Stardew Valley: A Spiritual 'Successor' to Harvest Moon

Wow. Here on Agricultural farm we are coming to grips with the new farming paradigm we've enacted for spring 2: sprinklers. A central grid of 16 improved sprinklers.
The apricot and cherry tree are providing fruit, though it looks like my cherry tree might have blighted during the storms because suddenly I am getting chunks of coal.
Duck mayo seems to be a hit, and my barn is in the process of getting the upgrade needed for goats.
There's a skeleton key in my wallet, which I am sure will prove useful at some point.
No iridium yet. Which surprised me. I was expecting to pull some from the mine, but apparently it bottoms out at 120 with no further levels. Going to rerun the last few levels for gold so maybe it is just rare enough that I missed it.

Iridium is still pretty rare. You can get it from geodes, but you'll need access to the desert (via the bus) to get iridium ore in usable quantities.

Anyone care to comment in whether the PS4 controls are sufficient enough to pass in the oc version? Are there good reasons to go oc like mods or superior controls?

Thanks,
Chad

Itsatrap wrote:

Iridium is still pretty rare. You can get it from geodes, but you'll need access to the desert (via the bus) to get iridium ore in usable quantities.

Good to know. I was about to plunge into the mines until I found enough to build my first iridium sprinklers.

As another option, the gypsy wagon sometimes has iridium sprinklers for sale too.

Iridium sprinklers take a long time to "pay" for themselves, you are much better off making large amounts of quality sprinklers and saving the iridium for tools until you have a full set. At the very least an iridium watering can and pick, the hoe and axe are less essential.

I just wish it would rain in my game, it hardly ever rained last fall and now its been a week during the spring and still not a cloud.

Tamren wrote:

Iridium sprinklers take a long time to "pay" for themselves, you are much better off making large amounts of quality sprinklers and saving the iridium for tools until you have a full set. At the very least an iridium watering can and pick, the hoe and axe are less essential.

That's actually another reason why I bought most of my sprinklers from the gypsy wagon rather than using my iridium for them. I wanted the iridium for tool upgrades and by the time I was at this point, it was easy to have the money for a sprinkler whenever one appeared on the wagon.

I had quality sprinklers everywhere by that point, so would just upgrade one of them whenever I had opportunity while still being able to keep my iridium for other things.

Tamren wrote:

Iridium sprinklers take a long time to "pay" for themselves, you are much better off making large amounts of quality sprinklers and saving the iridium for tools until you have a full set. At the very least an iridium watering can and pick, the hoe and axe are less essential.

Again, thanks for the tip. Where would I be without you guys? Wasting a lot of time, that's for sure.

Another source for iridium sprinklers:

Spoiler:

You can buy them on Fridays from Krobus down in the sewer for 10000 gold. Buy them on the first Friday before fall, and plant cranberries. You'll get five harvests from each plant, and at a base sale price of 75 gold per berry, you'll make back the 10K by the end of the season. If you put down fertilizer, you'll turn a healthy profit.

trichy wrote:

Another source for iridium sprinklers:

Spoiler:

You can buy them on Fridays from Krobus down in the sewer for 10000 gold. Buy them on the first Friday before fall, and plant cranberries. You'll get five harvests from each plant, and at a base sale price of 75 gold per berry, you'll make back the 10K by the end of the season. If you put down fertilizer, you'll turn a healthy profit.

Spoiler:

Ummm The sewer is locked for me... Is that a community center thing?

Getting a better watering can does more to improve your farming speed than anything else. The more crops you can water at once the less time you need per day and the more energy you have for other things (like planting more crops). Even when you have dozens of sprinklers like I do it's still helpful because you can plant "overflow" crops beside the sprinklers and water them manually. It's better to water foraged crops by hand because when they mature they often un-hoe the ground underneath them, so if you grow forage items with sprinklers you end up with a lot of maintenance work fixing all the holes in your neat rows. Also the first time you plant something you have to water it by hand, even with sprinklers, so having a better watering can always helps.

manta173 wrote:
trichy wrote:

Another source for iridium sprinklers:

Spoiler:

You can buy them on Fridays from Krobus down in the sewer for 10000 gold. Buy them on the first Friday before fall, and plant cranberries. You'll get five harvests from each plant, and at a base sale price of 75 gold per berry, you'll make back the 10K by the end of the season. If you put down fertilizer, you'll turn a healthy profit.

Spoiler:

Ummm The sewer is locked for me... Is that a community center thing?

Spoiler:

You'll get the key from Gunther after donating a certain number of items. Sixty, I believe.

trichy wrote:
manta173 wrote:
trichy wrote:

Another source for iridium sprinklers:

Spoiler:

You can buy them on Fridays from Krobus down in the sewer for 10000 gold. Buy them on the first Friday before fall, and plant cranberries. You'll get five harvests from each plant, and at a base sale price of 75 gold per berry, you'll make back the 10K by the end of the season. If you put down fertilizer, you'll turn a healthy profit.

Spoiler:

Ummm The sewer is locked for me... Is that a community center thing?

Spoiler:

You'll get the key from Gunther after donating a certain number of items. Sixty, I believe.

Wow... I think I'm at 20 or so right now... I need to get moving.

manta173 wrote:
many folks wrote:

...
spoily things
...

Wow... I think I'm at 20 or so right now... I need to get moving.

You can get a surprising amount by doing a lot of fishing and getting the bonus chests. Or just digging up worms when you see them on the ground too.

skylarhawk wrote:
manta173 wrote:
many folks wrote:

...
spoily things
...

Wow... I think I'm at 20 or so right now... I need to get moving.

