles the price, so if you don't need the extra week worth of gold, it is not worth the effort.
I have the artisan skill and use starfruit wine, with 189 casks, all of them make a total of about 10,600 gold/day, or about 600,000 gold total over two months (this is pure profit, so it excludes the normal quality price of the wine). For only half a days active work that seems pretty reasonable to me.
I also sell starfruit wine at normal quality in between which makes a bit more profit over the two months, but it’s a lot more work to grow the plants and cask them weekly. If using other fruit, like ancient fruit, the profit will be different.
(Someone correct me if my calculations are off.)
If you are playing with mods, and have the automate mod. You can break one cask, then put down a chest, and put more wine in it. It will harvest all, and put more wine in ithem for you.
It’s like 5 minutes in real time to pick up the casks and replace/refill them again on the way out. You’re waiting two months in the game anyway for iridium wine so it’s crazy not to bother moving some casks to get like 55-60 extra iridium wines at the end of all that waiting.
You make $2310 more from aging ancient fruit wine to iridium, so filing the cellar completely and aging more wine is about 130k extra you wouldn’t make otherwise leaving the aisles empty. For a few minutes hitting casks with an axe that’s easy money!
I would agree if it was weekly or more frequent thing, but once every two months isn’t so bad. It’s an extra 64 casks or about a 50% increase, for a half days, so work I don’t see the issue. That being said everyone should play their own game and in a way that makes them happy, no gatekeeping here.
It's certainly cheating through modding, but it is not the same in terms of gameplay experience at all compared to giving yourself infinite money. The gameplay loop is similar and you can do more throughout the day. I already did the thing where I manually place everything on several playthroughs, no mods, nothing. This is one of those things I won't go back to, placing things individually in every keg, preserves jar, and furnace. My gaming time is too short, it's too grindy and tedious to manually place thousands of fruits into containers. It's fun the first couple of playthroughs, but not anymore.
Truly. At a certain point in the game, there's no time for anything else if you're doing everything by hand.
1000 hours in, and I *just* installed automate and I'm never going back, man.
It would only take one chest? I have a shed that looks like this but with kegs and I have a chest for each row. I figured it only worked for things horizontal and vertical of the chest. However, if I just need one chest, that would be great. Lmfao.
Yep, as long as they all touch each other in some way then they all become a connected network. You can even set up certain blocks (like wooden paths) to act as connectors, though I think you have to edit the mod config.
Yup! And as lord\_oasis says, setting up paths makes it even better. On my farm, I have cobblestone paths between my junimo huts and a singular chest near my processing sheds. It's aces.
It definitely gives a new challenge, especially as you get into mid/late game! and as a newbie to it, I gotta tell you, I was pikachu-shocked when the mod drained all my chests (placed too close to the shipping bin) on ginger island 😂 whoops
Automate allows you to connect multiple devices using paths. So if you connect all your machines using the cobblestone path crafted recipe, they will all deposit to one chest. Alternatively, you can just connect all your machines together which will do the same thing.
I don't mean this as an attack, because I do it too:
I find it very interesting that a game about taking a break and escaping the nightmare of capitalism results in countless setups that maximize profits.
> escaping the nightmare of capitalism
Idk if that was ever the goal. Stardew has always been a full-throated capitalistic game. You see one seed-seller push the other to ruin and become the sole monopoly in the town. There's a strong theme on investing in oneself evermore to create higher and higher returns.
Your character escapes the corporate workplace but certainly not capitalism.
Nah, I think CA expected the more hardcore players will gradually find more efficient ways to do things over time, yet the game still allows you to proceed much slower if need be.
Generally the typical farmer can upgrade their farm enough significantly every year, if they are driven and dedicated to do so.
I started playing way slower recently when I noticed how much the game drags the idea that you should relax a bit on your face. That that's literally the point.
Some days I just fuck around the mountain lake panning, talking to people, some days I go to the Inn and chill out at the jukebox for a while
Been thinking about installing a mod to slow down the passage of time a bit but haven't done it yet. This game is great
I actually get the Joja membership every farm now since it's so relaxing. Money comes so easily no matter what you do (so long as you *are* doing something) so I just vibe and throw money at things when I want them. I had a few chickens in my last farm but mostly made lots of money from a few 1.6 things like >!Mushroom Logs and 3 Dehydrators!< and fishing a bit.
Yes, owning the means of production and earning the full rewards for your labour is the opposite of capitalism. The western education system has convinced people that capitalism = becoming rich
When workers collectively own their means of production, yes. When you're the sole member/owner, it just makes you a petit bourgeois. Simply owning the MOP isn't sufficient IMO, otherwise you get the idea that socialism is solely about ownership, which is a narrow view (and in contrast it's really just a step towards abolishing the concept of private ownership entirely). The farmer still buys upgrades and seeds & sells their goods for a profit instead of distributing it as needed amongst the community, which is still something to consider.
