Can You Complete Stardew Valley's Community Center Without Levelling Up?

(Stardew Valley "Cloud Country" plays) Completing Stardew Valley's Community Center is a gargantuan task. 30 bundles of items spread across six distinct categories, each requiring you to explore various facets of the game in order to find the things that complete them. It's a fun and clever way to get you to discover the game's many complexities without explicitly giving you a direction, you can do it all at your own pace. But no matter how you approach it, completing these bundles will cause you to naturally progress in the game's five core skills: Farming, mining, foraging, fishing, and combat. As you slowly climb from Level 0 to 10 in each of these skills, you'll gain more freedom and power in determining how you acquire everything that the Community Center demands, ultimately transforming you into a well-rounded, productive citizen by its completion. But what if you didn't care about that? What if instead of becoming a valuable and skilled member of the community, you just wanted to be really, really lazy. Still help fix up the Community Center, mind you, but not in any way that involves the harsh manual labor the game expects of you. Well, in order to be that lazy, you're going to have to put in a lot of work. 106 items, 42,500 gold, Zero skills. Is it possible? (Stardew Valley "Settling In" plays) Before I even begin to answer this question, there's an elephant in the room I should address. In Stardew Valley, specifically in Pelican Town where most of the game takes place, There's this big blue building tucked away in the northeast called Joja Mart At any time you like, you can visit Joja Mart and buy a store membership, provided you have the 5,000 gold needed. Doing this will fundamentally change how the Community Center works. In fact, there won't even be a Community Center anymore, as Mayor Lewis will sell the old building to Joja and will transform it into a warehouse instead. This transformation eliminates the original bundles, instead allowing you to pay off the Joja Community Development Form in order to receive the same benefits that completing each set of bundles would have provided. While this method does technically achieve the same end result as completing the community center, sort of, it's not a path I'm going to be pursuing in this video, since it's fairly obvious that you could eventually amass the 140,000 gold needed to complete this process without leveling up any skills. I'm also going to be omitting the use of glitches for the entirety of this challenge. There are a few as-of-yet unpatched bugs in the game that would trivialize some aspects of this Challenge, and I'd rather avoid those for the sake of integrity. Namely, there's a well-known way to spawn any item you want into the game by naming your character, farm, or animals in a specific way. Not only would this cheapen the challenge, but I'd rather not go through the game with a character named something like Open Bracket 7-0-9 Close Bracket, (robotic voice) Open Bracket, 2-6-2 Close Bracket-- Just personal preference. Lastly, I am going to be trying to complete the Community Center with zero levels, but not with zero experience. A small distinction, but an important one. For each of the five skills, you need exactly 100 experience points in order to gain your first level. This means that I have a small leeway of 99 experience points with in each skill. While I can see how this might seem against the spirit of the challenge, I actually think it makes things more interesting. What's the best way to allocate those 99 points in each skill in order to leverage some use out of them before you can never progress any further? My answer to that question might be wildly different to yours, or that the one that someone else doing this challenge comes up with, For better or for worse, with all of that out of the the way, It's time to form our plan of attack and find the best way to avoid work. (Stardew Valley Emily's Theme plays) Originally, while doing the research for this challenge, I actually didn't think it was going to be all that difficult. I wasn't even sure it would warrant a video like this. Mostly thanks to one particular character in the game that makes this idea even theoretically possible: The Traveling Merchant. Together with her pet pig, she comes through the Valley twice a week, on Fridays and Sundays, offering a wide and varied selection of goods, from the most basic of materials to exotic items that can usually only be sourced much later in the game. Not only that, but her stock changes completely each time you visit her, giving us plenty of opportunities to find what we need for the Community Center. I was initially under the impression that she had the potential to sell almost any item in the game, barring a few special cases. Meaning that completing this challenge will be as simple as visiting her shop every weekend and hoping for the best. And while this strategy is effective for the vast majority of the items we need, there are a few exceptions. Specifically these eleven items will never appear in her stock. So, I'll need to find different ways to gather each of these without leveling up. Some of them are simple enough, others less so. Not only that, but just buying all the other items from the Traveling Cart is problematic in its own right. In order to understand why, we'll have to take a more in-depth look at how the Traveling Cart actually works. Every time you visit her, the Traveling Merchant will have 10 items for sale, as well as one random piece of furniture and the occasional special item, but none of these are needed for the Community Center, so we can disregard them. For each of these ten items, the game first chooses a pool of items to draw from and then picks an item from that pool to sell. The pool of items is seemingly chosen at random, but the items within those pools each have variable odds of being picked, making some much more likely to appear than others. According to the Stardew Valley Wiki, my primary resource for most of the information in this video, link in the description. Most of the items sold at the Traveling Cart have a base 1.26% chance of being chosen from the respective pools, but some items have significantly higher odds of being picked, ranging from about 2% to upwards of 70% in some cases. No items have less than the base chance, though. What this means for our purposes, is that solely relying on the Cart to supply us with literally everything that it possibly could, would be an extreme exercise of luck and patience. It would likely start off pretty well. Since there are so many different items that we need anyway, that the likelihood of at least one of them being available on any given day is reasonably high. But as more and more of the bundles get filled out, fewer and fewer trips to the Traveling Merchant will yield anything at all. And once we're down to the last couple of items, it could very well take dozens of in-game years for them to show up. It's possible, but extremely tedious. And believe it or not, that's not even the worst of it. See, while most of the Community Center bundles are satisfied by individual items, there are a few that instead demand multiples of certain items, ranging anywhere from 3-198 of each. Specifically we will need to find multiples of these nine items. The Traveling Merchant typically stocks just one copy of any given item. Although, she can rarely supply 5 instead, mitigating this issue somewhat. But given how low the chances are for some of these items to show up even once, we'll need to consider other methods to acquire these. Thankfully, Stardew Valley is a deep and varied game. So while the Traveling Cart will be our main source for most of the things we need, it's far from the only avenue we can pursue. Even while remaining at level 0 in every skill, there are a surprising amount of systems we can use and abuse to our advantage. I'll discuss these as they become relevant. Finally, there's one more thing we should discuss before we begin the challenge: Capitalism. See, the Traveling Merchant is just that; A merchant, and a cut-throat one at that. The prices of her items will typically vary between 100 and 1,000 gold per piece, but some can go for much, much more than that. So even if we do see some of the items we need for sale, it doesn't mean much if we don't have the money to afford them. Question is, how can we make money effectively without leveling up any skills? There are a lot of answers to this, and more opportunities will become available as we progress through the challenge. But my initial strategy relies on the two core pillars that underlie the entirety of Stardew Valley: Friendship, and garbage. We'll start with that one, since it's easier to explain. Throughout Pelican Town, there are seven buildings that have trash cans outside of them. Once per day per trash can you can rummage through your neighbor's garbage in the hopes of finding something useful. Most of the time you'll get either nothing at all or, well, trash. But on rare occasions, you'll find a little extra treat and the possibilities are surprisingly many. Not only are some of these items directly required for the Community Center, notably, the Earth Crystal, and the Quartz, which are among the few that we can't get from the Traveling Cart. But you can sell a lot of what you find for a decent amount of money. It's unreliable, but it's the best we've got. At least for the early game. Just be sure that no one else is nearby while you're out garbage collecting, since that directly conflicts with our second money-making scheme. If you've ever played Stardew Valley before, you'll know that there's a wide cast of characters to meet, most of whom you can slowly build friendships with in order to cement yourself within the community. As your friendship level increases with each villager, some of them will opt to send you presents in the mail on occasion. We can exploit this kindness by selling or re-purposing all of their presents to suit our needs. The higher your friendship level with any given villager, the more likely they are to send you something. So it's in your best interest to make friends with as many as you can. But not everyone will send you gifts. So if you really want to fast-track the process, just befriend the people shown here and much like the garbage cans, you can actually get quite a few things for the Community Center directly from these folks, if you get lucky. I'll link a list to all possible gifts as well as all possible loot from the garbage cans in the description below. And as far as planning goes, that's kind of it. I'll adjust