(1.5 spoiler content is mostly marked, but there are some references to 1.5 in some charts / descriptions)
(1.6 spoiler content is all in a marked spoiler container at the bottom)
Note: All information in this article is assuming not using any new 1.6 items or powers, other than the spoilered section at the bottom.
Artisan vs. Other Professions:
Unlike in vanilla, Coopmaster / Shepherd will increase your maximum possible profits from animals more than Artisan. While for crops Artisan will still often yield better profits than Agriculturist, the gap between them is smaller than it is in Vanilla due to lower overall value of many fruits & wines. In fact when using HSG, the gap becomes incredibly small in many cases such as seasons with irrigated crops, and in Fall or the Greenhouse (aside from Hops / Fruit Trees) Agriculturist can actually give greater profits than Artisan, mainly due to seedmaker Sweet Gem Berries. Coop Animals:
Chickens are basic starter Coop income, worse than all other Coop animals with animals at low friendship, but get a big boost to 3rd best at high friendship. They lay daily, so have a higher interaction/week for all the processing, although it reduces somewhat at high friendship since Iridium quality Large Eggs sell for more than Gold Star Mayo, and Coopmaster increases the odds of getting Iridium quality. They sell at a profit compared to letting them keep laying, making keeping 1 slot open in a Coop for selling Chicks once they've laid an egg and the incubator is free again a nice little boost. This is still profitable even if you don't pet the Chick during the days waiting for the incubator to be ready again to boost its value. A side effect of laying daily is that Chickens can be useful if you are trying to amass many items to use for gifting / eating / cooking, such as quality eggs or mayo.
Void Chickens are similar to in Vanilla; best profit when leaving animals at low friendship in pastures, but don't really improve with high friendship, having the worst profit when animals are at max hearts. Like Chickens, they produce daily for a high amount of interactions. They sell a little better than Chickens.
Ducks are an immediate upgrade over Chickens at low friendship (but still worse than Void Chickens), and are the top producer at high friendship, moreso with Coopmaster. Main bonus is less gathering / processing compared to Chickens, and top laying profit at high friendship. They sell for a good bit more than Chickens, making "cycled" Coops more appealing where you dedicate 11 slots in the Coop for bird hatchlings at varying levels of friendship, selling them once they get to max Hearts and keeping the incubator running. This of course requires quite a lot of daily interaction for the benefit, so it provides the biggest boost when you're either already feeding Hay, or have Coopmaster, which makes it incredibly profitable. However, if you use Hay and don't have Coopmaster, you need to be cycling Dinosaurs for cycling to really be worthwhile.
Rabbits are have the worst Coop profits at low friendship, but at high friendship are a close second to Ducks. Produces every 5 days instead of every 4 now, so their bonus vs. Ducks is fewer gatherings at a slightly lower profit, as well as their unique item. However, the Rabbits themselves cannot be sold at a profit like Ducks can.
Dinosaurs are 2nd only to Void Chickens for low Friendship profits, but 2nd worst to Void Chickens at high friendship, though a big bonus is they only need gathered once a week, giving them incredible gold/day/tile/interaction, and a prime candidate for a "Lazy" method Coop where you only check in once every week or two to collect eggs, sell a Dino hatchling, and reset the incubator. However, their true purpose is as the most profitable animal to sell in Coops, typically being the best option for however many slots you want to dedicate to selling Coop animals, either 1 for a simple profit boost, or 5 (+1 bird) if you're "cycling" your hatchlings (3 + 1 bird if using grass pastures without Coopmaster).
1.5 Spoiler Content:
Spoiler:
Show
Golden Chickens Since they're essentially a "post-game" option, none of the balancing or discussion really accounts for the existence of Golden Chickens, but they are lowered to around ~25% of Vanilla profits anyways. Golden Chickens were also changed to lay every other day to require fewer interactions, and now Golden Eggs are only worth processing into Mayonnaise for regular, or just barely for silver quality eggs. Even with these changes, Golden Chickens fed Hay or in Pastures are generally 100% ~ 50% better than almost any other crop or animal option for gold/day/tile.
This makes a coop of 11 Golden Chickens laying + 1 slot for selling Dinosaurs better than any non-Golden Chicken option including crops, except Pigs with pastures, or Hay if you have Botanist + Gather but not Coopmaster.
In fact even just a Coop of 12 Golden Chickens laying, without selling any animals, has better gold/day/tile than almost anything else you can do on the farm other than Botanist + Gatherer Pigs, or "cycled" Dinosaurs. The only exception to this being if you took Artisan, and are using pastures, not Hay, and are using a farm plot on optimal crops, including through the Winter.
With Golden Chickens, "Cycling" is only worthwhile if you have Coopmaster with Dinosaurs, and only for a ~13% or ~30% increase for Hay feeding or pastures, respectively. If you Cycle 5 Dinos + 1 Golden Chicken, with the other 6 slots for laying Golden Chickens, this even beats the best possible Pigs for gold/day/tile
A big appeal for them is they still give incredible income even if you don't want to bother with selling Coop animals or processing Mayonnaise.
This makes a coop of 11 Golden Chickens laying + 1 slot for selling Dinosaurs better than any non-Golden Chicken option including crops, except Pigs with pastures, or Hay if you have Botanist + Gather but not Coopmaster.
In fact even just a Coop of 12 Golden Chickens laying, without selling any animals, has better gold/day/tile than almost anything else you can do on the farm other than Botanist + Gatherer Pigs, or "cycled" Dinosaurs. The only exception to this being if you took Artisan, and are using pastures, not Hay, and are using a farm plot on optimal crops, including through the Winter.
With Golden Chickens, "Cycling" is only worthwhile if you have Coopmaster with Dinosaurs, and only for a ~13% or ~30% increase for Hay feeding or pastures, respectively. If you Cycle 5 Dinos + 1 Golden Chicken, with the other 6 slots for laying Golden Chickens, this even beats the best possible Pigs for gold/day/tile
A big appeal for them is they still give incredible income even if you don't want to bother with selling Coop animals or processing Mayonnaise.
Barn Animals:
Cows are similar to Void Chickens as the best low-friendship performer, but require lots of attention for daily milkings / cheesemakers, and don't gain much at high friendship. Like Chickens, even if the profits from cows can fall behind other animals, if you are looking for a lot of quality milk or cheese to use for gifts / food / cooking, they are still useful.
Goats are comparable to Ducks as not standing out at low friendship, but being one of the top high-friendship performers. Like Ducks, as a bonus only need milked every other day.
Sheep are essentially the worst Barn animal overall, unless you have Shepherd and have them at high friendship, in which case they are significantly more profitable than any other animal by a decent margin, except Pigs if you're using pastures and/or Botanist. They now produce every 5 days by default, lowering to every other day with Shepherd + high Friendship, so like Goats or Ducks they don't have too many interactions needed.