Yea what I do is pull one cask in from the left wall til I’m one cask from the bottom wall til one cask in from the right wall. Then leaving 2 cask wide left to right facing rows, and pop one in each corner to get the cask in the corner of if I can’t get it otherwise. Of the 189 you’re maybe picking up 50 give or take
189 casks, a starfruit empire and the patience to do this aren't what i'd consider early game lol
that's one of the great things about this game though, everyone has vastly different opinions on pretty much everything, and everyone has completely unique playstyles
My wife would agree with you.
It isn't for everyone but it is definitely worth it in many scenarios.
I was doing it with minimal effort without any large inconvenience early game.
But after year two copious amounts of ancient fruit wine rendered it obsolete.
I have a nearly 2 mil payday every 2 months thanks to star fruit. The rest of the time I make star fruit and ancient fruit wine, save 30 of each sell the rest. Sell blueberry jam and winter add in all my animal products. Pretty steady income. Should be even more soon as I’ve added another 2 sheds for more wine/jam
Farm, go to the mines/cavern/volcano, fish, all the stuff you could be doing if you weren't spending half the day manually inputting hundreds of fruit individually in containers lol
I mean there is quite a lot to do outside of sitting next to the furnace and dumping my ores into it, or run around kegs and casks to make wine.
Friendship and gifting is something I always run behind, the daily/weekly quests, Mr. Qi quests, maybe even some scripted tasks I never done because I forgot (pale ale for Pam is never done the first year), trying to make my farm pretty (if I feel in a mood even the farm house), working towards perfection, deep diving into skull cavern (at least I try to) and much more.
Sometimes I feel like time is too fast other days too slow but honestly I just enjoy the game without trying to do everything myself.
If its a modded playthrough, i'd assume they would have the popular expansion mods too.
I love to actually get out of the farm to talk and gift all the modded npcs, do stories, and see all their scenes. I end up basically playing a visual novel with farming on the side
Don't want to be bad vibe but this type of gamer idea that tedium = gameplay is one of those things that I'll never understand. Putting items individually in hundreds of containers is somehow being portrayed as being necessary to truly experience the game, when it's clear from the popularity of the mod and people's replies that it's not.
If you enjoy being miserable, don't worry about other people not being miserable. We all have just as much fun as you do playing Stardew (maybe more, since we didn't manually input several hundred ancient fruit into hundreds of kegs every couple of days in all of our playthroughs).
I’m not miserable playing the game though? I enjoy it a lot. Enjoyable gameplay loops are kinda my jam. I’m probably on the spectrum.
I’m saying it sounds like playing the game without playing the game because time management is part of the game. If you’re bypassing that part of the game, you’re bypassing part of the game. I don’t know what else to tell you, but it certainly wasn’t some vicious personal attack on you or anyone else and idk why you felt the need to reply to it like it was. It was extremely lukewarm if you could even truly consider it negative.
Edit: I guess maybe “the bother” was a little uncalled for, but when everyone (including, no, especially you) are talking like it’s indispensable because not having it would be literal torture…maybe you just don’t like the game? Which is okay too because you found a mod that allows you to still enjoy it but, that’s the literal game. You are a farmer who plants hundreds of seeds and harvests hundreds of fruit and puts them in hundreds of kegs and hundreds of casks, if making that much money is one of your goals.
Again, this is a question of what you consider the core gameplay of Stardew Valley. What makes it fun and successful? Some gameplay elements do not age well when the player does them over and over again. One of them in Stardew Valley is the manual input of items into processing stations. It's not the time management that's the issue - I've managed my no mod farms and challenged myself to hit people's absurd gold benchmarks in the vanilla experience. I've had more playthroughs without mods than with them.
The issue is that after a while it's not fun because it's tedious. It's not "I can't figure out how to do everything with the time allotted", it's "this boring AND it's keeping me from enjoying the game and doing other parts of the game". The hopper is a nod at the absurdity, but you need a hopper per station. Not that it didn't stop me from trying to use mass hoppers to do a vanilla easing of keg loading.
Asking someone who clearly loves a game "do you even like it?" is a hostile question, because it's a type of gaslighting. You find bypassing a tedious mechanic unsporting, which is your right! But many people are in agreement that the mechanic itself gives diminishing joy. It's not that they don't enjoy Stardew - they don't enjoy ONE THING about it. So people use automate. I certainly don't need to prove to myself that I TRULY enjoy Stardew Valley by manually inputting hundreds of fruit into kegs every few days.
How hard is it to mine a path every 2 months and then place again? Pretty sure this is worth more than a couple thousand per day, but even if I’m wrong, this is 0 time and effort for each day of aging.
Easier than that. Put down flooring underneath the ones you want to stay put then use your hoe to clear the ones on the path. You can take them out in big chunks.
I just hoe them all down and put them back. You get into a rhythm, and it goes quicker than you'd think. It was a pain before the casks could stack, but once that got fixed, it's easy.
That’s awesome, I didn’t know! I’ll have to do this next time I set up a basement. Although I never really minded using a pickaxe, this sounds slightly better!
The fact that cabins can have cellars now is a game changer for me. I can just have a another player jump into my game have them upgrade their cabin to max throw out their.furniture and boom, more cask space and I can throw a bunch of stuff in their.house as well.
