Best way to make quick money at the beginning of the game

[rlinza]

I'm gonna have to deal with other players on my game so I'm hoping to make quick cash to get far ahead of them

[iLovePie_42]

Fishing and foraging

[[*~MAJA~*] Mandragoron]

I thought money is shared by all players?

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Originally posted by *~MAJA~* Mandragoron:

I thought money is shared by all players?

That's optional, not mandatory

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Originally posted by rlinza:

I'm gonna have to deal with other players on my game so I'm hoping to make quick cash to get far ahead of them

Clay farming

[eu]

You can also befriend Caroline early on to unlock tea saplings. Then you can either just craft and sell the saplings outright, or plant them and figure out what to do with the leaves. I can't remember which is more profitable.

[Maya-Neko]

if you want to stay within the intended playstyle, then Parsnips and potatoes, until 12th of spring and then buy as many strawberries as possible on the easter festival. If you mostly rely on farming, then going for Parsnips the first few days and concentrating on potatoes a littlebit later is the best way, alternatively you can also start with potatoes and spend the saved energy from watering to fish a littlebit.

And don't forget, that you can stay in your bed to restore energy and most importantly also keep in mind to either go into bed before 0:00, so that you don't get a penalty on your energy the next morning (though you can stay up until 2:00 if you've still some unused energy, as the game will gradually restore less and less energy until that point with 75% restoration at 1:00 and 50% at 2:00). You might even want to pass out in some cases like in the mine, when you've very small amounts of money and enough energy to not have a disadvantage.

Alternatively, as others said, clay farming is also an option. Though it leaves very obvious marks behind and it's up to you and your friends to decide, if exploiting the games logic that way is acceptable.

As for summer/fall, it's mostly about getting sprinklers running as fast as possible, because that turns your crops into a very stable and low effort income source. You obviously want to go with Blueberries and Cranberries here, since they're the best income crops early on.

And overall also don't underestimate animals, especially cows, so might be a good idea to buy a barn and some cows early on, if you've some spare money. Though it makes sense to not sell your milk/cheese in the beginning and to wait for farming skill 10.

And overall try to use buff food before harvesting, if someone on your farm already invested into a house upgrade. Hashbrowms are quite good early on, if you saved some potatoes for it, alternatively Farmers Lunch, if you also got animals already.

Also you can mostly ignore villagers in the beginning. Gifting them stuff might make them return you some gifts in the future, but the effort you need to put in is usually way bigger than the things you get out of it.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

You have to sink so much time, money and resources into building a barn, to make maybe a hundred, a hundred fifty gold a day?

Pigs are worthwhile, maybe, the other animals not so much, and certainly not early game.

Re energy management - OP whenever you level up a skill, you're guaranteed to wake up the next day full of energy. The 'late to bed' energy penalty doesn't apply. So a really common strat in the early game - first and second week of play - is to level up, keep working until 2am, pass out from exhaustion and wake up the next morning in bed, full of energy. If you do this on a day when you have no money, you won't be charged anything by the doctor. Think of it like a free warp back to the farmhouse.

It's really easy to make a new fishing level in one day, up until lvl 4 or 5.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Oh yeah, and on that .. if you're going to try this, something else to consider is not selling any crops until you need the money to buy something. This way you won't be caught with your pants down when you pass out. But you need to plan ahead and know what you're going to buy and when you're going to buy it, and manage your cash accordingly

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Something else. If you play with standard community centre bundles, not remixed ones - you'll have a spring crop bundle which rewards you 20 quick grow fertiliser. This fertiliser can be used to get three harvests from your strawberries instead of two.

But to make it work, you need to collect the reward and plant the strawberries with the fertiliser on the day of the egg festival. If you can do that before you go to bed, then you'll have a third crop of strawberries on the last day of spring. 10/10 worth it, since that's an additional 2,400 gold you otherwise wouldn't earn.

To make this work, you would need to plow and water the 20 plots of ground you intend to plant in before you go to the egg festival. You won't have time after it. Then when you've returned to the farmhouse, plant the strawberry seeds and fertilise them with the quick grow.

But to get the quick grow, you need to dash out to the community centre with the parsnip, bean, potato and cauliflower you've grown. You can only do this once you come back from the festival. It's a bit tight, time wise. You also want to make sure that you've completed the spring forage bundle, to have unlocked the panty. This should be done well before the egg festival in a normal playthrough any way..

In order to have a cauliflower ready on the day of the festival, you need to plant it on day 1. There's a bit more breathing room with the bean and potato. I like to get two of each on the first day, to ensure a bit of redundancy, and so having set it up I can forget about it ..

[xicewindex]

Forage and befriend Caroline.
At 2 hearts, wich you get in the third week with only gifting her daffodils, she gift you the tea sapling recipe.
Costs, 2 wild seeds, 5 wood and 5 fiber and the sapling sells for 500 gold.
You can easely get like 50k in that third week just from that.

