As a person who never minmax at all, one thing that helps me a lot to appreciate everything is decorating, not only my farm but small areas of the town (where no one walks around lmao) or cindersap forest

This one is pretty annoying for a lot of people but I personally like taking care of my animals, petting them and letting them eat some grass, taking a minute to watch my ducks swimming around

Only useful if you're starting a new file, but setting profit margins low really helped me, I'm the exact same

Pick a task each day, that's your task. Maybe its a forage and talk to people day, maybe it's a fishing day, or a mining day etc

Always visit the saloon every Friday to interact

No seedmaker, only what seeds you find or buy

Don't skip any events

Don't use the telephone, physically go and visit people

Edit: I just remembered something I've been doing with ginger island. I don't let myself bring any supplies over, only tools. I try to see how developed my island farm can get using only the island's resources. You can do a lot, although some things like fish smokers are just impossible (because you can't get cave jelly on ginger island.)

I like to change my outfits with the seasons and weather. 

Choose dialogue options that I think my character would pick, instead of just whatever gives the most friendship points.

Take my friends to the movies on their birthdays.

Buy people a round of beer or dinner at the saloon on weekends.

Grow a variety of crops and don't harvest them immediately when they're ready (it just looks nice to leave the fully grown crops a while.)

Build paths and fences and decor instead of filling all available space with crops and machines.

Decorate the house (this can take up a TON of time.) I buy furniture at shops too, instead of waiting for the catalogues.

Pick an activity to do during the day, maybe fulfill a quest if it's convenient, but don't run around frantically doing everything asap.

Another good one is to only give gifts on birthdays

It depends on the crops. For example apples take 10 apples to make one seed, which star quality sells for $1050. If you turn those 10 apples into jam they sell for $144 each, so multiply by 10 you're getting $1440 for those same 10 apples. From what I've generally seen bok choy and potatoes are usually better to turn into seeds, most things are better to persevere.

I'd also add to your consideration for his. Preserves jars are solely for turning things into profit. Seed makers are needed to continue your garden by making seeds. My seed makers are frequently tied up in making more seeds to plant in my garden and can't always be devoted to making profit. When you're later game and can afford tons of crafting slots then it won't matte as much since, but early game it does.

Then there's also the time factor to add in. Seed makers are often faster than preserves, but that also means needing to log in more often to keep feeding in crops, and that's not always possible for everyone.

All that to say the difference is usually very minimal. So minimal that for most the best thing to do is use what's available. Seed makers tied up in crops you need to replant? Preserve it. Preservers all tied up but nothing in your seed makers? Turn it into seeds. The small hit in profit from not doing the most optimal one is nothing compared to the hit in potential profit you will take by not having everything running.

I started the game recently and made a quick google sheet, here's the summary of what you need to do with crops:

https://preview.redd.it/mrx48fe96mbf1.png?width=419&format=png&auto=webp&s=6295336c5c015f3a9ad9b4d619113b75e139986e

I calculated based on the value for non-starred and starred crops, then how many crop for a seed and the difference of value between preserve jar or seed maker.

Sometimes it's not a big difference in money, but it's always more money anyway

The best passive profit i found are apples. Use preserves until you reach the gold limit of 1 mil then make seeds and store them, I store 1000 seeds. When you spend gold sell the seeds to cover the spent gold and replenish the storage back to 1000. This is what I found takes the minimum effort.

There are spreadsheets out there because I believe it varies by crop - some you’re better off preserving. Hopefully someone else has a more recent one but here’s one that I have bookmarked in the meantime

Edit - wait this one is better than the first one

https://www.reddit.com/r/Palia/s/1Dcp96LuZa

Currently using Fresh Farm Produce and I like how not processing everything into artisan goods doesn’t yield the highest price.

