Stardew Valley Preserves Jar Wont Give Me the Product Continuously Works

1. Is the only reason Kegs are so widely used is that it takes less berries to keep them going year-round?

   Would seem that Preserve Jars generate more money/day, but require more fruit/day than kegs.

   Just looking at Ancient Fruit, the per day profit on a Preserve Jar vs a Keg is almost 2:1, but since you can only fit so many plants on a farm/greenhouse, a Keg is preferred.

   Is that it, or am I missing something?

2. Kegs provide highest per-fruit yield. So assuming you have enough kegs to go around, it produces highest yield per day. Since it take a week to produce wine, and a week for an ancient fruit to produce a fruit, having one keg per ancient fruit maximizes your profits! After a week, you have a constant supply of Ancient Wine rolling in!

3. Don't Kegs provide 3 times base fruit cost in 7 days, and Preserves provide 2 time base fruit cost in 2.5ish days? Per Ancient Fruit, Kegs provide 375g/day, while Preserves provide 630g/day. Is that not right?

4. I'm trying to do the math, but I am struggling with something. It mentions a fruit base value for the Jelly, but just fruit value for the wine. Does that mean that the quality of the fruit affects the price of the wine but no the jelly? Assuming that to be true, I did the math...
   Preserves: 1650g for every 4000 minutes = 4125g for every 10000 minutes
   Keg: 2400g for every 10000 minutes OR 3600g for every 10000 minutes if quality matters

   HOWEVER

   As Shneeky explained, the Kegs provide the highest per-fruit yield. And it won't matter if your Preserves jars are quicker. If a Starfruit takes one week to mature, then your Preserves Jar will just go unused for about 4 days per week.
   Reason it like this: You can only get 20 Starfruit seeds (for example, because you only got space for that many). Do you want to make 33k or 48k off those Starfruits? I'd take you a week either way, since Starfruits don't grow any quicker!

5. No, neither wine or jelly is affected by ingredient quality.

6. Well, that's the point I was making. It's just because of the limitation on space/time that makes Kegs more useful than Preserves. Assuming you can grow the farm to sustain the preserves, the preserves are a better option, as your math indicates...Here's the math I used:

   Ancient Fruit Normal - Sells for 750 g
   Ancient Fruit in Preserve - Sells for 2325 g (with Artisan Passive)
   Ancient Fruit in Keg - Sells for 3375 g (with AP)

   Per Day:
   Preserve = 2325 / 2.5 = 630 g per day
   Keg = 3375 / 7 = 375 g per day

   Then again, if you don't have the Greenhouse, or you don't have a lot of Ancient Seeds, your yield will obviously be limited, and yes, since you would be limited in the production of Ancient Fruit, you would use Kegs since the production time lines up with the harvest time. This is more toward end game, where the limit on fruit is just the space and time. Also, this is apart from the much easier crafting to be done for the Preserve Jar instead of the Keg, again, not much of a concern late game.

   I guess my argument starts with the premise that your farm is entirely filled with Ancient Fruit, so that you have enough fruit to sustain the Preserve production requirement. I suppose that premise is limited to those in extreme late game anyway. I think what I wanted to point out was that I see Kegs used more often that Preserves even though the math would seem to indicate that Preserves are the way to go, but because most people end up running out of Fruit before the next yield it's generally accepted to use Kegs.

   So basically, if you only get 100 Ancient Fruit every 7 days, as long as you can make 100 Kegs you are gonna want to use Kegs, since you would only need 30-40 Preserves to take up the same 100 Fruit in that 7 day span.

7. I think the general thing is that yes...technically preserves could yield more if you have a constant unending supply of the fruits to put into them, but the reason why kegs often have a good turnaround ratio is that many folks factor in growing the fruit to synch up with the kegs so that the supply stays with the demand. And most folks go from the angle that they need to make every ancient fruit count because if they only get so many ancient fruits per payload, they'd rather use all those ancient fruits to make wine in time for the next payload.

8. That pretty much sums up the tradeoff exactly.

   Also, when calculating "gains" from kegs or jars, remember to subtract the opportunity cost: the value of the input crop. The keg or jar is only as useful as the value it ADDS. The value of the input crop was there all along, and it's only the extra you make from wine or jelly that is contributed by processing the crop.

   When you can sell an ancient fruit for 750g, and sell ancient fruit wine for 2,250g, you only produce 1,500g in extra value via the keg. Over the 10,000 minute production time, assuming 1680 minutes per day if you sleep midnight-6AM, That's about 252 g/day value produced from making ancient fruit wine from standard quality fruit.