my strategy and try out new tactics as they become available, but we have a good starting point. It's time to stop theory-crafting and get our hands dirty. (Stardew Valley "Spring Theme" plays) On my very first day, I took the 15 Parsnip seeds given by Mayor Lewis and sold 10 of them. I held on to 5 for reasons that will become clear much later on. From there, I set my daily routine into motion. A routine that went unchanged for most of the first year, in fact. Wake up, scour the garbage cans, talk to everyone, sell everything, sleep, and repeat. Fairly basic stuff. I did make the mistake of spending my initial 500 gold buying wood from Robin for 10 gold each, giving me just enough to craft a chest, something I'd recommend investing in early on just for peace of mind. The reason that this was a mistake, is that you can actually get wood for free simply by chopping the logs scattered around your farm. I have been working under the assumption that doing this provided foraging experience, but it actually does not. Chopping down trees and stumps does, though, so be wary of that. Quick side-note, Robin's Carpentry shop is immensely helpful for this challenge. She sells wood and stone, both of which we need in excess for the Construction Bundle. The initial price for these is 10G for wood and 20G for stone. The price quintuples at the start of the second year, so I'd recommend buying all that you need before this happens. Either that, or wait to be gifted enough wood and stone from Robin and George respectively. Both strategies are pretty effective. I whiled away the rest of my spare time on the first few days harvesting fiber from anywhere I can find it, primarily the Farm and the Cindersap Forest. Fiber itself isn't very useful for our purposes, but it does sell for 1G per piece. It might not seem like much, but every little bit counts this early on. At the end of the week, I made my inaugural trip to the Traveling Cart. With only a few hundred Gold, I wasn't expecting much, but I did end up having the choice between either a Parsnip or a Void Essence. Ultimately, I chose the Parsnip, which was probably a mistake since I could have easily been gifted this by Caroline later on, but it was still progress. After that, I realized I had forgotten to do something pretty important: Actually activate the Community Center. You do this by entering the Town from the direction of the Bus Stop any time after Spring 4th, but only between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. at which point, Mayor Lewis will debrief you on the building, you'll meet the Junimos for the first time, and the Wizard will brew a potion that gives you access to the first set of bundles, and only the first set of bundles. This posed a problem that I hadn't considered. You can't actually access all of the bundles in the Community Center right away. Instead, they're unlocked sequentially as you complete other bundles. This meant that I had to fully complete 1 of the 6 bundles in the Crafts Room before I could progress. All of these bundles require things that we can pretty much only source from the Traveling Cart, and due to its random nature, there is no telling when I would actually be able to do this. There is a rare chance that you can find foragable items in the garbage cans during each of their respective seasons. So the Spring Foraging bundle would have probably been the most likely option, but I somehow got it in my head that I could finish the Construction bundle more easily, despite the lofty need for 10 hardwood. Regardless, I carried on with this in mind. On Spring 11th, I completed the quest to find Robin's lost axe, snagging an easy 250 Gold just in time for the next round of the Traveling Cart. Of course hoping to fast-track that Construction bundle, I instead spent all the money on wood. Clearly I had my priorities straight. Spring 13th brought the Egg Festival, the first special event of the year. By and large these holidays aren't too important for our purposes, but they do make it easy to catch every villager in one place, gaining some quick friendship points by talking to everyone. Some of these events also allow you to earn money in a roundabout way. The Egg Festival doesn't at first, since the prize for winning the Egg Hunt is an unsellable straw hat, but winning the Hunt on subsequent years instead nets you 1,000 Gold. Unfortunately, Abigail sniped the win away from me anyway, but this money maker is pretty low on my priority list. The next day, I decided to check out the Mines. I didn't expect to make any progress, since that would obviously necessitate some Mining and Combat experience, but I was actually seeking something else. Sometimes different floors of these mines will have wooden crates and barrels scattered about that you can slash open with a scythe or sword. Most of the time, these only contain bits of wood and random foragable materials from within the Mines. But you can actually get hardwood from them on rare occasions as well. Sadly, after checking pretty thoroughly, I don't believe these crates and barrels can actually appear on the first floor of the mines, meaning that some progress would need to be made in order to make use of this strategy. I gave up on this endeavor pretty early on, but we'll come back to the mines in a bit. Spring 15th marked the start of our first decent, somewhat consistent source of money: Salmonberry season. Starting on the 15th and going through to the 18th, bushes around the Valley will grow these small reddish berries. Contrary to what you might think, you can actually pick these berries without gaining any foraging experience at all. They only sell for 5 Gold each, but you can typically pick anywhere from 20 to 30 of them each day, making for a relatively quick few hundred gold over those three days. With my new-found riches, I bought both a Cave Carrot and a Carp from the Traveling Merchant. Moving onto the Flower Dance on Spring 24th. This isn't a festival you'd ordinarily expect to be important, but it's actually pretty instrumental thanks to Pierre's questionable decision to sell Daffodils and Dandelions. Just make sure you set aside 100 Gold to afford both of them, and the Spring Foraging bundle will be halfway done. Jumping ahead to the 9th of Summer, I gifted a random Topaz I'd found to Shane on a whim, since he was in the area. Doing this completed one of the game's earliest quests, which you can achieve by giving any gift to anyone, and you'll get a sweet 100 Gold out of the deal. Most of the time, the completion of these quests is entirely out of your hands, since many of them require specific items or conditions, but be on the lookout for the ones that you can complete, since it's usually a good way to snag some quick cash. The next day, I found a Strawberry in Clint's garbage. This isn't need for the Community Center, but I saved it instead for the Summer Luau. Putting a decent ingredient in the stew during this festival will reward you with a decent amount of friendship points with everyone in town, so set aside something for it if you can. My next stroke of luck didn't come until the 14th of Summer, which turned out to be a pivotal day. First, I found a Largemouth Bass in Jodi's trash, used in the Lake Fishing bundle once we can access it. Next, some Copper Ore cropped up in Clint's garbage can. This was important because finding any ore, regardless of its source, will prompt Clint to show up the next day and tell you how to make a furnace. This is vital since Clint sells Copper, Iron, and Gold Ore, as well as the Coal needed to make Bars out of them, all three of which are used to complete the Blacksmith bundle later on. Finally, since all this happened on a Sunday, I also made a trip to the Traveling Cart and was able to afford a Cactus Fruit, another item for Exotic Foraging. Soon after, I found a Geode in the Museum's trash. You can pay Clint 25 Gold to crack these open, and it's usually worth while since you can get some valuable minerals and artifacts from them. I got a hunk of Sandstone out of this one, but I donated it to the Museum instead of selling it. There are some potentially useful rewards for filling up parts of the Museum collection if you happen to find enough Artifacts to earn them. I'll talk more on that when it becomes important. On the same note, though, I found another Geode on the 17th of Summer, this time netting an Earth Crystal, a much more valuable find. Not only is it required for the Geologist bundle, but it's also on our list of things that the Traveling Merchant doesn't sell, solving one of our problems. At the end of the week, the Traveling Merchant provided me with a Cockle, setting me on track for the Crab Pot bundle. By the 5th of Fall, I was starting to become decent friends with most of the townsfolk and I saw the first fruits of my labor in the form of a parsnip from Caroline. Unfortunate, given that I already bought one early on. But somehow, this Parsnip counted for the completion of the game's first quest, where you're tasked to grow and cultivate one of these yourself, so not a total loss. On the 7th, I decided to take advantage of something that I'm sure anyone who's familiar with the game is curious that I haven't mentioned up until this point. Appearing on the ground throughout Stardew Valley, you'll occasionally see these wiggling worm-like things that I'll refer to as Artifact Spots. You can dig these up with your hoe, usually getting something mildly useful or at least something worth selling for a small amount of residual income. Primarily clay, stone, ores, and Artifacts that help to complete the Museum. I hadn't touched on this mechanic until now, because during the recording of this challenge, I was simultaneously trying to complete the Community Center without expending any energy, something which using the hoe requires. This was the point where I admitted to myself that a No-Energy Challenge was likely to take too long, especially since making use of the Artifact Spots would speed up the No-Leveling Challenge considerably. And without spoiling the rest of this challenge, I can safely say that a no energy challenge is almost certainly impossible, anyway. But if anyone would like to prove me wrong, I'd love to see it. By this point, I was good-enough friends with Marnie to enter her room and retrieve Mayor Lewis' Lucky Shorts. You have a surprising amount of options for what to do with these, but returning them to Lewis earns you 750 Gold, something that was too tempting for me to pass up, just in time for the Traveling Merchant too, allowing me to snag a Sandfish for the Specialty Fish bundle. The next day marked the start of Blackberry season, which I made