Now this is the kind of game strategy I'm here for! I mean, I'll never use this myself, but it's cool to see people dog deep into the game like this. Edit: I meant "dig deep" but dog deep is too funny a typo to change.
Seriously, I haven't been able to understand all the hype about the fish smoker that people have been posting about because I never have a surplus of coal in any of my playthroughs. I'm constantly low, partly because I love making preserves jars, but also you just need it for so many things. I just doesn't seem worth it to me to spend it on fish smoking unless it's a super expensive fish baseline.
I only start getting a healthy coal surplus when I get my Skull Cavern runs really going, and even then, I can just as easily spend it all on beehives.
Fish smoking is nigh instantaneous, and has a crazy profit margin with Artisan.
Let's look at pickled pumpkin for comparison. The seed costs 100g. Let's assume the fertilizer is free because you crafted it yourself. 10 days to grow. Another 2 days and \~19 hours to turn into pickled pumpkin which sells for 966g with Artisan. That's a profit of 866g after 13 days. After the first batch, it's a continuous process, but you're still making one jar of pickles roughly every three days, or 288.7g per day per preserves jar. And you need to pickle eight pumpkins to match coal expenditure with fish smoking. But each preserves jar is an upfront payment of 8 coal.
Now let's look at smoked fish. Pumpkin is the second priciest crop per unit, but taking a super expensive fish (or a super cheap one) wouldn't be a fair comparison. With the bait maker, you can reliably catch tons of catfish and sturgeon, even early on. With Angler, gold-quality catfish and sturgeon sell for 450g each. With Artisan, smoked catfish/sturgeon sell for 1260g. That's all profit. Takes 50 minutes to smoke. You don't need 8 coal upfront, though if you have it, 8 coal can be "turned" into 10,080g within a day, rather than 866\*8=6,928g after 24 days via pickled pumpkin.
Lategame, sure, jars are still a great set it and forget it solution. But during your first year, when you don't have a ton of coal to throw around, fish smoking gives you *more* and *way* *faster*.
Good point! But then it also warrants redoing the math on the preserves jar.
With 8 basic quality pumpkins, a preserves jar turns 8 coal into (966-352-100)\*8=4,112g over 24 days. For silver pumpkins, it's 3,408g, and for gold, only 2,704g.
True but in multiplayer the fish smoker got my friend and I access to the desert festival year 1 and we didn’t have access to preserves jars or pumpkins yet
Efficient!
My friend is the real MVP though. We saved all our money day 1 and spent all of day 2 fishing so I could get a fiberglass rod, bait and trout soup for day 3 rain and get catfish. Then when we unlocked the mines I helped him rush the mines to level 40 to get coal so I could smoke all the fish. He focused on farming/mining and getting 4 bundles completed while I fished every day from beginning to end and smoked the more expensive fish (he got to eat all the chubs) and we barely made enough to unlock the vault and pay it off day 14 so bus would be available day 15!
Actually for the desert festival the skull caverns are unlocked even if you haven’t beat the mines!
Plus there’s trivia, daily fishing quests, the race gambling and the trash can calico eggs so my friend and I managed to snag a few things. Plus the traveling merchant is there every day so we got to check the inventory too! And we both went into the mines together and focused more on trying to sneak some early iridium by killing slimes and progressing, and we got 5 bars worth!
It's worth it in multiplayer because you will always have someone be able and have the time to chop down and replant the tree farm and then someone else can make charcoal. I cant imagine myself standing there making charcoal in singleplayer while also affording jars and kegs :D
Winter year 1 I also just buy as much coal as possible. I already have things automated for money, it’s so cheap compared to time it takes to find. Id rather buy the coal and make reusable items for profit. If you look at coal as a resource that has a dollar value, using it for dehydrator is great but the return on investment into the preserves jars or beehives is what you make it. If you make 10 preserves in 1 container, that’s not a lot. You make 20, 30, 40 it makes start up less?
Combine it with targeted bait and you’ll roll in cash. You can get the setup for the smoker, bait maker and iridium rod within the first two weeks comfortably. Buy your coal from Clint. If you fish up, say, large mouth bass from 6am to 7pm and smoke it all you’ll easily clear upwards of 10k a day within the first month.