You can get a surprising amount by doing a lot of fishing and getting the bonus chests. Or just digging up worms when you see them on the ground too.

This is true. My newest playthrough, I decided to focus on fishing. It's been amazing for finding artifacts. I just started fall, and I got the key bonus from Gunther.

Quick quality of life question: Is there any point in talking to all of the villagers during the festival events after the first year? I just played through the egg festival and while I'm not 100% certain it definitely seemed like absolutely nothing changed from the previous year.

AFAIK no, the dialogue stays the same even if you get married. I'm pretty sure festivals don't even give you the small social bonus from talking to someone. You can even skip them outright and the only thing you might miss is the prize, unless you already have it in which case you would just get a bit of money. BTW relationships do decay unless maxed, but this is very slow. You gain a small amount towards the next heart just by talking to people and the decay won't matter if you talk to a person at least once a week.

My harddrive died and I won't be able to play until...sometime. I'm losing my damn mind!

Vector wrote:

My harddrive died and I won't be able to play until...sometime. I'm losing my damn mind!

Don't waste iridium on the new one. Save it for tools.

-BEP

Tamren wrote:

AFAIK no, the dialogue stays the same even if you get married. I'm pretty sure festivals don't even give you the small social bonus from talking to someone. You can even skip them outright and the only thing you might miss is the prize, unless you already have it in which case you would just get a bit of money. BTW relationships do decay unless maxed, but this is very slow. You gain a small amount towards the next heart just by talking to people and the decay won't matter if you talk to a person at least once a week.

I can actually confirm from a test I did in one playthrough, that if you haven't met someone, but talk to them at, say, the egg festival, it doesn't actually even count towards meeting 28 people, and their status doesn't change in your social bar. They stay as "??".

8 days straight and still not a drop of rain

Wiped my spare laptop and installed Stardew Valley. Was finally able to play last night. Got first prize at the Stardew Valley Fair and earned enough points to buy a Stardrop.

I have the next day all planned out. The game really gets into you. Since each day is finite and compartmental, I can really plan ahead on everything but, personally, don't get too crazy like tracking crop growth.

Really looking forward to Winter. Great time to upgrade my tools, push deeper into the mines, and get a bunch of rocks.

Playing now on Xbox One, or at least taking my turn, as my kids have farms...

The only thing I mind about using the controller is watering, and how it's much easier to water in a long horizontal line for how the cursor jumps around, which in turn makes me want to have very different shapes to my farm than the PC (where I had 3x3 plots for sprinklers all over..at end of year one on PC...).

Have not tried fishing yet. A bit afraid of fishing, but my daughter is awesome at it so I spose it's doable for the old man.

I'm stalling out! Not because of the game, well kinda because of the game. As my turns get more and more complicated I'm finding myself wracked with indecision. And as my day gets packed with more and more goalposts to inch towards I am finding the 'game saves when you sleep' mechanic very limiting. I've left the game idling on an inventory screen all irl day just so I wouldn't lose progress I've made when I was suddenly called away or restricted to one hand while holding baby. Playing in short bursts and then idling again. Positives: the seasonal ambient soundscapes are pretty soothing. Negatives: I need to start keeping notes because more than once I've had to backtrack to pick up seeds for an empty plot. And maybe a checklist so I remember to free the animals. Luckily all my buildings autofeed now.
Case in point... I have had access to the greenhouse for a full season and visited it once just to see what it looks like. So much potential lying fallow irks me, but when I think about how to set it up and what to plant I kind of lock up and go fishing for a bit.
I need more time to play!
Married to Maru and a crib materialized in the kitchen one morning. 'Subtle hint?'

I'm also stalling out on this, the whole no rain for 2 weeks straight really killed my momentum, I need the rain to get the mermaid pendant but the fact that the guy only shows in middle of rain is highly inconvenient. So I'm not sure if my game is bugged out or I'm actually experiencing a drout. I started a new game just to see and it rained within first three days.

As for the green house I recommend planting ether cranberries or blueberries if you don't really want it have the time to constantly fiddle in there.

Fastmav347, there is a crafting recipe for a "rain totem", I believe.

I just peeked at the wiki, and evidently you get that recipe at

Spoiler:

Foraging skill level 9.

So that's one additional potential solution to your drought issue?

Yeah, I found myself in the same place at the start of year 2. Just so much I want to do, and I don't want to take notes all the time but feel I have to else I won't remember what I was going to do the next day the next time I have time to play. One thing that has helped me overcome this a bit is to try and schedule a bit more playing time just so that I can repeat the first couple of hours of play time while I figure out what I needed to do that day.

Fastmav347 wrote:

As for the green house I recommend planting ether cranberries or blueberries if you don't really want it have the time to constantly fiddle in there.

My year two spring and summer were the era of coffee beans. The ROI is insane and from a single mob-dropped coffee bean I ended up planting bushes on about two thirds of my fields to harvest 300+ coffee beans every other day. That's 9K gold per cycle once they're keggerized into cups of coffee. And the brewing goes relatively quick. One in game hour I think, so with a row or two of kegs you can churn out lots of money really quick! Probably horribly inefficient for the effort involved, but it's easy to remember and very satisfying to have quick results. Much better than the pickling barrels. By the time you get to pick up the results you have a stack of backlogged produce.

Edit: Which is why I didn't really get to the greenhouse. I would spend my mornings harvesting coffee and telling myself that 'yes' I COULD plant more coffee, but then I'd have to harvest it and process it even more. Don't be greedy!
Edit2 in bold. Missed a word.

The greenhouse is great for planting things out of season? As anything will grow year-round.