What to do all day long

[Regular Boar]

Either I understood something wrong or I have just too much time on my hands. My situation is this:

It's the 9th of April and I have done so far:

-repaired the whole farm
-did all quests for farming equipment
-rebuild my farm with metal where possible
-filled my greenhouse
-harvested both fields, sold grain, plowed and cultivated them again (also baling)
-collected all treasure chests
-filled my coop and barn with as much chickens and cows as possible

Now as I understand it I have to wait now until september to plant the wheat already in my storage because wheat is better to be planted in september? You can't sow and reap your crops more than once per season, can you?

A game day is longer than one would think and there is nothing to do that would make a difference. What comes to mind is:

-fishing (takes painfully long and canned fish doesn't yield much)
-plowing NPC-fields (tbh I don't know how good that is paid but I couldn't be asked. at least not with the old plow and tractor)
-transport quests: easy enough but for a couple of € why bother?
-repairing NPC buildings: that one is actually pretty rewarding but they don't pop up that often and I suppose you will get to the point where every building on the map is repaired really soon.
-making a wife: talking to a femal npc once a day is over rather quickly and apart from that you can't do anything to speed up the process

So any advice? I am aware that I could do stuff like talking to random npc's, mowing grass and so on but I just don't like doing stuff that doesn't pay off.

[Merck]

As you build funds you can:

• Purchase more greenhouses, which will then let you expand you vegetable growing capacity.
  
• Buy different building supply materials to customize your home & farm buildings.
  Also you can add solar panels to the roofs which will net you some SP.
  
• Some additional field work, such as fertilizing can be done in advance. Use your supply of manure from the cows, or purchase fertilizer from the Ag store.
  
• Do you have a rooster? Over time you will gain new chickens, with any over the coops capacity will be automatically sold each morning.
  
• Some crops can be planted in the fall; "Wheat and canola sown in September will lead to higher outcome the following year.", but the majority of crops have to be planted during spring.
  
• only one crop harvest per season.

Social Points (SP) is a marketable item, that can be used to lower the purchase price of equipment, but is also required to hire workers. I believe you need 50K on hand to be able to hire workers. Also higher SP levels does increase you chances with the ladies.
NOTE: Other than spending SP on equipment, the other two items mentioned above do not reduce your SP levels.

Things to do while waiting for the day to pass:

• Fishing can be a good relaxing pastime. Also, you will want some fish on hand for feeding the cat (about once per week). The cat will reduce mice damage to your supplies in the pantry. Store extra foods in pantry to save, & once you have a wife, then she will use the supplies in the pantry to make the highest level foods.
  
• Collect mushrooms, strawberries, & apples. Again store in pantry for your wife to upgrade.
  
• Talk to NPC's. Buy all raw foods they may have, & sell them back the upgraded foods for a profit.
  
• Plant flowers; They will increase your SP over time. They can also be harvested in the fall & sold or used for gifts to the ladies.
  
• Save up as much items for sale at the September Festival. The prices are much higher than normal, & make it a very good way to increase you funds.
  
• Contests can also increase your SP. I will often mow the areas that mushrooms grow, which makes it so much easier to complete & win the mushroom picking contests. The drone contests can be a fun diversion, so practice with the drones.
  
• Marriage:
  • More SP the better
    
  • Compliment once per day, as per the help text; "Women like to hear compliments, just not too often. Use your words wisely".
    
  • Ladies that you finish quests for have much higher regard for you, & are much easier to marry.
• You can also sleep a week to pass time.
  • Make sure your livestock have feed
    
  • Livestock produce does not accumulate during the extended sleep
    
  • Do not sleep through the end of September yearly change, since it can mess up any fall planted crops.

Useful forums for Farmer's Dynasty gameplay
There are a couple forums that may assist in answering common questions that players have brought up in the past;

• A Quick Guide for New Players..
  https://steamcommunity.com/app/678900/discussions/0/1620600279658021873/
  
• Yields/Crop List/Prices
  https://steamcommunity.com/app/678900/discussions/0/1620599015911612710/

The second forum has not been updated in a while, but it will still provide a basis for various commodities, & yield mechanics of the game.