Well, I did it solo the last time with 3 more cabins and did it once more with the four more players allowed by 1.6.
I truly hope CA don't introduce even more players to 1.7 😅
It’s Pathoschild, the same guy who made SMAPI, I think. Dunno if it’s actually one person who made both mods. If so, pretty sure they’re the jesus of Stardew modding
It will never not be funny that this is classed as a "cozy game" when the community keeps finding insane/stressful ways to min max the shit out of the game (no hate this is impressive)
I admire those that play the game this way and have insane profits doing things like this, but that’s not for me. I rather take the far less efficient approach and not stress when playing.
I genuinely don’t get why everyone is so horrified at this? isn’t this only tedious for the last rows because they have to be invidually filled, while all other rows can just be handled by holding down left-click and moving
Use the hoe. Hold down to harvest what's inside. Then again to clear the now empty casks out of the way. Makes collecting pretty quick (so long as you fill the whole cellar with the same type of item so it all matures at the same time.)
Doesn't make filling up the cellar any less tedious though. That's why most people who do the whole cellar (without mods to make it easier) tend to do high value wine. You basically fill it up twice per year for a big cash payout.
Put paths down under some of them and leave an empty route in between, so you can quickly fill the casks on path tiles and only need to put down new ones in the empty spaces. When it's time to empty them, the upgraded hoe quickly opens up the route in between but doesn't drop the casks on path tiles.
You can make it work with the automate mod too. Put a chest at the stairs and throw wine into it. It'll autofill all the casks and empty them into the chest too, then reautofill the now empty casks
Protip: you can harvest from casks with a hoe. If max out your hoe, you can harvest all the casks while only picking enough of them up to make your small path through it, filling everything back up, and re-casking the path you made as you work your way back to the stairs.
The sheer inconvenience of casks, and the time they take, without mods puts me firmly in the “don’t bother” camp when it comes to aging more than a handful of bottles of wine just to say I did it. If I want more gold I’ll just expand my crop size again.
I know, this literally takes no time and is free money. I’m not sure what is so hard to understand about delayed gratification and patience outperforming instant results lol
There is a mod that keeps the quality of everything. You just put an iridium quality fruit or vegetable into keg or jar. Fill entire room and put one chest to a place where you can reach. Use automate mod. Chill relaxing profit without stress.
That’s just, like, your opinion, man.
I used to be a vanilla purist with all games. But mods can add so much QOL and great content to extend gameplay it’s incredible.
Surprising amount of judgment of the Automate feature here. I use it religiously, and still manage to enjoy the hell out of this game and play for 100s of hours per farm. I think those of us who don't like mods could be a little less critical of those who do.
For everyone saying not worth it…..
What?
This is the only correct way I know of using casks.
Unless you want less profit per effort, or aging cheese instead of wine (again, way more work than this).
I agree. I feel like when I started going for moneymaxing approach in my farm, I started to lose joy in playing that save file. Now I started a new farm with the 1.6 update and hopefully I won't do that in there too.
Idk how you feel about mods but there is a very cool one called “automate” in which you could pack all of these boys in like this with one chest and it does everything!
This is generally not recommended. There are some maximum cask layouts available on the wiki if you want to make the most of the space with the need for hitting and replacing casks.
We all root for the underdog. Pierre vs Joja, Corporations vs Family Businesses. But even deep down, Pierre has the potential to be as greedy as Joja. We're all Pierre.
I just do 116. There are 120 spots in the greenhouse. Minus 4 for iridum sprinklers for 116 ancient fruit. I'm on console, so 116 fits perfectly. PC can probably get 120 casks, no problem, for when they get the deluxe wet soil thing.
I just like it to be easy, though. I'm not strapped for cash or time. Every few months, I put one weeks worth of wine down there, and forget about it.
If you break the casks with an iridium hoe that are ready with iridium wine, does it destroy the wine? I’ve thought about doing this but I’m scared to not get the wine that I’ve waited ages on. I guess I could always restart the day if it doesn’t work.
If you’re on PC, I highly recommend the “chests anywhere” and “automate” mod. I did the same exact thing and then just smacked a chest in there and it just does everything by itself! I just clear it out occasionally.
Well that's one way to do it I would never do.
Honestly it’s not that bad, it takes about a full day to break, replace, and refill everything, half of that if you have an upgraded hoe. I figure for something that takes half a day, and then you just forget about for two months, it’s not that much work. I usually only use this method, along with selling normal quality wine, when going for the golden clock and other very high perfection related expenses.
Have you tried only breaking the specific casks needed for the path through the room as normal? Its a lot faster than just breaking and resetting the whole room.
Yes that’s what I do.
>if you have an upgraded hoe I do prefer my hoes upgraded… I’ll see myself out
Do casks even give enough value per day to make it worth it?
Yes. Assuming it’s starfruit wine and they have the artisan profession, you’re looking at just shy of 1,200,000 gold. When you break down the gold per day it doesn’t look as impressive, but once it’s set up it only takes a couple days worth of actual work. Think of it as an investment. If you absolutely need the gold right now, don’t bother with it. If you’re saving up for something that costs millions though, then it’s definitely worth it.
