I’m on year two and winter is approaching (fall 25). I didn’t really like last winter because it felt very long. What do you do during those times? Do you skip some days by going to bed right after waking up? Do you fish and mine like hell?
I catch up on everything I meant to do during the summer and didn’t have time for. Depending on how I’m playing, in the first winter, that might mean getting enough money for fruit trees, or mining/ buying enough stones for staircases, or maxing out fishing so I can get all the legendary fish the following year.
Year 2 is getting to the island, running the volcano enough to forge everything, running Mr. Qi’s tasks to buy recipes and ease-of-life items, and making sure I have everything in place for Grandpa’s evaluation (which is when the game was intended to do it’s original scoring).
If I’m being really aggressive, I’ll try for Perfection by the end of year two. I never make it, though, I’m just not interested in getting married and having kids :( but I go for my own (no- family) perfection anyway.
How do you manage to get the money for the clock, not to mention everything else, by the end of year 2?
So, I started playing Stardew Valley about six months after it released, and played it fairly heavily for a long while. I’ve done all sorts of challenges (no tool upgrades! no backpacks! no dealing with Pierre or Jojo!). I still come back to the game like 2 or 3 times a year, but I no longer feel obligated to play a “pure” game. I mean, sometimes I do play from absolute scratch; and yet there are other times when I have less time to spend, or less patience, or I just want to try to tweak a “better” min/max. And in those cases, I’ll name my character
[74][166][337]
Which means that every time someone in the game says my name, I get a prismatic shard, a treasure chest and an iridium bar.
If I’m min/maxing this way, then my first day - okay, this is from memory, but I think it goes like this: I quick-clear some space at the farm, but head into town around 8.30am. I forget who I start with (maybe Lewis or Robin?), but there’s one character who, if you speak to them on the first day, they’ll call you by name, so you get your prizes. Then you go sell the iridium bar and prismatic shard to Clint. Take the money and buy a telephone from Robin. [I forget, you may need to stop by and greet Gus here.] Head back to the blacksmith shop, drop the telephone somewhere, and start spam-calling the Saloon. Gus will answer by name and you’ll get lots of loot. Stop accumulating at a convenient point before 3.50pm and sell the iridium bars to Clint (keep the prismatic shards to give as presents). Stop by the Saloon and pick up some coffee and salads. Then head to the store and buy backpack upgrades and fruit trees and all the seeds you need from Pierre. If you have enough time (depends on when you stopped calling Gus), you can also stop by Robin’s and buy wood and stone and have her start on the barn (not the coop!). Head back to the farm, throw the treasure chests into the shipping bin, and quick-plant the trees and some veggies.
If you really want to speed-run, you can buy all the bundles from Jojo and be done with them by end of Spring Year 1, and then out to the Island by late summer/early fall of Year 1.
Ahhh okay that makes sense then. Is it possible without the item code exploit?
IIRC, there have been people who got the gold clock before the end of year two, though I’m not sure how common that’s been since v1.5 came out (v1.5 added so much extra content!). I can’t remember the less common ways; the most common way was to become an artisan farmer [+40% on wine] and build a massive Ancient Fruit winery. Like, really, really massive. The most aggressive vintners ran kegs through every available-but-mostly-unused space - the quarry, the railway yard, one guy even covered the desert.
In my case mostly radioactive bars, and starfruit wine.
Spending an entire day with luck boosting food and drink, 2 combined rings that each have full magnetism (so usually two iridium bands with either a magnet or glowstone ring), and a slingshot of explosive ammo. Just resetting floor 1 over and over again until you see ore you can shoot, shoot it, click the ladder so time is paused while the rings attract the ore, back up, repeat. I can get over 200 ore a day like that on a high luck day. Average of 2.3 ore per node, about 1.3 shots per node, craft explosive ammo from deconstructed spinners bought from Willy (deconstructers at the top of the ladder with a chest with the tackle next to it). That’s 40 bars, at 4,500 each with blacksmith, 4,359 when you account for the tackle (4,077 if you buy the coal), so 174k. My record is 265 ore, so 231k for the day.
Greenhouse full of starfruit and turn it into wine, 215k for every harvest, every 13 days with no fertilizer, 9 days with deluxe speed-gro (only 80g from the Oasis, negligible cost after enough harvests), for an average of 16.5k/23.9k per day.
Pre 1.5 I would do skull cavern dives with bombs and staircases for prismatic shards and iridium which I would make into bars.
I haven’t ever made it year 3 spring 1, but I have managed it in the spring of year 3.
Fish, mine, ranch, work towards the community center (if not already done), redesign the whole damn farm and somehow make it more work for myself to maintain the farm come spring
Mine like hell, grow winter wild seeds, befriend the townies
Breeding slimes for specific colors. Winter is basically the only time I can do that in relative peace, as “sorting” those little hyperagressive snotballs takes astoundingly long each day, and when I try to do that in any other season I start to neglect everything that isn’t automated (like planting crops, going to festivals, working towards the greenhouse…).
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In spring, summer and autumn: animals >
crops> spending the rest of the day foraging, wooing villagers, mining or fishing. -
In winter: animals >
slimes> spending the rest of the day foraging, wooing villagers, mining or fishing.
(I still often manage to run out of time and sprint home, cussing, only to break down in front of the bed…)
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Mine , chop wood , make wines and Jams from the fruits and vegetables I planted. Redesign the farm in preparation for spring.
My new run I accidentally tried to do everything really fast (got community centre early in winter 1; island before the new year). So there was no time to be bored!
For that, I farmed a lot of winter forageables (wild seeds) for money, as I don’t care to learn the speed run trick of pattern-digging the beach to cheese RNG.
Before, aside from mining/fishing/befriending and anything else you can do outside of farming, I liked to use winter to plan and rearrange my farm layout. I posted a farm in this sub a while back: most of the planning and re-designing and main layout was done during the first three or four winters.
