To me, befriending Linus is more about removing some RNG from the run while avoiding the house upgrade. He's on the way to the mines, mountain lake and carpenter's house and not far from the farm, and likes free stuff. With the exception of his heart scenes (one of which can be skipped, but I'm not sure if that damages your relationship as there's a choice of response hidden in the scene) it takes little time and costs nothing. Of course, the luckiest would be to find one in the cart or saloon.

Agree about planting one melon, I agree that's a good idea. Also need to remind myself to put down a scarecrow or two as I always lose a melon or two during summer, and my luck with gold star melons seems bad.

I know we had this discussion on adjustments on the discord, but:

Assigning adjustments seems needlessly complicated. If the goal is to give an equal playing field to existing times - well, seeds are going to bury most of them anyway, but surely it's much smoother administratively to knock X seconds off of the old times than it is to have a laundry list of adjustments for each config option you tick. If we're going to make it complicated, let's just skip the options editing step and hope CA patches in global config some day.

(Also, if we're going to go the adjustments route sound absolutely deserves it as much as anything else - if not more, because those sliders are obnoxious with a game pad. Game audio adjustments allow you to do things like mute game music, keep sound effects, and let your own music play in the background; Windows' volume slider affects everything equally.)

I don't think we have any understanding of what else is determined by GameID - though, I suspect item spawns on the overworld are based on some other thing (steps taken, milliseconds played, items shipped, etc, all of which is tracked) or a combination thereof and therefore seeds wouldn't really break that. But yes - golden seeds will be a big deal, but it's not entirely unlike breakthroughs in other games. If a significant sequence break or glitch is found, it obsoletes everything that came before it. No one should come in to speedrunning a new game and expect to be king of the hill forever without keeping up with where the game is going.

I'd like to add my support to this, from an All Bundles perspective. The cart's inventory is determined at file creation: UniqueGameID and DaysPassed are variables in each save file. ID is a 9-digit number assigned at creation (appears to be sequential, maybe based on system clock - extremely unlike to be able to manipulate it properly) and what DaysPassed is should be obvious. The situation is that the cart will, immediately, make or break a run - but we won't know until we hit gold or walk away in disgust. With an 8+ hour category, that's unacceptable.

The best example of this comes with animal products - for all bundles you need the top-tier products from Rabbits and Pigs. If you find them in the shop, they'll cost ~2k. If you give up hoping you'll find them, your only option is to build Deluxe buildings and an animal, then wait for them to drop the item - at a cost of 50k each, and a month's worth of coddling. This is a run ender, and it probably won't become clear for five hours or so. A seeded run could either avoid this situation entirely, or at least allow it to be planned for.

I see two viable run types for All Bundles:

1. Seeded, with the runner choosing his or her seed. The risk is that a perfect seed will be found, effectively turning the category into a shopping category - but it would have to be found, first. In practice we'll probably wind up with a selection of pretty good seeds we can chose from and route around.
2. Cartless runs. Removes this element of RNG, again allowing for planning. The downside is that it's guaranteed to stretch the length of an already long run.

A third option would be unseeded runs, with the runner being allowed to project his cart inventory with the tool TrenteR mentioned. In practice this would become a restart fest until you get something on the level of a seed from option 1, and we don't really know if acceptable seeds will come along once every five games or seventy.

As for changing the start time, I'd be down for this, particularly if it allows us to set certain options (keybindings, zoom, music levels) before starting - though this would involve save file editing, I think.

On the point of restarting with a bad cart, I was thinking more along the lines of whether it's faster to run back home or just restart in bed. A quick test had running back take ~29 seconds (probably lost a second or so to grass) and restarting take about 21 seconds (this is probably going to be very dependent on your computer - my SSD is helpful here. I went through the menu but maybe Alt+F4 would be a second faster). I'm not sure how the rules look on this kind of thing, though, and I don't know if I'd care to keep killing the process for less than 10 second saves in a run that's several hours long.

