Gold/TileDay Animals

Flexible script for comparing the efficiency of Stardew Valley Animal businesses.

GENERAL

1: This script is designed to inform a late game (Y3+) business plan

for the vanilla version of Stardew Valley. A complete Community

Center/Joja Membership form and access to Ginger Island are assumed.

The Farmer is level 10 in all Skills and access to Masteries, Books,

and Animal Crackers. The Farmer and is assumed to be diligent and goes

to every reasonable length to maximize profit while minimizing costs.

ANIMALS

2: Max Mood and Friendship is assumed, so have Auto-Petters or be

prepared to do the petting yourself.

2.1: You can free range your animals and gather products yourself, but

this guide will assume all animals (except Pigs) are kept in their

enclosure year-round and you have an Auto-Grabber to gather their

produce for both space and time efficiency.

PROFESSIONS

3: In order to take full advantage of all Professions, this guide will

assume you are swapping professions from either Coopmaster/Shepherd to

Artisan when it is time to sell your goods. This will be relevant for

some animals as both Coopmaster and Shepherd boost animal product

quality, and more importantly Sheep produce Wool twice as fast with

Shepherd. The cases where Artisan is not swapped to will not have

Artisan as the listed profession; otherwise assume that either

Coopmaster (for Coop Animal products) or Shepherd (for Barn Animal

products) is the Profession being used throughout the year. The

Profession swap will be done once a year.

PROFITS

4: Gold/TileDay will be the metric used to measure the productivity of

all the businesses, as it allows for a fair comparison between

buildings of different sizes. Roughly speaking, it will be the Gold/Day

of a particular Building divided by that Building's footprint (in

Tiles) on the Farm.

4.1: Unlike with Crops these Buildings also have enough

space for all the necessary Artisan Machines inside them, and so Tiles

taken up by Machines will not factor into businesses that use a

Building.

4.2: Since the Artisan Machines for Animals finish in less than one

day and Animals produce daily at most, the bottleneck for time is

always one day so processing time for Machines does not need to be

considered (except for Aged Roe).

4.3: In order to minimize visits, the setups assume you only check your

Animals and Machines once a day at most, and thus each Coop/Barn has

24 Machines so that every time you harvest products there are enough

Machines to take in the next set of items. If you are willing to check

more often or if your Animals' production is not syncronized you can

use less Machines.

COSTS

5: The Low and High Building Fixed Costs are the costs of all of the

necessary equipment; and is combined the cost of the Building and all

the Animals and Artisan Machines inside it, as well as Heaters and Auto

Grabbers where applicable.

5.1: The Low Building Fixed Cost (LBFC) assumes you source any

materials you need manually, i.e. you mine your own ores, chop your own

wood, ect.; thus the cost is the opportunity cost of selling those

materials instead of crafting them or using them in Buildings.

5.2: The High Building Fixed Cost (HBFC) assumes you buy any materials

that can be easily bought; i.e. you buy all your wood and stone from

Robin and ores and Coal from Clint. The costs of materials that cannot

be easily bought (such as Pine Tar) are treated as they were in the

LBFC calculation.

6: The Low and High Tile Fixed Costs (LTFC and HTFC respectively) are

the LBFC/HBFC divided by the size of the Building's footprint on the

Farm. This is the most useful metric for determining how easy it is to

expand business.

6.1: This value does not measure how much gold you will have to spend

out of pocket to start/expand an operation. Depending on what materials

you already have and what materials you have to buy the amount of

money that you have to spend on a per tile basis may be higher or lower

than either of these values. Some of the costs are are assets you may

already have but not sold, like bought Animals or already crafted

Every business with a positive Gold/TileDay can profit and sustain

itself in the long term as the fixed costs will eventually wash out,

but the up front costs may be high enough that it will take longer to

turn a profit.

6.2: The LTFC/HTFC Time to Profit informs how many full days it will

take for the business to be profitable.

MISC.

7: Fish Ponds do not proivde space for the necessary Machines to

maximize their profit from them, so the extra Tiles the Machines take

up is accounted for separately. Note that one could benefit from

putting Machines in a Big Shed instead of outside, as a Big Shed

provides 137 usable Tiles for a footprint of only 21 usable Tiles,

making it a worthy investment almost always, and certianly once you

are using more than 21 Machines.

7.1: Each Lava Eel pond produces less than 1 Roe/Day on average, and

aging takes 3 days at most, so 3 Preserves Jars for every Pond will

suffice. Accordingly, Lava Eel Fish Ponds will be considered to have a

footprint of 28 Tiles (could be lower on average if you had many Ponds

and put all the Preserves Jars in a Big Shed).

7.2: Geodes are assumed to be broken at Clint's shop, and the cost of

doing so is already factored into their profitability.

8: Concerning Silos, you only ever need 1 since it can be refilled

with Hay from a Chest which is much more space efficient, and 1 Silo

will distribute Hay automatically to all Coops/Barns as long as there

is enough Hay to do so.

8.1: If you are building many larger Buildings, you

are likely to end up with a space that is not large enough to fit

another Animal Building (3x6 to 4x7) but is large enough to fit a Silo

(3x3), and many Farm Maps have alcoves or areas near bushes that a Silo

can fit in but larger Buildings cannot. For these reasons I do

not consider the Silo to compete for Tiles in the same way that the

larger Buildings compete with each other for Tiles, so Silos are not

accounted for in the Gold/TileDay.

8.2: That being said, the Gold cost of the Silo is accounted for as a

fixed cost when applicable. Additionally the high cost of the Silo uses

year 1 shop Prices for Stone, Coal, and Copper Ore since there is no

practical roadblock to building a single Silo in year 1 (or at least

buying the materials for it).

9: For Slime Hutches, only the profits from selling Slime Eggs and

Petrified Slimes were considered. There are other great sources if you

are interested in breeding Slimes for their drops, but that is not the

focus of this guide. As such we do not care about Slime color.

9.1: For optimal Slime Hutch layouts, the cost of any fencing/flooring

was not considered. Neither is the cost of a Wicked Statue since Slime

color is not a factor.

9.2: Sprinkler cost was considered; if you are sourcing

everything yourself, 1 Regular and 1 Quality Sprinler is the cheapest

option. If you are buying everything from Clint, all the materials for

4 Regular Sprinklers will cost 10,000 Gold; 1 Regular and 1 Quality

Sprinkler will cost 8000 Gold but you need to obtain a Refined Quartz.

Crafting an Iridium Sprinkler is cheapest a 6000 Gold, but you will

need both Iridium Ore and Batteries so it is the hardest to buy

outright.