For users who want to try and get the fields in the first year, I've composed a guide for those who wish to follow the lines of Conquesting instead of discussion. I haven't had this particular option myself so I can't say how much they range between for price, but a great way to get rep is through this as well, I've been told. Usually, you have to hope that no third party gets involved (I've had mostly three way challenges every time so they never gave me the final option).
Here are some extremely important steps to do before you take / accept any challenge.
Things To Always Do For Each Conquest
Steps
- First, accept the challenge and determine how many days you have before the actual conquest day. Preparing ahead of time is the easiest way to do this, so collecting items like fodder, bugs, low star crops (In the beginning), cooked items (Don't cook all the crops as the price for cooking will drop if you send out too many at once, but you can still make some profit and numbers off if it for bulk challenges, though anything with total value is going to have to be spam cooking until you can get the highest level available for that quality of ingredients that you're using to get the highest price), fish, etc. If the shipping day is in 2 days, save that evening, make sure you leave the other save slot open.
Second, sleep through the conquest day straight to the results day. This allows you to see just how many items/how much each person made/how many different items (Give or take) that your competitors will ship. You can do this more than once if you want to test it, or see what sort of margin you have to work with. Sometimes the numbers will significantly drop if you do save by accident, but try not to!
Third, go back to your original save and gather / grow / make at least 25% or so more than what the conquest challengers did. This gives you enough elbow room that when you're further in the game and have all your fields set up to grow properly for ship days, you can keep from having to send off like, 1 million items / g worth of items every day (This can get insanely stressful let me tell you, it's hard to enjoy the game if all you can do is spam harvest / hunt bugs, or fish all day.)
Fourth, if you win, take a note of what everyone has submitted points wise, then aim for at least 25% more than what you shipped the first time. The usual amount of items ranges between 400-700 for the first year from what I've seen as most of the conquest challengers are only going by their crops/produced items, not by other factors such as fishing, bug hunting, etc. My first variety of items shipped ended up with at most being 25 from the other conquest competitors. Total amount of items shipped ranges from 30k-600k depending on what part of the year/which year you're attempting. Be sure you save your game immediately after, and try to time your conquests properly so you can easily manipulate the trading days and save enough items to do so.
And finally, make sure you have at least 40k-100kg on hand at all times(this depends on how far ahead you're planning). If you don't think you can personally manage to grow enough items to ship on your own, buy from the vendors, and sell back to them! I personally buy out all of the General store's carrots, fodder, seeds (It's easier to go toward total amount of items shipped necessary for the rest of your traders to show up counts, too, you can do this with the other vendors for things like spices and crystals for a very small margin of profit in seedling mode.)
UPDATE: As a side note, finishing this as soon as possible in the first year (Summer seems to be the easiest time) is ideal. If you try to go for it later on, the conquests will get harder, so unless you stockpile like crazy as often as possible, be sure you try to get as much done as possible, but balance it out. Note, you do not need all of the land as the quality of crops aren't necessarily better, so much as grow faster. The biggest staple for the Conquest Rent-A-Fields are the fact that the paddy field, mushroom, and bee hives are all (so far) required and only allowed in those areas. You do not have to have all of the fields, but you can get them for Rep points later by letting others buy, and/or discuss with you the use of the fields you currently aren't using later on in the game.
Total Items Shipped Challenge (Hoarder Mode)
- Grow lots of perennial crops : (Tomatoes and Fodder for me, being in the first year summer), onions grow quick in the root field, water them all twice daily and they grow back even FASTER so you can deliver more. You can also use the Flax method, which will be further explained below.
Flax Linen Rich Scheme : Getting Flax is probably the easiest way to make money in the game. However, it's one of the longer processes with the three steps (Growing, making, dying). You can easily make a lot of G with it, and shipping it as pure can count toward your Vesnure crops sold that you need toward your goals just as is. However, if you want to make the money off of it, making it into linen and dying it gold (From what I've seen) has been the easiest and the best way to make money fast. Due to how long it can take, and the fact it is NOT a perennial, this is not the easiest method to use toward total item shipped challenge.
Only go for the fields you really want/need the most each month unless you have properly prepared ahead of time : going after all of them will totally fudge up your shipping item count unless you can guarantee to get 600+ items every day. It's easy if you collect a lot of fodder, but you can't always depend on the merchants to have items you can buy and sell back (Spices are the easiest as they only sell enough to raise their prices, then when you sell back to them at those raised prices, you get through with them just before you hit the drop, so there's a profit, too!)