Pigs are toned down quite a bit, so that while they can still achieve the highest total profit per animal by a wide margin, on a per tile basis at low friendship they require pastures to slightly beat Cows, due to how much foraging room they need. At max Friendship they beat other Barn animals or non-Coopmaster cycled Coops by a wide margin in gold/day/tile, but slightly lose to Shepherd Sheep if feeding Hay. However, with Botanist + Gatherer, on a per-tile basis they are substantially better than anything, although Coopmaster "cycled" Coops can come close.
All this profit, as in Vanilla, comes with the downside of daily collecting and Truffle Oil processing (no processing with Botanist), which can't be automated with Auto-Grabbers. This makes them one of the worst animal options in terms of gold/day/tile/interaction, even worse than "cycled" Coops. Since Pigs would need a certain amount of outdoor space even if being fed Hay, their gold/day/tile is not harmed as much by using pastures as most other animals. So if you are planning to have all your animals in outdoor pastures anyways, once at max Friendship they will always outperform any other outdoor animal or crop gold/day/tile, regardless of which professions you take (The one exception being if you take Coopmaster but didn't take Botanist + Gatherer, "cycled" dinosaur Coops will beat Pig Barns in gold/day/tile).
1.5 Spoiler Content:
Spoiler:
Show
Ostriches are essentially "upgraded" Dinosaurs, being useful for taking in either of two directions:
If just letting them lay at low friendship, they are the premier "lazy" animal: getting less gold/day/tile than other options, but generally having significantly better gold/day/tile/weekly interaction than any other options due to only laying once a week, although Coops with Dinosaurs using 0-heart animals with pastures will beat them. For the ultimate "lazy" style of using pastures with 0 heart animals & just checking in once a week or so, laying Ostriches get at least 5x better gold/day/tile/weekly interaction than any Barn alternatives. In fact you can push this even further, since you only lose ~6% or so of your profit if you skip turning the Ostrich Eggs into Mayo, for even better gold per interaction needed.
The other way to use Ostriches is by selling them. Since you can put as many Ostrich incubators as you want in a Barn, unlike "cycling" Coops, the best way to sell Ostriches is to use all 12 slots for selling by keeping 12 incubators full of eggs, and as soon as they are ready to hatch, just sell all 12 birds & immediately hatch their replacements by running in & out of the Barn 12 times. You can do this every 9 days normally, or every 7 days with Coopmaster (with Coopmaster waiting for the ostriches to lay new eggs even after the incubators are ready becomes the bottleneck)
Selling ostriches is always more profitable than selling their eggs/ mayo, by roughly ~50% (or more than ~100% if doing "lazy" pastures, especially with Coopmaster/Shepherd). This makes selling Ostriches 2nd to Pigs in gold/tile/day for Barns, even tying with Botanist Gatherer Pigs for "lazy" 0-heart Barns using pastures. And this is while needing less space & fewer weekly interactions than Pigs.
However, this comes at the cost of generally needing more interactions per week to accomplish. The gold/day/tile/interaction for selling Ostriches is generally well below all other Coop or Barn options aside from Pigs.
The exception to this is the "lazy" style with 0-heart animals in pastures, the gold/day/tile/interaction for selling Ostriches then is quite high, close to laying Ostriches (or slightly above them if using Coopmaster / Shepherd).
Shepherd actually gives a larger boost to ostrich selling than Coopmaster due to the increases in hearts per pet, with the exception of "lazy" 0-heart Barns using pastures where Coopmaster wins out.
- Either let them lay, as one of the top "lazy" animals in terms of gold/day/tile/weekly interaction despite a low gold/day/tile (boosted slightly by Shepherd)
- Or alternatively sell them as one of the top gold/day/tile animals despite a low gold/day/tile/weekly interaction. Notably, selling Ostriches gains significant benefits from either Shepherd or Coopmaster.
If just letting them lay at low friendship, they are the premier "lazy" animal: getting less gold/day/tile than other options, but generally having significantly better gold/day/tile/weekly interaction than any other options due to only laying once a week, although Coops with Dinosaurs using 0-heart animals with pastures will beat them. For the ultimate "lazy" style of using pastures with 0 heart animals & just checking in once a week or so, laying Ostriches get at least 5x better gold/day/tile/weekly interaction than any Barn alternatives. In fact you can push this even further, since you only lose ~6% or so of your profit if you skip turning the Ostrich Eggs into Mayo, for even better gold per interaction needed.
The other way to use Ostriches is by selling them. Since you can put as many Ostrich incubators as you want in a Barn, unlike "cycling" Coops, the best way to sell Ostriches is to use all 12 slots for selling by keeping 12 incubators full of eggs, and as soon as they are ready to hatch, just sell all 12 birds & immediately hatch their replacements by running in & out of the Barn 12 times. You can do this every 9 days normally, or every 7 days with Coopmaster (with Coopmaster waiting for the ostriches to lay new eggs even after the incubators are ready becomes the bottleneck)
Selling ostriches is always more profitable than selling their eggs/ mayo, by roughly ~50% (or more than ~100% if doing "lazy" pastures, especially with Coopmaster/Shepherd). This makes selling Ostriches 2nd to Pigs in gold/tile/day for Barns, even tying with Botanist Gatherer Pigs for "lazy" 0-heart Barns using pastures. And this is while needing less space & fewer weekly interactions than Pigs.
However, this comes at the cost of generally needing more interactions per week to accomplish. The gold/day/tile/interaction for selling Ostriches is generally well below all other Coop or Barn options aside from Pigs.
The exception to this is the "lazy" style with 0-heart animals in pastures, the gold/day/tile/interaction for selling Ostriches then is quite high, close to laying Ostriches (or slightly above them if using Coopmaster / Shepherd).
Shepherd actually gives a larger boost to ostrich selling than Coopmaster due to the increases in hearts per pet, with the exception of "lazy" 0-heart Barns using pastures where Coopmaster wins out.
Crops:
Reminders for crop price charts:
Most of the calculations of gold/day for crops assumed the plot was left fallow for the last few days of a season if there wasn't enough time for that particular crop to ripen again before it dies from season change. Thus, for some of the longer growing crops like Cauliflower, Melon, Pumpkin, etc., if you plant a quick growing crop like Parsnips, Wheat, or Bok Choy in their empty plot for the last few days of the season, their performance will be better than expected from the charts or descriptions here. In some cases this can make a big difference, such as SG Pumpkins / SG Eggplants actually giving noticeably better gold/day/tile than SG Cranberries, while the chart showing the gold/day/tile over the whole season can make it look like SG Cranberries would be better.
I assume no cost for quality-based fertilizers, and 80g for (Deluxe / Hyper) Speed Gro.
Also be aware that each price chart shows the gold/day assuming you are using the listed fertilizer, even if that fertilizer provides no benefit for that particualr crop vs. a cheaper one, so you may have to compare between different fertilizer charts for a fair comparison.