And foraging is not something that takes all day, so also plenty of time to do your farming, just don't go overboard in planting, hit the mines and even do some fishing

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by Prosecutor Godot:

You have to sink so much time, money and resources into building a barn, to make maybe a hundred, a hundred fifty gold a day?

Pigs are worthwhile, maybe, the other animals not so much, and certainly not early game.

Cows make 230g each day with normal milk or 345g with large milk (both turned into chees obviously). I'll continue calculating with normal milk, because that's what you mostly get early on anyway.

A barn costs 6000g, plus maybe 2 days of cutting wood, which could be like 500-1000g each day from missing out on fishing, so i would estimate about 7500g for the barn and 6000g on the cows. That's 15 days, until your cows make up for their cost. If you need to buy the hay, then it takes about 19 days. Everything beyond that (920g without buying hay or 720g with buying it per day) is pure profit for minimal effort.

For chickens the investment is 4800-7200g plus 2 days of cutting wood, so ~6300-8700g. If you get all 4 instantly, then it takes about 9,5-13 days until you earn 760/560 per day.

So overall, it's definitely worth going for them, since they're self sustaining anyway. Mostly rather depends on what you define as "earn as much money as early as possible". If you're only calculating Spring, then yeah, then it's probably not worth it, but if you calculate it for a whole season, then definitely go for it.

and for pigs: since you need the biggest barn anyway, that's already an investment of 43000 gold for the barn alone and an additional 16000 per pig. Obviously it acclimates relatively fast as well, but the initial investment is just ridiculously high and only worth for mid game farms.

Obviously, there's also the option to plants crops instead. Coops take up 18 fields and barns take up 28 fields, which is an income for blueberries of ~375 gold per day for 18 fields or 582g per day for 28, which is both still lower than the income of the animals. And this calculation gets even worse for crops later on, when you keep upgrading your barns.

And overall the time investment isn't really that big, especially when you keep your animals within the barn all the time. Takes like half an ingame hour, as long as you place your buildings strategically. Crops waste way more time if you still need to water them. And for the lategame you most likely use auto grabbers anyway, so the only thing you need to do from there on is just running through all animals once while holding the action button (and that already works for the coop anyway).

[PichuYang]

Regardless of the options in "early game", fishing is the only reliable way to make "quick" money. The key is, you have to cast lure onto a "deep water", plus scoring a "Perfect" catch. This will guarantee an Iridium quality fish.

https://imgur.com/a/UEpU59C
You can use Training Rod to cast minimum distance to train Skill. After Level 3, buy Fiberglass Rod and Lures asap, because you want get fish bites more frequently.

The main problem with fishing is in-game time does not pause when you are reeling in fishes. View Foraging as side income and food sources. Feel free to sell Leek, Daffodil and Horseradish, but do not waste your time to look over the map. Except Spring Onion, Foragables keep spawning and stay intact, before Sunday or hitting maximum cap (6).

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by PichuYang:

Regardless of the options, fishing is the only way to make "quick" money. The key is, you have to cast lure on a deep water, plus scoring a "Perfect" catch. This will guarantee an Iridium quality fish.

Initially due to low skill level, you can only cast up to zone 4, which results varied fish quality. "Zone 5" is usually 5 tiles away from shore. During Spring, your best fishing spots are Mountain Lake (Sunny) and Cindersap Forest River/South of Leah's house. (Rain)

The problem would be fishing do not pause during multiplayer. But it is certainly much better than foraging aimlessly, or exploiting RNG to farm Clay. Foraging is mostly for the sake of food, any low value, high quality food from various activities restore good ratio of energy and health. This info is crucial if you enter Mines and early Skull Cavern.

Keep in mind, that other have time to fish as well though. Overall you need to earn the money of what others would do with farming until the time, where they're done farming, because after that, they can simply fish themselves, completely negating your further income advantage.

Might be worth telling us, what money you usually do until the 12th of spring. I'm usually able to get my hand onto ~15-18k gold with mostly crops and some fishing the first few days, while spending half my time in mines as well. With only crops and fishing i might raise that to 25-30k gold.

Though i usually focus more on crops and mining, given that i try to gain access to sprinklers at early to mid summer to get a stable income of >6k gold per day with minimal efford.

[PichuYang]

Originally posted by Maya-Neko:

Might be worth telling us, what money you usually do until the 12th of spring. I'm usually able to get my hand onto ~15-18k gold with mostly crops and some fishing the first few days, while spending half my time in mines as well. With only crops and fishing i might raise that to 25-30k gold.

By Spring 12 morning, I earned 47 500g. I do not keep over 50 plants to water, and only farm for the sake of reaching Level 6 before Summer. Because of crop management, I earned more from fishing than unnecessary farming.

[Maya-Neko]

Even for MP? I usually hit the end of day, before i get beyond 2k income on most days.