Useful Mining Cycle I Found

[Ashiel]

**Warning: Some exceedingly slight mine spoilers below.**

This is the mining "cycle" I've been using for a short while. I found it, a bit by accident, while looking for an efficient spot to mine iron ore (after I found myself suddenly out of iron one day). This is the best spot for general mining I've found. It's not really a late game concern (late game you won't care about money, it's all about Iridium, etc) but I've found it pretty handy in my current playthrough, so I figured I'd share.

Mine levels 41-43 have become my go-to mining run locations for general mining supplies. Mine level 41-43 regularly spawn the following things you can break to collect.

• Iron ore (very common)
  
• Copper ore (common)
  
• Jade (infrequently)
  
• Aquamarine (infrequently)
  
• Frozen Tear (infrequently)
  
• Quartz (common)
  
• Chests and Barrels (very common)
  
• Ice crystals (very common)
  
• Torches (common)

The only enemies that spawn here are...

• Blue jellies (common)
  
• Soot sprites (very common)
  
• Black bats (infrequently)

Loot Information

• Chests and Barrels drop Cave Carrots (food), Yams (food), Coal, Wood, Hard Wood, Copper Ore, Iron Ore, Geods, Frozen Geodes, and gems (the ones you can find on these floors), as well as the occasional weapon or ring (glow rings and magnet rings are easy to find here).
  
• Soot sprites drop coal frequently, and can drop Coffee Beans and Crystal Fruit (which is a Community Center item for the winter forage, it's also pretty valuable).
  
• Bats drop wings which sell well or can be used in the Lightning Rod recipe.
  
• Blue jellies drop Winter Roots occasionally (food for energy, also part of the winter forage bundle).

General Concept

1. Get a strong weapon (I'm using the Obsidian Sword from deeper in the mine, but you could buy something useful from Marlon at the adventurer's shack) so you can quickly clear mobs.
   
2. Take the elevator to floor 40, then the ladder to 41.
   
3. Floor 41 is a very small circular floor that spawns all of the stuff mentioned here. Grab anything you want. If the ladder to 42 appears while you're collecting, take it and see if there's anything immediately near the ladder worth taking, repeating as long as the ladders are conveniently placed.
   
4. Don't bother mining out the rooms looking for ladders, or mining rocks (except to reach a node you want if another route isn't available). If goodies are not nearby, take the ladder back up, then restart from level 41. Similarly, if the floor doesn't have any goodies on it, just take the elevator again and retry.
   
5. Only fight the jellies if they're in your way. They have far more Hp than the other monsters here and don't usually drop anything worthwhile.
   
6. Repeat until you're either satisfied with your haul or run out of time/energy (eating the cave carrots can help if you couldn't afford to bring food with you).

Useful Notes

• With a sufficient mining level, you can convert 2 iron bars into 1 gold bar (transmute crafting recipe), which can allow you to rapidly acquire gold bars (an iron bar sells for 120g, a gold bar sells for 250g) in which to use in crafting recipes (which could be helpful if the levels where you find gold are too difficult or time consuming to deal with).
  
• The geods and gems can sell decently to make some quick cash.
  
• Several gems here make good gifts. Sebastian loves Frozen Tears (and he's usually hard to find gifts for). Emily loves most any shiny rock (such as the aquamarines or jades), and Abigail likes Quartz (and you'll get a bootload in here). Clint (the blacksmith) also loves/likes gems.
  
• You'll get a lot of coal killing sprites and looting chests/barrels. You might still end up selling a lot of your ore anyway. I get so much iron ore this way I cannot hope to get enough coal to smelt all of it in a timely fashion.
  
• If you get a coffee bean, it can be planted in spring or summer, grows pretty quickly, can be harvested multiple times, and each harvest nets you about 4 coffee beans / plant. Since you can plant the coffee beans to make more regrowing coffee plants, you may find your farm covered in coffee plants.
  
• Occasionally you can exit the mine and dump unwanted weapons and rings off at the adventurer's shack. This can free some inventory space and they'll usually sell for 100-300gp, depending on the item.
  
• This can be a handy way to stock up on torches without having to craft them yourself (just hit the torches that spawn in the cave with your pickaxe and you can loot them). It's a cheap way of lighting up your farm at night.
  
• It's very fast with a Gold pickaxe (it will 1-shot all the nodes you care about).

Modding Notes
Here are some notes concerning common Stardew Valley mods.

• If you're using a health/stamina regen mod, you can keep this up for a long time. The idea is to avoid wasting energy mining rocks and just rush nodes, eating food when you're energy is low. Since you're avoiding wasting energy, you might in some cases find your energy regen outpaces your expidentiture.
  
• If you're using the Build Health or Build Stamina mods, you'll probably earn a few points in this process (you're assured to get hit *sometimes*, and all the mining/eating can help build XP towards stamina).
  
• If you're using a mod that slows time inside the mines, you might be here for a while. If you use a mod that stops time inside the mines, you may have sentenced yourself to a frozen hell (unless you can bring yourself to stop mining).

[Ashiel]

Also, if anyone cares to see some of the fruits of the labor, here's a gyazo of my inventory post-mining expidition. I'm dumpin' stuff in the bin to get ready to buy new crop seeds tomorrow.
Gyazo Screenshot[gyazo.com]