All charts are based on a Farming/Foraging level of 12 (Max level +2 from a food buff), although since this doesn't affect Jarred / Kegged profits it won't be relevant in most cases.
All Fruit Trees are shown after 3+ years of growth when all fruit are Iridium quality.
Note on Quality fertilizers:
Since in most cases speed-based fertilizers improve profits more than quality-based fertilizers, most charts don't show any quality-based fertilizers. The main exception is Sweet Gem Berries, which gain huge benefits from them, and so some charts including Sweet Gem Berries also show quality-based fertilizers.
Note: The charts below incorrectly say "Tiller" when they should "Agriculturist"
Also, these charts still display the pre-1.6 profits for processed (uncrafted) Seasonal Seeds, they should be ~1.5x - 3x higher, depending on the Season.
Spring Crops:
No Profession Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Artisan Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Agriculturist Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Special Notes:
Spring overall has the lowest average gold/day (other than Winter). In addition, using Deluxe / Hyper Speed Gro will not give much of a benefit to profits/day of Spring crops, unlike Summer & Fall.
Coffee - As Coffee is a multi-season crop, if planted in Spring over the course of the 2 seasons together it generally performs better than Spring crops, but worse than many Summer crops. A sort of "middle ground" option for getting good returns now and saving time tilling day 1 of next season, but sacrificing that plot which could have been used next season on more profitable crops. The high ROI/day is deceptive, in the sense that by the time you are able to plant large fields of Coffee you should have enough cash on hand to make ROI/day less relevant, and planting Coffee Beans later in the season gett less & less of the full 2-season value. The charts also assume you already have a Coffee Bean, so buying a Coffee Bean from the travelling cart is still a long-term investment.
Strawberry - The profits for Strawberries have been changed to where if bought at the Spring Egg Festival, they will have the below average gold/day unless kegged. So they are more of a long term investment, to buy a few and then use the Seedmaker to get more for Spring Y2 or Y3 where they can outperform most others if planted on Spring 1. As such, Rhubarb exists mainly as a "backup Strawberry," basically an inferior version, but able to easily get by Year 2 without all the prior investment and Seedmaking necessary for a large crop of Strawberries.
Rice - As an irrigated crop, rice will typically underperform other crops of the season, unless irrigated where it beats most competitors. However, only a small portion of your field is typically close enough to water to irrigate (depending on map, giving a benefit to maps with a lot of water on them), and often makes for awkward field placement. Additionally, milled rice provides an intermediate option between raw and jarred crops. Wih the greatly increased price of Rice, milled irrigated Rice outsells all other raw options and gets very close even to the top jarred options, but without taking up valuable jar / keg processing time since you can mill unlimited rice overnight. This makes it appealing for when all your jars / kegs are already reserved, as a quick way to boost your "unprocessed" crop sales, but only if you have a Mill. Milled Rice also boasts a ROI/day on par with jarred Parnsips, if you still have room to expand, or have low cash-on-hand.
Note: The charts above still display the pre-1.6 profits for processed (uncrafted) Spring Seeds, they should be ~1.5x higher.
Summer Crops:
No Profession Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Artisan Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Agriculturist Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Special Notes:
The middlest performing season overall, but can vary substantially depending on chosen crops / conditions.
Hops - They still perform well above-average, but not obscenely so as in Vanilla. Now they are essentially a way to get Fall-sized profits during Summer, at the cost of a great deal of interactions and kegs required, plus the awkwardness of growing trellis crops.
Wheat - Wheat's niche is that it will usually be a little worse than other options if you have no use for Hay for animals, but if you were otherwise planning to buy Hay, it often slightly outperforms many Summer options when kegged. With Hyper Speed Gro, it can beat Hops and even get close to some of the Fall vegetables! You can mill some into however much flour you need for cooking, but kegging is always the better gold/day.
Corn - Much like Coffee in Spring, a 2-season Corn plant outperforms many Summer options, but will be below average in Fall.
Starfruit - It may look like a joke given Starfruit's seed price is much higher than its base value, but Starfruit still holds a powerful niche. If you have Artisan and keg them all, unfertilized it will outperform any other Summer option in gold/day/tile except Hops. With Speed-Gro, only Hops or kegged Wheat + Hay can beat it. With DSG it beats any DSG or HSG Summer crop except HSG Wheat + Hay, which takes much, MUCH more interactions to accomplish. In the Greenhouse it sometimes can beat some of the Fall Veggies, but won't ever be the top crop there.
And as the most valuable wine, it remains appealing for Cask aging as it is now the best gold/day option to age by a significant margin.
Note: The charts above still display the pre-1.6 profits for processed (uncrafted) Summer Seeds, they should be ~2x higher.
1.5 Spoiler Content:
Spoiler:
Show
Taro Root - As an irrigated crop like Rice, Taro Root typically outdoes the competition if irrigated, but falls behind normally (all descriptions here assume you're using irrigated Taro Root), though it is reliant on speed fertilizer to excel. With irrigation, Speed-Gro, and jarred, it's tied with jarred Blueberries for gold/day but with fewer interactions / jars required. With DSG, its jarred gold/day is slightly better than the top non-Hops kegged gold/day. And with HSG, its jarred gold/day slightly beats kegged Wheat when using Hay, but is still below kegged Hops, but those take far more interactions / kegs. It also boasts the top raw gold/day for Summer, only losing to Corn if you're using no speed fertilizer.
With Artisan DSG, its jarred gold/day equals Red Cabbage's kegged gold/day. Artisan HSG irrigated Taro Root is still below HSG kegged Hops, but even better gold/day than Artisan DSG Starfruit, tied with kegged Wheat if you're using Hay, but you still have limited irrigated spaces, and it takes more interactions than Starfruit.
Pineapple - With Speed-Gro, Pineapple easily beats all non-Hops Summer options for best kegged gold/day, for a nice lazy option with few interactions. It loses to Melons or Red Cabbage with DSG, and falls behind even more with HSG. However the true power of the Pineapple is in the Greenhouse or Island Farm, as an "upgraded Ancient Fruit." With the same low interaction weekly harvest, kegged it will outdo all other multiple-harvest crops in the Greenhouse / Island that aren't Hops or Fruit Trees. Technically it's tied with Grapes & Cactus Fruit kegged and slightly below them jarred, but those require over twice the interactions and kegs. Sweet Gem Berries, or some other single-harvest Fall crops with good enough fertilizer will still outdo Pineapple in gold/day in the Greenhouse/Island Farm, but it's the ultimate lazy Greenhouse/Island crop.
With Artisan DSG, its jarred gold/day equals Red Cabbage's kegged gold/day. Artisan HSG irrigated Taro Root is still below HSG kegged Hops, but even better gold/day than Artisan DSG Starfruit, tied with kegged Wheat if you're using Hay, but you still have limited irrigated spaces, and it takes more interactions than Starfruit.
