Legendary Fish Ponds Nerfed! Are they still worth it? - Stardew Valley Update 1.6.13

With the nerf to legendary fish ponds in update 1.6.13, I wanted to see how much revenue was reduced. Are legendary fish ponds still worth it?

The original pre-nerf stats and info can be found here:

O:00 Intro
0:49 Fish Pond Nerf and Experiments
2:35 Legendary Fish Revenue
4:02 Aesthetics tip

[AnneEliseMorrigan]

Still worth it. Thank you scientists for all the help with fish pond

[zaineoakley]

still around 3x better then lava eel so 100% worth it

[LAZERAKV]

Are they still worth it?

Yes. They are a passive income source that requires little to no investment and minimal time to collect. You catch the fish, build a pond and collect. No maintenance, produces every season.

No quests to fill the pond.

Aging 2 Roe completely pays off the Fish Pond.

If you want a Fish Pond on your farm, you should get them set up immediately.

If you catch the Crimsonfish early enough (or the Legend if you want to exploit it), it's a massive rate of return for 5000g.

[MrBosor]

thanks for your diligent work! Much love to the science team! Definitely building full suite of ponds for every legendary fish. Definitely fits them better than sitting in a tank in the house in my opinion. Well done concernedApe! :)

[James]

I hope CA gets some playtesters on board for Haunted Chocolatier. Seems like a lot of small changes very quickly after 1.6

[MikePSU]

Called this after your first video, but this still makes early game fishpond useful if you catch legend year 1 spring

[Tibor]

Well, still worth it for sure, but the nerf is very strong, considering all the bonuses applies to the Roe produced by the 2 most valuable Legendary Fish Pond produces now barely half the amount of gold per day. Huge, but still worth your time and money because overall it's beneficial.

[sonnitude]

Even with the nerf, I was still gonna do this once I get my advanced iridium rod to try for 3 legends or whatever. I’m on the river lands farm, you gotta have fish ponds there haha

[TheDJkarsy]

Owww, I saw your first vid and was so excited to do it but was wondering why it wasn't working for me... Thank you for the update though!

[mirellie]

I just want something other than truffles and wine. Why you gotta do fish dirty like that?

[NhoVahdy]

It's a relief to know that most of the legendary fish haven't taken a major value hit from the update, if any hit at all. Great data, and great work scientists!

The way I'm looking at the change now is how some players *might* have to ask themselves if they're willing to take the short-term consistency gamble on the Legend and Legend II ponds while waiting for its per diem to average out, as opposed to the lower average paying, but much faster to hit average, Crimsonfish pond.

With other legendary fish ponds, you're likely to see about 22 payouts over the course of a full in-game year, so you'll notice any low-roe quantity payouts getting balanced out by high-rolls that much sooner. (And high-rolls balanced by low rolls in turn!) Meanwhile, the two Legend ponds are only likely to see about 10 payouts over the course of a year, barely more than once every two in-game weeks. While the roe quantities of these slower payouts could just as easily swing above the expected average in your early days, early low-rolls on the quantities could leave you under that average for an extended period of time.

If you're going to keep the pond active for several years, none of this will likely even matter... but once you reach the Walnut Room and are catching Legend II's, it might not even be two years before Perfection is reached. So the question becomes: Do you take the lower expected per diem, but get to reach that expected per diem rate faster if things go poorly? Or do you take a slight dice roll, risking a longer recovery period from a bad start-up but hold onto the guaranteed of a higher per diem long-term? Decisions, decisions...

[MarkoKostelac]

OH GOD. WandOfSparking can now confidently do all items. The only item he can't get with only one save now is cursed be the Joja machine.

[Zarren_Redacted]

Man, I didn't even get a chance to "exploit" the thing before hand

[kwan]

Always on the cutting edge of stardew mathematics

[i_am_ergo]

Focusing on catching and ponding Legend ASAP is still the best way to start runs in 1.6, even if you're not doing a pond- or fishing-focused run. It's just so much free, effortless money early on. And sometimes, you'll get 8+ roe at once within a few days of ponding it, which gets you the greenhouse four days later, and that's it, the run is solved.

[loke]

Hmmm, One could do a playthrough just earning money from fishponds and crab cages, that would probably be fun. Kinda need the crabcages to afford the first Fishpond unless you accept bribes from Lewis and Pierre, and even then, getting 5000 could take a long time that way.
With a base rule that anything you put in the bin or sell to a trader would have to have originated in a fishpond or crabcage (smoking and aging would be fine.

I just might do that when I am done with my pigfarm. Anyways, thanks Kita & Scientists. :)

[Arrowdodger]

It is still worth it. I've been very pleased with my Mutant Carp pond, especially with it being Baja Blast-colored.

[Goremize]

It makes sense it was going to get nerfed

Still interesting that its still worth it though.

Because now if you just fish in your first Spring, you can get more income then farming by far and all it takes is getting a legend in the first spring and just farming tons of roe off of it. A legend fish pond was better then farming 200 melons in your first summer.

It needed nerfs really haha because if you then combined both methods you could become super rich really really early. And then go the Joja route and get the greenhouse before the end of the first Spring.

[viktorholm]

I would love to see a video by you and your scientists to see comparisons between all the money makers in the game, you have been one of the only people i have seen that actually uses a lot of datas like for example getting into fruittrees like cherrys and stuff no one else i know so far has done that and its amazing, havin a big indepth video on all money makers in game and havin a comparison would be nice especially since you tend to see more then just money/day but also other values like gift, how easy it is to optain, when you can get it running etc. I know that would prb be a really big and long video but i would 100% watch that and with enough science behind it we might actually have a proper amswer to quenstions like are cranberrys or pumpkins better etc.

[Mzrenegade]

I love the colored pond water, I always get the ones with colored water just for the aesthetic