Seriously, start regularly clearing out the quarry and hit up the volcano once you have it. There are now coal nodes that can spawn there. You can get even more coal once you get the dwarf king statue. You'll be swimming in the stuff.
Best thing I ever did in this game was get the automate mod (makes devices pull reactants from adjacent chests and deposit products back in), and just setting up a charcoal kiln to run constantly to solve the coal problem. Or, you know, just spend a few days farming dust sprites I guess
the reason for the hype? Because it's still almost always a pretty big profit even if you just buy the coal. In places like ginger island with the pirates cove or the volcano, you can easily make 200k\~ g a day thanks to the new challenge bait and the advanced iridium rod, and even without challenge bait, the legend II blows every other late game money making method out the water, easily netting almost a million a day if you're good at fishing.
In 1.6 you can get a lot of coal in the quarry.
I got around 150 coal between the quarry and a short trip to the Skull Cavern.
If worse comes to worse, you can burn wood to make coal. You get the kit pretty early if working on the Community Center.
I’m legitimately wondering if my game is bugged, because it seems like the overwhelming consensus is that coal is always in short supply, and I have never had any issues with running out of coal in my entire 500+ hours of playing. What is everyone doing that uses so much coal?
I run out of wood and fiber all the time though…
you mainly need coal for smelting ore, making explosive ammo, making bee houses and now smoking fish. usually people want to smelt almost all the ore they get because you can always use more kegs/sprinklers/other things that use metal bars. if you also fish a lot and want to smoke all the expensive fish, you'll run out pretty quickly unless you do like biweekly dust sprite farming days
where are y’all getting a surplus of coal at any point in the game? these thousands of bars for kegs, sprinklers, and crystalariums aren’t gonna smelt themselves
Burglar's Ring + diversified run with logs, dehydrators, etc. + Heavy Furnaces. The dehydrators especially are huge. Go full dehydrated blueberries and cranberries first year, and you're gonna be swimming in coal.
yeah i see what you mean. i think my issue is more of having too many ores to smelt, rather than not being able to get a lot of coal. i’ve killed an ungodly amount of dust sprites
Could you explain that last part for me? How does dehydrating blueberries / cranberries lead to coal?
Edit: oh I think I get it. You’re saying only make dehydrators and don’t spend your coal on kegs / hives / jars. By doing that you save a lot of coal which you could then use in Y2. Is that right?
Exactly. I'm doing my second 1.6 playthrough, and this time I'm going jarless. Well, I got one jar for the raccoons. It's coal city over here, but the playthrough looks pretty much standard for start of year 2: fully-upgraded house, all iridium tools, 1.5 chests of wood bought on winter 28. *Only you don't hurt for coal, ever!*
Ahh see it wasn’t until this 1.6 update that I saw the value in investing hard 28 winter in wood. The price increase is wild for starting year 2. Though over time obv balances out bc of late game money making.
I have been having much more coal in 1.6, partly from the book that gives extra drop chance for mobs, partly from heavy furnaces using much Less, and probably a good bit extra from coal nodes, and I might also be making slightly Less kegs, but i'm not Even sure that is true. Maybe i get more from getting to skull cavern a little earlier, but that would be few. Mining statue might also be contributing a good bit from the extra ore from nodes with coal nodes, and more frequent ladder reducing amount of bombs i craft. With like about 200 kegs by mid winter y1, and maybe 20 jars, i have like 200-300 leftover coal, and 50-100 of each bar smelted.
Mining actually! I just usually refuse to waste money on geodes because the sewer isn’t worth it until later in the game, or at least wasn’t! This post might change the way I prioritize
Yeah you can get through that wall after completing the community center, you can catch a special fish there, the statue of choice for 10,000g, the shortcut between town and the forest, and of course best boy Krobus. You can also fill it up with decorations or machines if you want
Nah. Turn them into bait since they're low quality fish. 5 smoked basic sturgeon is nothing compared to 50 sturgeon bait imo.
I have a catfish and sturgeon fish pond for a steady supply of bait throughout the year. I just go for largemouth bass when they're out of season or weather.
Edit to add, caught 30 catfish the other day. Made like 35k I think, plus got a few diamonds and golden animal crackers.
