Farm Buildings, Which is your cash cow?

[Charlie Friggn Brown]

Ive acquired enough money to start farm buildings, and have built silo's ahead of all this.
Which one of you have focused on 1 type of building or multiple? In the long run is it wise to build chicken coops or just barns when it comes to the constant flow of income?

[Miraglyth]

The general consensus is that animals aren't really a fantastic source of income regardless of how you go. Unlike crops which can be largely automated by the time you can really invest in farm buildings, animals always need constant maintenance for feeding and petting.

And after all that effort their output, by the latter half of the second year animal produce remains a considerable distance behind artisan goods made using crops and kegs. Especially once you have both a greenhouse and ancient fruit.

By that point the answer to your topic title would be barns, by virtue of the fact they can hold more kegs than coops which makes them more space-efficient at raking in crop wine money.

Edit: Vaguely amusing pun with the cash cow thing by the way.

[Gromak]

In my opinion, animals are a very bad source of income.. They requiere a lot of invenstment in money and time and the return is very low...

[Sam]

Well I don't really make much money from farm buildings. I have 4 cows 2 goats 2 pigs (babies) 4 chickens 4 ducks and 2 bunnies.
I do make cheese but i only give them out as gifts. EVERYONE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ likes cheese. Except for emo ass and the hipster

[Abalister]

Well, I don't like games where it goes too fast, and I always tend to build everything a game has to offer and slowly take my time. I don't care to make 1million gold in no time. I prefer to take things slow. I have a deluxe barn with all existing different animals (6 cows, 2 goats, 2 pigs and 2 sheep). That gives me enough milk, goat milk, wool and truffles to craft them into recipes or artisan goods. My deluxe coop has 5 chicken (4 brown-1white), 2 rabbits, 2 ducks, 2 void chickens and 1 dinosaur. It provides me enough eggs, duck eggs, wool, duck feathers, rabbits foot, void eggs and dinosaur eggs for different recipes and crafting goals. Artisan goods are good too.

Overall, when I wake up, I enter both the deluxe barn and deluxe coop, I pet all animals, I take all resources and I'm done at 8am, It takes no time. I have all associated crafting items outside where I can craft truffle oil, cloth, mayonnaise, duck mayonnaise, and cheeses. I have a chest nearby that holds all these items.

Then I jump into my greenhouse, I have 58 ancient fruit seed and 58 tomatoes. I make tomato juice, corned tomatoes, ancient fruit wine and ancient fruit jelly. I sell these crafted goods every other day.

When everything is said and done, it's about 10am, and all my farming and animals are taken care of. I make about between 10k and 25k per day, depending on what I decide to sell. I'm close to year 5, all achievements are done, the farm is basically now running itself with these.

[Gordon DeLarge]

Pigs are the best choice to farm buildings, but planting crops is way too far better

[T1nm2n]

Pigs for the truffles. Make truffle oil every day you can and sell it. It did not take me very long to make my money back (after the pig matures to an adult and starts producing truffles). Since then, Beans (yes, I named my pig Beans) has given me easy money.

[MassConnect]

Never occurred to me to exploit buildings in order to magically get more indoor tiles than the amount of outdoor tiles the building actually takes up. But then again, the cost of the building(s) and the break-even point for doing that is a very long term strategy. By the time you would absolutely have to (as in you are out of space), you wouldn't really need to because the majority of the game should be done.

I might entertain the idea of using buildings to protect things from lightning, since lightning rods use up tiles and don't even protect you if you forget to pick up batteries. Once the achievements are out of the way, I basically prefer the least amount of work possible.

[The Y'All Of Us]

Pigs, for their gold-star truffles.

Otherwise just plain old chickens are the most profitable of all the animals, for their mayo.

Farming still beats animals by terms of sheer profit, but it's nice to have animals around to feel like your farm is livelier.

[The Y'All Of Us]

Originally posted by Metatron:

Originally posted by Charlotte:

~snip~

I would argue that the Slimes are more profitable and also require less maintenance. the problem is harvesting slime balls is a chore cause you have to kill slimes.

