So I'm poised to get into this again, as my GF has started up a server to try out multiplayer along with her younger sister.
Now, last time I played was before 1.1, so there are a lot of things I need to get reacquainted with. It's the forest farm, but I think for solo I'd probably try out the hilltop farm as it seems like it might have the "bestest" benefits all around. Hardwood is awful nice though.
I'm also wondering about changing what professions I end up teching up as... I'd picked up crab potting and the bait-free trash cycle extravaganza in my original run, but I've heard good things about going down the active fishing line and boosting that treasure find rate. This will also tie in nicely with the fact that I find fishing quite passable, while both my GF and her sister absolutely hate having to do it.
I'd also gone for scout/desperado in my combat tree before, but I'm thinking that maybe just stacking raw damage might be the better choice, all things considered. Critchance doesn't really seem high enough to avoid Overkill's law: If a critical hit can deal more than an enemy's total health, it will trigger once the enemy is already nearly dead.
So far I haven't seen anything to convince me about going for forester/lumberjack instead of gatherer/botanist, especially if we're going to be on the forest farm anyways. Tapper strikes me as a complete whiff of a profession, and tracker... Again, limited value, especially considering how amazing botanist is (does it still work on truffles? I think it might still work on truffles, which is hilarious).
For mining, I don't really remember what I took the first time around, but my thinking is that geodes are probably the way to go, so geologist/excavator.
That leaves the big one, farming professions... Now, I went with the busted tiller/artisan last time, and it's a dickens trying to argue for anything that isn't specifically that. I mean, the bonus is just to big and too applicable, how are you supposed to compete with that? Sure, shepherd being able to shear +20% value wool every day on happy animals is... well, a thing. But does that really outdo getting +40% value on every single thing classed as an artisan good, including cloth woven from said wool?
Only thing I can think of that might compete would be raising ducks and using coopmaster to both befriend them faster (increasing value) and incubate faster, so you just keep a constant stream of happy duck exports going until the world is filled with egg-laying mallards (they may be confused, but at least they're happy). Ducks only lay eggs every other day, which is fine enough to keep up with incubation and duck rotation. But then you have to name all the little bastards and then part with them once they've grown to love you, which is pretty damn harsh, man...
There's also of course the question of what "role" I'll be asked to fill, provided we start specializing towards various aspects on the server. Was just wondering if anyone here had some thoughts regarding the whole hullabaloo of farmcrafting.