Best way to process harvest?

[Kiznu]

What gives the biggest payout? Is it worth drying/pickling or just dumping straight into contribution box?

[Kalech]

There's no 1 size fits all. High value crops are worth pickling or turning into aged wine. I use low value crops to turn into vinegar to use for pickling more valuable crops.

[Kiznu]

Originally posted by Kalech:

There's no 1 size fits all. High value crops are worth pickling or turning into aged wine. I use low value crops to turn into vinegar to use for pickling more valuable crops.

thank you! i take the time to pickle pumpkins and squash but most everything else i just process randomly or dump them

[modernevil]

If you have the Mill, dumping stuff in there first adds a bit of value without eating up your time & stamina. If you mill legumes into Plant Meat, smoking them is a little better than drying them. Drying fish is better than smoking them. Mulled Wine appears to be worth more than Aged Wine. Sour cream is worth more than butter or cheese--unless you have the casks spare for Mushroom Cheese (more points than Herb Cheese, but slower). Pickled eggs are worth more than eggs/mayo, but pickling pumpkin produces more value per pickling.

Some ingredients are good for mass-cooking for stamina (rarely/never contribute cooked food!) instead of dumping for points (the first I used was just turning all the tomatoes & garbanzos I'd accumulated into food). Try out different stuff to see what works best for your play style (i.e.: different buffs from food) and consider holding on to a little of everything until you figure it out. Some recipes are locked behind friendship.

Not all processing steps add value or add equal value, though. In general, turning mead/wine/beer into vinegar doesn't add value, but pickling with the vinegar approximately doubles the combined value of the ingredients--but note that the quality of the pickle (and thus the multiplier) will be the quality of the lowest-quality input, so don't mix a wild ingredient with a Good/Better/Best vinegar or vice versa. Depending on your farming volume, this either means only fermenting & pickling Best-quality stuff or making sure you pickle & ferment stuff from *every* quality level so you can match them together.

I think the game is new enough there's no one "best" answer yet, and a lot depends on what you like doing and how much land (and resources/time) you're willing to devote to machines.

[Kalech]

Originally posted by Kiznu:

Originally posted by Kalech:

There's no 1 size fits all. High value crops are worth pickling or turning into aged wine. I use low value crops to turn into vinegar to use for pickling more valuable crops.

thank you! i take the time to pickle pumpkins and squash but most everything else i just process randomly or dump them

Modernevil's tips are good! Esp about matching quality. I think it's fine to just dump some stuff, for example I'm growing legumes to increase my knowledge level so I can get high quality plant meat later. And I tend to just chuck the low quality ones because I feel like processing them isn't worth it for something that has really low value.
But I try to keep an eye on what's the most high-value crop of the season, generally. Definitely process those imo

[Censay]

Hey, i made a small list that took most available products and compared their products on the standard domesticated quality.

TLDR:
- pickle stuff that is worth "a lot" in base quality.
- brew everything else if possible to juice or ferment
- only make vinegar from tomato, strawberry and prickly pear
- never plant legumes after you have a stockpile of them for reasons :D

MENTIONS:
- This is NOT a comparative list (reseeding, harvest total, growth time and so on not in it)
- pumpkins and Teff are still missing (still in 2nd spring)
- animal produce and such are not intensivly compared, see recommendation at the bottom.
- stamina use cases are - most of the times - not included in the comparison

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ZW69dnNURgTqVZVwWqnsvLPj22aHG6fD_nqszDZf7Vc/edit#gid=0

[Kalech]

Thank god Im not the only one who made a spreadsheet, that makes me feel a lot less weird 😂😂

[Censay]

well. I tried to find the logic behind the whole process. Unfortunately except for some "rule of thumbs" (like drying adds +50% plusminus for plants) I could not do so (not as in "this should give xyz if I do zyx with it).
Especially the incoherence between "effort" and "gain" drove me nuts (and still does... lookin' at you, dried stargazer).

Originally posted by Kalech:

Thank god Im not the only one who made a spreadsheet, that makes me feel a lot less weird 😂😂

[Kalech]

Originally posted by Censay:

well. I tried to find the logic behind the whole process. Unfortunately except for some "rule of thumbs" (like drying adds +50% plusminus for plants) I could not do so (not as in "this should give xyz if I do zyx with it).
Especially the incoherence between "effort" and "gain" drove me nuts (and still does... lookin' at you, dried stargazer).

Originally posted by Kalech:

Thank god Im not the only one who made a spreadsheet, that makes me feel a lot less weird 😂😂

Do you think there's any chance you might give us a version of the spreadsheet that we can make a copy of? 🙏Totally fine if you'd rather not!

[Censay]

Originally posted by Kalech:

Do you think there's any chance you might give us a version of the spreadsheet that we can make a copy of? 🙏Totally fine if you'd rather not!

Sure, will unlock it in the file (sharing is caring)^^
If anyone already has the missing entries... (e.g.fennel pickled is missing as I saved not enough fennel ) -_-
Feel free to use it and spread the word.

[Kalech]

Thank youuuu!!