Additional items:

• Add scarecrows to fields, each will give you a bit of SP, & they give any commodity grown in that field a boost in production levels. Scarecrows can be added to every field on the map, with each giving you some extra SP - for a small charge of course.
  
• Build all the bee hives on your farm. There are four locations that they can be built. Just use your engineer's sight to find the spots.

[Regular Boar]

wow you could take that as it is and put it on steam as a guide : D
Unfortunately I knew about most of the stuff already but I really appreciate the effort.
Well please take into consideration I am still on 1st season so money is scarce, I only got 5000€ to spend and I am saving for better equipment (which in my opinion makes the greatest difference in money making) So generally speaking everything that costs a significant amount of money is off the table for me. But let me go further into detail:

-greenhouse: like I said they are expensive. Also is the gain of processed food really that high? Correct me if I am wrong but I suppose you have to run a lot of 20-day cycles to break even with the price for the building...
-building material/solar panels: thought of that but I would need a truck for this and this is way beyond my budget
-fertilizer: true, I could do it in april but since I am sowing in september (where I will also have too much spare time) I will do it then and save my money for now
-manure: need to wait till there is enough produced by my cows, dont want to buy it
-got a rooster (sorry, forgot to mention)
-'Some crops can be planted in the fall': well like I wrote in my first post that is exactly the issue. I want to plant my wheat (which is in my depot since gamestart) in september, but what do I do UNTIL THEN?
-the rule about one crop per season I never understood. lets say I will plant barley in april and harvest after it's done (don't know how long that takes). Can I plant wheat on the same field in september the same year I did harvest the barley earlier?

I know about social points but with 5.000€ budget I neither want to hire a worker (while I can do it myself for now) nor can I spend so much SP to get a new tractor for 5000€ if I am not mistaken.

-fishing: no offense I know some people find it relaxing but I fish only to feed my cat because I don't like fishing. Not just in this game, also in every other like stardew valley, graveyard keeper etc. and in this game it is not even rewarding so its a double no.
-already collected apples and shrooms around my farm. don't wanna bother driving around and looking for them. again the payoff is just not worth my time in real life (game time is abundant like I said)
-My estimate is I talked to about 80% of all NPC's and cleared their stores. Now waiting for september to sell the cooked products on the festival.
-planted a lot of flowers already around my bee boxes because there is a unconfirmed theory outside that this leads to more honey production. do they really give social points or is it just what the ingame tip says?
-yeah I will do so but that doesn't kill time ; )
-the only contest that would have been was drone racing and again I don't want to spend a crazy amount of money on a drone for a meager 100€ and 200 SP price for winning

While it's a good thing they give the option to skip a week I am hesitant about that because you miss out on so much animal products, which for me (I am money oriented in that game) actually is counterproductive.
Is there any disadvantage to go to sleep at 10 a.m. every day? I think that would be the optimal solution for me.

So all in all I think your suggested activities are more for mid-, or rather endgame. I am looking for something to do which is productive for april to end of august in the 1st year

[Merck]

Yes indeed building up some starting capital is slow at first, but then once you get it going, it is not all that bad. Things such as livestock - especially chickens will keep you with food at the start of the game. I normally only purchase about half the full compliment of chickens, & a rooster as soon as I can. From then on you will eventually get a full coop over time.

Cows takes even longer. Again, I usually buy 1 or 2 at start, & then add more as my funds build up. I use the majority of my first straw crop to fill the cow barn to 100%. That will keep your cows in feed for a long time.

I sell the majority of treasures that I find - with maybe keeping 1 or 2 gifts for a future wife. Any tools that I find in treasure chests, I keep - but sell any extras.

Sell most of the canned foods, but keep tomatoes & pumpkin soups, since those are good for NPC quests. I pretty much survive on eggs - again mostly canned, since they are very low income value, but still provide more than enough food for your character.

