Hiya,

TL;DR: Preserving Jars are much better time wise than Kegs and Casks!

Today I decided to go on a calculating spreadsheeting spree.

Something that's always 'bothered' me or at least triggered my curiousity is how people determine which items to produce. Mostly after having everything unlocked, and thus to generate as much gold as possible.

A lot of people seem to favour the Ancient Fruit, since it can produce year long, and can create some large sums of gold when shipped. (A basement full of Ancient Fruit Iridescent Wine generates large sums of gold at once.)

Besides Ancient Fruit, most people seem to consider the Keg more valuable than the Preserving Jar. Even the wiki states the cutoff for Fruit is 50 gold (higher to put in Keg) and for Vegetables is 200 gold.

What always irked me about this statement is that it didn't take the amount of time it takes to process the items into account. Yes, per item it might be the most profitable, but a fully built farm can generate such a large sum of items, the true limiting factor becomes TIME.

So, with time being the primary essence of profit, why do we not look at the amount of gold earnt per day/hour/minute.

After thorough calculations (I can write them out in a comment if anyone wants.) I have to conclude the following if we consider the amount of time it takes from planting to harvesting (crops, fruit, but also milk and eggs) to shipping:

Not to process -> Any Foraged Fruits or Tree Fruit.To put in Keg -> Wheat, Hops, Ancient Fruit, Starfruit, Pineapple, Melon, and Rhubarb.To put in Preserving Jar -> Literally everything else.

Why everything in the Preserving Jar? The amount of time it takes longer in the Keg does not outweigh the higher value.

For instance, a Strawberry Jelly is valued at 290, but only takes 4000 minutes to complete. Whereas a Strawberry Wine is valued at 360 but takes 10000 minutes to complete.

So, taking the full time it takes to produce the products (from seeding to shipping) in Spring it's best to go Strawberry (if planted at the start of the season, else Rhubarb (if Desert is available), else Kale), in Summer it's best to go Starfruit (if Desert is available, else Hops) and in Fall it's best to go Pumpkin. This all assuming you cannot mass produce Ancient Fruits or enough Starfruit to keep your Kegs running year long.

If you can keep your Kegs running year long with Starfruit produced during Summer, for the other months it's best to go the same crops without any processing. The only exception here is in Spring, if the other options aren't available, grab Potatoes instead of Kale.

I wonder what other people feel about all this. Should we base our profits on the time it takes to generate it, or should we base it purely on the amount we earn when we ship it?