One thing learned about farming crops, the hard way.

[hyperion]

One thing I've learned about growing crops, now on my 2nd summer, is that you do not want to be watering them by hand. And the cheapest sprinkler are next to worthless. You can spend way too much time watering crops when you could be making more money fishing or in the mines. So my new strategy is that I only plant the amount of crops that can be watered by the better spinklers, and wait until I can craft another sprinkler before expanding my crops. This allows me to make more money mining and fishing, or doing other things.

[R̷e̷n̷v̷e̷n̷a̷r 💀]

Have you ever upgraded your watercan so far? It defenitely still takes some energy, but a lot less time if you manage to fully upgrade it~

[hyperion]

Originally posted by Renvenar:

Have you ever upgraded your watercan so far? It defenitely still takes some energy, but a lot less time if you manage to fully upgrade it~

Yes, to the copper. Then I gave up on that and decided to build the sprinklers that water 8 plants at a time.

[R̷e̷n̷v̷e̷n̷a̷r 💀]

Originally posted by hyperion:

Yes, to the copper. Then I gave up on that and decided to build the sprinklers that water 8 plants at a time.

Hm... well, if you upgrade the watering can to gold, you will be able to water a field of 3x3 - and at iridium even 3x6. I found upgrading it to steel early on to be very useful (1x5) and easier than obtaining the sprinklers (on the other hand, I just didn't bother really with them, because they just seem boring to me).

[Justin Sellers]

I could not get the water can to work on the higher upgrades until I did a lot of looking online. If you hold the left mouse button for a moment, it will water the intended number of crops. If you just click it, only one.

[Geothermal1159]

Originally posted by justinsell:

I could not get the water can to work on the higher upgrades until I did a lot of looking online. If you hold the left mouse button for a moment, it will water the intended number of crops. If you just click it, only one.

Yes a classic harvest moon mechanic.

[Panfilo]

I found that by the first winter you can get enough gold from the mines to build plenty of tier 2 sprinklers. Chances are later on upgrading the water can is probably still worth it, since at that point you'll be swimming in resources and want to maximize farmable area (an issue with some farm types) making actually manually watering them more worth it than building another sprinkler.

That's assuming you don't start slapping down eridium sprinklers, of course.

[Nakos]

While I apprecieate that my view point is a minority one, I disagree that the type 1 sprinklers are useless.

No, they're not worth a huge investment of resources if you're having trouble gathering minerals, but if you have minerals to spare, then they do help cut your workload, depending on how you employ them.

Personally, I like to use them to grow the various trellis plants: Beans, Hops and Grapes.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=834935132

[FiddyTrickPony]

It really depends on how someone decides to play. As someone who has min/maxed the heck out of this game, its clear the game is balanced to allow for players to play how they want. The 'three year timeline' of the evaluation gives lots of room -- no rush.

That said, absolutely you need sprinklers if you want to maximize profit. I've done a few runs with 1mil+ in cash before the end of the first year -- and in each run the turning point is the quality sprinklers (level 6 farming recipe) because they give you some extra free time in the day, a huge energy savings and allow you grow far more (especially with repeating crops like blueberries and cranberries). Without the sprinklers, it would be immensly more challenging (if even possible) to hit 1mil cash before first year end (to buy the statue of endless fortune).

Another good tip is to check the travelling cart on Fridays and Sundays for a chance at 5k iridium sprinklers, or 10k every Friday at Krobus after unlocking the sewers.

[hyperion]

Well, it's just my opinion, and I'm sure there are many 'right' ways to play the game. Now that I'm down to level 85 in the mine, getting gold ore is easier and I'm sticking to just using the 2nd level sprinklers and not hand watering any plants.

[NotThatHarkness]

I upgrade my tools as soon as I can. With the watering can at gold I'll sometimes hand water plus use sprinklers for crops that have a chance to grow a giant version. Hand watering allows for more 3x3 grids for those crops increasing the chance of a giant crop. It's probably not a great strategy, but I hate the fishing mini-game and would rather hand water crops than fish.

[kevinshow]

I think it comes from experience, about what will be upgraded and when. For example, someone can rush down the mining levels to get gold (or at least, lots of iron), if they know what they're doing. Or if they're doing their first play through, they might slowly go down the levels, repeating same levels over and over, trying to collect copper, because it seems like there are so many recipes needing copper, too. As a result, it would seem that advancing to a more automated farm is a lot of time and effort.