The cart's offerings seem to be fixed - maybe from file creation. I found an item in the save file called uniqueIDForThisGame which seems to be the seed for the cart's RNG - incrementing it by 1 changed the cart completely, and changing it back put the stock back to what it was. It SEEMS to be a permanent value; I fooled around a bit in game and it didn't change. Assuming this is the only variable that impacts the cart (not confirmed), we may be able to work out some early game indications of how good cart luck will be.

(also interesting but not relevant - there's a flag for "ShippingTax". I'm tempted to flip it.)

EDIT: https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4dvkvx/traveling_cart_datamined_list_of_items_and_chance/

Redditor confirms cart stock is determined by UniqueID and DaysPlayed, neither of which is open for manipulation. Post includes a link to the code that generates the cart's inventory if anyone wants to peek.

But it would be very disappointing if this run came down to grinding entire rooms through the cart. If that became the case, I might propose a no-cart sub-category.

OK, killed my second run near the end - realized I would need to amass an extra 40k+materials to build a DX barn just for a truffle and decided there was nothing more to learn anyway... game timer was at 9:59, which is obviously shorter than real time but my plan is still quite rough. Some things I took away this time:

• My first game, the cart lady was fairly generous. This time she was stingy - though if I wanted a puffer fish, she often had several to choose from. It made things a bit tense, especially when she started selling things I could have used just after I'd obtained them elsewhere (Sturgeon :/). Starting to wonder if it's worth exiting and reloading rather than running back to the farm after a bum cart visit - shame there's no return to main menu option.
• I'm also disappointed that there's no way to advance a day without saving. Would be interesting to see if that could be used to cheese the cart, or if the RNG is seeded at the file creation.
• Definitely want to get a Silo - it's not as expensive as I remembered; it pays for itself very very quickly. Wasted several thousand G on hay before I decided this, then wasted time gathering materials which I'd had before deciding I was done building and tossing them. Oops.
• On that note, the more I play the more I realize I should stop throwing stuff away. Clay, Fiber Sap are things I always drop immediately, but I was kicking myself when I decided I could use things that require them.
• Want to get a barn over a coop - I went into this run thinking I could get a truffle from the cart, but turns out she doesn't sell it. She does however sell everything you need from the coop - not to say you're likely to get it all, but the cost of having to build a Deluxe Coop, a rabbit, and the time you spend coddling it for a foot are so great that any run without a rabbit's foot at the cart is probably going to fail. The same will probably be true of a duck feather - if you can get both, you could very likely skip building a coop of any kind. (EDIT: Comments on reddit indicate that you can indeed get a truffle from the cart. The wiki doesn't list it, though - in any case, I think it might be good practice to kill a run if one or the other DX animal item hasn't shown up during Spring. Seems a little extreme, but getting to the end of your bundles without finding at least one of them at the cart is a run ender - after more than half a dozen hours)
• I've been choosing fruit bats for my cave, but I've decided mushrooms are a better bet - there's plenty of items to fill the artisan bundle, I plan on planting apple and pomegranate trees regardless, tree fruit is really uncommon in the cave anyway, mushrooms produces items FAR more reliably (and in greater numbers) and the purple mushroom is just one more thing the mine can screw you out of and it'd be nice to have a backup.
• I don't know why I forgot about Quality Fertilizer in the Vault - this run saw me end up with 4 Quality melons in >30 fertilized and harvested which never would have happened if I had Quality. Should definitely try to get this early in Summer.
• It occurred to me, to late, that I should spend as much of my cash as possible on blueberries/cranberries at the beginning of each season, and use the proceeds from that to plant what's needed for the bundles later. It's maybe a bit risky from a Quality Bundle perspective, but with better fertilizer and enough plants it should work out. Gives me more of the most valuable plants.
• The amount of money we need is probably more than I was anticipating - in this run I was probably a little short and was having fairly poor luck finding stuff at the cart (so wasn't spending as much). Harvesting more is probably the right solution, which makes me think sprinklers may very well be useful in the run - I'd shoot for 40 cranberry plants next time, and five sprinklers would be just peachy for that purpose. If I stockpile a bit of gold and quartz I should be able to make the sprinklers in time for Fall. The exception to this plan will be if I stumble across some fire quartz in a fishing chest - then I'll skip the deeper levels of the mine, miss out on easy gold and will probably just manually water as needed.
• It seems Linus needs 5 hearts to start handing out Maki Rolls. I'm not sure what the effect of skipping his first event is - IIRC there's a choice in it which probably impacts the relationship and I'm not sure how the game assumes the answer if you skip. I was at zero hearts after skipping it though, which may be a bad sign.
• Heavy fishing should probably wait until summer and fall; by the end of summer you should have the Specialty Bundle complete for Dish o the Sea (the fish in it show up pretty often in the cart, and the final fish is easy to catch in the secret forest) which is absolutely necessary for the Sturgeon if you have to catch it at a low level, and you'll have to wait until later in the year to finish off the bundles anyway. All of the fish that come out in the rain are available in Fall, so I wasted a chunk of time chasing individual ones down during Spring.
• The Tide Pool seems unnecessary - unless urchins are really rare on the default side (I was a little surprised to find one, but I don't really pay that much attention to the beach), there's probably no need to waste 300 wood fixing the bridge.
• Aside from the Boiler Room, I think I'll leave one item in each room unsubmitted until I'm ready to wrap up the run. This will let me skip the nighttime scenes - not long in the scope of the run but there's no excuse not to.