Stardew Valley Balance Overhaul is probably what you're looking for. it's a massive overhaul on lots of things, including primarily prices, to make different playthrough strategies much more balanced

There's also Ferngill Simple Economy, which adjusts the price of items based on random chance, time, as well as how much you've sold already of an item. this is a really cool new mechanic, and absolutely addresses the min maxing issue. sell 100 starfruit? The sale price drops the next day and for the rest of the season because the market is flooded, now although it may still be the most expensive item, the profit margin is actually better on red cabbage because it's in high demand and the sale price is skyrocketing. the mod is highly configurable, and you can really punish/promote different strategies with it. It also works with all modded crops, and works with artisan goods flavored with those crops (like wine or honey) This is especially true when combined with mods that add lots of crops, like Cornucopia, because the options expand exponentially, and the market goes wild. If, on top of that, you use a mod that limits seed availability like Realistic Seasonal Shop Inventory or (shameless plug) Vegas' Limited Shop Inventory, it further restricts your options, making sure you can't buy 999 seeds on day 1 of the season.

Honorable mention: Walk of Life does this a little bit too, but it evens out the different skills in an attempt to balance things. it's less about the process of goods and more about how you get all the items in the first place.

PIGS! Get the forager perk and every truffle they find will be worth about 1,500 and if you keep them happy they will find 2-6a day.

I have about 60+ pigs and make over 100k a day

I no longer sell my crops often. I save them for myself to make food. I mainly produce cheese and make a few thousand a day from cheese and mayonnaise

Start by fishing until you can buy a barn and put some cows in there. After that turn the milk into cheese until you can fully upgrade the barn and sell all your cows but one( the cheese is very good energy wise for skull cavern). And invest in pigs they will get you truffles daily and you’ll make loads of cash pretty quick I got it done in about 2 and a half a season for the barn 3 pigs and a cow. And if you make just a little bit of truffle oil with that your cash will skyrocket :)

Repetitive crops for me. Strawberries, blueberries, cranberries. High profit margin, only need to plant and fertilize once per season. Corn's a repeater, but low margin.

I'm in year 6 so that's a ways away, but I plant almost nothing but ancient fruit. Got that much by planting them in the greenhouse first and putting them all in seed makers. I had over 1000 ancient fruit seeds to plant this spring, combined with speed grow fertilizer. Ancient fruit lasts until winter, so you don't have to bother with replanting anything either.

After that, pop them into kegs for great wine, or just sell them as-is if you lack that many kegs.

Looks like a user did this recently!! Thank you /u/shootingclouds ☺️

https://www.reddit.com/r/RootsOfPacha/s/tDzMUpqJa2

The cheaper crops like tomatoes, turn into juice then wine them vinegar (so much processing). The best thing I've found is pickling fish or your highest veg. That and turning any grain into beer

I love less profit in Stardew.

My first time playing, I was only in winter year 1 but could already see how money was just flowing in and how it was only going to get worse (Money losing meaning because you just get so much every day).

I deleted that save & started a new one. Did 50% profit and downloaded the 'Longevity' mod. (along with many many others)

It increased my joy in the game forsure.

Doing a 25% run in coop right now, we're in summer year 2.

1. Both board quests seem to give normal rewards, so these became a very useful money maker for us.

2. We do a lot of cooking and buying rice, oil, and flour from Pierre just isn't viable so we are growing way more corn, wheat and rice than ever before.

3. The Legendary fish roe is still very good, I got Glacier fish online in winter year 1 and The Legend early spring year 2

We did this to try to prolong the game experience and it's been a lot of fun, highly recommend

My main thought on it was that it would only reinforce my over the top tendencies for the early game. Basically, setting up to have kegs ASAP and plant tons of hops (with sprinklers) on Summer 1.

I went the other way and tried to find other crops with mods and new ways to profit. I saw mentions of the Longevity mod and I should probably try that. Need something to change up my formula.

I did 50% profits for my first 1.6 run because I thought it would be a nice way to see everything the update had to offer while also giving me a new challenge. I had a similar early game experience but by late game I became a total profit driven monster (kegs everywhere, bee hives covering the west side of Ginger Island, Crystalariums in the bus tunnel) and I kind of hated it and who it made me become.