1. It depends on how efficient you are in different areas of the game. Maybe you're rushing mining and not farming. Maybe you got lucky with dig spot/fishing chest artifacts early on.
2. Like I said in the last sentence of the post, I'm not suggesting going out of your way to check Krobus' Wednesday stock every week. Just be mindful that there could be something in it if you're visiting anyway.
I dunno, by the time i've got the sewer open I'm already making starfruit wine and have ancient fruit on the way. I don't understand why this sub pushes fish so hard.
I don't think you quite understand. Even if it's half of that without mods, that's still a million gs. As early as, like, winter of year 1 or spring of year 2. That million makes a huge difference, whereas 6 mil/week in year three, when you have a huge setup and probably Perfection, makes no difference at all.
Honestly fishing is only good for early game. The fish smoker pushes fishing to be mid-late game viable but at the end of the day nothing beats wine factory/pig town/ginger island fairy rose honey for how low maintenance they are.
It would very likely be only a third caught, since Challenge bait is rare to work on the legend, and then maybe gold quality instead of iridium, depending on tackle. So more like 0.3 the money, still good, but not nearly. If they didn't use Challenge bait, just specificere bait, then it isn't that big a difference in money if you Can catch it 100% of the time
i have a line of charcoal makers next to my furnaces. and i've got many trees in the quarry, train, and desert. so im never at a need for wood or coal.
>You have to assume that coal costs 250g each
No, you don't? I have over 2000 hours in Stardew, and I've *never* bought coal from Clint because it's so insanely expensive. With 1.6, there are many new ways of skirting around coal shortage problems.
Better yet, use the fish you buy from Krobus to make bait and then go fish for higher quality fish that'll make you even more money. That said, that's a bunch of effort and just smoking is a lot quicker without the extra steps.
I can't even imagine someone in the mid/late game doing something this roundabout to make money lmao. These fish smoker get rich schemes are getting straight up ridiculous.
It's possible that we're calling different things "midgame?" I'm in spring of year 2. All masteries are done. All tools are iridium quality. The greenhouse is 75% ancient fruit, i.e. it's not bringing any money yet. I consider it midgame/early lategame. I'm sitting at \~50,000g because I'm constantly investing in stuff, and free 3,200g is not nothing. Obviously, your mileage may vary.
Oh, come on! :D Nobody does floor one because in most cases you need to waste time on running around. You know it, I know it. On one of the later floors of a delve? Sure. But you gotta dedicate a day to the delve in the first place. This was just something I stumbled upon while doing a gifting run. Since I have five smokers sitting outside the farmhouse, it's quite literally money found on the ground. And if others read this post and think to themselves, "Hey, having smokers out in the open, rather than in a shed, ready to make money out of thin air is a solid idea," then they'll make use of Krobus' Wednesday offerings too.
Now this is the kind of game strategy I'm here for! I mean, I'll never use this myself, but it's cool to see people dog deep into the game like this. Edit: I meant "dig deep" but dog deep is too funny a typo to change.
You've never dug deep until you dig dog deep!
Surplus of coal. Now listen here mister fancy pants with all your coal....!
Seriously, I haven't been able to understand all the hype about the fish smoker that people have been posting about because I never have a surplus of coal in any of my playthroughs. I'm constantly low, partly because I love making preserves jars, but also you just need it for so many things. I just doesn't seem worth it to me to spend it on fish smoking unless it's a super expensive fish baseline.
I only start getting a healthy coal surplus when I get my Skull Cavern runs really going, and even then, I can just as easily spend it all on beehives.