Sorry for the length, was just brain dumping. Some day I'll actually finish a run, and time it properly. But it's such a long run that setting aside a whole day isn't going to happen until I'm happy with my plan. In the meantime, I've started putting together a spreadsheet to track how much of certain things I need so I know when I can stop chopping trees, start making stairs and cherry bombs, etc.

Earnings runs seem like the least interesting - I may be wrong, but there seems to be little routing or execution involved past determining the ideal setup. For 50k I assume this has been/will be found fairly quickly (and that will probably be the case for the other categories as well) and from there every run is entirely dependent on rain luck.

This may not be entirely the case for larger categories - it may well be worth your time to obtain quality sprinklers if you're going for 10 mil - but in that case those categories will have a little more setup then devolve into a couple hours of extremely tedious harvest grinding. Maybe there's a happy middle.

If mining had multiple achievements like fishing did, it could be interesting - ship 50 gemstones, 50 of every bar, etc. Could also go for all crafting, cooking etc, harvested, etc categories.

I don't think getting under 10 hours is a high hurdle - I'm sure you can get through Spring with level 80 in the mines in under 3 hours, and I imagine things go a little more smoothly after that. If I had to make an estimate, 7 hours might be possible with good luck.

For reference, the save file I've just started is at level 60 in the mines, both Spring bundles completed, copper pickaxe, all Spring fish caught (sans the Eel, at day 20) and >2k in the bank. There's a few issues I see on the horizon - the cart has been unkind with fruit and animal products so far, except a rabbit's foot I couldn't afford - but there's no reason to expect those to be run enders. I could see this run coming in under 10 hours, and that's before any real optimization work or outstanding luck.

My thoughts right now are that Spring will be the mining month, Summer will be the month to make money with blueberries and Fall will be the month for getting your animals in order - unless cranberries are so good that it's worth replacing heavy harvesting in Summer for Fall. Obviously each season will have harvesting and foraging and fishing thrown in, but I expect the mining to be the most time-consuming part.

As for the Fried Egg, someone on the Steam forums was able to dive in the xml file and confirm that the Saloon does sell it, but the order is random:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/413150/discussions/0/365163686056561559/

At some point someone will have to do some analysis about whether it's worth running to the Saloon to check up to ~45 times to check for it (and waiting for noon!) vs the time it takes to chop 450 pieces of wood and find 10k gold. Right now I'm going to assume it's worth checking the Saloon any day I'm not planning to jump immediately back into bed.

EDIT: I suspect sprinklers won't be worth the effort as there will maybe be one season of real farming, but would be interesting to see how much time could be saved by sprinklers once we know roughly how much we need to harvest.

I don't think the Lv. 2 fishing pole will be necessary either - everything should be catchable with the default pole. No need to spend 1.8k if we don't need to.

I've started another run, but I'm being rather casual about it and just playing in 2 hour chunks against the ingame timer. The biggest thing I'm learning is I need to be more patient with things - might as well wait until berries are growing everwhere before I hit the mines; might as well wait until I've got an upgraded axe before I start trying to amass lumber.

