Starfruit vs Ancient Fruit

I've got way more complex of an answer than you probably wanted but here you go:

TLDR: whether or not starfruit is better than ancient fruit in the greenhouse comes down to how many kegs you're willing to build - and if the answer is 'a whole heck of a lot' then hops and fruit trees are possibly better than either starfruit or ancient fruit, as long as you still have enough starfruit planted to fill your casks in the farm basement with starfruit wine year-round.

TLDR TLDR: First: get exactly enough starfruit to fill your casks year-round. Second: if you don't want more than 75 kegs just plant starfruit, otherwise the more kegs you have the more peaches/pomegranates/hops you want in your greenhouse. Ancient fruit gets honorable mention for space left over that you need to access the trees/trellises.


Technically the best possible option is to have exactly enough starfruit to exactly fill the casks in your farm's basement (~32 should do it if you're going with a typical ~125 cask layout, more if you're going absolutely bonkers with the things.) After you've got enough to keep your casks full year round, star fruit isn't necessarily the best option for the rest of the growing space.

In general (assuming unlimited numbers of kegs), Hops, Peaches & Pomegranates > Ancient fruit > Starfruit as far as gold / plant once casks are out of the equation. This is mostly because hops and fruit trees produce daily, so as long as you have the kegs to keep up with their output, they'll give you the most gold / square of plant.

What's best for you depends more on your particular farm though. If you have less than 75 kegs or so, your best bet is to fill the greenhouse with starfruit. If you have hundreds of kegs, hops and fruit trees start to pull way ahead since their profit depends on having multiple kegs available for each plant.

Also, there's always aesthetics to consider! An optimal hops/starfruit/fruit tree/ancient fruit setup is going to look really silly (entirely full of fruit trees, with hops and starfruit and ancient fruit all in between them hidden under the leaves). It's a pain to deal with every day and hardly worthwhile. So, since any setup you go with isn't going to be the best possible setup, why not just go with whatever you think looks nicest? My greenhouse makes me happy, even if I'm not using every possible inch of space.

/r/StardewValley Thread