Transitioning to 1.6

[jacobb]

I thought it would be a good idea to figure out the goals/roadmap/structure once 1.6 is released on March 19th.

Once appropriate updates are ready, should main transition to 1.6, even if the ideal routing is in the air?

Should 1.5 move to its own branch, or just a tag be enough?

Vanilla + QOL mods is definitely my preferred way to play, and I'd be happy to help with any of the work to transition the guide.

[Zamiell]

hihi!

Should 1.5 move to its own branch, or just a tag be enough?

i dont really think we need to maintain routes for old versions, if you want we can git tag it yes

Once appropriate updates are ready, should main transition to 1.6, even if the ideal routing is in the air?

up to you

I'd be happy to help with any of the work to transition the guide.

thanks! yeah im excited to try 1.6 myself, hopefully it comes out sooner than later

[Zamiell]

i have started up a casual 1.6 playthrough. here are some things i have noticed (i will edit this post more over the course of the week):

• there are new Jelly items available from all fishing locations (River Jelly, etc.), which changes the fishing tables. (note that Jelly has a high GPE.)
• joja cola is the same gold per buff second as coffee. however, the difference is that cola gives much more energy back. thus, it is now optimal to use joja cola instead of coffee.
• buying the movement speed book for 15,000 gold seems pretty good. it could probably be squeezed in to buy on Spring 11.
• foraging salmonberries gives foraging XP now, but I don't think that changes the calculus at all (i.e. you still want to ignore salmonberry bushes)

[brokencygnus]

Let me preface that I've been using your guide since 1.5, it's one of a kind and well-written! Thank you for your hard work!

I've started a new playthrough on 1.6, and there are two major things I'd like to note:

1. The desert festival unlocks SC temporarily, and it's slightly more rewarding to do dives there. It's a good idea to sacrifice a few days going to floor 120 to unlock the bus early. Unfortunately, this makes getting the gold for both the gold pickaxe and the bus a very stringent constraint, much more stringent if you're not on riverland farm.
2. The targeted baits are gamechanging for fishing. I'm not sure if you should defer fiberglass for the iron and wood for the tide pools, but it's definitely # 1 priority to get it after fiberglass. You could fish only catfish if it rains, or otherwise largemouth bass.

Riverland is so good now that I worry that nobody minmaxing is going to play the other maps. The limiting factor for fish smokers is the 10k gold at the start, and after you get it it won't be as worthwhile as bait maker since coal is 150 a pop. That makes smoking largemouth only give 50g if you factor in the coal (150 with angler) but since you get it so early in riverland, that's really good.

Hope this helps! Btw I'm open to help updating your guide for 1.6

[JeffreyBell]

One of the new features that comes into play very early is the introduction of carrots.

• same XP as Parsnips
• three times the energy
• same gold
• three days to harvest.

If you were really good at picking up seeds (13) you could potentially get Farming 1 a day sooner.

[Zamiell]

If you were really good at picking up seeds

Be more concrete though. The only source of them pre-Fishing-Chest and pre-Skull-Cavern is the seed spots (?), and there wouldn't be more than a handful on the first day. I don't really think "skill" comes into play, because you can just pause the game, take a screenshot, and examine it closely to find all of the seed spots. (Personally I use a notifier mod that displays a message whenever one exists + this mod.)

Thus, Carrot Seeds are similar to mixed seeds insofar that if you get any, you can plant them immediately. So yes, to your point, it may tip you over the edge of getting farming 1 a day earlier, but would that influence the route in any way? You can craft scarecrows a day earlier I guess?

[Zamiell]

Riverland is so good now that I worry that nobody minmaxing is going to play the other maps.

Thanks, I generally agree with what you said. It is perhaps its worth considering that for a run that involves year 2, you only get vs 1578 hoeable tiles on riverland vs 3427 hoeable tiles on the normal farm. In year 1 it matters less, since you probably would not be able to cover your full farm with Starfruit, but that ends up being a lot less Starfruit on year 2.

[JeffreyBell]

carrot....but would that influence the route in any way?