Building materials can be transported by either using the bus or teleport to a pre-placed vehicle. You do not have to transport the skid/pallet to your work site to use the materials. Just note that the vast majority of building materials are only cosmetic. They do not add anything to your SP or livestock production. That said the solar panels do pay back over time, & each evening you get a report on the benefits, plus the added SP. They are expensive, so I usually add a skid or so of panels as I get the extra cash.

Fertilizer & seeds, I use what I have on the farm initially. All field work, basically "adds" to the chance of having a better crop outcome at harvest. So it is not critical that you "always" fertilize or such. Plus, there is a bit of randomization to all crops, so that even if you were to do the exact same steps & amounts for a field, it will always have slightly different outcomes. Similar to how it is in real life.

Crops, are normally planted in the spring, usually after all chances of frost are out of the ground. IRL farmers usually wait until the "insurance date", which is a date fixed by insurance that takes into account freezing weather, & such, which can destroy a starting crop, & require a replanting. Insurance covers the replanting as long as you don't plant before the date they set for your area. Here in Minnesota the dates are later than to the south as you can imagine. Reference: https://www.cffm.umn.edu/farm-management-publications/ SEE section on Crop Insurance.

Indeed we have it much easier in this - & most other farming games. But normal practice is to plant the seeds in the spring, & harvest them in the fall. So only one crop per season.

Winter wheat is planted in the fall to give the wheat a chance to start growing before the ground freezes. This gives it a much better start in the spring compared to wheat planted in the spring (aka spring wheat). Both are harvested in the summer or fall.
https://www.agriculture.com/crops/wheat/farming-101-planting-wheat

Social Points (SP), I personally keep my SP, & don't spend it on equipment, but many do use it since it can reduce the price a bunch. And over time as you do things, you will gain SP back. Basically each items has an option to purchase at 1/2 price along with a chunk of SP, or pay the full price in cash.

Gathering, mushrooms & strawberries can usually be found wherever you see groups of deer or boars. Those spots I tend to mow -often with weed wacker - to allow me to return every so often to those areas to collect any new ones that have re-grown. The contests will also be in those same areas.

Apples can be collected on any apple trees on the map. The NPC's don't care one bit if you harvest the apples from the trees on their property. So as I travel about areas, I take advantage to stock up on apples.

Flowers, do indeed increase your SP over time, & once you have a wife, she will take care of the watering for you. But if it rains, it will also keep the flowers properly hydrated. They also do help increase the chance of honey from the hives, but I could not tell you how far from the hives before their benefits drop off. I plant flowers over most of the odd areas on the farm. I regularly plant them down by the runnoff from the manure pit behind the barn, & on the steep hill next to the greenhouse.

Again harvest the flowers during the September festival, since they are worth some cash. And it never hurts to give a lady friend a flower. Flowers will wilt in the fall, so they will need to be replanted in the spring.

Sleeping, early in the day is another method that I have used occasionally to "skip" a day, after I have all my tasks completed. In fact I have rarely ever used the sleep a week option, since I to like to collect all the produce from the livestock.

I try to complete all the beginning quests to gather all the starter equipment. I usually drive the tractor to each location, since I will have to use that to bring the equipment home anyway. But, at times I will zip on down in truck to complete a quest, & then later when I have some free time, I will then go to retrieve the equipment.

Many of the field work quests can indeed be a bit long with the older equipment, but note that all jobs only require a percentage of the work completed. So I don't sweat if I miss a strip here or there. Usually by the time I have the majority of the field worked, I will receive the message that it is completed. And if not, it is usually just a matter to hit a few of the missed strips. Watch the ground color change, & use it as an indicator to spacing your work.

You can sell all the old equipment, but personally I tend to keep most of it. The drivable vehicles can be pre-placed as teleport locations, where there may not be a bus station near by. Also, I have found that some of the older equipment helps me keep from wasting the limited resources that I have. Tasks such as fertilizing - either with store bought or manure. The new big equipment has a very big area that they cover, & it is easy to either get too much overlap or miss gaps. I then use the smaller - older equipment to complete those missed gaps - & thus save a lot of fertilizer that would be spread by the new equipment.