Maybe I've spent too much time farming, but I have no idea how you run out of new stuff to do after year 2. I'm about to start year 6 and I'm constantly learning about new stuff from this subreddit.

I just hit spring year 3 and I have $250k without really trying. It accumulates easily in the game, I’ve just focused on building relationships and ranching and unlocking every item. I think the easiest way to make money is having a bunch of chickens and making mayo at the end of every week

Cook and craft! I never sell crops raw. Try to work on your cooking skill level and get 5 star recipes, then plant plant plant!

One of the recipes that helped me make 1M was the pumpkin pie. Plant A LOT of pumpkins and wheat in autumn, sugar canes in summer and collect a lot of milk from your animals. Same thing for strawberry cake and later golden cookies (but these are annoying as golden butter takes a lot of time to make in large batches) maybe it'll take some time, but once you have all the ingredients you need, you'll easily make a lot of money.

It's a good idea to plant wheat and sugar canes regularly bc most desserts require them, so even if you don't have all ingredients for one specific recipe, you'll still be able to cook another one.

Use your wools and furs to craft carpets as well. Use your plants to make fake decorations and sell them if you can't cook with them, but don't sell them raw!

No to selling raw crops (except one of each type, in case it unlocks recipes).

If there's no cooking recipe with the crop, then use the faux crop recipes, since all crops have those.

Cooking or crafting increases the price and has a chance of giving you extra freebies, so no reason to sell raw crops.

Usually cooked dishes sell for more money plus as you level up the cooking skills, I'd go for the perks that reduce time to cook

Craft faux plants out of raw vegetables! Certain ones are worth a decent amount of money if you sell in bulk!

Excellent advice, not even getting into how much of a powerhouse Wheat Flour can be from a cooking standpoint for skills.

Fishing, Farming, or Mining? You need flour for Maple Bars giving +1 to all those skills for a whopping 16:47.
Foraging? Pancakes for +2 for 11:11.
Dungeoneering or just running around? Crabcakes. for the +1 speed for 16:47

Why do you say anciant fruit is better then starfruit

Farming, and process what you farm in preserve jars and kegs (check wiki for what is most efficient for this). Eventually you'll add casks to that mix. Pick Artisan for your level 10 farming skill. Nothing in the game can compare to the profit you can make with this approach because sprinklers, and later the "auto-harvesting feature" (don't want to spoil too much..), allow this to scale far beyond what other approaches can. So you make more money and most days use hardly any of your time to do it.

Fishing has a terrible profit-per-time-spent scale. Mining and selling ores and gems can make decent money, but it takes your whole day or you make nothing, and you can't really scale it up. So it's pretty solid early but not going to get you a golden clock without a very long grind.

For animals, pig truffles, golden cheese from regular cows, and eventually ostriches, are all pretty good money compared to the effort involved. Takes too much space to scale up, and definitely not worth the effort until you can afford auto-harvesters. But I like to supplement my farming with these.

Truffle oil, I make 75k a day on bad days. Even with winter and rainy days counted I make more per day than my ancient fruit wine.

Early game is fishing and tea tree saplings, later on is strawberries, blueberries, cranberries. Pigs, ancient fruit and star fruit wine when you can.

I do truffles and coffee mainly but I’m not uber rich. I’m like upper middle class. I have a Junimo hut’s worth of seasonals that regrow a la strawberries, etc

Well uhhh, mostly bombs inside skull caverns for iridium, also the mining level (5? Possibly 10) for +1 ore per vein really helps in the long term. Lucky days, plus lucky food, plus lucky ring, burglars ring for monster rerolls for iridium bars from bats, monster musk, crusader on infinity sword to take care of mummies and slime charmers ring so slimes dont do damage.

Edit: forgot about rabbits foot from the journal scrap.

Selling the tea sapling btw, not placing them for the tea, just making sure

Generally a pig will find one truffle a day at no hearts. But with every heart the chance it finds more increases. I generally never settle for fewer than 12 pigs.

Mostly 128 crystalariums making diamonds