Pineapple - With Speed-Gro, Pineapple easily beats all non-Hops Summer options for best kegged gold/day, for a nice lazy option with few interactions. It loses to Melons or Red Cabbage with DSG, and falls behind even more with HSG. However the true power of the Pineapple is in the Greenhouse or Island Farm, as an "upgraded Ancient Fruit." With the same low interaction weekly harvest, kegged it will outdo all other multiple-harvest crops in the Greenhouse / Island that aren't Hops or Fruit Trees. Technically it's tied with Grapes & Cactus Fruit kegged and slightly below them jarred, but those require over twice the interactions and kegs. Sweet Gem Berries, or some other single-harvest Fall crops with good enough fertilizer will still outdo Pineapple in gold/day in the Greenhouse/Island Farm, but it's the ultimate lazy Greenhouse/Island crop.
Fall Crops:
No Profession Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Artisan Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Agriculturist Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Special Notes:
Overall the best performing season. With many high-value crops, this season may see more relative benefit from using quality-boosting fertilizers compared to other seasons if you'll be selling some crops raw, with many getting raw gold/day relatively close to jarred/kegged gold/day with the top quality fertilizer. Also most crops in Fall gain little benefit from being kegged instead of jarred compared to other seasons.
Sweet Gem Berry - Without Artisan, buying seeds for 1000g will always outdo any other Fall option. Using the Seedmaker to get seeds can underperform in comparison, usually being roughly ~25% less profitable than purchased ones. Notably, Sweet Gem Berries require very few interactions and also gain incredible benefits from using Basic/Quality fertilizer, etc. So much so that Quality fertilizer will let Seed-Maker Sweet Gem Berries beat the top DSG Fall crops for gold/day, and the ultimate quality fertilizer will put Seed-Maker Sweet Gem Berries on par with even the best HSG Fall crops in gold/day. However, getting enough Rare Seeds to grow them in bulk will take some time. With Agriculturist and HSG, you can get 2 plantings & harvests of Sweet Gem Berries in Fall.
Additionally, Sweet Gem Berries now compare very favorably to other crops in the Greenhouse, even with speed-fertilizers or using the seedmaker.
Another huge benefit for Sweet Gem Berries is not needing the time or expense of Kegs or Preserves Jars.
NOTE: In the above charts, when using HSQ or some quality-fertilizers the profit for travelling-cart-bought Sweet Gem Berries may extend beyond the chart, reaching up to 187 gold/day/tile in those cases. However, cart-bought Rare Seeds cannot be purchased in bulk anyway.
Beets - With the raised price of Sugar, Beets are not just the best way to get Sugar for cooking, but give you an option to get gold/day which is better than practically any raw crop and close to many jarred Fall crops, without taking up Jar / Keg production, as you can mill essentially unlimited Beets overnight. This makes it an appealing option if your jars / kegs are already fully booked, but you want to increase your profits the most. Additionally, if you somehow haven't fully expanded your farm by now or have limited cash-on-hand, Beets offer an incredible ROI/day, even more if milled to Sugar. However, using the very best quality-boosting or speed-boosting fertilizer will allow some other Fall crops to get better raw gold/day than even DSG milled Beets.
Note: The charts above still display the pre-1.6 profits for processed (uncrafted) Fall Seeds, they should be ~3x higher.
Seasonal / Winter Seeds:
Seasonal Seeds have improved profits compared to vanilla (especially since in 1.6 most forage can now be pickled / juiced), but are still clearly inferior to purchased seed crops for gold/day, offering a quick way to get returns with no out-of-pocket expenses. Crafting the seeds to sell is now always more profitable than selling the crops directly (unless taking Botanist for 100% iridium quality), but always less profitable than processing the forage crops themselves, giving around ~60% of the profit but skipping the need for machines. They follow the Better Balance pattern of increasing profits from Spring->Summer->Fall (with Winter matching Summer). However it's up to you if investing effort into the relatively small Winter crop yield is worth the opportunity cost of Fishing, Mining, using those jars/kegs on leftover Fall crops, etc.
NOTE: The charts above still display the old pre-1.6 profits for Seasonal Seeds, as Nexus isn't allowing reuploads of images for some reason.
Ancient Fruit, Tea, & Fruit Trees:
Ancient Fruit's new role is "the king of lazy outdoor crops," due to how little interactions or planning it requires. The only time it will beat "optimized" outdoor crops on the farm for yearly gold/day/tile however is if you are only using Speed-Gro, but no Hops & no Artisan. Otherwise, it will usually be just a tad below an "optimized" crop plot for that year, falling behind even further if you have Artisan and/or are kegging Hops. Similarly, it's not the top crop in the Greenhouse either, even among the "lazy" options. Tea Bushes are now buffed slightly to be sort of a "poor man's Ancient Fruit" for when you don't want to devote many Kegs to Ancient Fruit Wine, and instead use many Preserves Jars or a few Kegs for Pickled Tea Leaves / Green Tea. Pickled Tea Leaves are now normally better in gold/day than jarred Ancient Fruit, even with Spped-Gro or DSG, but HSG will make Ancient Fruit pull ahead since Tea Bushes can't use fertilizers. Notably, brewed Green Tea is now worth only slightly less than pickled Tea Leaves (but still more than jarred Ancient Fruit without HSG), so brewing Tea Leaves should be appealing for a much faster return, needing only a few Kegs. Tea Bushes still retain their unique advantages of not needing water/fertilizer/scarecrows, being used for permanent fencing, etc.
(Excerpts from the Explanation & Background article):
Fruit Trees:
Each season has a low-tier and high-tier fruit tree, which are probably all best made into jelly unless you have many kegs to spare. The high-tiers do 77-86% of the average gold/day/tile of using that tile to grow hyper speed gro, kegged, non-hops, non-winter, non-artisan crops over a whole year, and low-tiers do 52-62%. This means that Pomegranate Trees outdoors jarred are just barely below kegged outdoor DSG Ancient Fruit in profits/day/tile. Low-tiers are cheap, and usually more than pay for themselves in less than a season, with much less maintenance than crops. High-tiers get quite expensive, requiring 2 - 6 seasons of yield to pay for themselves.
In the Greenhouse Fruit Trees perform much better, essentially quadrupling their outdoor production. Low-tiers in the Greenhouse will tend to outperform most other crops except for Hops. High-tiers beat everything else, eventually doing ~+50% better than Hops, or close to double the best non-Hops crop. This still comes at the cost of blocking the surrounding tiles while growing, and many kegs needed, but the addition now is a very steep startup price to achieve that optimal setup.
1.5 Spoiler Content:
Spoiler:
Show
Banana & Mango Trees : Island trees act as the peak of the low-tier and high-tier tiers, and when jarred have a cap of 92% or 68% of the gold/day/tile of non-Hops crops outdoors. This means the ultimate performing fruit tree when jarred will do slightly more gold/day than an Ancient Fruit crop, unless using Hyper Speed Gro.
