Golden Animal Cracker
| Golden Animal Cracker | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Collection |
| Location | Fishing Treasure Chests; Skull Cavern; Golden Mystery Boxes; Artifact Spots; Trees; Crates and Barrels; Monsters |
| Sell Price | 1000g |
The Golden Animal Cracker is a treat that doubles what a farm animal produces, for good. Feeding one to a cow, a sheep, a chicken or a rabbit leaves the animal on its usual schedule but sends twice as much into the trough each time, and the same trick works on a Fish Pond. Nothing in the valley sells them, and they only begin to appear at all once Farming Mastery has been claimed, so every cracker found is a small decision about which animal deserves it. Pigs are the one exception and simply refuse the offer. Treating the first few as a long-term investment rather than a quick sale is the usual advice, because the doubled output keeps paying for as long as the animal stays on the farm.
Overview
The gate is the Mastery system. Every skill has to reach level ten and have its perks claimed, after which a bar for Mastery appears and ordinary skill experience starts filling it. The first level takes ten thousand points, and spending that level on the Farming altar in the cave in Cindersap Forest is what switches the crackers on. Until that altar is claimed, nothing anywhere in the valley will drop one.
Afterwards they turn up in a scatter of places. Fishing treasure chests are the most generous, with the golden chests a shade better than the ordinary ones, so a farmer fishing with a decent rod will meet them first. Treasure rooms in the Skull Cavern are the next best bet, followed by artifact spots dug anywhere in the valley, the desert or on Ginger Island. Below that come thin chances from shaking or chopping trees, breaking crates and barrels underground, killing monsters and cracking open Golden Mystery Boxes. Daily luck nudges several of those odds upward, so a good fortune on the television is a reason to dig and fish rather than stay in.
Using one is a single click. Hold the cracker, walk up to the animal and hand it over, and a music note pops up to confirm it. From then on the animal's own information screen and the Animals tab in the player menu both carry a small cracker icon, which saves a lot of guessing about who has already been fed. A baby can take one early and will produce double as soon as it grows up. A pig gets a question mark instead and keeps on digging for truffles at the old rate.
Fish Ponds take a cracker the same way, tossed straight into the water. The collecting basket at the edge of the pond turns gold afterwards, which marks the pond at a glance, and the pond's menu shows the icon as well. One is the limit per pond, and throwing a second in while the first is still in the air simply wastes it.
The effect is permanent but not transferable. Selling an animal takes its cracker with it, and choosing the empty pond option on a stocked pond wipes the buff out for good, so a pond that has been fed should be left alone rather than restocked with a different fish.
Notes
Choosing a target is worth a moment's thought. The best return comes from whatever product sells highest for the time it takes to appear, which usually points at sheep, since wool comes round quickly and turns into cloth, and at ponds full of expensive roe.
The cracker also doubles as a dye. It reads as a yellow dye at the pots in Emily and Haley's house and as a gold dye in the spool of a Sewing Machine, which is an expensive way to colour a shirt but an option for anyone who has more crackers than animals. Handed to a villager as a present it goes down badly with everyone in town.
All Collections
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