Also, you can use the old equipment to store extra manure, since the storage tank behind the barn can fill during the time jump at end of September. This then causes you to loose some potential free fertilizer since the storage is full.

Many players have posted many other helpful hints & tips in the pinned forum; "A quick guide for new players.... I have posted images of things such as the fertilizer savings by using old equipment in that forum.

The Crop Yield forum has likely become out dated, but maybe you & others will find some time to update the information in that forum?

Good luck with your farm!

[Merck]

Yes you can plant a fall crop such as the winter wheat after you harvest one of the summer crops.

[healthy.energy.care(Sam)]

playing 1month 15 days (ingame) got 8 fields ... you have to watch out witch field you buy. A field with crops on it when you buy is not more expencive then an empty field, but you can harvest it and sell the crops. then you have enough money to buy a new field, harvest and sell, buy a new field, ect.

[TheOriginalMark:-)]

Crops planted in April will be ready to harvest in June at which point you can plant again for August. You should make enough from that to buy 1 or two more fields (perhaps the ones just to the south) for seeding in September.

Remember that the price you get for grains rises and falls (canola for example can go as high as 864 per ton, barley up to 869 (maybe higher? not sure about that one) so don't rush to sell.

As the game points out upgrading your Chicken Shed and Cow barn WILL increase yields. I just did the wooden and metal bits and the roofs, did not replace the bricks of the Barn because I hate the look of the new red bricks.

As already suggested, buy as much raw produce as you can from NPC's (its a pain constantly talking to NPC's to see if thay "want to trade" but worth it) and process it. If you don't need immediate cash save as much as possible for the September Market where prices double. You can make tens or even hundreds of thousands at that market.

A note about talking to NPC's - pressing the SPACE bar cuts off their tedious replies and shortens the conversation nicely.

I know using the old equipment can be tedious but doing ploughing jobs for NPC's can earn you over a 1000 if you are lucky and is the best way of increasing valuable SP's since you get double the cash in SP's (IE. if a ploughing job pays 1000 you get 2000 SP's). And after all, what else ya gonna do with your time? I'd advise you use the Jack Bear NOT the Born Special which is horrible for ploughing (and actually worth selling).

You may get some ploughing/cultivating jobs that are actually fields with crops on them. In this case you can legitimately harvest and sell the crops before ploughing. Note that if this happens with a cultivate job you will need to plough the field after harvesting as well and then cultivating it before it counts as completed.

When you reach 55,000 SP's try not to fall below it as its at that point that you are able to hire workers.

On building repairs - yes, they will soon all be repaired but that will not stop NPC's asking you to do it. That means you can earn money for doing absolutely nothing more than walking round the building once.

Steal apples from other farms (nobody cares).

Transport, agree, not worth it.

[TheOriginalMark:-)]

Originally posted by Merck:

I sell the majority of treasures that I find - with maybe keeping 1 or 2 gifts for a future wife. Any tools that I find in treasure chests, I keep - but sell any extras.

I kept the beer

[TheOriginalMark:-)]

Originally posted by healthy.energy.care(Sam):

playing 1month 15 days (ingame) got 8 fields ... you have to watch out witch field you buy. A field with crops on it when you buy is not more expencive then an empty field, but you can harvest it and sell the crops. then you have enough money to buy a new field, harvest and sell, buy a new field, ect.

But keep in mind that you will not get good yield from those "free" NPC planted crops - if you check out the fields before you buy you will find that they have usually (always?) been ploughed but neither cultivated nor fertilised.

For example, I just bought five fields at Lakeside two of which had wheat crops on them. Those two combined to 2.17 Hectares from which I harvested 17 tonnes of grain. That's about 8 tonnes per hectare or not much over a third of what one might get off a well managed field.

It's better than nothing of course

[Tux]

I dont recall the details but in short what I did when I played is buy land.
So although there was a few months where I did some quests for something to do, in general though I spent more of my time in all the fields I bought. I was foolishly trying a 'buy the whole map' personal challenge