Bananas in the Greenhouse or Island Farm are the best performing crop by a noticeable margin, with Mangos beating Hops, and Bananas ~70% better than Hops or double non-Hops crops. Mango saplings and Banana saplings are now bought from the Island Trader for a combination of some gold and items, and the droprate of Banana Saplings from Golden Coconuts is reduced from ~17% to 4%.
Bananas in the Greenhouse or Island Farm are the best performing crop by a noticeable margin, with Mangos beating Hops, and Bananas ~70% better than Hops or double non-Hops crops. Mango saplings and Banana saplings are now bought from the Island Trader for a combination of some gold and items, and the droprate of Banana Saplings from Golden Coconuts is reduced from ~17% to 4%.
No Profession Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Artisan Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Agriculturist Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Flowers & Honey:
Both unflavored Honey & several flower prices have been reduced to lower the value of honey over a year, so like in vanilla flowers themselves remain mostly useful for honey & gifting, not selling the flowers themselves. However since other crops & animals have been reduced even more, honeymaking turns out pretty well. Assuming using 1 flower per ~16 Bee Houses, and brewing all Wild or Blue Jazz Honey into Mead, over the course of a full year Bee Houses will usually get 44 gold/day/tile, or 62 with Artisan. This puts an "optimal" cluster of Bee Houses above most kegged Ancient Fruit, but a little worse than kegged Ancient Fruit with HSG. Also, while Bee Houses don't take much interaction, they do need around ~50% more than Ancient Fruit. This, alongside the high material cost of scaling up many Bee Houses, gives them a niche as an Ancient Fruit alternative late-game, and a nice low-maintenance boost to the farm early game when you only have enough resources to make a few that outperform your current crops, while other crop/fertilizer options are limited. Basically, they're suboptimal Ancient Fruit that you can build yourself early-game. That too comes at the cost of the materials used, which could instead be put towards more Preserves Jars / other items instead.
While you can't use Bee Houses in the Greenhouse, if you were somehow able to keep them running all year long with Fairy Roses they would outdo most other crops aside from Hops or some HSG Fall vegetables.
NOTE: In the above charts, the value for Honey is assuming picking the best flower for each season, using Deluxe Speed-Gro on it, Kegging all low-value Honey into Mead, and only using 1 flower for every ~16 Bee Houses, so in practice it may be difficult to attain this exact value.
Greenhouse:
In general, the Greenhouse gives more benefit to multiple-harvest crops, especially Fruit Trees. If you're willing to plant top-tier Fruit Trees that's still the best gold/day/tile for the Greenhouse, just like Vanilla. In fact even an Apple or Orange Tree will outdo most non-Hops crops in the Greenhouse if you're not using any fertilizer. However, if you're not planning to do the huge weekly interactions or upfront costs for Fruit Trees, you have a variety of options depending on fertilizer & whether you took Artisan.
Most notably Sweet Gem Berries are now a real contender for Greenhouse space, even from the seedmaker. While the ultimate quality-fertilizer will still be the best for purchased Sweet Gem Berries, in the Greenhouse the 2nd and 3rd best fertilizers for them are the ultimate speed-fertilizer and DSG. Any kind of fertilizer will allow them to beat any other crop including Hops, and using the ultimate speed or quality fertilizers get them just barely below the best jarred Fruit Trees.
For seedmaker Sweet Gem Berries, the ultimate-quality fertilizer and ultimate-speed fertilizer are tied for best fertilizer, with DSG coming in second, then Quality fertilizer in 3rd. While they will never approach Fruit Tree profits, using one of the "ultimate" fertilizers still lets seedmaker Sweet Gem Berries beat Hops, and DSG lets it come quite close while still requiring far fewer interactions. Even just Quality fertilizer lets them beat all non-Hops crops, even ones using the ultimate-speed fertilizer.
You can bring seedmaker Sweet Gem Berry profits even closer to purchased Sweet Gem Berry profits if you reserve a portion of your Sweet Gem Berry plots (roughly one-third of the plots) purely for seedmaker purposes, giving those your best speed fertilizer. This way you can use quickly grown, low quality ones for the seedmaker, and save the slowly grown, high-quality ones for selling.
After Fruit Trees and Sweet Gem Berries, Hops will typically be the next best earner for the Greenhouse. However if you want to avoid the high interactions/day required for Hops, you may instead go with the top multiple-harvest crops like jarred/kegged Cactus Fruit which gives the same gold/day as Grapes but without the hassle of a trellis, or Cranberries for lower gold/day (in the Greenhouse) if you don't have access to Cactus Fruit yet. And if you're using Speed-Gro or no fertilizer, these will be the top options aside from Fruit Trees, Sweet Gem Berries, or Hops. With DSG, jarred Artichokes, Pumpkins, and Yams start to beat jarred Cactus Fruit for gold/day, but still lose to kegged Cactus Fruit. However with HSG, most of the "big" Fall vegetables jarred will beat kegged Cactus Fruit, with Artichoke on top, and Amaranth a close second. These fall veggies with HSG all give very slightly more gold/day if kegged with Pumpkin being 2nd place to Artichoke, but it's up to you if the minor increase is worth the kegs vs. jars.
However with Artisan, while purchased Sweet Gem Berries will still beat most crops using an equivalent fertilizer, they need either one of the "ultimate" fertilizers to beat Hops, and fall quite a bit behind most Fruit Trees. Seedmaker Sweet Gem Berries fall behind many other top crop options like big Fall vegetables, Hops, Fruit Trees, etc. With Artisan, kegged Pumpkin beats kegged Cactus Fruit with just DSG, and even jarred Pumpkin beats kegged Cranberries. With Artisan & HSG most jarred Fall veggies beat kegged Cactus Fruit, and kegged Pumpkin is the top gold/day of all, though just barely beating other Fall veggies. Amaranth has top jarred gold/day, almost reaching kegged Pumpkin, with jarred Artichoke close behind jarred Amaranth. Thus with Artisan, having a good number of Jars might be more worthwhile than in Vanilla.
1.5 Content Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Show
Island Farm - For crops in general, see the section above on the Greenhouse. Unlike the Greenhouse you can use Bee Houses on the island, however. Keeping a Fairy Rose planted indefinitely allows Bee Houses to reach gold/day/tile better than any crops except Sweet Gem Berries.
No Profession Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Artisan Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Agriculturist Charts:
Spoiler:
Show
Misc:
Crystalariums & Gems
By default, the changes in this mod lower the profits of crops, trees, and animals enough that Crystalariums with Diamonds would be the clear champions in terms of gold/day/tile at 150 or 195 gold/day/tile, depending on having Gemologist. Therefore, Crystalariums now take 3.3x as long to clone most things. This results in a Diamond Crystalarium giving 45 gold/day (slightly above kegged unfertilized Ancient Fruit), or 59 gold/day with Gemologist (slightly below kegged unfertilized Ancient Fruit with Artisan). Using Hyper Speed Gro on non-Artisan kegged Ancient Fruit will barely outperform the Crystalarium now, and Artisan will put even DSG Ancient fruit on top as well. If you take Gemologist, but not Artisan, you would either need optimized non-Ancient crops + Winter crops to beat it, or a fully attended Coop/Barn with Rancher.