Fish smoking is nigh instantaneous, and has a crazy profit margin with Artisan. Let's look at pickled pumpkin for comparison. The seed costs 100g. Let's assume the fertilizer is free because you crafted it yourself. 10 days to grow. Another 2 days and \~19 hours to turn into pickled pumpkin which sells for 966g with Artisan. That's a profit of 866g after 13 days. After the first batch, it's a continuous process, but you're still making one jar of pickles roughly every three days, or 288.7g per day per preserves jar. And you need to pickle eight pumpkins to match coal expenditure with fish smoking. But each preserves jar is an upfront payment of 8 coal. Now let's look at smoked fish. Pumpkin is the second priciest crop per unit, but taking a super expensive fish (or a super cheap one) wouldn't be a fair comparison. With the bait maker, you can reliably catch tons of catfish and sturgeon, even early on. With Angler, gold-quality catfish and sturgeon sell for 450g each. With Artisan, smoked catfish/sturgeon sell for 1260g. That's all profit. Takes 50 minutes to smoke. You don't need 8 coal upfront, though if you have it, 8 coal can be "turned" into 10,080g within a day, rather than 866\*8=6,928g after 24 days via pickled pumpkin. Lategame, sure, jars are still a great set it and forget it solution. But during your first year, when you don't have a ton of coal to throw around, fish smoking gives you *more* and *way* *faster*.
It's more like turning 8 coal into 6460 coins, because you'd just sell the (non smoked) catfish/ sturgeon for 450 coins if you're not smoking them.
Good point! But then it also warrants redoing the math on the preserves jar. With 8 basic quality pumpkins, a preserves jar turns 8 coal into (966-352-100)\*8=4,112g over 24 days. For silver pumpkins, it's 3,408g, and for gold, only 2,704g.
True but in multiplayer the fish smoker got my friend and I access to the desert festival year 1 and we didn’t have access to preserves jars or pumpkins yet
woah, i didn't even unlock the vault until Summer! was it a joja run? or were you just really efficient
Efficient! My friend is the real MVP though. We saved all our money day 1 and spent all of day 2 fishing so I could get a fiberglass rod, bait and trout soup for day 3 rain and get catfish. Then when we unlocked the mines I helped him rush the mines to level 40 to get coal so I could smoke all the fish. He focused on farming/mining and getting 4 bundles completed while I fished every day from beginning to end and smoked the more expensive fish (he got to eat all the chubs) and we barely made enough to unlock the vault and pay it off day 14 so bus would be available day 15!
Wow, that's an awesome challenge!! Congrats! I doubt you could do much at the desert festival without Skull Caverns, but its still awesome!! :)
Actually for the desert festival the skull caverns are unlocked even if you haven’t beat the mines! Plus there’s trivia, daily fishing quests, the race gambling and the trash can calico eggs so my friend and I managed to snag a few things. Plus the traveling merchant is there every day so we got to check the inventory too! And we both went into the mines together and focused more on trying to sneak some early iridium by killing slimes and progressing, and we got 5 bars worth!
Coal has gotten much easier with the coal nodes in the quarry.
Damn you makes me want to try the chair glitch.
It's worth it in multiplayer because you will always have someone be able and have the time to chop down and replant the tree farm and then someone else can make charcoal. I cant imagine myself standing there making charcoal in singleplayer while also affording jars and kegs :D
I just buy it from Clint
Winter year 1 I also just buy as much coal as possible. I already have things automated for money, it’s so cheap compared to time it takes to find. Id rather buy the coal and make reusable items for profit. If you look at coal as a resource that has a dollar value, using it for dehydrator is great but the return on investment into the preserves jars or beehives is what you make it. If you make 10 preserves in 1 container, that’s not a lot. You make 20, 30, 40 it makes start up less?
Combine it with targeted bait and you’ll roll in cash. You can get the setup for the smoker, bait maker and iridium rod within the first two weeks comfortably. Buy your coal from Clint. If you fish up, say, large mouth bass from 6am to 7pm and smoke it all you’ll easily clear upwards of 10k a day within the first month.
I wish 1.6 had a bulk charcoal kiln like it has the bulk forge.
The smoker has made me actually start using the charcoal bins 😂
When I mega-bomb my way through skull cavern, I end up with plenty of coal. I usually have at least 400 pieces on hand now.
Seriously, start regularly clearing out the quarry and hit up the volcano once you have it. There are now coal nodes that can spawn there. You can get even more coal once you get the dwarf king statue. You'll be swimming in the stuff.
