Picking strawberries

Picking strawberries
Release date	23 February 2018
Time frame	06:00 - 20:00
Task	Picking strawberries
Job giver	Strawberry guy
Repeatable?	Yes
Requiredequipment	Berry box
Payment	40 mk per full box

The player can pick strawberries for money at the strawberry field in Rykipohja, by the dirt road just west of the landfill site. The job is somewhat monotonous and doesn't pay as much money as most, if not all, other jobs in the game do, but the strawberries can be picked any day from 06:00 to 20:00, which may prove useful when all other jobs are unavailable, and only a little bit more money is needed to purchase something.

Guide

The job is very easy, and the only thing needed to do it is a berry box which will be provided free of charge at the field.

Once the field has been reached, pick up a berry box from the empty box pile, and bring it to the strawberry bushes. Find a non-empty strawberry bush and place the berry box next to it on the ground, a bush that has strawberries in it will make a prompt saying "Pick strawberry" appear on the screen when looking at one of the bushes.

Once a non-empty bush has been found, press F while looking at it to pick a strawberry, then, while looking at the berry box, press F again to place it inside. Keep doing this until the bush becomes empty, then move on to another bush. The box is full when the berry level doesn't rise anymore when placing them inside, which will take just under 4 bushes worth of strawberries.

Once the box is full, drop it on top of the full berry box pile inside the tent and pick up 40 mk from the lockbox in front of the strawberry guy. A new empty box may then be picked up from the empty box pile by pressing LMB.

Only the first seven rows, a total of 280 bushes, can be picked from. As of "UPDATE 30.12.2024" all rows can be picked from. The player will be paid 2,800 mk with no additional reward or dialogue from the strawberry guy if they manage to pick every bush clean. Empty boxes can still be taken even though there are no more strawberries. Saving, quitting, and reloading is the only way to replenish the field.

Berry picking skill

The player has a berry picking skill affecting berry picking efficiency. The skill level begins with 1 and can be increased to a maximum of 8 by practice, allowing the player to clear a berry bush with 50/skill level (rounded up) picks and fill a berry box with 200/skill level (rounded up) drops. The player's skill level is a decimal value that increases by 0.0015 per each berry picked, therefore each level up takes less time than the last due to more berries collected per pick, with levelling from 1 to 2 taking ${\frac {1}{0.0015}}\approx 667$picks, levelling from 2 to 3 taking ${\frac {1}{0.0015\times 2}}\approx 333$picks and levelling from skill level n to n+1 taking roughly ${\frac {1}{0.0015\times n}}$ picks (not exact due to excess experience from a previous skill level spilling over into the next). Though it takes 667 picks to reach skill level 2, it takes less than three times that many picks to reach skill level 8 from 1 with only 1730 picks. Because of the rounding, the player can actually fill a berry box with less than 4 berry bushes. When skill level reaches the maximum, each bush provides 7 picks (50/8 round up), and filling a box requires 25 drops. This allows the player to fill up 78 full boxes (7*280/25 = 78.4) of berries with the optimal picking strategy and making 3,120 mk between resetting the field.

Note: The player can drop berries to the berry box even if it is full, wasting the berry picked.

Tips

• For faster gathering; place the berry box directly inside a bush, this will make it so that F can be repeatedly tapped to fill up the box without having to move the mouse. The easiest way of placing the box is by dropping it on the bush. The box needs to be to the far side of the bush. Be careful though, placing it too low will make the box disappear, reappearing at the landfill site, forcing the player to go there and get it in order to continue picking.
• The player character has a berry picking skill that increases every time a berry is picked, so being patient will allow them to be picked considerably faster.
• At first, it takes 50 picks to clear a single bush, but this can eventually be lowered to 7 by increasing your berry-picking skill.
• The picking speed is directly affected by player fatigue, so have a cup of coffee or go to sleep if the picking speed begins to slow down. At less than 0 fatigue berries are picked up instantly, so it is recommended to drink a lot of coffee in advance.
• The job is not counted as part of the player's income. Finnish law allows people to sell berries for untaxed income as long as they're collected in the wild and as long as that income isn't paid as salary. However, as the player is picking in a cultivated field and strawberry guy as the owner of the field is paying for the effort, this would make it illegally acquired income.