However, especially once slowed down 3.3x, the Crystalarium has one of the lowest interactions /tile needed, no additional processing, and thus the highest gold/day/tile/interaction of any options, with a few exceptions. (Quartz & Fire Quartz are slowed down less with lowered prices, to allow cloning for Refined Quartz to still be feasible). Because the value of Gems themselves is largely unchanged, mining for Gems should give worthwhile income for longer than in Vanilla, when compared to investing that time into crops instead.
Note that all changes to Crystalarium speeds can be toggled off in config.json.
Fish & Fish Ponds aren't directly addressed by this mod (other than a nerf to a 1.6 Fish-related item), but a side effect of lowering the profits for crops & animals is that end-game, the best Fish Ponds should be doing between 1/2 ~ 2/3rds of the gold/day/tile of an equivalent plot of fully fertilized kegged Ancient Fruit over a year. So while still the underdog, for low effort options they shouldn't look quite as pathetic in comparison anymore.
Foraging also isn't directly addressed, however the increase in value to the forage items grown by the Seasonal Seeds should make general foraging on the map a bit more worthwhile. Particularly heading into Summer & Fall, as those forage items received larger value increases which should help compete with the more profitable opportunities in those seasons.
Crafting recipes & Construction costs also aren't changed by this mod itself, but again check the "Recommended Mods" section for some options on improving the balance of crafting / construction costs.
Stardew Valley Expanded price adjustments
SVE crops are adjusted a little more loosely than the vanilla crops. The ones found from combat / foraging are generally better than other options when obtained for free, but using the Seed Maker on them will likely underperform some other options. The SVE Joja crops are adjusted so that using the Seed Maker is inferior to buying the seeds (Joja wants you dependent on them to get seeds after all), and will noticeably outperform Ancient Fruit, being near or above the top Fall crop profits but available all year long. Generally the Joja Berries will be more profitable, although Artisan will make the Joja Veggies much better instead. Neither are usually top options in the Greenhouse, however.
SVE fish & cooked foods prices left at default, but can now be affected by the Fish / Cooked Food Value Multipliers set in Better Balance's config.
New SVE 1.15+ content:
Spoiler:
Cucumber: Reduced average yield from ~2.7 Cucumbers per harvest to ~1.7 per harvest. Not great sold raw, but one of the best Spring jarred crops as it benefits a lot from Preserves Jars and Artisan, as well as Seedmakers
Butternut Squash: One of the best raw Summer options, especially with Deluxe Speed Gro
Sweet Potato: Gave a ~20% chance to yield an extra Sweet Potato, like regular Potato, to differentiate it from Pumpkin. Should be slightly better jarred than jarred Pumpkin, although Artisan puts Pumpkin back on top.
Golden Carrot: Reduced value, but still better than any other crop, since you can generally only get a limited supply.
New SVE fruit trees (Pear, Nectarine, Persimmon) have ~5% higher value & cost than the equivalent "expensive" tree for that season.
Birch Syrup: Reduced value, but still better than most other tapped syrups (Mystic Syrup beats it if using non-Heavy Tappers)
Money Bags from Money Trees are affected by the "Farm Forage Value Multiplier" and have reduced value, but they will still noticeably outdo the best fruit trees in the greenhouse (even when planted outdoors), and without needing any processing or Artisan.
Bears are a bit above the profitability of Pigs, but require no food or outdoor space to forage, and can be automated with the Auto-Grabber.
Camels are a bit above the profitability of Sheep, but don't require the Shepherd profession to maintain their high profits.
Geese have laying profits a bit above Ducks, but also can be regularly sold at around the same profit rate as dinosaurs.
Show
Cucumber: Reduced average yield from ~2.7 Cucumbers per harvest to ~1.7 per harvest. Not great sold raw, but one of the best Spring jarred crops as it benefits a lot from Preserves Jars and Artisan, as well as Seedmakers
Butternut Squash: One of the best raw Summer options, especially with Deluxe Speed Gro
Sweet Potato: Gave a ~20% chance to yield an extra Sweet Potato, like regular Potato, to differentiate it from Pumpkin. Should be slightly better jarred than jarred Pumpkin, although Artisan puts Pumpkin back on top.
Golden Carrot: Reduced value, but still better than any other crop, since you can generally only get a limited supply.
New SVE fruit trees (Pear, Nectarine, Persimmon) have ~5% higher value & cost than the equivalent "expensive" tree for that season.
Birch Syrup: Reduced value, but still better than most other tapped syrups (Mystic Syrup beats it if using non-Heavy Tappers)
Money Bags from Money Trees are affected by the "Farm Forage Value Multiplier" and have reduced value, but they will still noticeably outdo the best fruit trees in the greenhouse (even when planted outdoors), and without needing any processing or Artisan.
Bears are a bit above the profitability of Pigs, but require no food or outdoor space to forage, and can be automated with the Auto-Grabber.
Camels are a bit above the profitability of Sheep, but don't require the Shepherd profession to maintain their high profits.
Geese have laying profits a bit above Ducks, but also can be regularly sold at around the same profit rate as dinosaurs.
1.6 Content changes:
Spoiler:
Carrots from the Seedmaker will generally be at or near the bottom compared to other Spring options, however Carrot Seeds that are either found or purchased with Maple Seeds you weren't going to use will generally beat most other Spring options assuming you are using the Preserves Jar and not using Hyper Speed-Gro. However if you have the Agriculturist profession and use Deluxe Speed-Gro, pickled "free" Carrots explode in profits and handily beat anything except HSG Irrigated Taro and a few HSG Fall crops, and even pickled seedmaker Carrots beat most non-irrigated Spring crops aside from Kale. This comes with the significant cost of needing to harvest & replant every day, on top of all the jarring and sourcing enough "free" seeds to keep up. Of course, Seedmaker Carrots may still be desirable to grow just for their very high energy recovery when eaten, or to feed to your horse to speed it up. In particular later in the game, they have a kind of synergy with a playstyle focused on lots of tree cutting, as felling trees consumes a lot of energy quickly while producing tree seeds, and Carrots restore a lot of energy while their seeds can be bought with certain tree seeds.
Summer Squash is more consistent, with the difference in performance between the Seedmaker & "free" versions being smaller. Unfertilized, the jarred "free" version beats all other jarred options, and even all non-Hops kegged crops, while the Seedmaker version ties Corn for jarred g/d/t. The unfertilized raw "free" and Seedmaker versions have the #2(tied with 2-Season Corn) and #3 g/d/t behind 2-Season Coffee. With Speed-Gro several more crops tie the Seedmaker version for jarred g/d/t while the "free" version stays on top. With Deluxe Speed Gro it falls behind, although even so in many situations it always tends to have a respectable raw g/d/t, though usually Irrigated Taro or 2-season Coffee / Corn will beat it.