use of in much the same way as Salmonberry season earlier. Just be sure to keep one Blackberry to spare, since it's needed for the Fall Foraging bundle as well. It was also on this day that my patience was beginning to erode, causing me to do the unthinkable. After a small amount of research, I decided to complete the Fall Forging bundle the old-fashioned way, by picking up the remaining items I needed from the ground. Doing this gives you seven experience points per foragable. Pretty minor, since I mentioned that we have 99 experience points to work with anyway, right? And while that's true, this ultimately ended up being a severe mistake on my part, causing this challenge to take much longer than it otherwise could have. We won't see why until much later on, but don't repeat my mistakes if you're trying this challenge yourself. I'll explain more once it becomes a problem, but all I'll say for now is that those foraging experience points are better spent elsewhere. On the bright side though, this strategy did allow me to complete my first bundle, giving me some Fall Seeds to sell, and more importantly, access to the next two sets of bundles, the Pantry and the Fish Tank. all for just 21 foraging experience. By the 12th of Fall, when the Traveling Cart was back in town, I had amassed a small fortune, thanks to the Blackberries, allowing me to purchase both a Pufferfish and a melon, and still have over 4,000 Gold to spare. When the Stardew Valley Fair rolled around, I decided to try my hand at a beautiful grange display, but Mayor Lewis wasn't very impressed. There's no way to earn money from this Festival, but I did take some time to amass enough star tokens for a Stardrop and some sweet extra merch. I rounded off the day with some late night garbage collection and-- .... uh, Vincent? (crickets chirp) Coming to the 21st of Fall, Demetrius sent me a Bream, one of the three fish needed for the Night Fishing bundle. And being a Sunday, the Traveling Merchant provided me with a coconut for Exotic Foraging, a tomato for Summer Crops, and jelly for the Artisan bundle. A pretty fantastic haul, especially considering that I still had 2,500 Gold remaining. The next weekend rolled around, and I got lucky once again with some wool and a Nautilus Shell. Although buying these, especially considering how expensive they were, was a bit of a blunder on my part, since Emily and Demetrius can send you these items in the mail, respectively. The next day brought Spirit's Eve, by far, one of the most lucrative festivals in the game, If you're able to get through this maze without dying of fright, which is, admittedly, pretty difficult, you can claim the Golden Pumpkin once per year. You can use this as a gift to fast-track some friendship points, since its universally loved by everyone, or you can sell it for a staggering 2,500 Gold. The only caveat is that you have to bide your time until 10 p.m. for the festival to begin. Easier said than done when you can't fish, mine, or farm to while away the hours, but it's a minor grievance. With the profit from this Festival, I was able to afford both an orange and a lobster from the Traveling Merchant, just in time for the turn of the season. Now, Winter is where things really started to pick up speed. In a standard game of Stardew Valley, this season can be a bit of a struggle to get through, since no crops grow outside in the cold. This usually means more free time and less profit. For us, though, Winter is by far the busiest and most lucrative time of the year, primarily for one reason: Yams. See, during the Winter, much of the ground is covered in snow. While in real life, this can be a living nightmare, here in Stardew Valley, It creates a substantial business opportunity. while digging through the snow with your hoe, you pretty frequently unearth both Winter Roots, and Snow Yams. Digging these up thankfully yields no foraging experience, and we'll need one of each for the Winter Foraging bundle. But beyond this, Winter Roots sell for 70 Gold each and Snow Yams for 100. Depending on your luck and the amount of time you invest, you can usually get anywhere from 5 to 15 of each every day. Mathing that out, this means an expected daily profit of around 800 to over 2,500 Gold from this method alone, and unlike Blackberries and Salmonberries, you can do this all season long. Compared to our typical daily yield, which I would average out to be less than 100 Gold, it's a massive improvement. The only problem is that I didn't actually realize this method existed until part-way through the season. Definitely do your research before undertaking a challenge like this. I've learned that the hard way. Starting off the season, I decided to invest in buying all the wood and stone I needed from Robin. Don't forget, her prices skyrocket at the start of next year. So now's the time to buy. The same principle applies to ores from Clint, so I'd recommend taking advantage of that too, even though I didn't end up doing so. I also stupidly foraged this holly, thinking that it was part of the Winter Foraging bundle without actually taking the time to look, needlessly rising seven experience points closer to the limit. But in same vein, I went ahead and foraged both a Crystal Fruit and a Crocus, boosting me to 42 experience points while simultaneously rounding out my second bundle and unlocking the Boiler Room. Coming to the first weekend of Winter, I got an Iron Bar for the Blacksmith's bundle, Then, following an unexpected cash injection from Daddy dearest, I picked up both a Green Bean for Spring Crops, and a Poppy for the Chef's bundle. By the 11th of Winter, I finally realized how much untapped potential laid beneath the snow and started on the foraging grind, earning well over 1,000 gold in just one day. The profits from just a couple days work allowed me to afford wine, cheese, and a Spice Berry. Starting off on the 15th of Winter, probably the most important event of the year rolled around: The Night Market. This eccentric Festival has always been one of my favorite parts of the game, just because of its weird charm. And for the purposes of this challenge, it's surprisingly important for three distinct reasons. First, the mermaid boat. Attending this show and seeing it through to its end enables you to enter a secret code using the shells of the front of the stage. If you found the correct code from the secret notes strewn throughout the game, or from the Wiki more realistically, you'll be rewarded with a Pearl. This can only be obtained once per save file, limiting its usefulness, but it sells for 2,500 gold, so it's well worth going for. Next the Traveling Cart, or boat, I guess. On all three days when the Night Market is in town, she'll come right along with it switching up her stock each time, just like usual. This gives us three extra chances per year to find something we're missing. Finally, and by far most importantly, coffee. Oh my god... Coffee. Let me break this down. Starting at 5:00 p.m. when the night market begins, this Merchant will begin giving out free cups of coffee. You can talk to her once every 10 in-game minutes, and each time you do, you'll get another cup of coffee. You can stockpile as many of these as you like up until 2 a.m. strikes and you collapse from exhaustion, allowing you to acquire a maximum of 54 cups of coffee per day. These sell for 150 gold per cup. Meaning that, if you have the patience for it, you're looking at 8,100 gold for each day of the Night Market for a total possible gain of 24,300 gold in three days. Even if you're like me and you don't have the heart to stay all the way until 2 a.m. since I feel bad watching Chloe collapse on the docks. You can easily make over 6,000 gold a day. I didn't even know about this strategy when I started this challenge, so when I first went to the Night Market and realized the potential, I was giddy. All of these factors amount to the most pivotal and important few days in the challenge thus far. Over those three days, I sold 93 cups of coffee plus a Pearl for a grand total of 16,450 gold. The merchant was also kind to me, selling me a Fiddlehead Fern, Woodskip, Solar Essence, and Crayfish. I spent some of my wealth buying materials to craft a furnace too, as well as the ores needed to smelt Copper and Gold bars to complete the Blacksmith's bundle. And as a bonus, all of this coffee money sent my total earnings skyrocketing past the 25,000 gold-mark, prompting Demetrius to visit my farm and transform the cave on the north end into a field research area where you can either house fruit bats or mushrooms. If you choose fruit bats, random bits of fruit will occasionally appear on the ground. Many of these fruits are actually useful for the Community Center, particularly the Artisan bundle, but collecting them gives you 7 foraging experience each. Not ideal. The mushroom cave, on the other hand, allows you to harvest any of the five mushrooms in the game, growing six of them at random every other day or so. Not only are four of these fungi needed for the Community Center but picking them actually doesn't grant any experience points, meaning that we can freely collect the ones we don't need and sell them, giving us our first source of reliable income that works year-round. And it's actually a good enough source of income that we'll be pretty well off as far as finances go if we take the time to check the cave every day. After I unlocked this, it was rare for me to be unable to afford what I needed from the Traveling Cart, so I'd recommend getting to this point as soon as possible. Although, earning 25,000 before the Night Market is a lofty prospect. By the end of the Night Market, I'd already harvested a red mushroom for Exotic Foraging. I took this and my items from the Traveling Merchant and made for the Community Center, But not before learning of a very misinformed newspaper article. Completing the Blacksmith's bundle gave me an additional furnace to work with, plus access to the bulletin board, the penultimate set of bundles. The following weekend, I picked up some Large Goat Milk for the Animal bundle, and a Wild Horseradish, nearly finishing off Spring Foraging. Emily was kind enough to send a bolt of Cloth in the mail too, rounding out 2/3 of the Artisan bundle. From the mushroom cave, I found a second red mushroom. this one for the dye bundle. And since I now had access to the Bulletin Board, I opted to buy the 10 hay needed for the Fodder bundle from Marnie, since she sells it year-round. This is another one you can't get from the Traveling Cart but it's very easy to source from Marnie, regardless. I also got lucky and found a purple mushroom in my cave, which I could