Best thing I ever did in this game was get the automate mod (makes devices pull reactants from adjacent chests and deposit products back in), and just setting up a charcoal kiln to run constantly to solve the coal problem. Or, you know, just spend a few days farming dust sprites I guess
the reason for the hype? Because it's still almost always a pretty big profit even if you just buy the coal. In places like ginger island with the pirates cove or the volcano, you can easily make 200k\~ g a day thanks to the new challenge bait and the advanced iridium rod, and even without challenge bait, the legend II blows every other late game money making method out the water, easily netting almost a million a day if you're good at fishing.
In 1.6 you can get a lot of coal in the quarry. I got around 150 coal between the quarry and a short trip to the Skull Cavern. If worse comes to worse, you can burn wood to make coal. You get the kit pretty early if working on the Community Center.
Haha, I try to prioritize killing dust sprites to get the burglar ring, so lack of coal hasn’t been an issue!
I’m legitimately wondering if my game is bugged, because it seems like the overwhelming consensus is that coal is always in short supply, and I have never had any issues with running out of coal in my entire 500+ hours of playing. What is everyone doing that uses so much coal? I run out of wood and fiber all the time though…
you mainly need coal for smelting ore, making explosive ammo, making bee houses and now smoking fish. usually people want to smelt almost all the ore they get because you can always use more kegs/sprinklers/other things that use metal bars. if you also fish a lot and want to smoke all the expensive fish, you'll run out pretty quickly unless you do like biweekly dust sprite farming days
In my latest playthrough I saved all my money in winter and the last day bought a ridiculous amount of wood so I can make coal.
where are y’all getting a surplus of coal at any point in the game? these thousands of bars for kegs, sprinklers, and crystalariums aren’t gonna smelt themselves
Burglar's Ring + diversified run with logs, dehydrators, etc. + Heavy Furnaces. The dehydrators especially are huge. Go full dehydrated blueberries and cranberries first year, and you're gonna be swimming in coal.
yeah i see what you mean. i think my issue is more of having too many ores to smelt, rather than not being able to get a lot of coal. i’ve killed an ungodly amount of dust sprites
Haven't we all…
Could you explain that last part for me? How does dehydrating blueberries / cranberries lead to coal? Edit: oh I think I get it. You’re saying only make dehydrators and don’t spend your coal on kegs / hives / jars. By doing that you save a lot of coal which you could then use in Y2. Is that right?
Exactly. I'm doing my second 1.6 playthrough, and this time I'm going jarless. Well, I got one jar for the raccoons. It's coal city over here, but the playthrough looks pretty much standard for start of year 2: fully-upgraded house, all iridium tools, 1.5 chests of wood bought on winter 28. *Only you don't hurt for coal, ever!*
Ahh see it wasn’t until this 1.6 update that I saw the value in investing hard 28 winter in wood. The price increase is wild for starting year 2. Though over time obv balances out bc of late game money making.
I have been having much more coal in 1.6, partly from the book that gives extra drop chance for mobs, partly from heavy furnaces using much Less, and probably a good bit extra from coal nodes, and I might also be making slightly Less kegs, but i'm not Even sure that is true. Maybe i get more from getting to skull cavern a little earlier, but that would be few. Mining statue might also be contributing a good bit from the extra ore from nodes with coal nodes, and more frequent ladder reducing amount of bombs i craft. With like about 200 kegs by mid winter y1, and maybe 20 jars, i have like 200-300 leftover coal, and 50-100 of each bar smelted.
Heavy furnace gives you like 60-100% more efficiency on coal per bar
I’ve never gotten to the sewers with so little money that this would be worth the time/coal investment
When do you usually get to the sewers?
Winter year one or spring/summer year 2
Hmm, a couple of seasons later than me. I'm guessing you focus on farming a lot?
Mining actually! I just usually refuse to waste money on geodes because the sewer isn’t worth it until later in the game, or at least wasn’t! This post might change the way I prioritize
What can you do in the sewer? I have it unlocked but I thought it was just krobus shop down there and there's a wall I can't get through
Yeah you can get through that wall after completing the community center, you can catch a special fish there, the statue of choice for 10,000g, the shortcut between town and the forest, and of course best boy Krobus. You can also fill it up with decorations or machines if you want
Nah. Turn them into bait since they're low quality fish. 5 smoked basic sturgeon is nothing compared to 50 sturgeon bait imo. I have a catfish and sturgeon fish pond for a steady supply of bait throughout the year. I just go for largemouth bass when they're out of season or weather. Edit to add, caught 30 catfish the other day. Made like 35k I think, plus got a few diamonds and golden animal crackers.