   With Artisan (which requires Tiller) skill, the base fruit value is 825, and the wine sells for 3,375, so the keg produces an extra 2,550 value for a productivity of 428 g/day.

   Just updated the wiki with better calculations to make it easier to compare. As Ambaaargh summarizes, the best possible profit per day is from jelly (normal-quality Starfruit), assuming you have the fruit to feed the preserves jar

   http://stardewvalleywiki.com/Jellies_and_Pickles
   http://stardewvalleywiki.com/Keg_Products

   Probably the most significant takeaway from those tables is the value of Hops. Ancient Fruit and Starfruit have the highest possible production, but Pale Ale from Hops beats absolutely everything else. Hops are both cheap and produce 17 crops per plot in season. Hops are also easily available the first summer, when few players will have many starfruit or ancient fruit.

   By themselves, Hops make the strongest argument for Kegs, at least in the early game.

   edit: Do you think it'd be worthwhile to add a few columns to each wiki page for the profit with Artisan profession? It might be kinda cluttered.

9. dont forget less space for machines = more space for crops!
   also.. less delay in getting your money back = faster reinvestment = more crops at the end of the day

   this sheet may help

   yellow section for early on when ur chronically out of money.
   blue section for later when ur not actively expanding your farm.

   nothing beats wheat in kegs when ur growing,
   nothing beats hops in kegs when ur stagnant.

   ...except maybe things like ancient fruit, which arent in the sheet.

10. A 1:1 ratio of kegs to ancient fruit certainly makes things easier, after year 3 when money isn't so much of an issue that's more important to me than having to collect hops every day.

11. I think the logic on the investment return is wrong. For example, wheat shows an investment of the seed cost on day 0, and a return from a keg on day 6. But there's no reason for a the keg to sit empty waiting for wheat to grow. If you want to calculate a return rate from crop growth and artisan processing simultaneously, you're going to need a different approach than the one in that spreadsheet, that can take into account that a farmer might have more than one plot simultaneously feeding a keg, or that a keg might be processing another product while waiting for a plot to mature.

    For a mid- to late-game player, return on investment (ROI) becomes basically irrelevant, since they'll have plenty of spare cash, and per-keg/jar or per-plot productivity will be what they want to maximize. ROI is a little more interesting early-game, but still frequently less useful, because an early-game player might be more limited by how many plots they can cultivate than by their ability to afford seeds.

12. its not wrong. from day 1-4, the wheat plant takes up 1 space.
    5-6 takes up 1 space too (the keg).
    it therefore takes up an average of 1 space on ur farm for 6 days.

    as far as time investment goes, its not wrong either.
    you would have to have planted the previous wheat crop 4 days before that, from other funds.

    longer working:

    say you plant 2 wheat crops and have 1 keg.
    the first 4 days, the 2 wheat crops take up 2 spaces. the keg is free and can be used for other things. so the keg isnt counted as being "used" by these 2 wheat plants.
    4 days later, you harvest your wheat. they have taken 8 tiledays. (2 tiles x 4 days)
    you place 1 wheat in the keg for 2 days.
    during this time, the space on the farm is free and can be used for other things, and so isnt counted as being used by the wheat either.
    on day 6, 2 tiledays(1 tile for the keg x 2 days) after harvest, 1 beer is ready. you put the other wheat in and sell the beer.
    another 2 tiledays later, you sell the 2nd beer.
    the 2 beers have taken a total of 12 tiledays.
    so 6 tiledays per wheat.

    now obviously the rate of return on the 2nd wheat plant is lower(u get a return on day 8 instead of 6) because of logistical inefficiencies. please dont expect the sheet to account for that. its up to you to plan an efficient resource flow.

    ROI = profit/investment as a percentage
    which is irrelevant to people with excess funds.
    this is not covered by my sheet.

    my sheet covers rate of return in the yellow section.
    its still irrelevant to rich people
    people trying to grow their farms will find this more useful than ROI though.
    because it takes time into account. the faster you get a return, the faster you can reinvest.
    there's a link to the original forum post in that sheet. there's more explanations there.

    the blue section is profit/tileday.
    thats what rich people should be looking at.

13. I am in both awe and terror at the spreadsheet because man math and I are not best friends.

    So I'm guessing the brighter the blue/yellow, the better it is?

14. yup!
    the brighter the better.

    ...ignore the maths if you want.
    knowing the math wont magically improve the crops. lol

15. I say stick whatever you want in there. Me, I was sticking Hops in there anytime I could, which make for a nice pleasant after work beer once it's ready.