use to either complete Exotic Foraging or in Field Research. But before I could make that choice, I was interrupted by the 25th of Winter: The Feast of the Winter Star. Oh man, this festival... In essence, The Feast of the Winter Star is a village-wide Secret Santa Exchange. Backing up to the 18th of Winter, Mayor Lewis will send you a letter with a random villager's name, then it becomes your job to find them the perfect gift. Which villager you get isn't important, aside from being a good way to earn major friendship points, if you can get them something they love. What is astronomically more important for us, is the villager randomly chosen to give us a gift. The majority of the presents you can get from this are inconsequential, with a few like Wine or Nautilus Shell being among the better options, since they're needed for the Community Center. However, should the stars align, there are two gifts you can be given that will save you a lot of time. If Robin gets your name, unlikely in and of itself, since any villager can be chosen, there's a 1 in 3 chance that she'll give you 25 hardwood. Incredible, since hardwood is among the rarest resources available to us Getting all 10 from the Traveling Merchant would take an exceedingly long time, and gathering from the crates in the Mines is a long shot as well. The only other option is to get it the old-fashioned way, by chopping these large stumps found in the Secret Woods, which not only requires a Copper Axe, but also awards 25 Foraging experience per stump, and each only gives two hardwood, meaning that the maximum you can get from these before reaching level one foraging is only six, a far cry from the 10 we need. So if you happen to get this present, count yourself very lucky at having gotten to avoid one of the toughest grinds in this challenge. But even with all that in mind, there is one gift that I would be even more elated to see: the Frozen Geode required for the Field Research bundle. Theoretically, this one is actually more common to receive than hardwood, since it can be given by Clint, Vincent, or Jas, but each of them have a broader selection of possible gifts than Robin; A 1 in 5 chance from Clint, or a 1 in 6 chance from either of the kids. But here's the rub. Where acquiring Hardwood outside of this festival is unlikely but possible, the Frozen Geode is locked away within the permafrost that begins way down at Floor 40 of the Mines, and getting there is almost certainly the only way you’re ever gonna see one. The Traveling Merchant doesn't sell it, and it can't be obtained from garbage cans either. Well, it can, but only once you've already gotten to Floor 40 of the Mines, so it's a moot point. You can obtain it from treasure chests while fishing, but that's out of the question, since the odds of that happening before you gain a fishing level are inconceivably low, plus this method might be locked behind reaching Floor 40 in the Mines, too. The jury's still out on that one. So for all intents and purposes, the only way to get a Frozen Geode is either by reaching floor 40 of the Mines without leveling up mining or combat once, obviously an impossible task, or getting very lucky at this festival. Pause. So I'm in the middle of editing this right now, and it just came to my attention that there is one other way of obtaining a Frozen Geode that I never touched upon. When you first start a new farm, you're given the option of five separate layouts it can be. Aside from the standard layout, the one that I used for this challenge, each of these maps has a unique feature that caters to one of the game's skills, including the Hill-top farm, which has a small quarry to facilitate mining. This quarry is the only place in the game where special types of rocks called Geode Nodes can appear. There are three different forms of Geode Nodes: Standard, Magma, and -- you guessed it -- Frozen. So you might think, as I did, that you can circumvent this entire problem by just starting with a Hill-top Farm. But after extensive research, it turns out this method actually has a pretty big caveat. Interestingly, these Geode Nodes can only appear once certain conditions have been met. And in the case of the Frozen Geode Node, the condition is that you need a minimum level of five mining. Obviously and unfortunately, that rules this method out entirely. Kudos to Lawtonfogle over on Reddit for this information. There will be a link to his post that outlines the spawn rates of different rocks on the Hill-top farm in the description below. Anyway, that ends this tangent. Back to it! And before anyone asks, No, resetting the day of the Feast of the Winter Star doesn't change the villager who gives you a gift. It doesn't even change what gift they give you. So you have to wait a full in-game year to get another chance. There may yet be other avenues worth pursuing for the Frozen Geode, but for now this is going to be my strategy: Blind faith that the random nature of this Festival won’t make me go through hundreds of Feasts in order to get the gift I need. On the bright side, Haley gifted me another purple mushroom at this first Feast, allowing me to fill in its slot in both possible bundles, ultimately completing Exotic Foraging and unlocking the final set of bundles: The Vault. Not a bad outcome given the possibilities. I also bought some cauliflower and a blueberry the very next day, putting me close to finishing both Spring and Summer Crops. Before moving on, let's talk about the Vault. The bundles in this room are unique in that they don't require any items at all, instead demanding a hefty sum of cash to complete each one, 42,500 gold for the lot. You might be tempted to put these on the back burner and commit your money to the Traveling Merchant instead, but I'd actually recommend buying these out as soon as you can, starting with the 25,000 gold bundle. Why? Because the reward for this bundle is a Crystalarium, a machine that takes any gemstone and replicates it, free of charge, forever. Each gem has a certain amount of time it takes to duplicate, so the only limiting factor is time, but it's otherwise a steady source of income in much the same way as our Mushroom Cave. Since you’ll need to get this bundle done anyway, doing it early allows you to get the most value out of your Crystalarium, provided you have a gemstone, a simple enough task, since Demetrius will occasionally send you an Amethyst in the mail, or you can get lucky from the garbage cans. The final trip to the Traveling Cart of Year 1 landed me a Fried Egg for the Chef's bundle. This one is also pretty easily bought from the Stardrop Saloon's rotating stock, so keep that in mind. Being back in Spring meant an end to the substantial income of Winter Foraging, but I was in a good position regardless. I got pretty lucky in getting an Amethyst from Demetrius on the second day, and I had just enough for the 25,000 gold bundle, so I took my own advice and invested in the Crystalarium. I also continued the trend of Foraging the last few items needed for the Foraging Bundles, picking up a Leek to round out Spring Foraging, and boosting me to 49 Foraging experience total. Otherwise, nothing too noteworthy happened this Spring. I had pretty comfortably gotten into my routine of checking all the trash, talking to everyone in town, selling off my wares, and repeating, mixing in the occasional Artifacts Spots, of course. And with the advent of the Mushroom Cave and Crystalarium, money was no longer an object. Things stayed pretty consistent for most of the season. I still had enough empty slots to fill in the Community Center that the Traveling Cart was proving fruitful most every weekend. The first weekend netted me a Bullhead, a Large White Egg, a Shad, and a Ghostfish; the latter of which completed the Specialty Fish Bundle. Next weekend saw me a Duck Egg and two Pomegranates, one for Artisan Bundle and one for Enchanter’s. Following that I bought a Sunflower, and scavenged a Catfish from Lewis’ trash. Linus sent me a Maki Roll for the Chef’s Bundle, and I finished off the season with a Pumpkin for Fall Crops. On the last day of Spring, I made what might seem like a mistake in buying an Apple Tree Sapling from Pierre’s, but bear with me. These fruit trees are actually more useful than you might anticipate. Each one takes a full season to grow, but will produce one fruit each day when fully grown, provided it’s in its fruit-bearing season. In the case of the Apple Tree, it only bears fruit in the Fall, hence why I bought it just in time to plant on the 1st of Summer so it would be mature in time. But I’m sure you’re wondering, "Wouldn’t planting and harvesting an Apple Tree give you ample amounts of Farming and/or Foraging experience?" That’s what I initially thought too, because, duh, right? But after some research, it turns out that no, in fact, you don’t gain any experience in either skill through farming these fruit trees. I’m not really sure why, but it’s a nice quirk of the system that works in our favour. I chose an Apple Tree since you need three Apples for the Fodder Bundle, plus you can use one for the Artisan Bundle, whereas most of the other fruits only apply to the one bundle. Except for Pomegranates, but thankfully the Merchant already handled that one. You could plant as many of these trees as you can afford, and it’d be a steady source of income much like the Mushroom Cave or Crystalarium, but I opted for just the one, since space on the Farm was already starting to run low. Getting into Summer, I finished off the Summer Foraging Bundle in much the same way as the others, gathering both a Grape and Sweet Pea for another 14 Foraging experience, bringing me to 63 total. That did mark the end of the Foraging Bundles, though, so it seemed unlikely that I’d need to gain Foraging experience for any other reason. Ha... The first half of the season was uneventful, but I did manage to complete a fair few bundles. A Shrimp put me one slot away from finishing the Crab Pot Bundle, and I decided to take another hit to my Foraging experience in order to seal the deal. I had enough money to justify buying the 2,500 Gold Bundle as well, and I got lucky next weekend with a Sturgeon and a Potato, completing both the Lake Fish and Spring Crops Bundles. On the 13th of Summer, I decided to test something. Something so crazy that it just might work. Dusting off my pickaxe and sword, it was time to take a shot at the Mines. I had no delusions of being able to go very deep, but it seemed like a reasonable goal to at least get 5 floors down in order to access the first checkpoint. Still a far cry from the 40 I’d need to have a shot at finding the Frozen Geode, as well as the