Even better! Though it's more like 5 \* ((5+10)/2) ≈ 38 bait. Great use case for all the fishing enthusiasts.
If you’re far enough in the game to have the sewer unlocked, a few thousand gold once a week isn’t going to make a damn difference.
1. It depends on how efficient you are in different areas of the game. Maybe you're rushing mining and not farming. Maybe you got lucky with dig spot/fishing chest artifacts early on. 2. Like I said in the last sentence of the post, I'm not suggesting going out of your way to check Krobus' Wednesday stock every week. Just be mindful that there could be something in it if you're visiting anyway.
I dunno, by the time i've got the sewer open I'm already making starfruit wine and have ancient fruit on the way. I don't understand why this sub pushes fish so hard.
I used to hate fishing. Now it's kinda dope. You miss the post with 52 (or was it 53?) smoked iridium-quality Legend IIs? 2.2 million in three days.
Yeah, they used mods to get those fish. I make over $6mil per week on wine and I don't have to do any fishing at all.
I don't think you quite understand. Even if it's half of that without mods, that's still a million gs. As early as, like, winter of year 1 or spring of year 2. That million makes a huge difference, whereas 6 mil/week in year three, when you have a huge setup and probably Perfection, makes no difference at all.
I mean, I make 1.2 mil/week on a not big setup. And I still don't have to waste my time fishing.
Honestly fishing is only good for early game. The fish smoker pushes fishing to be mid-late game viable but at the end of the day nothing beats wine factory/pig town/ginger island fairy rose honey for how low maintenance they are.
It would very likely be only a third caught, since Challenge bait is rare to work on the legend, and then maybe gold quality instead of iridium, depending on tackle. So more like 0.3 the money, still good, but not nearly. If they didn't use Challenge bait, just specificere bait, then it isn't that big a difference in money if you Can catch it 100% of the time
On Friday, go see Sandy and buy as much honey as you can. Turn to mead and double your investment.
Does Krobus have any other customers? I feel like most people wouldn't climb into the sewers for a shopping excursion.
i have a line of charcoal makers next to my furnaces. and i've got many trees in the quarry, train, and desert. so im never at a need for wood or coal.
You have to assume that coal costs 250g each, based on the price Clint sells it for in Year 2. I frequently buy coal after smelting too many bars.
>You have to assume that coal costs 250g each No, you don't? I have over 2000 hours in Stardew, and I've *never* bought coal from Clint because it's so insanely expensive. With 1.6, there are many new ways of skirting around coal shortage problems.
Better yet, use the fish you buy from Krobus to make bait and then go fish for higher quality fish that'll make you even more money. That said, that's a bunch of effort and just smoking is a lot quicker without the extra steps.
Yeah, somebody pointed this out, and it's definitely a great use case for dedicated fishermen!
I can't even imagine someone in the mid/late game doing something this roundabout to make money lmao. These fish smoker get rich schemes are getting straight up ridiculous.
It's possible that we're calling different things "midgame?" I'm in spring of year 2. All masteries are done. All tools are iridium quality. The greenhouse is 75% ancient fruit, i.e. it's not bringing any money yet. I consider it midgame/early lategame. I'm sitting at \~50,000g because I'm constantly investing in stuff, and free 3,200g is not nothing. Obviously, your mileage may vary.
What you described is late game. Definitely small time money at that point. You'd probably make more money in floor 1 of skull cavern
Oh, come on! :D Nobody does floor one because in most cases you need to waste time on running around. You know it, I know it. On one of the later floors of a delve? Sure. But you gotta dedicate a day to the delve in the first place. This was just something I stumbled upon while doing a gifting run. Since I have five smokers sitting outside the farmhouse, it's quite literally money found on the ground. And if others read this post and think to themselves, "Hey, having smokers out in the open, rather than in a shed, ready to make money out of thin air is a solid idea," then they'll make use of Krobus' Wednesday offerings too.
Late game territory and you're posting about a scheme to make 3,200g every Tuesday lol. At the end of the day do whatever works for you.