You make a good point. It would not change the route significantly. It's mostly like mixed seeds.

[brokencygnus]

you only get vs 1578 hoeable tiles on riverland vs 3427 hoeable tiles on the normal farm.

This is a non-issue since year 1, you won't get 1500 starfruits anyway, and in year 2 you already plant starfruits in the ginger island. the additional 1500 plots for just summer y2 are overshadowed by the faster start and getting full mastery in summer y1.

The main benefit of fish smokers is that it becomes trivial to get money for bus and gold pick (or bombs) to properly do SC dives in day 15. This also means that you have to buy a green bean and copper ore on the first day, which in my experience (~5 runs) still leaves plenty of room to get fiberglass day 2. You also save some money from not having to buy the 500-800 bait since you'll get bait from bait maker anyway.

The benefit of y1 desert fest is twofold:

1. Depending on how good you are at SC dives, you can get foraging XP (the limiting factor for mastery) during the desert festival by buying books up to 9000 xp (realistically for me I'd say 5000). Woodcutter's weeklies are sold for 100 eggs and give 250 xp, and can be bought infinitely. (10 mystery boxes for 20 isn't worth it in my opinion) The rest can easily be gained by tree farming in the railroads or desert. After that 800 starfruits for 2 harvests give ~70k mastery points and the 30k can so easily be gained from SC dives. I haven't tested this since I flunked my desert fest this run and planted trees too late, but even with that I've gotten mastery before the final starfruit harvest.
2. You get much more initial capital for starfruits. You can get really deep in SC dives during the fest because the chef's buffs stack with food and drinks. That's almost equivalent to having MRC every single day during the fest. Not to mention on day 3 you can actually stack MRC with the +3 luck buff. I consider myself good at planning but my execution sucks. With your guide in 1.5 I unlocked the bus in day 20 ish and could only get like 200 starfruits running y1, while now with the flunked fest and fish smoker I can get 700+ starfruits running. A person who can follow your guide in 1.5 (with 400 starfruits) can easily fill the riverland farm to the brim with starfruits.

[Zamiell]

Fantastic info, thanks. Can you sketch out a new route / submit a PR?

[brokencygnus]

I will be sketching out a route after I'm done with my y2 perfection run, but it'll be for riverland only. Are we sure we want to limit the farm selection in the guide to just one farm? Because I haven't found a way yet to consistently get y1 desert fest with adequate preparation on the other farm layouts.

Edit: it seems possible, but with steel pick instead of gold. I'm not good enough at SC to verify that it works.

[rorshan]

First of all, I'm really looking forward to trying an updated route for 1.6. I'm knowledgeable enough to follow the route, but I can't really wrap my head around how to properly move stuff around to serve the goal of reaching SC by the time the desert festival begins. The one big thing I can't decide is whether to buy or chop the 300 wood needed to unlock the bridge, which we need early to get the ingredients for the bait maker.

One thing of note: with fish smoker being part of the route (definitely for Riverland, and I would expect for other layouts as well), you want way more coal than in 1.5. Since coal essentially replaces artifacts in fishing treasure chests if you haven't found artifacts yet, I'm thinking it might actually be beneficial NOT to dig up any artifact spot before inevitably getting an artifact in the mines. Every bonus coal fished up that way can go straight into the fish smoker instead of having to buy it from Clint. The average value of a fished up artifact is 107 gold. I think coal replacing artifacts drops in stacks of 1-24 (like the regular chance of coal in a chest), but even if it's only 1 coal per artifact, it's still 43 extra gold per replaced artifact.

The two downsides I can think of are fewer chances at getting an ancient seed, and potentially a harder time reaching the 60 artifacts milestone to gain access to the sewers in the summer. However I suspect those tradeoffs are well worth the extra few hundreds or thousand gold we might get during early spring, especially since every extra fish we can save until fishing 10 is worth 50% more (even when smoked!)

[Zamiell]

Are we sure we want to limit the farm selection in the guide to just one farm?

i am not sure. the idea is that the guide should serve as a rough layout for any particular challenge run. so maybe we can put a riverland farm guide as an appendix.