Frozen Tear, and Aquamarine, which are also gated by Floor 40, but there were things I could find in the early levels of the mines, too. Primarily any crates or barrels would be my best bet for Hardwood, despite it still being rather rare, but I also needed Quartz, which appears randomly throughout the first 40 floors and isn’t sold by the Traveling Merchant. I knew that if I wanted to make the most of my limited ability to gain Mining and Combat experience, I couldn’t just charge in headlong. I needed a plan. And for that, I needed to do research. A lot of research. For the uninitiated: the Mines are a gauntlet of 120 separate floors chock full of rocks and ores, most floors also being overrun with many hostile beasts. Starting from the top floor, the only way to progress is to find a ladder that leads down, or by using a Staircase, but you can’t craft those until you reach Level 1 Mining, so ladders it is. Sounds simple enough, but there’s a catch. Nearly every floor of the Mines is a tableau of probabilities and random chance; each rock and creature its own dice roll. The layout of each floor changes every single time you enter, making it impossible to just memorize the patterns and take the route that minimizes Mining and Combat experience. There are three ways that you can find a ladder. First, one can just appear out in the open. There’s a 95% chance when you enter a floor that a ladder will try to spawn on a randomly chosen tile, but if that tile is obstructed, you get nothing. This method is ideal since it means we can progress to the next floor without mining or fighting anything, provided there are no rocks blocking our passage to the ladder itself. Second, every rock you mine has a base 2% chance of spawning a ladder adjusted either up or down depending on your daily luck modifier which you can check from the Fortune Teller on TV. This sounds like it wouldn’t be viable, since the amount of rocks we’d have to mine on average even with the greatest possible luck, would likely grant me too much mining experience to get very far at all, right? That would be the case, if not for a quirk of the rocks in the Mines that makes this idea possible to begin with. Ordinarily, destroying any rock whether by pickaxe, explosions, or something else, will give 1 Mining experience, plus an additional 5 if the rock contains Coal or Ore, another factor determined by luck. But within the Mines, every basic rock, aside from these two specific types, actually gives no base experience at all. This is presumably to make it difficult to level up mining solely from plain rocks, but it’s an ideal feature for our challenge. This means that we can mine as many rocks as we please while trying to unearth the ladder. You do still get the bonus 5 experience if you’re unlucky enough to get Coal or Ore, but thankfully no bonus if you mine a Geode. So I’ll need to be extremely vigilant of these happenings to ensure I don’t blow past the 99 experience limit. The third and final way to spawn a ladder is by killing a monster. Any monster will do, as each one has a flat 15% chance to drop one, not influenced by luck at all. This chance is pretty high, but there’s no way to get around earning Combat Experience while slaying enemies, making this my last resort for finding a ladder. Each creature grants a different amount of experience based on its difficulty, and you can find the values for all of them on the Combat page of the Stardew Valley Wiki, linked below. The lowest experience you can get is from these Bugs, which give only 1 point each, followed closely by Grubs at 2. Slimes and Bats are common, but they grant 3 experience, which can add up fast. Any other monster is almost certainly not worth killing, unless you’re at the very end of your goal and you know you have the experience to spare. I should also note that while I have all of this information now, I didn’t have it in such concrete terms when I first went into the Mines, resulting in some suboptimal decisions where I should have reset the day to try for better luck rather than pressing on. Keeping all of this in mind, I waited for a day where my luck modifier was highest before spelunking for the first time. I’ll spare showing you my entire first delve into the Mines, but I managed to hit a streak of luck, getting through all four floors without any experience at all. I also grabbed a Quartz that was laying around, which doesn't grant experience either. I tried to press past Floor 5 to see if I could get all the way to the next checkpoint at 10, but my luck ran out, as I got a whopping 10 Mining experience before deciding to cut my losses and head out. Still, getting this far meant access to potential Hardwood, and that’s all I’d really been after, so 10 Mining experience seemed like a small price to pay. I happened to have maximum luck on the next day too, so I quickly stopped to buy some Maple Syrup before making another push towards the 10th floor, which proved to be a decent idea, since I went the full distance while gaining only 5 more Mining experience. Unfortunately, my confidence convinced me to set my sights on the next checkpoint, Floor 15. Aside from having to contend with these annoying flies, it went okay until I reached the 14th floor. In my ignorance, I mined this Amethyst node under the assumption that it gave no experience. In reality, it’s only these nondescript Gem Nodes that give no experience, whereas all the Gem-Specific Nodes do in fact confer points. A lot of them. I was punished with 16 Mining experience for this mistake. If I’d known at the time, I would have reset the day. But I didn’t, and I ultimately had to retreat anyway, meaning I didn’t even reach the 15th floor. With a total of 31 Mining experience under my belt, the chance of any progress beyond this point didn’t seem too great. The next weekend came, and I managed to get the first bundle of Wheat of the 10 I needed for the Fodder Bundle, and unlike Hardwood, the Traveling Cart is our only possible source for this one. I bought out the 5,000 Gold Bundle, and went back into the Mines the next day. My first push for Floor 15 wasn’t great, as I was required to get 3 Mining experience before being forced to retreat once again thanks to the monsters. But after a trip to the spa, I took the plunge once more and succeeded, but not without gaining 15 more Mining experience. I tested my luck in getting to Floor 20, but it wasn’t gonna happen. Another mistake with an Amethyst node cost me 16 Mining experience before I called it quits. I closed out Summer with a Red Cabbage from the Traveling Merchant. My Apple Tree took a few more days to mature than I’d planned due to being stymied by some unfortunate debris, but it was all ready by the 3rd, allowing me to finish off the Artisan Bundle and put a dent in the Fodder Bundle after a few days. The reward for the Artisan Bundle was a Keg, proving somewhat useful since I could ferment some of these Apples for a little extra money once I no longer needed them for Bundles. It’s also a good way to get the Wine needed for the Enchanter’s Bundle if you didn’t get it from the Traveling Merchant. I didn’t get anything from the Traveling Cart on my first weekend, but I decided to take another crack at the Mines, hoping against hope that my luck might just be good enough to get to Floor 20. But as it turned out, the opposite was true. I amassed 20 more Mining experience before slamming into a wall. On occasion, you’ll get this message when entering a floor. These infested lairs are special in that the only way to spawn a ladder is by killing every single monster, at which point the last one will reveal the path downward. Even though I had strayed away from gaining any Combat experience, the amount of Slimes and Flies on just one of these infested floors is more than enough to gain a full Combat level. What’s worse is that I was under the assumption that an infested floor would remain infested until it was cleared even between different days This assumption was actually incorrect, but it convinced me that I wasn’t going to be getting any deeper than I already had. Although given the fact that I was just 15 experience points from leveling up anyway, it didn’t seem like much of a loss. The one saving grace was that I found this Secret Note which alerted me to the presence of buried treasure just north of the train tracks. Treasure Chests sell for 5,000 gold apiece, making this a nice surprise. In conjunction with my other sources of income, this proved more than enough to justify buying the 10,000 Gold Bundle, completing our very first set. (Junimos pop out and chirp) (Junimo chirps intensify) (Stardew Valley "A Golden Star is Born" plays) Despite the fact that this was always likely to be the first set of bundles I finished, it still felt like a major accomplishment. Seeing that first of six stars getting mounted up on the wall after so much time spent on this challenge filled me with renewed determination. When you complete a full set of bundles, the Junimos will spend the following night repairing one of the features around the valley, giving you access to new locations and facilities. In the case of the Vault, it unlocks the Bus Repair, allowing us passage to Calico Desert. You could be forgiven for thinking that this place doesn’t provide anything of value for this challenge. That's what I assumed, too. The only real points of interest are the Skull Cavern, which we can’t even access until we reach the bottom of the Mines. And Oasis: a store run by Sandy here. Her basic stock is fairly limited, boasting a few exotic seeds and little else. Where it gets interesting, though, is in the rotating daily stock. Each day, Sandy will offer an unlimited supply of one special item that changes according to the day of the week. A few of these are useful for certain bundles if you haven’t already finished them, specifically the Coconut on Mondays, Cactus Fruit on Tuesdays, and Honey on Fridays. But I had my eye on Wednesday’s stock: the Omni Geode. These minerals proved instrumental in this challenge for a few reasons. Much like an ordinary Geode, an Omni Geode can be cracked open by Clint for 25 gold, only this type of geode offers a wider and more valuable selection of items than any other type in the game. Specific items of interest include the Fire Quartz and the Frozen Tear, both of which we need for the Geologist’s Bundle and aren’t sold by the Traveling Merchant. But even beyond those, the diverse set of minerals and artifacts obtainable through these Geodes, combined with all the artifacts I’d already acquired from Artifact Spots and regular Geodes, would be exactly what I needed to fill out the Museum’s Collection. Or at