If you water the troughs every day, slime piles appear that yield slime balls without you having to butcher the slimes. You can make a profit without ever having to kill a single slime.

[MassConnect]

Now I'm curious how many indoor tiles each building has, and which one has the best value per tile. The wiki doesn't say, and I'd rather not dump money into it just to find out (storage sheds are on the way).

[The Y'All Of Us]

Originally posted by Tweak:

Now I'm curious how many indoor tiles each building has, and which one has the best value per tile. The wiki doesn't say, and I'd rather not dump money into it just to find out (storage sheds are on the way).

Barns are the best value in comparison to their footprint on the farm- with about triple the space a Coop would give you.

[MassConnect]

A deluxe coop with 60 tiles inside, 18 tiles occupied outside, nets 42 additional tiles for the cost of 34,000g. The cost of each additional tile would be 809.5g

A big coop with 66 tiles inside, 18 tiles occupied outside, nets 48 additional tiles for the cost of 14,000g. The cost of each additional tile would be 291.7g

A deluxe barn with 207 tiles inside, 28 tiles occupied outside, nets 179 additional tiles for the cost of 43,000g. The cost of each additional tile would be 240.22g

A slime hutch with 121 tiles inside, 77 tiles occupied outside, nets 44 additional tiles for the cost of 10,000g. The cost of each additional tile would be 227.3g

A normal coop with 49 tiles inside, 18 tiles occupied outside, nets 31 additional tiles for the cost of 4,000g. The cost of each additional tile would be 129.03g

A big barn with 177 tiles inside, 28 tiles occupied outside, nets 149 additional tiles for the cost of 18,000g. The cost of each additional tile would be 120.8g

A normal barn with 149 tiles inside, 28 tiles occupied outside, nets 121 additional tiles for the cost of 6,000g. The cost of each additional tiles would be 49.59g

So you have to do the calculations. I don't care which is bigger, I care what the tiles cost. Luckily, I found screenshots that allowed me to count tiles without spending money. The problem is that these numbers assume you have all the materials. Buying the materials might skew it.

It remains to be seen, but storage sheds better be more affordable than barns, if their sole purpose for being is to provide tiles.

[Fyndir]

Leaving aside the discussion over whether animals are really worth it at all I would say pigs give the most for the least effort.

No additional equipment required, no real inventory messiness (i.e. the multiple types of egg or milk), or need to go inside the building to collect, just fence off a small area with grass and enjoy your daily truffle income, especially with the foraging skill perks to make them gold star every time and give you a chance at double harvest on each.

I wouldn't bother with the oil unless you need it for a recipe, quest, or gift, just sell the truffles straight and one filled barn will happily net you around 10k a day.

Personally I quite enjoy having that simple daily income, just ride down to the corner I shoved them in, wander around petting while I gather, and shove the product in the crate when I'm back at my house, because it only ever takes up one inventory slot I don't really feel the need to go back and clear out straight away.


Plus, from an RP / character perspective, an endless pursuit of maximum efficiency seems like it would align you with Joja, and who wants to help those guys? They're not very nice.

[MassConnect]

@meta No, size doesn't equal profit. Empty buildings produce no revenue. Expensive occupied buildings take longer to actually produce profit (no matter what you put in them), and the opportunity cost of wasting the money on something that produces no revenue is just another way in which people fail to understand the time value of money.

Buy a basic farm. Fill it. If a filled barn doesn't hold everything you need it to, then build another basic farm. The less money spent on buildings, the more money you have to spend on things you need: be it seeds, ores, etc.

When you reach the point that you have no room for another barn - only then is it worth it to upgrade the barn. Because the amount of extra space from the upgrade is paltry, and expensive as all hell to top it off. Larger opportunity costs, with later break even points, are not better.

Basic -> Big = 28 additional tiles for the cost of 12,000g. Practically 429g per tile.
Basic + Basic = over 100 additional tiles for the cost of 6,000g.

Granted, if you already mass produced ancient seeds, then ancient seed wine makes everything affordable. But if you did that, do you really need a barn at all? The greenhouse was more than adequate for breaking the game.