Preserves Jar

The Preserves Jar is a crafted machine used to process crops and certain forage items into higher-value preserved goods. It turns fruits into Jelly, vegetables and most mushrooms into Pickles, and Roe into Aged Roe or Caviar. Because the finished product always uses the input’s base sell price rather than its quality, the jar is especially useful for crops with low base value but good yields, and it is one of the most reliable ways to increase the sale price of farm produce.

A Preserves Jar normally takes 4000 minutes to finish processing, which is a little over two in-game days. The one exception is Sturgeon Roe, which takes 6000 minutes and becomes Caviar instead of Aged Roe. Finished products are always regular quality, so the higher the quality of the input item, the smaller the profit margin becomes. In practice, the jar is most profitable when used on regular-quality produce, while silver, gold, and iridium-quality items lose some relative value because their quality is ignored.

The standard selling formulas are:

• Pickles: 2 × base vegetable price + 50
• Jelly: 2 × base fruit price + 50
• Caviar: fixed sell price based on the product
• Aged Roe: 2 × base roe price

A few special cases affect what can be processed. Truffles cannot be placed in a Preserves Jar because they are not classified as mushrooms. Some inedible vegetables and fruits still produce preserve products, but at reduced value compared to edible produce. A number of forage items can also be pickled, including Wild Horseradish, Leek, Dandelion, Cave Carrot, Morel, Chanterelle, Spring Onion, Common Mushroom, Hazelnut, Winter Root, Snow Yam, Purple Mushroom, Ginger, and Magma Cap.

In terms of profit, the Preserves Jar is usually an easy choice whenever the goal is to sell processed goods rather than raw crops. It is particularly strong for low-value, high-yield crops such as Corn or Tomatoes, while high-base-value crops are often better suited to the Keg instead. Even so, if profit per day is the priority, the Preserves Jar is extremely efficient because it works much faster than a Keg in almost every case.

A few practical details are worth keeping in mind:

• Product quality does not affect the output; only the base item value matters.
• Processing time is approximate because time passes differently between 2:00 am and 6:00 am.
• Items started at 6:00 am with a 4000-minute cycle finish at 7:20 pm two days later.
• If a 4000-minute item is started between 12:40 pm and 7:20 pm, it finishes at 6:00 am three days later.
• Caviar started at 6:00 am finishes at 2:00 am three days later, so it cannot be collected until the next day.
• Preserves Jars can be stored anywhere on the farm, but they take up less space if placed inside farm buildings or outside the farm entirely.

One final detail: the machine’s description says it makes jam, but its actual output is Jelly. The same description was also not updated to mention fish roe and Caviar until later versions.