least to bump me up to 60 donations. I’ve neglected to mention this up until now, since before we gained access to Calico Desert, getting 60 artifacts in the Museum seemed like a pipe dream. But if you are able to reach that lofty goal, Gunther will reward you with the Rusty Key that unlocks the gates to the Sewers, and by extension, Krobus: a friendly Shadow Brute that offers his own stock of weird and rare items for sale. Part of his base stock includes both Void Essence and Solar Essence, one of which we still need for the Adventurer’s Bundle. And much like Sandy, Krobus also has a rotating stock of items that varies by weekday, including Wednesday when he sells a random fish, or magnet lure, chosen from an assortment of 11 possible options, many of which are needed for the Community Center. The three I still needed were the Chub, Tilapia, and Tiger Trout, although he can sell Bullhead, Shad, and Sturgeon as well. Any of these items could eventually be sold by the Traveling Merchant, but the odds of getting them through Krobus are much greater. It’s a long term goal, so we’ll just put it on the back burner for now. I decided on the 14th of Fall, that it would be worthwhile to upgrade my Hoe to its copper variant in order to speed up my foraging process come Winter. If you have the materials and money to do so, I’d recommend it since it does make the whole process considerably quicker, and upgrading all the way to a Gold Hoe isn’t actually all that difficult even within the stipulations of this challenge. Come Wednesday, I made my first trip out to Calico Desert. While this Omni Geode tactic will pay off in the long run, each one costs a full 1,000 gold. Combined with the 500 you need for a bus ticket and the 25 gold per Geode to break them open, money is the limiting factor to this method. I could only spare enough cash for a single one on my first trip, but even small trips like this add up. In fact, it only took until my second outing to get lucky with a Frozen Tear. The rest of Fall went by without much of interest, and it took until the first weekend of Winter for me to get lucky at the Traveling Merchant again, snagging a Yam for Fall Crops. The 17th of Winter turned out to be a very profitable day. My Coffee gains enabled me to buy 26 Omni Geodes in one trip. And from those I managed to get, among many other things, a Fire Quartz, finishing up the Geologist’s Bundle and putting me one item away from completing the Boiler Room. The remainder of Winter was inconsequential, only earning me an Eel at the very end. It was around this point that I decided to take another stab at the Mines, hoping not to encounter the same dead end I had earlier. And, at the time, things seemed to be going amazingly well. Not only did I blow past my previous barrier and make it to Floor 20, I got all the way to Floor 25 and harvested my first piece of Hardwood to boot. But everything came crashing down when I went to bed and was met with this message. (Level-Up sound plays) Thankfully, the game doesn’t save the day’s events until after this message is displayed, allowing me to close out of the game and try again. During the recording process, I hadn’t been keeping good track of the exact amount of Mining experience I’d gained, so I thought I had a lot more room to work with. But this was a wake-up call. I proceeded to go through the day again, avoiding the Mines altogether and closing off that chapter of this challenge. On the final day of the year, I did something unorthodox and spent a few resources to have Robin build this Cabin on my farm. The purpose of this won’t become apparent until later on, but I wanted to get it built before my farm became too overgrown to find a decent spot for it. Those of you who know the purpose of the Cabin might have an idea of what I was planning, but let’s just press on for the time being. At the outset of the new year, I decided to touch upon the biggest stumbling block in this challenge that I haven’t mentioned yet: the Quality Crops Bundle. Of all the bundles in the game, this one seems like the most likely one to render this challenge impossible. It looks humble enough, only needing three stacks of items of the four you can choose from: five each of Parsnips, Melons, Pumpkins, or Corn. The problem lies in the fact that all of these have to be Gold Star Quality, something that crops from any other source except Farming cannot be. No Traveling Cart. No gifts in the mail. Nothing. Even the item spawn bug mentioned at the very beginning of the video can’t help since you can’t spawn a specific quality of any crop in this way. That begs the question: is it possible to farm all 15 fruits and veggies that we need without gaining more than 99 Farming experience? To answer that, we’re going to have to look at how Farming works as a skill. We can break Farming down into three distinct phases: Planting, watering, and harvesting. Of these, the only one that actually gives you any Farming experience is the last one. Every crop has its own value for how much experience it gives when you harvest it, and crucially, that experience is unaffected by Quality. So let's take a look at the four crops in question. Parsnips yield 8 experience, Corn gives 10, Melons give 27, and Pumpkins 31. Multiplying each of these by 5, the minimum of each one we’d need to harvest for Quality Crops, gives 40 experience for Parsnips, 50 for Corn, 135 for Melons, and 155 for Pumpkins. Looking at these values, it’s clear that no matter which combination of three crops we choose, we simply can’t farm everything we need without leveling up once. But this is the only legitimate way to get Gold Quality crops, so is the challenge a bust? Well, maybe. Even faced with these numbers, I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel yet. There are many different features in this game, a lot of which I’d overlooked or been unaware of at the start of this challenge that dramatically changed the strategy. So with nothing but faith that I’d stumble into a solution, I set to work doing what I could. Using the Quality Fertilizer I’d gotten from the 5,000 Gold Bundle and the Parsnip seeds from the beginning of the game, I did my first bit of real farming. I knew I’d at least be able to harvest five Parsnips and five Corn and only gain 90 total Farming experience. The problem then became guaranteeing that each of those ten crops was Gold Quality, but that part is actually simpler than you might expect. The quality of any given crop is determined at the start of each day, not at the moment of harvesting. The way it’s decided is by factoring in both your Farming level and the quality of the Fertilizer you used. From this table on the Stardew Valley Wiki, we can see that our odds of any crop being Gold Quality is 8%. And we can actually boost this as high as 15% by eating skill-boosting food such as Farmer’s Lunch, something I’d recommend saving for this purpose if you come across them. With that in mind, all I had to do was wait for the Parsnips to be fully grown, pick all five of them, remember which ones were Gold Star Quality, reset the day, then only harvest those ones. You can rinse and repeat this process until you have five Gold Quality Crops since the quality is determined anew each day, giving you as many days as there are until the end of the season to keep trying. Following this method, I was able to save-scum my way to 5 Gold Quality Parsnips by the 19th of Spring. Beyond that, the Traveling Merchant granted me a laundry list of items: a Duck Feather, Red Snapper, Tilapia, Truffle, Large Milk, Tuna, Walleye, and Corn. Getting eight items in one season this late into the game was nothing short of a miracle. With these, I completed three separate bundles: Chef’s, Animal, and Night Fishing. And the Traveling Cart wasn’t the only source I utilized this Spring. Early on, I decided to forage a Sea Urchin on the Beach, bumping me up to 77 Foraging experience and putting me just one item away from clearing out the Dye Bundle. I found a Sardine in Haley and Emily’s trash for the completion of the Ocean Fish Bundle. And finally, I touched upon the one skill that I haven't mentioned yet: Fishing. Due to its random nature, I tried my best to avoid relying on Fishing for anything, but an opportunity did present itself to make use of the skill. One of the few remaining fish I still needed was a Sunfish, which happens to be among the most common river fish of the season. Since I still had zero fishing experience, I figured I was safe to at least try to get this one the old fashioned way. And if I happened to snag the wrong fish, or a high quality Sunfish, since quality does affect experience in this case, according to this surprisingly complex formula, then I could just reset the day; no harm done. And after just one failed attempt, the Sunfish was mine for only 13 experience points. And since I’m keeping track of every bit of experience, I should also note that at one point, the debris on my farm consumed so much space, that it forced me to mine a single rock in order to continue accessing my Mushroom Cave, bringing me up to 86 Mining experience. On the 1st of Summer, I stopped by Pierre’s for 5 Corn seeds in preparation for the second slot in Quality Crops. You have a much wider time window to get these five, since Corn grows in both Summer and Fall Fortunate for me, since it took until the 3rd of Fall to get all of them, putting me as close as I could seemingly get to finishing off the Bundle, topping out at 90 Farming experience. I got lucky on the first Fall weekend with some Oak Resin, and not too long after, my Omni Geode efforts finally paid off, bringing me up to 60 Museum Donations enabling me to buy from Krobus. I bought the single Void Essence I needed and completed the Boiler Room as my second set of Bundles. The Junimos promptly fixed up the minecarts, which made it a bit quicker to get around, but didn’t accomplish much else. Still, it felt good to have it done. I started checking in with Krobus every Wednesday for the two fish he could still provide me: the Chub and Tiger Trout. but nothing much changed otherwise. Winter brought some good tidings in the form of my second piece of Wheat, as well as a Rabbit’s Foot to finish up the Enchanter’s Bundle, and I was onto Year 4. I upgraded to a Gold Hoe early on, mostly because I could afford it, but that was the only notable thing to happen until the first weekend of Summer, when the Traveling Merchant sold me a Chub for the Field Research Bundle. That was quickly followed up by an Eggplant, completing the Fall Crops Bundle entirely. The reward from this one was a Bee House, which is another source of residual income, as it produces Honey