Rancher or Tiller Professions in Stardew Valley
Rancher or Tiller? These two professions will greatly help you in progressing the game. Choose the rancher profession if you are more into taking care of animals, or pick the tiller profession if you prefer earning while growing your crops.
Stardew Valley is a game that focuses on growing and taking care of your grandfather’s old farm. In order to survive and enjoy the game, you must learn and master your farming skills. From planting crops to taking care of animals to using your harvested crops and items to grow your profit – farming skills is a pretty useful skill in Stardew Valley.
By earning farming skills experience, you can level up and claim specific rewards. Upon reaching level 5, you can choose between two professions that give you a special perk that you can utilize throughout the run of the game.
The said professions that you can choose from are rancher and tiller. When you reach the later part of the game and upgrade the chosen profession to the maximum level, there are two additional skills that you can also choose from.
To fully understand how it works, continue reading this guide!
Farming Skills
Among the six other skills, you will first be able to learn and explore your farming skills. As you step out of your house, the first thing you will see is the plot area. By farming, you can earn your farming skills experience. The farming activities that can help you level up include harvesting the crops, petting the farm animals, milking the cow and the goats, shearing the sheep, and collecting animal products inside a coop. Along with the level upgrades, the player also earns +1 proficiency in both hoe and watering can.
As you level up your farming skills, you also receive specific crafting recipes as rewards. Here’s a list of all the crafting recipes you can obtain per level:
Level 1: Scarecrow, Basic Fertilizer
Level 2: Mayonnaise Machine, Stone Fence, Sprinkler
Level 3: Bee House, Speed-Go, Farmer’s Lunch
Level 4: Preserves Jar, Basic Retaining Soil, Iron Fence
Level 6: Cheese Press, Hardwood Fence, Quality Sprinkler
Level 7: Loom, Quality Retaining Soil
Level 8: Oil Maker, Keg, Deluxe Speed-Go
Level 9: Seed Maker, Iridium Sprinkler, Quality Fertilizer
However, you will not receive any crafting recipes as rewards for levels 5 and 10. Instead, you can choose which profession and specialization to unlock respectively.
For level 5, you will be asked to choose between a rancher or a tiller. In the next part, we’ll talk about the perks of each profession and their specializations at the maximum level.
Rancher Profession
Picking rancher as your chosen profession greatly benefits farm animals and other animal-related tasks. You will gain a 20% increase when selling raw animal products. These raw animal products include any kinds of eggs and milk, wool, rabbit’s foot, duck feathers, cloth, and any kinds of cheese and mayonnaise.
Once the level is maxed out, you will be given the chance to choose again between the two specializations that you want – coop master and shepherd.
Coop Master
As its name implies, this will improve your relationship with your animals that live in coops such as chickens, rabbits, ducks, dinosaurs, void chickens, and golden chickens. You can befriend these animals quicker than the ordinary. Aside from your relationship with the animals, the incubation time of eggs is cut in half.
Coop Master also allows having an increased chance of getting higher-quality animal products.
Shepherd
Basically, shepherd and coop master are similar in their perks. The only difference is that the shepherd helps you befriend barn animals quickly. Barn animals include cows, pigs, goats, sheep, and ostriches.
Aside from quicker friendships between you and barn animals, another cool thing about this is that it increases the wool production of sheep. Plus the fact that there is always a high chance of having a high-quality product that you can obtain.
Tiller Profession
Compared to the rancher profession which is more inclined toward animals and animal products, the tiller is the profession that focuses more on your crops. So, if you prefer planting crops to taking care of and looking out for animals, this one is for you.
Picking tiller as your profession grants an additional 10% worth to your crops. This might look small at first, but imagine if you already have a wide farm to plant and grow your crops – the 10% of each crop is already a good amount.
Its bonus basically includes all vegetables, flowers, and fruits, except the foraged ones. Otherwise, it will not credit the bonus of the perk.
Now for the specializations, maxing out your tiller professions allows you to choose between an artisan and an agriculturist.
Artisan
Players consider this skill, artisan, as one of the most profitable professions in Stardew Valley – the same reason why it is a popular choice by the players. By choosing this, your artisan goods such as wine, cheese, truffle oil, and pale ale are worth 40% more. This is actually a great edge for your profit while you can easily produce these goods on your farm using different artisan equipment.
Agriculturist
Agriculturist, on the other hand, allows you to grow your plants faster by 10% of their original growth time. This is also a great move if you want to sell your harvested crops – because of their faster growth rate, you can sell more products.
Despite its perks, it is not that popular among players since adjusting the growth rate of crops can also be done with fertilizers.
Rancher or Tiller: Which is Better?
Again, there are no right and wrong answers when it comes to choosing which profession is better. The important question is which profession suits you best?
In playing Stardew Valley, you must be aware of what playstyle you are going for. If you want to focus more on looking after animals, it would be better to choose a Shepherd over a coop master. It is clear that the perks are almost the same, but the set of animals is different.
Choosing a shepherd can put you on the more advantageous side. This is because incubating eggs into chickens and ducks will only be useful for a limited timeframe. While the sheep is producing wool throughout its lifetime, and because of the shepherd’s perk, its wool production is also increased.
Meanwhile, for players who are more into planting crops, the artisan will give you the upper hand. As stated before, it is a popular choice among players for a clear reason. Aside from the fact that crops can produce more profit than animal products, reaching the later game also requires you to craft items into artisan products.