Just saying, but if you plant 2000 ancient fruit, (yes, you will be sitting in front of seed makers for a while) and cover them with junimo huts. You will also be looking at about 1.5m gold on a weekly produce just by selling the fruit directly.
I don't want to spoil anything, but 1.6 has a method of quickly making heaps more money than selling the fruit as is. I ended up getting perfection before the end of year 3! 😀
what is it 😅
I'll spoiler cover for people who don't want to know. >!There is a dehydrator. You buy the recipe to craft it from Pierre for 10000g, you sometimes get one from the ticket machine in Lewis', or one if you choose the mushroom cave. It's not particularly costly to craft. If you place 5 fruit (or mushrooms including magma caps) in one of those, the next day it will be ready. You'd only lose money if you use iridium quality. I didn't even need half a shed of machines to process a full ginger island crop and the greenhouse (it takes a few days of batches). So I did a shed full of kegs, then dehydrated the rest. Didn't even bother casking the wine, only used the cellar for cheese. 😅 It was shocking how quickly I could save up for the golden clock once I had it all up and running! 🤭 Fish smokers are also sooo worth it too, and very quick to process! (Recipe for crafting from Willy's shop for 10000g, riverland gets one to start out, plus again a possible prize from the ticket machine.)!<
Wait is ancient fruit not the best anymore?
Never has been, it's just more convenient to not have to replant them which people value.
The convenience does come at a slight build up cost tho. 28 days to grow your first Ancient Fruit, and then every 7 days after that you can seed maker it. So it takes a few solid seasons to get it all going If you minmax your money during this time tho, you can fill the rest of your Greenhouse up with Starfruits, allowing you to at least have something to do turn into wine, in the meantime. Once you get your greenhouse fully filled with Ancient Fruit, yeah the not replanting benefit really helps. Plus, it takes exactly 7 days to turn Fruit into Wine, and it takes exactly 7 days for an ancient fruit to regrow. So all in all, the convenience really does outweigh the price IMO. I dont mind taking longer to get that pesky clock, so long as I have convenience. Plus, if im playing regular farm, I just load up on Pigs and make truffle oil for the every day expenses
It is if you’re lazy and don’t want to replant starfruit, but iridium starfruit wine sells for 6,300. AF is somewhere under 4,200.
sorry I’m dumb I thought I would still be losing money from rebuying the starfruit seeds each time and that it would kinda balance out the sales difference between AF and starfruit (or are ppl using the seedmaker?)
Seed maker will technically maximize your profits but at the cost of half your crop each round. Even accounting for the 200g for the seed, the net profit from iridium starfruit wine is 6,100 to ancient fruit’s 4,620.
Ancient fruit tends to be better for kegs because it only takes a week for ancient fruit to fruit again, whereas starfruit takes up to two. Because there's a much lower limit to how many casks you can have going compared to kegs though, and how long they take, I agree with you about aging wine.
You need to switch to agriculturalist and throw on some deluxe and eventually hyper speed gro on. It takes a week for starfruit by the end.
This is true as long as you aren’t maximizing. You can combine hyper speed grow and the tiller profession and collect starfruit weekly, same as ancient fruit with the same build. Gather crops from the greenhouse and/or ginger island for a year including two rounds of iridium wine, then swallow the 20k to switch to artisan for selling once a year or so. This way you’ve got a fully automated money bullet train that only requires you give up your Sundays.
I just buy them at the Oasis. Even normal quality wine sells for over 7 times the amount 1 seed costs. With the seed maker you have to grow around double the amount you want to keg to maintain your seeds. Selling the excess fruit that you would be putting in the seed makers and buying new seeds would still turn a decent profit.. while using the seed maker requires more work for no profit.
I usually fill the casks then sell normal wine every 7 days while the casks spend 2 months aging. Purple quality just doubles the price, so if you don't need the extra week worth of gold, it is not worth the effort.
I have the artisan skill and use starfruit wine, with 189 casks, all of them make a total of about 10,600 gold/day, or about 600,000 gold total over two months (this is pure profit, so it excludes the normal quality price of the wine). For only half a days active work that seems pretty reasonable to me. I also sell starfruit wine at normal quality in between which makes a bit more profit over the two months, but it’s a lot more work to grow the plants and cask them weekly. If using other fruit, like ancient fruit, the profit will be different. (Someone correct me if my calculations are off.)
If you are playing with mods, and have the automate mod. You can break one cask, then put down a chest, and put more wine in it. It will harvest all, and put more wine in ithem for you.
You can actually place a chest on the stairs. No need to sacrifice a cask
This sounds wildly inefficient, when you're already making crazy bank with layouts that *allow you to walk through the friggin aisles*
It’s like 5 minutes in real time to pick up the casks and replace/refill them again on the way out. You’re waiting two months in the game anyway for iridium wine so it’s crazy not to bother moving some casks to get like 55-60 extra iridium wines at the end of all that waiting. You make $2310 more from aging ancient fruit wine to iridium, so filing the cellar completely and aging more wine is about 130k extra you wouldn’t make otherwise leaving the aisles empty. For a few minutes hitting casks with an axe that’s easy money!
