Preserves always better than Keg

[rajwarrior]

Ok, I'm still on my first playthrough of this great game. Am in year 3 now and looking to maximize profits. Been looking at kegs vs preserves for other crops that can be placed in either.

I've tried to stay away from as many spoilers as possible during my game, but I did look this up and most say that kegs are better for high value crops, preserves better for low value. However, if my calculations are correct, it seems that preserves is always better from a straight income approach.

Take ancient fruit. Base is $550. Keg triples to $1650. Takes 7 days. Preserves doubles +$50 to $1150. Takes 2 days. So in 14 days, keg makes $3300, preserves makes $8050. Even if you space out preserves to 3 days (which I think is more inline), in 21 days, you still make the $8050 from preserves, while only making $4950 for kegs.

I haven't play tested any of this, though. Thoughts?

[I Kinda Fail]

It has to do with how many fruit you have, and how many kegs/jars.

If you have ten million blueberries, then yeah, you'd wanna use preserve jars.

But if it's early game and you only have 1 starfruit, you'd want to keg it.

Likewise, starfruit take 14 days to grow, so they're best put in a keg. It has to do with grow times. It's better to have kegs running 24/7 than to have preserve jars running half the time because you ran out of stuff to put in them.

Jars are moreso better for crap crops because of the +50. If an apple sells for 200, apple wine isn't worth making for 600. It'd be better to get 450 or whatever. But if apples are your only source of income, then you'd want to keg them, because you're gonna run out of apples real quick.

Keep in mind that they each have their own uses.
Kegs are great for beer, and you can age the stuff once it comes out. Beer is the best artisan good in the game, I think? (Shed full of beer is like 25k every 2-3 days)
Pickles and jelly add value to crappy crops, and are faster all around.

[jairgraham]

It's only better when you have infinite fruit, and arn't brewing hops or beer. Hops are very competative when brewed.

Also top teir wine is better when you don't have a massive, unlimited surplus of starfruit\ancient fruit.

Jars are always better on a per day basis with fruit, given infinite fruit. They are MUCH better on low value fruit. Kegs are for ale or top teir fruit.

Since Kegs and jars can be put in sheds, and crops cannot, kegs and jars are far more space efficient. A fully loaded out farm growing long growth cycle fruit with max speed fertilizer doesn't give you effectively infinite amounts of fruit, so kegs have their place.

But jars will always be better for strawberries\blueberries\cranbarries and such.