The biggest time sink is going to be the mine - you pull maybe 2 bundle items for every ~30 minutes of hard work. The Fire Quartz is 80 levels down and is not really otherwise available outside of a really lucky omni geode. Even if we find another way to get one then we'd have to hope we find a Frozen Tear and Aquamarine without going too deep. Much as I love mining in casual play, it's the most frustrating part of this run so far.

I've been interested in seeing how fast the Community Center can be completed, and have started brainstorming a plan. A lot of this category will need to be approached as with a hope for the best, plan for the worst mindset as the cart is helpful but unreliable.

My thoughts on seasonal goals are currently: Spring 1

• Storage box of course.
• Copper Watering Can
• Mines to at least 40 (though will need to get to 80 for fire quartz, so might as well push if we can.) Collect Copper for upgrades as well as Cherry Bombs.
• Both Spring bundles
• All Spring fish caught
• Tide Pools opened (or would this be better left to Summer when I have an upgraded axe?)
• End with 4,000 G for seeds in Summer (will need to make more than this for Cart purchases)
• Friend with Linus
• Take a look at Artisinal Bundle - if you're not having good luck at the Cart, may be wise to buy a fruit tree or two for summer. Honey and Jelly will come to you; fruit is less certain.

Summer 1

• Both Summer bundles completed
• Plant Apple Tree by Summer 15. If you haven't seen a Pomegranate yet, consider planting that tree as well.
• Harvest 5 Quality Melons and Corn (Would be ideal to have a couple of Quality Corns at least)
• Steel Axe for Secret Forest
• All relevant Mine items collected (including Ghost Fish and Aquamarine)
• All Summer fish caught (note: try to finish Specialty Fish for Dish o the Sea, as the Sturgeon is a real PITA. Can leave Sturgeon until Winter if needed)
• Have a Tapper (level 3 foraging; should provide plenty of wood for building in the process)

Fall 1

• Get enough money to finish the Vault.
• Fall Bundles.
• Build and upgrade to a deluxe coop.
• Fall fish.

Winter 1

• Nautilus Shell
• If animals haven't produced the goods yet, keep up with them.
• Clean up any unfinished bundles.

¤at this point, is it worth continuing to check the Cart for Red Cabbage and any fish you haven't caught, or is it best to just sleep through to Summer 2?

Summer 2

• If not found at the Cart grow a red cabbage.

I've got a couple questions/to dos kicking around in my head. Apologies if this is a bit scatterbrained - I've done one aborted run and a lot of thinking without testing.

• One thing that absolutely needs doing is building a list of what needs to bought and built and an associated accounting of what is needed to attain them, as well as determin when they need to be built. So how much gold/materials do we need to amass by certain dates?
• Is using coffee to speed up travel worth the cost, inventory space and time to consume?
• What is the fastest route to the Center? Probably an easy one to check; does the mine cart save any time?
• What goals should be set for Spring Y1? Unless we find a Red Cabbage at the cart we'll need to go to Summer Y2, so perhaps it's not worth spending much time in Spring 1 as it's a low-income month and running around should perhaps be avoided until we can afford to buy coffee (assuming we want to). On the other hand, it's an ideal time to do things like start the mines, get a copper watering can and get your fishing skill up a bit in preparation for Summer. In any event we will need to earn some amount of money to buy Blueberries with. Unsure if the best plan is to frontload a lot of mining and fishing in spring or just get enough money to set up Summer.
• In my first run it looked quite likely that I might get away without building a barn for the Animal Bundle - had good luck with Large Milks etc. I think a coop will still be needed (as the chance of getting all your eggs, duck feather, AND a rabbit's foot at the cart are low), though a Silo will not be since you'll probably only want two or three animals and can get rid of them once you get what you need.
• I know from a previous playthrough that Linus will send you Maki Rolls once you befriend him. Is there a similar way to get a Fried Egg (Saloon perhaps?) that will allow us to skip a house upgrade? Or will a house upgrade + cooking be necessary?

Has anyone else been doing any work on this category? Any insights to add or corrections to make?