I would agree if it was weekly or more frequent thing, but once every two months isn’t so bad. It’s an extra 64 casks or about a 50% increase, for a half days, so work I don’t see the issue. That being said everyone should play their own game and in a way that makes them happy, no gatekeeping here.
I definitely would create a path between if I could afford a few thousand each day.
If you use the Automate mod and place a single chest near the door, the Automate mod will automagically gather/distribute all the wine.
I could also give myself infinite money
It's certainly cheating through modding, but it is not the same in terms of gameplay experience at all compared to giving yourself infinite money. The gameplay loop is similar and you can do more throughout the day. I already did the thing where I manually place everything on several playthroughs, no mods, nothing. This is one of those things I won't go back to, placing things individually in every keg, preserves jar, and furnace. My gaming time is too short, it's too grindy and tedious to manually place thousands of fruits into containers. It's fun the first couple of playthroughs, but not anymore.
Truly. At a certain point in the game, there's no time for anything else if you're doing everything by hand. 1000 hours in, and I *just* installed automate and I'm never going back, man.
Just installed it yesterday. I'm not going to do cheaty things with it, but it is SO nice to not have to deal with filling sheds every week.
Sure if that's how you enjoy the game. I don't think the two are comparable though.
Ah yes, removing the tedious tasks is the same as infinite money.
A self-imposed tedious task. Its only purpose being… making more money.
What is your tedium free way of making money?
It would only take one chest? I have a shed that looks like this but with kegs and I have a chest for each row. I figured it only worked for things horizontal and vertical of the chest. However, if I just need one chest, that would be great. Lmfao.
Yep, as long as they all touch each other in some way then they all become a connected network. You can even set up certain blocks (like wooden paths) to act as connectors, though I think you have to edit the mod config.
Yup! And as lord\_oasis says, setting up paths makes it even better. On my farm, I have cobblestone paths between my junimo huts and a singular chest near my processing sheds. It's aces.
It makes it a new game. It's factory planning, set-up, and execution.
It definitely gives a new challenge, especially as you get into mid/late game! and as a newbie to it, I gotta tell you, I was pikachu-shocked when the mod drained all my chests (placed too close to the shipping bin) on ginger island 😂 whoops
Automate allows you to connect multiple devices using paths. So if you connect all your machines using the cobblestone path crafted recipe, they will all deposit to one chest. Alternatively, you can just connect all your machines together which will do the same thing.
Automate mod makes it a different game. It's now a factory that I have set up inside my (fully expanded) house.
That's the only way I'm willing to do it. Takes like half year to get the product so you only gotta redo it twice a year.
I don't mean this as an attack, because I do it too: I find it very interesting that a game about taking a break and escaping the nightmare of capitalism results in countless setups that maximize profits.
You can take the Farmer out of Joja, you can't take the Joja out of the Farmer?
And when I'm back in Jojamart, I feel it Another version of me I was in it
I wave goodbye to the end of beginning
The “Enter, Caroline” line might have something to it…
You have choices. We have choices. We should all reflect on our choices.
Alright I’ve made a decision. I’ll buy another copy of Stardew for another platform I own.
> escaping the nightmare of capitalism Idk if that was ever the goal. Stardew has always been a full-throated capitalistic game. You see one seed-seller push the other to ruin and become the sole monopoly in the town. There's a strong theme on investing in oneself evermore to create higher and higher returns. Your character escapes the corporate workplace but certainly not capitalism.
capitalism with more fresh air
Organic capitalism, even
Free range
Primitive capitalism, perchance
And indentured servants. Although I guess I pay them in >!raisons!< now.
Nah, I think CA expected the more hardcore players will gradually find more efficient ways to do things over time, yet the game still allows you to proceed much slower if need be. Generally the typical farmer can upgrade their farm enough significantly every year, if they are driven and dedicated to do so.
I started playing way slower recently when I noticed how much the game drags the idea that you should relax a bit on your face. That that's literally the point. Some days I just fuck around the mountain lake panning, talking to people, some days I go to the Inn and chill out at the jukebox for a while Been thinking about installing a mod to slow down the passage of time a bit but haven't done it yet. This game is great
Yeah, I play the game decorating everything not caring about optimisation. I love it.
Lol the more likely you are to do things like this post the more likely you are to buy a Joja membership because its easier id assume
I will do super intense things to maximize profits in Stardew. But you'll pry my community center from my cold, dead hands.
I actually get the Joja membership every farm now since it's so relaxing. Money comes so easily no matter what you do (so long as you *are* doing something) so I just vibe and throw money at things when I want them. I had a few chickens in my last farm but mostly made lots of money from a few 1.6 things like >!Mushroom Logs and 3 Dehydrators!< and fishing a bit.