roughly every four days. If you have the space for it, you can even plant some flowers nearby to boost the value of this Honey, since you’ll only get Farming experience if you pick the flowers. It could be an excellent strategy if you unlock this early on, but I already had more money than I could reasonably spend. Towards the middle of Fall, I found my first bit of Hardwood, courtesy of the Traveling Merchant, even getting lucky enough to buy five at once, boosting me halfway to my goal. I also learned that warping home from the Night Market when you haven’t tended the fields in 4 years is pretty ill-advised, and Krobus surprised me with a Winter Star’s Eve present in the form of a Tiger Trout: the final fish I needed to complete the Fish Tank, the third full set. Since we’re getting down to the last few items, I think now would be a good time to take a look at each one and formulate a plan for them, if we can. (Stardew Valley "Danger!" plays) Five Hardwood: This one will eventually come courtesy of the Traveling Merchant or the Mines, it’s a waiting game either way. I could luck out at the Feast of the Winter Star, but that’s far less likely. Hot Pepper: I could wait on the Traveling Cart for this one too, but coincidentally enough, Farming a Hot Pepper yields exactly 9 experience. Since I’m at 90 right now, doing this would put me at precisely 99 experience, the limit before leveling up. I don't foresee any other need to gain farming experience. so this is a solid plan that I can enact in the Summer, assuming I don’t get one from the Merchant first. I ultimately decided to wait one more year on the Traveling Merchant though, just in case. Eight Wheat- I’m left waiting on the Traveling Cart for this. Farming Wheat yields 6 experience apiece, so the most I could get from growing it myself would be one more. I think the Hot Pepper is a better bet. Frozen Geode- Waiting on the Feast of the Winter Star seems like the best bet for this, but it theoretically can be gotten from Treasure Chests while fishing an avenue maybe worth pursuing. Otherwise, I’d somehow have to navigate from Floor 15 to 40 of the Mines without gaining 14 or more Mining experience, very unlikely. Gold Quality Melons, or Pumpkins- Uhh… I’ll just deal with this one later. Finally, the Aquamarine. this one seemed like another trump card for a long time, but the newly undammed river, courtesy of the Fish Tank Bundles, might be our answer. On the morning after this glittering boulder is destroyed, Willy will give you a Copper Pan, allowing you to pan for ores in bodies of water. In an ordinary playthrough, most people don’t make much use of the Copper Pan It’s generally just an inferior way of gathering ore. But if we want any hope of finding an Aquamarine without needing to reach Floor 40 in the Mines, this is our best shot. Whenever you’re near a body of water, there’s a chance that you’ll hear a sound of something splashing, like this. (splash) When you hear it, you have anywhere from 5 to 90 seconds, in my experience, to track down the glistening spot, brandish your Pan, and hope for the best, provided you can reach the spot to begin with. The majority of the time, you’ll only get some coal or ore. But there is an 8% chance that you’ll get a single gemstone instead, chosen randomly from a list of 5, and Aquamarines are among that list. There’s no way to influence this chance with luck, meaning that our odds of finding an Aquamarine through panning are 1.6%. It’s an incredibly slim chance, but it’s the best we’ve got. Or so it seemed. To make a long story short, I spent a lot -- a lot -- of time on this Panning method. Day in and day out was spent watching, listening, and waiting. On a good day I could reach as many as five spots, but it was much more common to get one, two, or even none at all. Partway through, I decided to mix in some Fishing, trying my luck at getting a Frozen Geode from a Fishing Treasure, but that grind was equally mind-numbing, and not worth discussing in any detail right now. The seasons came and went as I whiled away my time on these tasks. To break up the monotony, I tested a little theory I’d thought up in the middle of Fall. From all the ores I’d been gathering through Panning, I easily had enough to upgrade to a Steel Axe, allowing me to chop this log that blocks the Secret Woods. I was hoping I’d miscounted my Foraging experience and could safely get 2 Hardwood closer to my goal without leveling up. Imagine my surprise when I didn’t get 2 pieces of Hardwood, but 8. While it’s true that these Large Stumps give 2 Hardwood and 25 Foraging experience, these Large Logs offer much more Hardwood while still only conferring 25 experience, a fact that I’d overlooked early on. Such is the tragedy, though, that I spent 77 Foraging experience on random tidbits when I could have saved myself a lot of grief had I collected just one foragable fewer. Let this be a warning to anyone else attempting this: Make sure you leave yourself leeway of at least 50 Foraging experience so that you can safely gather 8 Hardwood from this log and 2 more from a stump. Saddened, but not defeated, I reset the day when I saw the level up message and carried on with my other plans. By Spring of Year 5, I had collected enough Iridium Ore from Panning, Geodes, and the Traveling Cart, that I upgraded my Hoe to its highest potential, primarily just for bragging rights. Summer rolled around, and I enacted my Hot Pepper plan, completing the Summer Crops after just a few short days and capping my first skill at 99 Farming experience. The middle of the season also saw me to my third piece of Wheat. The end of my sixth Fall came near, and I still hadn’t had any luck with either the Aquamarine or the Frozen Geode. I was at my breaking point with this grind. Deciding it was time for a change of tactics, I set my sights back on the Mines. It felt like a longshot, potentially just a dead end, but the possibility of reaching the 40th Floor was tantalizing. And it would at least be more actively engaging than… ... this. (crickets chirp) I went back into the Mines with a different mindset. I already had 86 Mining experience-- Actually 87, because apparently I broke a random stone somewhere in this 80 hours of footage and can’t find it, but it hardly makes a difference, honestly. Meaning that my margin for error there was quite small, but I hadn’t even touched Combat yet, so I devised a strategy around that. First, I would scour each floor for a ladder, potentially saving me the trouble of having to spawn one myself. Second, kill all of the enemies on the floor, starting with the ones with the lowest experience yield and working up. Finally, mine rocks as a last resort. If I ever felt that I’d gained too much Combat experience in the 5-level stretch to the next checkpoint, I would reset the day. It’s a strategy that could theoretically work, if luck was on my side. So I bought a supply of Energy Tonics for healing purposes and got ready. (Stardew Valley "Magical Shoes" plays) My first couple of attempts were expectantly thwarted, either by gaining too much Combat experience to be comfortable continuing, or by getting unlucky enough to level up in Mining. But on my third try, I made a successful trip to the 20th Floor. It started off poorly, as I was forced to mine rocks for almost every ladder. and I actually got 5 Mining experience on the very first floor. But I pressed on. And thanks to some lucky ladder spawns on the final two floors, I made it through with just 16 Combat experience. It felt like the best I could reasonably do. Luck was on my side for this one, taking me all the way to Floor 25 on my first go for the cost of just 5 Combat experience. More than halfway to my goal with just 21 total Combat experience, my hope was slowly rekindling. But 15 floors is still a long, long way. My luck on the previous 5 floors had to balance out somewhere, and this seemed to be the place. There were plenty of failed attempts, spanning a few different days just so I could test how different luck modifiers worked. But each time I was stymied by something or other. I even took a break partway into the season just to relax a bit. But on the 20th of Winter, my twelfth attempt seemed to be working out okay. I was forced to mine through the first floor, but I got lucky. The next floor only had me slay a single Slime to move on. Floor 27 was scary, pushing me up another 5 experience in both Combat and Mining, for 97 total Mining, but I kept going. Floor 28 was a gimme. And Floor 29 tested my mettle, but it rewarded me with my first bit of Hardwood ever from the Mines before blessing me with another experience-free ladder, leaving me still at Level 0 by Floor 30. It was the best shot I'd had, so I saved my progress. Only ten floors remained, but I no longer had any margin for error with Mining, and my Combat experience was creeping higher. It was gonna be close. I had taken to a strategy of only going into the Mines on days when my luck was at its worst. This minimized the chance of finding a ladder from rocks, but also minimized the possibility to get coal or ore from those same rocks. I was relying mostly on Combat for ladders now anyway. I saw my chance just two days before the Feast of the Winter Star and set out for Floor 35. I failed on my first attempt, and my second didn’t seem much better. I had already slashed monsters to the tune of 37 Combat experience by the second floor, but a lucky string of events saw me through to Floor 35 with just 3 more experience, totaling up to 69. It wasn’t great, but I knew that I only had 5 floors to go. A margin of 30 experience points felt reasonable, so I committed to it. (Stardew Valley "Sam's Band - Electronic" plays) The very next day, the Eve of the Winter Star was another bad luck day. I steeled myself for another gauntlet of save-scumming frustration. And yet, as though ConcernedApe himself was smiling down on me, the stars were aligned on my very first run. I got through Floor 35 after just one rock. Floor 36 was a freebie. Floor 37 was scary, as Bats swarmed in from the darkness. I was forced to kill 8 of them before the ladder revealed itself, But then Floor 38 graced me with killing just one bug, and I was one floor away from a goal I had thought unreachable. This was it-- 94 Combat experience, 97 Mining experience, but just one more ladder. I took the plunge, ready for the worst. But then... (music intensifies) It was over. What I had written off for so long as an impossible task finally came to pass. I took the Slingshot as my trophy and rode on the high of getting all the way to Floor 40 without a single level in Combat, Mining, or anything else. Of course, the journey didn't