Venturing into drink crafting can significantly boost your in-game economy. This guide provides a detailed walkthrough on optimizing your drink production, focusing on early game strategies, the lucrative process of aging, and essential infrastructure.
Early Game Drink Production: Maximizing Daily Output
In the early stages, efficient drink production hinges on maximizing your daily crafting cycles. You can craft up to four distinct drinks each day, excluding seasonal beverages, champagne, and wines initially. Strategic timing is key. Start crafting a drink right before you retire for the night; it will be ready upon waking. Following this rhythm allows you to initiate a new drink production cycle roughly every six hours: upon waking, around noon (12:00), in the evening (18:00), and again at midnight (24:00).
Why prioritize producing multiple, different drinks? Offering a variety of drinks for sale provides a beneficial, albeit small, price buff. This bonus is only triggered by having different drinks available; stocking multiples of the same drink will not yield this price increase.
The Power of Aging: Increasing Drink Value
Aging is where the true profit potential of drink crafting is realized. The value of drinks escalates dramatically with aging. Crucially, drinks must be aged at least once before they can be served to customers. Aging is determined by the duration a drink spends in an aging keg, not simply by in-game days passed. Be warned: removing a drink from an aging keg before it’s fully aged will reset the aging progress completely. Therefore, ensure drinks remain undisturbed until the aging process is complete.
Consider Wheat Ale as an example, crafted with top-tier ingredients. Its value progression through aging is substantial:
- First Aging Cycle: Worth 7 gold coins.
- Grand Reserve (Fully Aged): Worth 10 gold coins.
According to the in-game encyclopedia, aging to Grand Reserve can boost a drink’s value by up to 30%. This value increase is critical, especially when mixing cocktails, as the base drink’s price directly influences the final cocktail price.
Barrel Support Stands: Efficient Aging Infrastructure
To effectively manage drink aging, acquiring Barrel Support Stands is highly recommended. These stands allow you to stack aging barrels, optimizing space utilization. The Small Barrel Support Stand accommodates 3 aging barrels within a 4-tile footprint. The Large Barrel Support Stand increases capacity to 5 barrels, occupying 6 tiles.
Barrel Support Stands are crafted at the blacksmith table. The crafting recipes are as follows:
- Small Barrel Support Stand: 5 Iron Bars, 3 Iron Sheets
- Large Barrel Support Stand: 10 Iron Bars, 6 Iron Sheets
Top Drinks and Ingredients for Mass Production
When aiming for efficient mass production, some drinks and ingredients stand out. Based on ease of production and ingredient availability, the following drinks are highly recommended (assuming best ingredients and full aging):
- Whisky
- Milk Stout
- Champagne
- Vanilla Ale
- Rum
- Dunkel
- Sake
- Chocolate Lager/Lager
These drinks are generally easier to mass produce due to ingredient accessibility and production complexity.
For optimal veggie ingredients, focus on:
- Pumpkin
- Cauliflower
- Broccoli
- Cabbage
The best fruits for drink crafting include:
- Watermelon
- Melon
- Pineapple
- Coconut
Conclusion: Mastering Drink Production
By implementing these strategies – maximizing early game production diversity, leveraging the value-boosting power of aging, utilizing barrel support stands, and focusing on easily mass-produced drinks and ingredients – you can establish a highly profitable drink crafting operation. Strategic drink production and aging are key to economic success in the game.