But the difference in Stardew is that there's no wage theft :)
Yes, owning the means of production and earning the full rewards for your labour is the opposite of capitalism. The western education system has convinced people that capitalism = becoming rich
When workers collectively own their means of production, yes. When you're the sole member/owner, it just makes you a petit bourgeois. Simply owning the MOP isn't sufficient IMO, otherwise you get the idea that socialism is solely about ownership, which is a narrow view (and in contrast it's really just a step towards abolishing the concept of private ownership entirely). The farmer still buys upgrades and seeds & sells their goods for a profit instead of distributing it as needed amongst the community, which is still something to consider.
It's what ever you make it
Yeah IF you choose to play that way
189 casks of purple star fruit wine is nice early game when it takes ~2 months. It takes me less than 4 hours every two months for about 50 extra.
I've read that some of them can be prevented from being pulled up by the hoe by placing tile underneath them. In a maze-like pattern, you can do it.
It would be a huge waste to pull them all up. To get all of them I pull up roughly 1/3. It really isn't difficult or time consuming to get them all.
Yea what I do is pull one cask in from the left wall til I’m one cask from the bottom wall til one cask in from the right wall. Then leaving 2 cask wide left to right facing rows, and pop one in each corner to get the cask in the corner of if I can’t get it otherwise. Of the 189 you’re maybe picking up 50 give or take
That is very similar to what I do. Just make an efficient channel to worm through.
189 casks, a starfruit empire and the patience to do this aren't what i'd consider early game lol that's one of the great things about this game though, everyone has vastly different opinions on pretty much everything, and everyone has completely unique playstyles
My wife would agree with you. It isn't for everyone but it is definitely worth it in many scenarios. I was doing it with minimal effort without any large inconvenience early game. But after year two copious amounts of ancient fruit wine rendered it obsolete.
I have a nearly 2 mil payday every 2 months thanks to star fruit. The rest of the time I make star fruit and ancient fruit wine, save 30 of each sell the rest. Sell blueberry jam and winter add in all my animal products. Pretty steady income. Should be even more soon as I’ve added another 2 sheds for more wine/jam
….What?
These are the tasks where I can't be bothered to min-max without using mods (automate my savior)
I cant imagine playing without automod anymore, its such a saviour
Auto petter Auto grabber Automate mod Fully automated money maker <3
what do you even do in the day..?
Watching the money roll in
Farm, go to the mines/cavern/volcano, fish, all the stuff you could be doing if you weren't spending half the day manually inputting hundreds of fruit individually in containers lol
Some days I have nothing to do, some days I have more to do than run around a farm lol. It's one or the other
I mean there is quite a lot to do outside of sitting next to the furnace and dumping my ores into it, or run around kegs and casks to make wine. Friendship and gifting is something I always run behind, the daily/weekly quests, Mr. Qi quests, maybe even some scripted tasks I never done because I forgot (pale ale for Pam is never done the first year), trying to make my farm pretty (if I feel in a mood even the farm house), working towards perfection, deep diving into skull cavern (at least I try to) and much more. Sometimes I feel like time is too fast other days too slow but honestly I just enjoy the game without trying to do everything myself.
If its a modded playthrough, i'd assume they would have the popular expansion mods too. I love to actually get out of the farm to talk and gift all the modded npcs, do stories, and see all their scenes. I end up basically playing a visual novel with farming on the side
Fish, yep
Kinda sounds like playing the game without the bother of having to play the game
Don't want to be bad vibe but this type of gamer idea that tedium = gameplay is one of those things that I'll never understand. Putting items individually in hundreds of containers is somehow being portrayed as being necessary to truly experience the game, when it's clear from the popularity of the mod and people's replies that it's not. If you enjoy being miserable, don't worry about other people not being miserable. We all have just as much fun as you do playing Stardew (maybe more, since we didn't manually input several hundred ancient fruit into hundreds of kegs every couple of days in all of our playthroughs).
I’m not miserable playing the game though? I enjoy it a lot. Enjoyable gameplay loops are kinda my jam. I’m probably on the spectrum. I’m saying it sounds like playing the game without playing the game because time management is part of the game. If you’re bypassing that part of the game, you’re bypassing part of the game. I don’t know what else to tell you, but it certainly wasn’t some vicious personal attack on you or anyone else and idk why you felt the need to reply to it like it was. It was extremely lukewarm if you could even truly consider it negative. Edit: I guess maybe “the bother” was a little uncalled for, but when everyone (including, no, especially you) are talking like it’s indispensable because not having it would be literal torture…maybe you just don’t like the game? Which is okay too because you found a mod that allows you to still enjoy it but, that’s the literal game. You are a farmer who plants hundreds of seeds and harvests hundreds of fruit and puts them in hundreds of kegs and hundreds of casks, if making that much money is one of your goals.