Broccoli is a bit more specialized. In many situations overall it underperforms other Fall crops, however when jarred with Speed-Gro it beats all other except for Sweet Gem Berry, although kegged Cranberries still beats the Seedmaker version. With Deluxe Speed-Gro it starts falling behind things like Pumpkin, although the "free" version still is the best for multiple-harvest gold/day/tile, while kegged Cranberries beat the Seedmaker version. Hyper Speed-Gro sees it fall behind further, although it will still have the top jarred g/d/t for multiple-harvest Fall crops. Artisan doesn't change much, although Agriculturist with Hyper Speed-Gro has Eggplant win top jarred g/d/t for multiple-harvest Fall crops.
However Broccoli's other niche is in the Greenhouse, where it has the top jarred g/d/t for multiple-harvest non-tree crops at 83g/d/t, above Cactus Fruit jarred but below Cactus Fruit kegged.
Powdermelon doesn't have much competition, other than Winter Seeds, so the comparison is pretty simple. Jarred or Kegged "free" Powdermelons have nearly double the gold/day/tile of Jarred or Kegged Winter Seeds, while Seedmaker Powdermelons are slightly below them, which is fairly consistent in all situations (Artisan closes the gap for kegged seedmaker Powdermelons & kegged Winter Seeds). Powdermelons will require more a few more processing machines overall (particularly kegs, if using kegs rather than jars) than Winter Seeds, however.
Mystic Syrup value was lowered significantly so that (assuming 2 tiles used per Mystic Syrup tap, to allow access to the tapper) it now has 38 gold/day/tile, a little less than "relaxed" non-Artisan kegged Ancient Fruit with a normal Tapper, and with a Heavy Tapper is 67 g/d/t, a little more than "intense" Artisan kegged Ancient Fruit. The Tapper profession increases this to 47 or 83 g/d/t, even beating "intense" Artisan kegged Ancient Fruit with growing Winter Seeds.
Mushroom Logs are deceptively powerful. Even with Better Balance's various nerfs to them (reduced mushroom prices, doubled growth time, stops producing in Winter, crafting requires more items and mushrooms), they are still shockingly profitable when using Preserves Jars, Tappers, and an efficient tree arrangement. Better yet, they still tend to require fewer interactions per week than most crops due to not ever needing to water, fertilize, or replant. Although unlike crops they will always need manual harvesting. Assuming 1 tree & 1 open walkable tile per mushroom log with about 16 trees nearby each mushroom log, and half the trees having moss on them, Dehydrating Silver Quality and lower mushrooms, and tapping all trees, a setup of all Pine trees can yield about ~47 gold/day/tile with regular Tappers or ~55g/d/t with Heavy Tappers, and Artisan pushes this to ~63 or 70g/d/t. This puts it between unfertilized and SG Ancient Fruit. Using all Mystic Trees ups this to ~67g/d/t or 78g/d/t with regular or Heavy tappers, and Artisan pushes this to a whopping ~85 or 95 g/d/t, above even HSG Ancient Fruit. The Tapper profession can also give a small boost due to all the tapped trees used in a mushroom log farm, but the vast majority of profits will always come from the (pickled) mushrooms. These profits can be significantly boosted with frequent use of Rain Totems to further reduce the mushroom growth time instead of just the normal ~20% chance of rain per day, although this can interfere with Junimos if you are using them to harvest your crops.
One thing to note despite the impressive g/d/t of a Mushroom Log patch, these values above are all assuming each Mushroom Log has 16 trees in range. In practice, there will always be some Mushroom Logs at the "edges" of your patch, which will have fewer trees nearby and thus bring down the average profits per Mushroom Log of your setup. For the example using 16 Mushroom Logs, 16 Pine trees, and 16 walkable tiles above and assuming a square arrangement, Mushroom Logs in the central area would get the full ~48 g/d/t with regular Tappers, but Logs at the corners would get only ~39g/d/t. Different shapes and arrangements of Log layout will vary, but the general rule would be the larger Mushroom Log patch, the better the average profits due to relatively fewer being on the edges.
Golden Animal Crackers essentially double the gold/day/tile of animals (aside from Pigs), which is why Better Balance by default reduces all Animal Product values to 0.7x once they become unlocked (Doesn't apply to Truffles/Truffle Oil, since pigs are unaffected). This essentially changes the profit bonus from 2x to 1.4x once all your animals have gotten crackers, with the added cost of reduced profits until you find enough crackers to break even. Pigs don't benefit from crackers, and Cycled Coops get only partial benefit (as animal sale prices are unchanged), so with crackers and optimal professions the highest gold/day/tile for animals will be Cycled Coops, then Pigs, then Sheep, although they are all very close to each other at that point. Additionally, Better Balance allows you to trade the crackers to Pierre for 10x or 15x Hyper Speed-Gro / Deluxe Fertilizer, or 5x Raisins in case your farm is focused on crops and not animals/fish. The +20% harvest bonus from Raisined Junimos can also help Crops compete with Golden Animal Crackered Animals.
Fish Smokers are still a significant boost to fishing profits even with Better Balance's nerfs (takes much longer to smoke, no longer benefits from Artisan). There is also an optional setting to adjust what quality Smoked Fish come out as, instead of vanilla "Preserved" by default. Setting it to something like "Normal" or "Silver" could be a way to slightly nerf most Rod-caught fish (which can often be Gold or Iridium quality soon into the game) while slightly buffing to Fish Pond fish (which are always Regular quality).
While Fish Smokers help out Fish Ponds slightly, Golden Animal Crackers come close to doubling their daily profits, enough to bring them to around the profits/day/tile of Artisan intense kegged Ancient Fruit (63 g/d/t). With the Angler profession, they can reach 90 g/d/t, above Hay-fed professionless Pigs.
Fruit Tree Saplings from the Prize Machine or Mystery Boxes can be set in the Better Balance C# config to always be the "Cheap" versions like Orange or Apple instead of "expensive" ones like Peach or Pomegranate, to avoid giving the player too valuable of a free boost.
Show
Carrots from the Seedmaker will generally be at or near the bottom compared to other Spring options, however Carrot Seeds that are either found or purchased with Maple Seeds you weren't going to use will generally beat most other Spring options assuming you are using the Preserves Jar and not using Hyper Speed-Gro. However if you have the Agriculturist profession and use Deluxe Speed-Gro, pickled "free" Carrots explode in profits and handily beat anything except HSG Irrigated Taro and a few HSG Fall crops, and even pickled seedmaker Carrots beat most non-irrigated Spring crops aside from Kale. This comes with the significant cost of needing to harvest & replant every day, on top of all the jarring and sourcing enough "free" seeds to keep up. Of course, Seedmaker Carrots may still be desirable to grow just for their very high energy recovery when eaten, or to feed to your horse to speed it up. In particular later in the game, they have a kind of synergy with a playstyle focused on lots of tree cutting, as felling trees consumes a lot of energy quickly while producing tree seeds, and Carrots restore a lot of energy while their seeds can be bought with certain tree seeds.
