How do you make big money?

[DJCaseyD]

I'm hovering around $50,000. I have started buying most furniture and such so that I can meet neighbor needs. I have 20 or so crops, 12 trees, hit the port for fishing, mines and forest for dewdrops everyday, make and sell food (though I probably ought to learn more recipes), museum is almost full. Just wondering if there is a secret for the people with a million dewdrops.

[SnugglePanda]

Farming and selling food is the best for sure. Focus on upgrading the food pantry and cooking especially. Eventually you unlock perks that make all your recipes sell for at first 3x value then max value no matter what you cook if I recall correctly. That combined with an increased sell fridge and upgrade perk of citizens buy more food each day you start to roll in the dewdrops. Similarly with the marketplace. You unlock sales multipliers there as well. So yeah in short, the key is to farm, cook, and upgrade your marketplace and pub to max.

[SnugglePanda]

PS. Yeah I Just remembered I think the massive food and market multipliers come from maxing those skills out. Spend some time grinding cooking all day every day and fill up that shop every day, even if its with junk. Upgrading the pub lets you hold more items in your fridge and sell more each day. Key to taking advantage of the multipliers.

[DJCaseyD]

Ok, thanks a lot! I have the tavern maxed and did the workshop upgrade. Cooking is at about 90 right now. I'll keep grinding.

[ephemeraltoast]

A much faster way to make a lot of money is to upgrade Dalton's house so he gives you the statue that makes fish sell for 3x the money. Selling fish then becomes massively more profitable than cooking them (in fact, you will lose money cooking most fish dishes after you have this statue).

That's really the only "secret" there is to making money: the statues and building upgrades that multiply the selling cost of things. Any of them work, but fish is probably best because fishing is incredibly easy, the base cost of them is higher than fruits and veggies, you don't need a lot of them for other purposes like planks or stone, and the statue is available earlier than almost any of the others because it's a gift and not a level-10 upgrade.

[DJCaseyD]

Do you have to get his house upgraded all three levels? I'm stuck because the second level is waiting on some piece that RNG has not been kind to me on.

[ephemeraltoast]

It's not his final gift. I was remembering it as his first but if you don't already have it I guess it must be the second.

[DJCaseyD]

I might have it. I'll have to look. So, after I get that, it's better to sell the fish at the market then cook them?

[SnugglePanda]

Yeah its probably better to sell the fish at market than to cook them (aside from new recipes). I did most of my cooking with fruit from trees and from farming tiles. There are some recipes that are like two slimeapples and ♥♥♥♥, just dirt cheap to make, and once your buildings and levels are high enough even they sell for 999 x 3 in the tavern fridge.

[ephemeraltoast]

It's a good idea in general to prioritize building any statues or "important town objects" you come across because that's where a lot of the profit multipliers are hiding. (Some statues are just for decoration, like the giant frog, but they are in a different tab. I also recommend you build the giant frog. It does not get you any money, but giant frogs are cool.)

[DJCaseyD]

Yeah, I got the statue from Dalton for fishing but I hit level 99 in cooking and all of the sudden I'm getting like 17,000 from a few meals because they're all masterpieces. Nice!

[DJCaseyD]

Funny how your money increases exponentially with a couple items. The food selling itself probably took me up to almost $700k now. Have all the hobbies maxed except for woodcutting (at 96 now) and tarrot cards, which I can't figure out how to play yet. Have all houses done except for two that are waiting for a round hedge. After that, I'm gonna use the lightning sword, wipe the place out and redesign it. Getting people near the stuff they wanted and on the elevation they wanted was a pain because I had never really changed much from where it originally had it (elevation-wise). Thanks for the help. Really fun game. Enjoying it almost as much as Stardew Valley which is saying a lot.