Best Way to Farm Moss? – Moss Farming Math in Stardew Valley 1.6

Moss is a very useful, but limited resource, so how do you farm up lots of it? I asked my team of scientists for some help with the math and they’ve got some interesting findings!

Shout out to mrwiggly705 for pointing out some interesting info in the game code regarding fertilizers!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:42 Moss Background
1:58 How Does Moss Grow?
2:55 Moss Simulations
4:55 Getting Moss in a New Playthough
6:03 Long-Run Moss Growth
8:31 The Secret Weapon?
9:50 Fertilizer Testing
10:42 Moss Farming Tips
12:12 Final Thoughts

33 Comments

  1. SCIENCE!! All of this was useful to me! Now I understand why there's so little moss in the first spring and how to up that a little. Going to leave more trees to sit around and fertilise them more!

  2. This is really interesting, I've found that fertiliser doesn't necessarily progress a tree by 100% I've got 1 tree that has never progressed past stage 3. It's over a year now. And that's with fertiliser.

  3. Yaah for Stardew science! I love how big updates like 1.6 bring me back to the pre-wiki 1.0 days, making spreadsheets calculating gold/tile/day and planning seasonal replanting.

    Moss collection for mushroom logs feels a bit like oak resin for kegs pre-tree fertilizer days. Planting oak trees, awaiting maturity, and placing tappers on them took a long time. I often planted maybe ~20-30 in a designated area my first week with the long-range goal in mind of ~1-2000 kegs. Now to achieve a similar kind of output from mushroom logs, you need a silly amount of moss.

    I hadn't realized moss accumulates faster on older, fertilized trees. Love how this rewards keeping a "wild area" of trees on the farm, yet a lot of chopping is still necessary for bldgs and machines. Will definitely try this my next playthrough speeding through mastery to become a fungal farmer!

  4. I was thinking about suggesting some statistic tools and suddenly you bring the Monte Carlo simulations 😅. I love doing this kind of things for the game, and really enjoy seeing I'm not the only one.

  5. I'm an idiot. This entire time, for some reason I thought you could only harvest it from trees with the axe, and thus couldn't get it from tapped trees. I think I've got a bit of a backlog to go pick up.

  6. Is there any benefit to waiting for two mosses over one? (Apologies if this was covered and I didn’t pay enough attention!)

    Always love a Kitadoll video 🥰

  7. Personally I don't see a need to chop down a Moss farm for Wood. yes it's a lot of trees but even with an Iridium Axe it takes at least most of the day to chop down the entire Cindersap Forest when fully grown and they seem to regenerate back up to full as fast as fertilised trees without any assistance. So you can have your desert Moss farm then just keep the Forest below your farm clear of Trees for steady wood and Steady Moss. You should be able to harvest the entire forest at least every week or more. From an entire month of farming the Forest, I got almost 5 full stacks of Wood. If you have the Lumberjack profession after getting Forester then you'll have even more wood and a small supply of Hardwood too without needed a dedicated Mahogany farm. Perhaps not as efficient but it works and it's free with no maintenance

    Thank God Robin has an entire hidden pocket dimension to harvest her wood from else we'd put her out of business. I use the forest to get my foraging Level up fairly quickly while giving myself a steady supply of Wood

  8. Thank you for this, my wife and I were just talking about the best way to maximize the moss situation and I couldn’t come up with anything solid. The major issue I thought about was how important first year wood is vs. the energy you get from the snacks you make from seeds vs. the availability of a good spot for tree farming

  9. Bonus tip: Plant a bunch of tree seeds the day before the Green Rain. Many of them will reach full maturity from the rain and be covered with moss.

  10. Great work to you and your scientists! I'm wondering if it's an effective technique to use a bunch of rain totems (late-game) to increase the chances of moss as well.

  11. I definitely don't just subscribe to somebody the first time I see their video.. but the amount of time you and the scientist's put into this.. 👏

  12. I think sometime around the last few months there is a new sound on your videos where there has been added a very sharpness to it. It is rather uncomfortable to listen to. It sounds to me like the start and end of every word is cut off and heightened unnaturally, almost like a clicking sound at every word. There was a video where someone mentioned it, and it has become better after it. But your videos are still very different sound from any YouTube-video I listen to. I really enjoy your content, but my ears can only listen for a short while and pause and resume later because of it. I know I am sensitive to sound, and perhaps this becomes more of a problem when the volume is low as I mostly have YouTube on low volume on my phone. Hope this sound situation is possible to fix 💛 Thank you for all the videos on Stardew Valley! Love it!

  13. God absolutely *bless*! 😭🙏 I have been waiting for a video like this ever since 1.6 first came out! (And ever since I spent an ungodly amount of time in my ‘just for funzies checking out the update before it comes to console’ save checking for moss nearly every single day and never finding a Single Piece until the green rain event in midsummer 🥲)

    …but everytime you search ‘how to get moss?’ ‘moss in *Spring*?’ ‘Tips to Accumulate Moss in Stardew Valley’ ‘early moss (Stardew)’ ‘moss maxing strategies’ 99% of the time you just get a dozen different variations of “Did you know? The new ~special summer event~ 👀 is a great way to stock up on 100s of moss! 🤯”
    And yes. I did know that. 🫠
    However A: the information I’ve been hoping for is to maybe possibly get some tips on how to get at least a few moss before having to wait a season and a half for green rain event
    And B: ~300 or so is a lot, but it’s not a lot if you feel like you have to ration it because you’ve been unable to get more except for the One Day Per Year of abundance 🫠
    Anyway! Tl;Dr:
    Bless you and your team of scientists for collecting the data and running the numbers and all that fabulous research-oriented jazz
    This is exactly the kind of thing I’ve been wishing for 😌
    (Honestly seeing the numbers you came up with for what would even be possible pre-green rain of like maybe a few dozen realistically, even if you set aside 100 trees and get a good amount of rain, makes me feel a lot better about struggling so hard to get any 😅 With what a time investment it is to get any return (and when you don’t have tree fertilizer or mossy seeds or a large amount of land to dedicate to Specifically Growing Moss yet) the amount you can find early on is always gonna be pretty limited so might as well not stress about it, lol)
    That tree fertilizer info is Game Changing tho… 👀 I’ve been wondering about if the 10 stages of No Visible Changes between ‘full grown tree’ and ‘able to produce moss’ also counted for purposes of being sped up or if fertilizer only affected the ‘seed to adult tree’ stages
    Thanks to you and the scientists for once again bringing your viewers the important information they need! 🫡

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