Summer Squash is more consistent, with the difference in performance between the Seedmaker & "free" versions being smaller. Unfertilized, the jarred "free" version beats all other jarred options, and even all non-Hops kegged crops, while the Seedmaker version ties Corn for jarred g/d/t. The unfertilized raw "free" and Seedmaker versions have the #2(tied with 2-Season Corn) and #3 g/d/t behind 2-Season Coffee. With Speed-Gro several more crops tie the Seedmaker version for jarred g/d/t while the "free" version stays on top. With Deluxe Speed Gro it falls behind, although even so in many situations it always tends to have a respectable raw g/d/t, though usually Irrigated Taro or 2-season Coffee / Corn will beat it.
Broccoli is a bit more specialized. In many situations overall it underperforms other Fall crops, however when jarred with Speed-Gro it beats all other except for Sweet Gem Berry, although kegged Cranberries still beats the Seedmaker version. With Deluxe Speed-Gro it starts falling behind things like Pumpkin, although the "free" version still is the best for multiple-harvest gold/day/tile, while kegged Cranberries beat the Seedmaker version. Hyper Speed-Gro sees it fall behind further, although it will still have the top jarred g/d/t for multiple-harvest Fall crops. Artisan doesn't change much, although Agriculturist with Hyper Speed-Gro has Eggplant win top jarred g/d/t for multiple-harvest Fall crops.
However Broccoli's other niche is in the Greenhouse, where it has the top jarred g/d/t for multiple-harvest non-tree crops at 83g/d/t, above Cactus Fruit jarred but below Cactus Fruit kegged.
Powdermelon doesn't have much competition, other than Winter Seeds, so the comparison is pretty simple. Jarred or Kegged "free" Powdermelons have nearly double the gold/day/tile of Jarred or Kegged Winter Seeds, while Seedmaker Powdermelons are slightly below them, which is fairly consistent in all situations (Artisan closes the gap for kegged seedmaker Powdermelons & kegged Winter Seeds). Powdermelons will require more a few more processing machines overall (particularly kegs, if using kegs rather than jars) than Winter Seeds, however.
Mystic Syrup value was lowered significantly so that (assuming 2 tiles used per Mystic Syrup tap, to allow access to the tapper) it now has 38 gold/day/tile, a little less than "relaxed" non-Artisan kegged Ancient Fruit with a normal Tapper, and with a Heavy Tapper is 67 g/d/t, a little more than "intense" Artisan kegged Ancient Fruit. The Tapper profession increases this to 47 or 83 g/d/t, even beating "intense" Artisan kegged Ancient Fruit with growing Winter Seeds.
Mushroom Logs are deceptively powerful. Even with Better Balance's various nerfs to them (reduced mushroom prices, doubled growth time, stops producing in Winter, crafting requires more items and mushrooms), they are still shockingly profitable when using Preserves Jars, Tappers, and an efficient tree arrangement. Better yet, they still tend to require fewer interactions per week than most crops due to not ever needing to water, fertilize, or replant. Although unlike crops they will always need manual harvesting. Assuming 1 tree & 1 open walkable tile per mushroom log with about 16 trees nearby each mushroom log, and half the trees having moss on them, Dehydrating Silver Quality and lower mushrooms, and tapping all trees, a setup of all Pine trees can yield about ~47 gold/day/tile with regular Tappers or ~55g/d/t with Heavy Tappers, and Artisan pushes this to ~63 or 70g/d/t. This puts it between unfertilized and SG Ancient Fruit. Using all Mystic Trees ups this to ~67g/d/t or 78g/d/t with regular or Heavy tappers, and Artisan pushes this to a whopping ~85 or 95 g/d/t, above even HSG Ancient Fruit. The Tapper profession can also give a small boost due to all the tapped trees used in a mushroom log farm, but the vast majority of profits will always come from the (pickled) mushrooms. These profits can be significantly boosted with frequent use of Rain Totems to further reduce the mushroom growth time instead of just the normal ~20% chance of rain per day, although this can interfere with Junimos if you are using them to harvest your crops.
One thing to note despite the impressive g/d/t of a Mushroom Log patch, these values above are all assuming each Mushroom Log has 16 trees in range. In practice, there will always be some Mushroom Logs at the "edges" of your patch, which will have fewer trees nearby and thus bring down the average profits per Mushroom Log of your setup. For the example using 16 Mushroom Logs, 16 Pine trees, and 16 walkable tiles above and assuming a square arrangement, Mushroom Logs in the central area would get the full ~48 g/d/t with regular Tappers, but Logs at the corners would get only ~39g/d/t. Different shapes and arrangements of Log layout will vary, but the general rule would be the larger Mushroom Log patch, the better the average profits due to relatively fewer being on the edges.
Golden Animal Crackers essentially double the gold/day/tile of animals (aside from Pigs), which is why Better Balance by default reduces all Animal Product values to 0.7x once they become unlocked (Doesn't apply to Truffles/Truffle Oil, since pigs are unaffected). This essentially changes the profit bonus from 2x to 1.4x once all your animals have gotten crackers, with the added cost of reduced profits until you find enough crackers to break even. Pigs don't benefit from crackers, and Cycled Coops get only partial benefit (as animal sale prices are unchanged), so with crackers and optimal professions the highest gold/day/tile for animals will be Cycled Coops, then Pigs, then Sheep, although they are all very close to each other at that point. Additionally, Better Balance allows you to trade the crackers to Pierre for 10x or 15x Hyper Speed-Gro / Deluxe Fertilizer, or 5x Raisins in case your farm is focused on crops and not animals/fish. The +20% harvest bonus from Raisined Junimos can also help Crops compete with Golden Animal Crackered Animals.
Fish Smokers are still a significant boost to fishing profits even with Better Balance's nerfs (takes much longer to smoke, no longer benefits from Artisan). There is also an optional setting to adjust what quality Smoked Fish come out as, instead of vanilla "Preserved" by default. Setting it to something like "Normal" or "Silver" could be a way to slightly nerf most Rod-caught fish (which can often be Gold or Iridium quality soon into the game) while slightly buffing to Fish Pond fish (which are always Regular quality).
While Fish Smokers help out Fish Ponds slightly, Golden Animal Crackers come close to doubling their daily profits, enough to bring them to around the profits/day/tile of Artisan intense kegged Ancient Fruit (63 g/d/t). With the Angler profession, they can reach 90 g/d/t, above Hay-fed professionless Pigs.
Fruit Tree Saplings from the Prize Machine or Mystery Boxes can be set in the Better Balance C# config to always be the "Cheap" versions like Orange or Apple instead of "expensive" ones like Peach or Pomegranate, to avoid giving the player too valuable of a free boost.
0 comments