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Cask Productivity

Cask Productivity
Type Artisan Good

Cask Productivity ranks the goods a Cask will age by the gold each one adds for every day it occupies a barrel. The Cask stands apart from the other artisan machines, because it changes nothing but quality: a good climbs through silver and gold to iridium, and iridium carries double the base price. That makes the whole page a question of patience, since the cheeses are finished in a fortnight while the wines need two full seasons. The ranking puts the two best wines at the head and Goat Cheese immediately behind them, ahead of every other bottle in the valley. The cellar holds only so many barrels, so choosing what goes into them is worth more than owning more of them.


Making

Ageing moves in three steps, and each step adds a quarter of the good's base price. Silver comes first, then gold, then iridium at double the plain value. The steps are not evenly spaced. A wheel of Cheese or Goat Cheese turns silver after three days, reaches gold a few days later and comes out iridium at a fortnight. Wine needs a fortnight for silver, four weeks for gold and eight weeks before the last star arrives. Beer and Mead sit between the two at about four weeks, and Pale Ale takes a little longer than either.

For wine those gaps work out to a flat rate: a quarter in the first fortnight, another quarter in the second, then the last half across four weeks. A bottle lifted out at gold has therefore earned exactly what it would have earned by waiting, which makes an early collection a free choice rather than a sacrifice. Cheese is not flat in the same way. Its first step is the quickest of the three, so a cellar under pressure can turn over silver wheels every few days and still beat most wines on the page.

A barrel works only down in the cellar, and the cellar itself arrives with the last farmhouse upgrade. A full set of barrels is standing there the morning it opens, which is enough to start without a single tree being felled. More are built from Wood and Hardwood, and a careful layout fits a great many more, so long as every barrel can still be stepped up to.

Prices

The gold a day column is what separates a good input from a bad one, and it has surprisingly little to do with the size of the gain. Starfruit Wine leads because it is the dearest bottle in the game and it ages on the same eight-week clock as the cheapest one. Ancient Fruit Wine follows it. Goat Cheese then beats every remaining wine, not because it gains much but because it gains it in a fortnight, and that fortnight comes round four times over while a bottle of Melon Wine is still ripening. Ordinary Cheese sits just behind. Below those four the wines line up in the order of their fruit, and the cheapest of them earn so little for each day of cellar space that the barrel is better off holding something else entirely.

Large Milk and large Goat Milk come out of the press as gold wheels, so they need only the final step. That step is half the total gain and half the total time, which leaves the rate unchanged. The choice between ordinary and Large Milk therefore decides how often the cellar wants a visit rather than what it earns.

Artisan lifts the base price of everything a barrel touches by the same share, so every line on the page climbs together and the order stays exactly as it is. Rancher is the one profession that reshuffles the ranking. It raises the cheeses and leaves the drinks alone, which carries Goat Cheese past Ancient Fruit Wine and makes a cellar of cheese the stronger plan for a farm built around its barns.

What a cask adds by ageing a drink or a cheese to iridium.

Drink Image Time Value Per Day Value (Artisan) Per Day (Artisan)
Starfruit Wine - 56 days 2250g 40.2g 3150g 56.3g
Ancient Fruit Wine - 56 days 1650g 29.5g 2310g 41.3g
Goat Cheese Goat Cheese 14 days 400g 28.6g 560g 40.0g
Cheese Cheese 14 days 230g 16.4g 322g 23.0g
Pineapple Wine - 56 days 900g 16.1g 1260g 22.5g
Melon Wine - 56 days 750g 13.4g 1050g 18.8g
Rhubarb Wine - 56 days 660g 11.8g 924g 16.5g
Mead Mead 28 days 300g 10.7g 420g 15g
Pale Ale Pale Ale 34 days 300g 8.8g 420g 12.4g
Banana or Crystal Fruit Wine - 56 days 450g 8.0g 630g 11.3g
Peach or Pomegranate Wine - 56 days 420g 7.5g 588g 10.5g
Beer Beer 28 days 200g 7.1g 280g 10.0g
Mango Wine - 56 days 390g 7.0g 546g 9.8g
Grape Wine - 56 days 240g 4.3g 336g 6g
Strawberry Wine - 56 days 360g 6.4g 504g 9.0g

Notes

Supply rather than space is the real limit on cask income. A cellar of Starfruit Wine wants a Starfruit every eight weeks for every barrel, which in practice means the Greenhouse, a large summer field or the island. Cheese is far easier to feed, because cows and goats give milk through every season, but a fortnightly turnover asks for a collection round every other week instead of twice a year.

Ageing also locks money away. A bottle in a barrel is worth nothing at all until it comes out, and a cellar filled in the Fall pays out in the spring. Farms still saving for a Greenhouse or an Obelisk sell their drinks straight from the Keg and start ageing later, once the building work is paid for.

Two traps catch otherwise careful farms. The first is a cheap bottle holding a barrel for two seasons when the same barrel could have turned out four wheels of Goat Cheese in the same stretch. The second is a wheel pressed from Large Milk being treated like a plain one. It is already two steps along, so it wants a single week in the barrel, and leaving it in for the full fortnight hands over a week of cellar space for nothing.

The last point is what a cask is for. The barrels are the final stage of a chain that starts in a field or a barn, and they add their quarter shares on top of everything the Keg, the press and the professions have already added. A bottle of Starfruit Wine brewed by a farmer with Artisan and then aged to iridium is the single most valuable ordinary item a farm can ship, and the page is really an argument about which barrels deserve to be part of that chain.

All Artisan Goods

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name Image Machine Time
Aged Roe Aged Roe Preserves Jar 4000m (3-4 days)
Beer Beer Keg 1750m (≈29h)
Cask Productivity - - -
Caviar Caviar Preserves Jar 6000m (4 days)
Cheese Cheese Cheese Press 200min (3.3h)
Cloth Cloth Loom 240m (≈4h)
Coffee Coffee Keg 120m (2h)
Dinosaur Mayonnaise Dinosaur Mayonnaise Mayonnaise Machine 3h
Dried Fruit Dried Fruit Dehydrator 1750m (≈1d)
Dried Mushrooms Dried Mushrooms Dehydrator 1750m (≈1d)
Duck Mayonnaise Duck Mayonnaise Mayonnaise Machine 3h
Goat Cheese Goat Cheese Cheese Press 200m (≈3h)
Green Tea Green Tea Keg 180m (3h)
Honey Honey Bee House 6100m (≈4d)
Jellies and Pickles - - -
Juice Juice Keg 6000m (≈4d)
Keg Productivity - - -
Maple Syrup Maple Syrup Tapper; Heavy Tapper 9 or 4 days
Mayonnaise Mayonnaise Mayonnaise Machine 3h
Mead Mead Keg 10h
Mystic Syrup Mystic Syrup Tapper; Heavy Tapper 7 or 3 days
Oak Resin Oak Resin Tapper; Heavy Tapper 7 or 3 days
Oil Oil Oil Maker Varies by ingredient
Pale Ale Pale Ale Keg 2250m (37.5h)
Pine Tar Pine Tar Tapper; Heavy Tapper 5 or 2 days
Preserves Jar Productivity - - -
Raisins Raisins Dehydrator 1750m (≈29h)
Smoked Fish Smoked Fish Fish Smoker 50m
Truffle Oil Truffle Oil Oil Maker 360m (6h)
Void Mayonnaise Void Mayonnaise Mayonnaise Machine 3h
Wine Wine Keg 10,000m (≈7d)