Bugs, bugs, bugs, bugs: You can go into each area at least twice before 17:00 and collect all the bugs that you absolutely can each time! You can collect up to 17 grasshoppers in 2 days if you manipulate this, as well as butterflies! Do this when you're going to do these item shipped quests, but be sure you're saving some back as gifts! (I'm not making nice nice really with the locals until year 2 or so when I've got enough saved back and I have a comfortable amount of cash under my belt coming in on a daily basis.) However, having too many "Other" type items can be more of a curse than a blessing. If you have too many bugs or "other" category items, the price will drop before you can make any real profit from it, so you'll have to decide if you want to bite the bullet to sell more items for less, or sell something else in larger quantities instead. This happens for any kind of items such as cooked, "other", spices, and, well, I haven't seen it happen for crops yet but I didn't hoard enough of them to throw them all out in the first place yet to be able to see. I'm pretty sure that it probably does happen at some point.
Fish Hatcheries are worth it : Make sure you catch at least two squids for this. Basically, put one in the hatchery, feed it, swim away, catch some other things (Save all garbage, too, this counts toward your item shipped count as well as your total G count to unlock other vendors), then within a day or two you'll have two more squids! Take the three out if you don't want to risk the hatchery breaking, then put one of the lesser quality squids in. Feed it, then continue swim fishing the rest of the next two days, wash, rinse, repeat! Soon, by the time (If you timed this right, start at the beginning of the month or at least 20 days before you know your lease is gonna be up for the larger day leases like for bees and for the rice paddy fields) the leases are up, you'll not only have a huge stack of cash to make (You can probably use this to help manipulate doing the 'total value of items shipped), you'll also have a good chunk of fish to ship off! The squids alone at base half star price are 650g a piece, after all!
Swim and fish as much as possible: There's totally not enough time in the day for me personally for me to be able to do much fishing if I want to catch as many bugs as possible and if I want to make sure all of my crops are watered unless it's a rainy day, so this makes me sad, but also keeps me from having not enough space in my bag. But, swimming is something I make sure to always do because you can also collect garbage (Boots, bottles, fish bones, ores and minerals, etc) that can be worth upward of 3kG toward resell if you're not going to make accessories and things right off the bat.
Trade and Buy: Purchasing the spices, herbs, and even building materials from other shop owners (IE the carpenter, etc) can work in your favor! Right now, for example, my Silk Trader has had Material sales at a super high rate for buying back! So buy as much as you can of whatever they're really wanting, then sell it to them for a profit. This is why I say to keep at least 40-100k on you at all times. Also, purchasing items like carrots and things from the General store counts toward your crops as well, since they are a vegetable! I already have my horse at full hearts so I'm not too worried about it on my own. Also, buying out all of Silk's spices and selling it back to the other vendors can help, as well, though only sometimes is there a profit. However, if you buy all of certain items from one vendor and sell to another, a lot of time you won't make a profit if you're not careful, so use this trick wisely and sparingly unless you absolutely have to. Crystals are about 3700 (I believe?) and probably the easiest money maker way to add to your totals of shipped items. You might not personally make a profit, but you will have that 3000g to tack on to the end of your total sent. Note, this is in Seedling mode. I am not sure if this is applicable in Veteran mode, but you can still use this to your advantage for quantity numbers.
Total Value Earned Type Conquest: (Moneybags Mode)
- Swim For Minerals: Gathering up pearls, fluorite, peridot, topaz, and other accessory based materials can help bump up your value up to 3000g each! I found ancient fish fossils and other things help, too! Just collect anything that's over 100g
Fish Often: Fishing for larger fish (that are upward of 200g) can help! Using bait and such can also help, but you'd end up having to invest a good bit to guarantee. I have not tried using bait yet personally, but it's great for the fishing contest I'd imagine for largest size.
Bugs Aren't So Great: They're the best for the quantity conquest, but honestly they're only 20g-40g at most per during the first part of the seedling mode first year. Gathering up beetles and such might help, but in the end if you sell too many bugs at first, your "Other" category items price listing will go down, thus defeating the purpose, so use this wisely with what bugs you catch. This would be a great way to collect bugs to give to others instead!
Cooking Is Fantastic: Only have low star level crops? Cook 'um! However, remember you can only sell so many before the price drops! Cabin is notorious for this, so if you sell to the Cabin first, run over to Silk and see if it's the same. I have yet to have this happen (I normally just hit the price drop AFTER I've sold everything)
Buy Low, Sell High: Crystals and other items that Silk sell can be resold at a higher price during spice sale days! So, if you have enough on hand now, buy as many as you can as often as you can, and on conquest day (After hoarding as much as possible) go back to the stall to sell them all at once for a profit AND a count toward your final total! Note, this is in Seedling mode, I am not sure if it's applicable in Veteran.