end there. Now that I had made it, I still needed to track down both a Frozen Geode and an Aquamarine either from Mining, since Geodes don’t give experience, or from the abundant crates and barrels. I waited for a good luck day since I knew it would improve my odds, but even with that, the search was sure to be long and arduous. I strapped myself in for the long haul, and-- Oh... It was just that easy, huh? Yes, the Frozen Geode came pretty quickly, but the Aquamarine was guaranteed to take far longer. After all, I couldn’t very well mine an Aquamarine node, so I’d have to rely on either a regular Gem node or-- Okay, well that's just rude. With a sigh of relief, I finally finished off both the Field Research and Dye Bundles. With those out of the way, we’re left with three more obstacles: Hardwood, which we need 4 of; Wheat, which we need 7 of; and the last Quality Crop, either Pumpkins or Melons, but I’m going to talk in terms of Melons since they yield fewer experience points. Although does that even matter, since we’re already at the limit for Farming experience? Let’s really look at the options, now that we’re down to it. Despite the apparent impossibility of this task, I managed to brainstorm a couple of possible solutions, the first being Giant Crops. These behemoths are rare occurrences that can only affect three crops: Cauliflowers, Melons, and Pumpkins. For every three by three grid you have of one of these crops, there’s a 1% chance per day that they’ll transform into their giant variant. After it’s grown, you can harvest it with an Axe for 15 to 21 of the respective crop. I had to do a lot of digging on this one, since there’s a surprising lack of information when it comes to harvesting Giant Crops, but I'm fairly certain that it wouldn't work. Even if harvesting them doesn’t grant any Farming experience, a fact that I can’t reliably confirm. Every source I’ve found seems to indicate that the product of any Giant Crop can only be regular quality. Specifically this video by DangerouslyFunny, where he harvests a full field of Giant Crops and doesn’t obtain a single silver or gold quality item from the lot, seems to shatter this theory soundly. My only other idea lay in our Community Center friends themselves: The Junimos. There’s a building you can get on your farm called the Junimo Hut. The materials for it would be difficult to acquire within the rules of the challenge, but it seems to solve all of our problems. these little guys will wander the fields of your farm, harvesting any crop they come upon and storing it for you to pick up, free of charge. Not only do you gain no Farming experience this way, but it also retains the quality of the crops. It seems like a perfect solution. There’s just one problem. To get this building, you need to complete the Goblin Problem Quest, one of the final quests in the game. A prerequisite for this quest is another quest called Dark Talisman, and that quest is only unlocked… by completing the Community Center... Well, shucks. So where does that leave us? After all of this, after six long in-game years, even if we did eventually acquire all the Wheat and Hardwood we still need, it seems that we’ll be a single empty slot away from Community Center completion, no matter what we do. And yeah, unfortunately, that is the case. I wish I were joking, but the challenge ends here. It’s been quite an experience, and hopefully I’ve made it enjoyable for you. Maybe you learned a thing or two along the way, I know I have. However, it’s with a heavy heart that I’m forced to admit that No, in fact, you cannot complete the Community Center without-- Wait... Hold on, just one minute. Let's rewind back to the very inception of this challenge. Remember this? ... but my initial strategy relies (voice echoes) on the two core pillars that underlie the entirety of Stardew Valley: Friendship, Friendship, Friendship. I may have maxed out all of my friendships with the villagers in the game, but what about friends outside of the game? You might remember this Cabin that I built a while back. The purpose of these Cabins is to allow other players to enter your game, real, separate people with their own farmers, their own friendships… and their own skills. My original plan for this Cabin was to bring someone in to help get to the 40th Floor of the Mines, since I’d written that off before I got desperate enough to actually try it myself. But maybe we can re-purpose this for something else. This challenge might not be possible to complete by yourself, but I think that actually lines up beautifully with the spirit of the game. Sometimes, you need friends. As a refresher, Melons give 27 Farming experience when harvested. Since we’ll need five of them, we’ll need at least two farmhands to come in and harvest them. The first will harvest three, gaining 81 experience, and the second will harvest the remaining two for 54. I also decided to have the second helper harvest the seven Wheat I needed. Each grain gives 6 experience for a total of 42, which the second farmhand could safely collect and max out at just 96 Farming experience. I could have waited on the Traveling Merchant for this as well, but since I’m resorting to multiplayer anyway, it was really just a means to save time. I powered through Spring of Year 7, finally having some luck with these barrels in the Mines and getting 2 more Hardwood before the start of Summer. At the turn of the season, I got some Melon Seeds, Wheat Seeds, and Quality Fertilizer before setting my plan into motion. Finding the space to plant the crops was a bit touchy, but everything was good to go by the 13th. It was time to call in the troops. First, I brought in John. John is a bit strange, but he’s definitely not just me playing the game on a separate client, as you can tell by these very natural human interactions. I gave him some skill-boosting food I’d stockpiled from the Traveling Merchant to boost his odds of finding high quality fruit. And after a few days of the same check and reset strategy as before, his work was done, and I had three of the Melons I needed. I proceeded to demolish his house and replaced it with a fancy Wood Cabin for my second helper. This is Wednesday, yet another person who is definitely a real human being. She started off with the Wheat, not using any skill-boosting for this one since all the Wheat needs to be of the same quality. Thankfully all seven were regular quality on the first try, so she moved on to the Melons. And despite the fact that she only had two Melons to worry about instead of John’s three, it took all the way until the 28th of Summer, the last day of the season, to get both of them. And just like that, against all odds, I had five Gold Quality Melons with Level 0 Farming. All that stood between me and the end of this challenge were two pieces of Hardwood, and after just 13 more days of checking the Mines, that hurdle was cleared too. The Fodder Bundle was filled, completing the Bulletin Board. The Construction Bundle came next, closing out the Crafts Room. And last but not least, the Quality Crops Bundle was finished with a little help from our friends, and the Pantry gave us our sixth and final star. The Community Center was complete, and so was this challenge. (Stardew Valley "A Golden Star is Born" plays) So to finally answer the question in the video’s title: Can you complete Stardew Valley’s Community Center without leveling up? No, you can’t, and I can’t, but together, we can. (Stardew Valley "A Golden Star is Born" continues) Hey, if you’re still here, thanks a lot. It took more time and energy than I can put into words to make this, so I hope it was as interesting and fun for you as it was for me. I’ve always wanted to create something like this, and I’m pretty proud of how it all turned out. I’d like to offer my thanks to a few select people before I go. First and foremost, thanks to Eric Barone, the developer of Stardew Valley, for making this experience possible. Consider this a love letter to you and your incredible work for the countless hours of fun this game has provided me. Next, thank you to the Stardew Valley Wiki and all of its contributors, without whom gathering all of the information needed to complete this challenge would’ve been next to impossible. Also shout-out to DangerouslyFunny on YouTube, as well as Lawtonfogle and mooheril3 on Reddit for their contributions of information I couldn’t seem to find on the Wiki. Lastly, thanks to all of my subscribers for your unending patience. I know it’s been quiet on the channel for a few months, as I’ve committed all of my time to this passion project. Hopefully it’s been worth the wait. Now that everything’s said and done, regular content should be back in short order. To anyone who’s made it all the way, please consider dropping a like down below It would mean the world to me. Maybe consider subscribing too. I’d like to do more projects like this in the future, just maybe not on as huge of a scale next time. So subscribing would be the best way to stay up to date with anything in the future. On that same note, feel free to comment as to any other challenge videos you might like to see, whether they be in Stardew Valley or in other games. And let me know what your favourite part of this video was, too! For me, it was being able to get as far into the Mines as I did. It’s got me wondering whether it’s possible to reach the bottom of the mines within the same ruleset, but that’s a question for another day. At any rate, I think I’ve rambled long enough. I’m gonna go get some much needed sleep. This is ArgonMatrix, finally signing out. Thank you and good night. (fireplace crackles)

Channel: ArgonMatrix

Views: 2,169,037

Keywords: Stardew Valley, ArgonMatrix, Challenge, Community Center, Is It Possible?, No Level, Level 0, Without Levelling Up, Bundles, Crafts Room, Fish Tank, Pantry, Boiler Room, Vault, Bulletin Board, Travelling Cart, Making Money, How To, Tutorial, Guide, ConcernedApe, Eric Barone, Full Playthrough, Gifts, Villagers, Marriage, Pelican Town, JojaMart, Grandpa's Shrine, Junimos, Wizard, Heart Event

Id: fBztexUKhY8

Length: 77min 59sec (4679 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 05 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Turtletosser992]

Nice, Tim promoting his friends, I'll give it a watch. :)

[u/NintendoCapri5un]

Sorry in advance if this has been posted here before. I did search quite a bit though. I just feel like this guy deserves way more views for the incredible work he did on this video.

[u/slugline]

This was epic and the difficulty can be appreciated by any experienced Stardew Vally player.

[u/ticktockmaven]

This was a really nice watch. Thanks!