16. eh i did it more of an experiment than as something to follow.

    its a good place to start, but most farmers have other considerations not covered by the sheet.
    like bundles, food, quests, time, or aesthetics.
    ....or enjoyment. (you want to enjoy the game right? i hope?)

    wheat for example is good in the yellow section.
    but by the end of summer ur probably looking at a few thousand wheat plants if you follow the sheet blindly.
    thats like 50 starfruits.

17. Yep, I agree, the math consistently follows that assumption. (And the spreadsheet looks correct to me, assuming a keg and a farm plot are the same cost.) But assuming that a plot space and a keg space are equivalent seems like a poor decision.

    Plot spaces are far less expensive than a keg for most of the game. Calculating ROI seems kind of meaningless if you don't count the Keg has having some up-front cost.

    I don't claim to have a better long-term planning answer! I just think it's worth warning people that most simple answers, like the one presented by the spreadsheet, do so by over-simplifying, in this case, ignoring the cost and logistical differences between a plot and a keg.

    The logic applied in the spreadsheet would suggest that just growing beets (20g investment, ~125 average return with fertilizer after 6 days= IRR, or daily return, of 36%) is better than growing hops for Pale Ale, which is listed as having an IRR of 27.5% on the spreadsheet. But you don't see everyone abandoning kegs to just grow beets, because the total gold/day is typically what people care about, much more than daily percent return. (Though it's still super interesting to calculate in various ways!)

    I'm just saying that sometimes the logical approach in the spreadsheet leads to some poor conclusions, and you need more than just a 1-plot daily return calculation if you want to consider crops growing and artisan good production together.

    As you point out, eventually that moves you to Ancient Fruit and Starfruit. I wonder how the spreadsheet would look if you assumed unlimited kegs, but a limited number of growing plots? (i.e. a full greenhouse, and as many kegs as you need to process the crops coming out of it.) Hops produce 1 crop/day, but require 1.4-ish days to process, so if you have a lot of kegs, you can get more value out of one hop plot. (Ignoring the logistics of trellises) Starfruit and Wheat wouldn't experience a gain by that measure, since they produce slower than processing.

    Blueberries gain surprising value in that case! If you have a silly number of kegs, blueberries produce as much g/day as starfruit. (about 180, if plots are limited and kegs are free.) Ancient fruit, with its faster growing time, still wins in that case, and most others. (If kegs are free, one plot of ancient fruit produces about 320g/day. )

    If kegs are the limiting factor, processing Ancient Fruit wine adds about 252 g/day/keg over the original the value of the crops. That's still a great profit.

    Wine takes about 6 full days, according to the wiki's calculation of how sleep schedules affect processing time, so assuming a 1680-minute day. So Ancient Fruit and one keg don't quite match up perfectly. Also, you'll get some gold Ancient Fruit even without fertilizer, and those are less profitable to process (g/day/keg), than normal or silver Hops, so if you have both and don't have unlimited kegs, you might want to consider selling the gold ancient fruit instead of processing it.

    Yeah, that's by far the most important point!! Totally agreed.

18. I know for me when I start a new playthrough part of me is just "I want to just get through the bundles and rack up the skill levels ASAP so I can focus on courting my next would be spouse" so anything that speeds up that process works well. My main playthrough is probably also my most casual where I'm trying to just make a large collection of everything so anything gold star I prefer to keep for myself. (Cause I like to pretend I'm that kind of farmer who is keeping the best stuff for myself. Nyo ho ho ho~) One of my next playthroughs I plan to just try to see how fast and strong I can make profit so its handy to have a good strategy for what I should be planning for to maximize mah profits.

19. I prefer Kegs they look pretty but i use preserves jars

20. There's a fallacy here with respect to preserves versus kegs that I'd like to address... fruit income.

    You have a specific number of fruits you are growing at any given time. Let's use ancient fruits, as an example. They have a growth time of one week (we'll assume we're far enough that the one month wait has already expired). So, to keep up with, say, 10 fruits, you would need either 10 kegs or 3 preserve jars. At the end of the week, you still end up with 10 products, because you had ten fruits produced. So either you end up with 10 wine or you end up with 10 preserves from your 10 fruits. So, your weekly gains comes out in favor of kegs.

    The problem here is that you assume a like number of kegs versus preserve jars, and this is never going to be the case. Or at least, if it is, your preserve jars are going to be standing empty 2/3 of the time. You won't have enough fruits coming in to keep them all producing at their theoretical maximum.

    Preserves may have a 'burst cash' output higher, but long-term it wanes based on input to output.

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Source: https://community.playstarbound.com/threads/kegs-vs-preserve-jars.112934/

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