Seed Maker and Fertilizer Is Your Friend: Make sure you use and abuse the seedmaker's abilities. Sometimes you can go in and around on multiplayer and you get crops or seeds from the players there. Plant them, fertilize them (If they're not 5 star), and wash rinse repeat until they're five star. Remember! One crop can yield 1 seed, which yields up to 9 new, higher level crops if you continue to fertilize the fields! Make sure you hoard these crops as much as possible, because you can cook them if you feel you might have too many crops to sell with a price drop at once, etc.
Process Your Goods: I know that a lot of users in the beginning won't have the Seed maker, the sewing room, the cheese room, whatever, but it is incredibly incredibly important that you gather as much cash and materials for this as you can to get them as soon as possible.
Flax Linen Rich Scheme : Getting Flax is probably the easiest way to make money in the game. However, it's one of the longer processes with the three steps (Growing, making, dying). You can easily make a lot of G with it, and shipping it as pure can count toward your Venure crops sold that you need toward your goals just as is. However, if you want to make the money off of it, making it into linen and dying it gold (From what I've seen) has been the easiest and the best way to make money fast. Due to how long it can take, and the fact it is NOT a perennial, this is something you definitely have to hard ahead of time and plan ahead of time. This can also be used to simply buy the fields if you are given the option in the first place. I have yet to have that option in a Conquest (Discussing), so I can't say how much it is in either seedling or veteran mode.
Safari Is Super!: Mine. Just. Mine as much as possible once you get the safari open. Take your animals there and you get higher quality products if you let them stay in there often. The longer you wait, the harder it's going to be to win (Because of randomizer, crop quality, etc. The equation for it is all rather difficult.) Be sure you take good care of your animals, too! It's simple, treat them, wash them, feed them, talk to them. That's all! Literally that is all you have to do! However, if you want higher quality material, upgrade your hammer as soon as possible. If you don't, not only will the chances of finding decent items drop with each day that you mine, you will not be able to find the really high ranking material you need to upgrade anything (Gold, Mythril, Orichaleon, etc)
Cooking Levels Count: Make sure when you cook dishes (Even if it's a LOT of them) you do it one at a time so it counts toward your final level! I'm not sure if you can cook in bulk yet (I've found that when I got to my first level, I had to cook one at a time after I got my kitchen), but from personal experience, if you cook 50, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1,300, and 1,900, you can raise the quality level of your cooking! This helps if you have a low level crop but a higher level cooking, you can at least get it up half a star depending. However, using high level crops and a high level cooking level is your best bet to get it fast.
Note, you only will need to have 1 of each item to win this if you want to keep your stash as close to the chest as possible for items shipped, or value based conquests later in the game. This, actually is literally the easiest way to get high numbered conquests to demolish your competition. I've yet to be challenged when I renew my fields rental agreements, so I can't say how high the numbers will get, but saving back one low level item of each crop you grow for this challenge alone is probably your easiest way to make sure you keep rights to whatever field you're using.
- Catch Lots of Bugs! - Believe it or not, this will help you! In seedling mode, I won by 109 just because I had a « Puppy Doodoo » load of bugs, old seeds (single star level for things) finished requests with low level crops I didn't need for seeds (I have higher star seeds through the seed maker), and such!
Harvest prior! - Harvesting your crops helps, you were going to need to sell the low level ones anyway, right? So just go ahead and sell them at once! It will only count as one, though!
Fish! - Each fish, each bug, each anything you give them counts as variety. So, finishing fish requests also helps!
Cook! - Cooking dishes all count as one!
Process! - Process all of your regular foods (You honestly can get more for them, really such as cheese, yogurt, etc) flax too! Dying them different colors (If you don't have gold ability or anything yet) is also extremely helpful!
Collect Trash - Garbage counts as variety too!
Materials - Got a single lumber you can spare? Throw it in! Same for all of your building material (Not the black stone or black anything, though, I would never do that since those are so hard to get. As well as gemstones and things, save those for if you ever decide to take the 'value' conquest. However, things like one weed, twig, small lumber, lumber, material stone bases are easily used.)
Just throw as much junk as you can! Heck, buy things from the vendors themselves and sell the single item back to them! You can at least get your money back (Usually, in seedling mode I usually make a profit, however, though, for things like crystals and spices) for it so long as you haven't sold too many of the item prior!