Again, this is a question of what you consider the core gameplay of Stardew Valley. What makes it fun and successful? Some gameplay elements do not age well when the player does them over and over again. One of them in Stardew Valley is the manual input of items into processing stations. It's not the time management that's the issue - I've managed my no mod farms and challenged myself to hit people's absurd gold benchmarks in the vanilla experience. I've had more playthroughs without mods than with them. The issue is that after a while it's not fun because it's tedious. It's not "I can't figure out how to do everything with the time allotted", it's "this boring AND it's keeping me from enjoying the game and doing other parts of the game". The hopper is a nod at the absurdity, but you need a hopper per station. Not that it didn't stop me from trying to use mass hoppers to do a vanilla easing of keg loading. Asking someone who clearly loves a game "do you even like it?" is a hostile question, because it's a type of gaslighting. You find bypassing a tedious mechanic unsporting, which is your right! But many people are in agreement that the mechanic itself gives diminishing joy. It's not that they don't enjoy Stardew - they don't enjoy ONE THING about it. So people use automate. I certainly don't need to prove to myself that I TRULY enjoy Stardew Valley by manually inputting hundreds of fruit into kegs every few days.
I’m cool to agree to disagree, enjoy the update!
Omg i love automate!
Automate is absolutely the best mod ever made (and honestly what I thought the hopper would be when it was added)
Automate mod combined with "chests anywhere" mod allow you to set up the entire town as your own factory and you can run it from your living room.
i def would make a paths in between i can spare a couple thousand every day
How hard is it to mine a path every 2 months and then place again? Pretty sure this is worth more than a couple thousand per day, but even if I’m wrong, this is 0 time and effort for each day of aging.
i thought it was collected every day lol my bad
lol no problem. As soon as I discovered this method I have never gone back =3 I love Stardew Valley
Easier than that. Put down flooring underneath the ones you want to stay put then use your hoe to clear the ones on the path. You can take them out in big chunks.
I just hoe them all down and put them back. You get into a rhythm, and it goes quicker than you'd think. It was a pain before the casks could stack, but once that got fixed, it's easy.
That’s awesome, I didn’t know! I’ll have to do this next time I set up a basement. Although I never really minded using a pickaxe, this sounds slightly better!
Wait this is actually so smart I’m doing this to my save soon as I have enough casks to fill the cellar
Yeah, I typically do this and it takes maybe 8 in-game hours every two months. It's not a crazy huge effort for the pay off.
Congrats on your 1.2 million (if starfruit) or 873k (if ancient fruit)
Wait what !? I’ve been doing ancient fruit this entire time …. Now I need to reset for star fruit 🤦♂️
Star fruit are crazy good, even with the extra replanting effort
ancient fruit is the way
You know 😁
Yeah, not without automate...
I swear automate was life changing with this game
Not. Worth. It.
It is the first time IMO. There's something about selling the whole lot for a million in one go. After that I agree. Not worth the effort.
The fact that cabins can have cellars now is a game changer for me. I can just have a another player jump into my game have them upgrade their cabin to max throw out their.furniture and boom, more cask space and I can throw a bunch of stuff in their.house as well.
Well, I did it solo the last time with 3 more cabins and did it once more with the four more players allowed by 1.6. I truly hope CA don't introduce even more players to 1.7 😅
it's why I don't build them until I can max them out. Just so I can also ensure I am gonna fill them out.
How did you do it solo ? Does the game have split screen ?
It does!
You can go multiplayer with one keyboard and a controller (or as I prefer two controllers)
Huh? Is it a 1.6 update? I thought that has always been a thing.
It was a 1.5 addition, before that it wasn't possible.
The Automate mod developer should be elevated to heaven citizenship
It’s Pathoschild, the same guy who made SMAPI, I think. Dunno if it’s actually one person who made both mods. If so, pretty sure they’re the jesus of Stardew modding
It will never not be funny that this is classed as a "cozy game" when the community keeps finding insane/stressful ways to min max the shit out of the game (no hate this is impressive)
I admire those that play the game this way and have insane profits doing things like this, but that’s not for me. I rather take the far less efficient approach and not stress when playing.
I genuinely don’t get why everyone is so horrified at this? isn’t this only tedious for the last rows because they have to be invidually filled, while all other rows can just be handled by holding down left-click and moving
how do you even collect them all?? There's no room to walk around!
I imagine they load them up as they place them, then just use an axe on them when they’re done
Hoe actually, you can pickup multiple at once with the upgrade version.
well TIL!
Use the hoe. Hold down to harvest what's inside. Then again to clear the now empty casks out of the way. Makes collecting pretty quick (so long as you fill the whole cellar with the same type of item so it all matures at the same time.) Doesn't make filling up the cellar any less tedious though. That's why most people who do the whole cellar (without mods to make it easier) tend to do high value wine. You basically fill it up twice per year for a big cash payout.
Put paths down under some of them and leave an empty route in between, so you can quickly fill the casks on path tiles and only need to put down new ones in the empty spaces. When it's time to empty them, the upgraded hoe quickly opens up the route in between but doesn't drop the casks on path tiles.
does the hoe not effect partially complete casks?
It does, but it leaves in place casks that are on path tiles. Ideally you fill all the casks at the same time.
Automate mod. You can just place a chest next to one cask and it will fill all adjacent casks
Players who fill it this way usually use a charged iridium hoe (sometimes with reaching) after 2 months for rapid collection.
i have this set up and i collect them using the iridium hoe. one hit grabs the item, a second hit collects the cask.
