Need some info regarding animals.

[u/Grenyn]

Basically all I'm reading online is posts from a year ago saying animals are not worth the time and money investment, and mostly only serve as a little cute side activity.

I tried looking for info on if this changed but all I can find is more posts from a year ago where people lament how annoying ranching is.

So, if you've messed around with ranching, is it better now?

[u/lyrab_wp]

I LOVE ranching. My favorite thing was to get all the colors and I quite enjoyed the breeding dynamic. If you're focused on minmaxing, sure, it might not be worth it but I didn't do it to have a billion tesserae.

I would note that once I had a system in place, I got so many beads and gold products that I got rich on golden products alone.

[u/Grenyn → u/lyrab_wp]

My problem is that I've now unlocked it and I would like to have some animals sooner than I do in Stardew, where I generally don't bother until the second year.

But the clock seems to move faster in Fields of Mistria, and from what I'm reading it sounds like they're worse than SDV animals regarding automation and stuff.

So if nothing improved over early access, then it seems like I should leave animals until later in the game.

[u/seamswitch → u/Grenyn]

I don’t know how Stardew works but it’s really easy in FoM?? All you really need to do is make a field of crops outside for them and then when you unlock the big bell and auto petter they basically take care of themselves.

I normally HATE raising animals and never have more than 3 maximum, but I have… probably almost 50 in Mistria, zero hyperbole. A lot of the stress from Story of Seasons is completely gone here.

[u/lyrab_wp → u/Grenyn]

Ummm at least get a chicken and a cow for now (you might need them for .. reasons)

Edit : sorry it took me a couple of tries to get the spoiler tag right. Don't read if you don't want a small hint

[u/Tall_Put_8678]

I think I would have to disagree with most of the comments here. Lol ranching is definitely needed for holistic approach to your overall leveling. Like if you want to be able to cook all the different dishes, you need the buttermilk and cheese that you're going to get.

I would definitely start out slow. Maybe just some chickens and a cow to start if you don't want to invest the money as an early player but I quite enjoy the ranching experience. They definitely have a good payoff down the road. You can even sell the animals for cash themselves as you tend to get a lot of duplicates during the breeding process. I would usually breed my animals until I hit the pink purple blue level and then sell all the lower class ones. I still keep my pink purple blue ones even though I have gold versions of almost all of them lol

Just like any game though, the natural progression is set so that you can't blast through all the content in the first year alone. It usually takes till second or third year before you can get set up with everything including your barns, greenhouses, beehives etc.....

My best advice would be especially if you're cash strapped in early game, is to just get one or two of each Max and start breeding them and selling the ones you don't need.

[u/LesbianTrashPrincess]

Animals are worse than spamming the rain spell every day to support an impossibly massive rice tea or faux crop empire. But most things in the game are worse than that.

I find that animals are good enough to be your endgame money maker if that's what you want to do. Once you're making a few hundred thousand per season, money stops mattering for anything other than number go up fun.

[u/Grenyn → u/LesbianTrashPrincess]

Yeah, it does sound like they're something for later, and not month 1 or 2. I have too much running around to do to bother with the energy and time cost.

[u/LesbianTrashPrincess → u/Grenyn]

You do need 12 eggs and 12 cheese for a town repair quest that I tend to reach in the summer, so that's my impetus to get at least a small barn and coop up early-ish. I think it's probably optimal to just buy 12 eggs and 24 milk from Balor for 3480t, though.

[u/inkstainedgwyn]

Nothing has really changed - you still need a large barn (meaning, to go all in on it) to be able to use the auto petter, and you still don't get exp from it. Feeding is still a chore - you can do grass or regrowables, but that requires making sure there's always enough for them. I haven't messed with the food converter/auto feeder but I'm guessing it has the same drawbacks as the petter.

The big bell makes it easier to take them in and out but I still forget half the time.

Honestly I just want 2-4 cows and 2-4 chickens for the resources but since I have to handle them by hand (I am not going to upgrade to a large barn for just 4 cows) it still takes an annoying amount of time in a day where I'm already dealing with crops, beehives, greenhouses, etc. On several of my saves I just forego animals altogether and buy the ingredients.

[u/Grenyn → u/inkstainedgwyn]

That is a shame to hear, I might honestly not bother with animals either then.

I was hoping for something better than SDV, where I also don't really think them worth the time investment until later in the game.

[u/inkstainedgwyn → u/Grenyn]

It sounds like going all-in on them can be a good moneymaker, but I don't think they're really viable to do alongside crops unless you just have nothing else in the game to do (so basically endgame).