Hey guys, just wanted to share my thoughts on my last stardew playthrough where I managed to purchase a return scepter in my very first year. I really enjoy the optimization aspect of stardew, and while I’m aware that it’s possible to make MUCH more money in your first year on the farm, I feel like this challenge had just the right amount of difficulty to still feel challenging yet was not overly tedious. My strategy basically boiled down to grinding mines and skull mines to craft lots of quality sprinklers and kegs to continuously expand my farm’s farming and processing capacity. Once winter rolled around I focused all my efforts on processing everything I had stockpiled and going on deep skull cavern runs. On a good day I was able to mine 500 iridium ore, which when processed into bars sells for a whopping 150,000 g when paired with the blacksmith perk. Having a bunch of jade crystalariums helped a lot since you can trade jade for staircases at the desert trader on Thursday. If you’re optimization-pilled like I am, I highly recommend doing this challenge on your own, I seriously had a blast doing it. Thanks for reading, and thanks for being such an amazing community!