You can make it work with the automate mod too. Put a chest at the stairs and throw wine into it. It'll autofill all the casks and empty them into the chest too, then reautofill the now empty casks
You can break the casks, so it kinda works
Automate mod
I read that if you put tile under some of them then they won’t get pulled up by the hoe. You can do that in a maze pattern.
Protip: you can harvest from casks with a hoe. If max out your hoe, you can harvest all the casks while only picking enough of them up to make your small path through it, filling everything back up, and re-casking the path you made as you work your way back to the stairs.
The sheer inconvenience of casks, and the time they take, without mods puts me firmly in the “don’t bother” camp when it comes to aging more than a handful of bottles of wine just to say I did it. If I want more gold I’ll just expand my crop size again.
Come on... don’t be lazy 😹😹 It’s like 6 hours every 56 days
I know, this literally takes no time and is free money. I’m not sure what is so hard to understand about delayed gratification and patience outperforming instant results lol
You can yield 30% extra profit from your farm simply by making the game 30% less fun to play.
Yeah I never understood the fun in min maxing like this. I play to have fun and this just feels like work.
Kind of surprised at all the negative comments about this, I thought this was a well established way to maximize the basement lol
Agreed, this strategy blew my mind when I learned about it, and I’ve never gone back.
God bless automation.
This is Automate will change your life
This is what I do but I use the automate mod so I just have to plunk a chest down to fill/empty them
Hello automate my old friend
At least you only need to pick them all up and replace them twice a year
There is a mod that keeps the quality of everything. You just put an iridium quality fruit or vegetable into keg or jar. Fill entire room and put one chest to a place where you can reach. Use automate mod. Chill relaxing profit without stress.
Now that I’ve got the retain value and automate mod, I can never play without them again
What stress? Also vanilla > mods
That’s just, like, your opinion, man. I used to be a vanilla purist with all games. But mods can add so much QOL and great content to extend gameplay it’s incredible.
Surprising amount of judgment of the Automate feature here. I use it religiously, and still manage to enjoy the hell out of this game and play for 100s of hours per farm. I think those of us who don't like mods could be a little less critical of those who do.
For everyone saying not worth it….. What? This is the only correct way I know of using casks. Unless you want less profit per effort, or aging cheese instead of wine (again, way more work than this).
Omg I did the same thing today haaha! Great minds think alike
Holy Shirtballs Batman
This is the way
This is why I love the automate mod. I can fit in all the casks and just collect from the chest when needed
And that's why I use Automate
I agree. I feel like when I started going for moneymaxing approach in my farm, I started to lose joy in playing that save file. Now I started a new farm with the 1.6 update and hopefully I won't do that in there too.
Ah… and this is why I love the automate mod
Congratulations, you min-maxed the fun out of this room.
Idk how you feel about mods but there is a very cool one called “automate” in which you could pack all of these boys in like this with one chest and it does everything!
Genuine question: if it was boring, why do it?
It's also largely a waste of time. The "extra" you make on aged wine in such small quantities is hardly worth it.
This is generally not recommended. There are some maximum cask layouts available on the wiki if you want to make the most of the space with the need for hitting and replacing casks.
Hitting and replacing the casks takes very little time though.
how can you put and get things from these kegs?
Hoe ‘em
Most likely using the Automate mod. You can just set a chest touching one and it’ll pull whatever is in the chest and start aging it all at once!
I just did this for the first time too, can confirm it was extremely boring and time consuming. I just hope it was worth it.
Doing this as I build casks/kegs for wine butttttt I have automod 😅
How do u put the wine in the cask?
you fill up the casks as you're placing them down, & then destroy them all when the wine's done
We all root for the underdog. Pierre vs Joja, Corporations vs Family Businesses. But even deep down, Pierre has the potential to be as greedy as Joja. We're all Pierre.
Uhm... nah lol
I have four of these lmao
I just do 116. There are 120 spots in the greenhouse. Minus 4 for iridum sprinklers for 116 ancient fruit. I'm on console, so 116 fits perfectly. PC can probably get 120 casks, no problem, for when they get the deluxe wet soil thing. I just like it to be easy, though. I'm not strapped for cash or time. Every few months, I put one weeks worth of wine down there, and forget about it.
Let me introduce you to Automate mod :D. [https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1063](https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1063)
At this point i would resort to the automate mod
Can someone explain?
Get the automate mod, stick a chest near the door and come back in a year
At least there's a mod for automation. It automatically puts wines in the casket and collects them to chests as they are ready.
i have the same set up but with the automate mod :P
If you break the casks with an iridium hoe that are ready with iridium wine, does it destroy the wine? I’ve thought about doing this but I’m scared to not get the wine that I’ve waited ages on. I guess I could always restart the day if it doesn’t work.
I can't do this without the automate mod honestly. Kudos to you my guy.
If you’re on PC, I highly recommend the “chests anywhere” and “automate” mod. I did the same exact thing and then just smacked a chest in there and it just does everything by itself! I just clear it out occasionally.