Just gatekeep those very expensive late game fish behind much stronger fishing rods, tackles and baits that player can't get before the 2nd or 3rd year. I think fish that we catch early game should remain as they are, call them normal and silver fish, while late game and best equipment/skill level should give access to gold/iridium fish that'd sell for much more than now, just so it remains competitive to other sources of income. Past that it's no longer an activity of any value or interest. The amount of money you make from fishing holds up only in the very early game. You have to work very hard in the mini-game, spend your entire rainy day at the river and you still are going to make only 1/10 of what your pigs just dug out of the grass on the same day. It'd also make a lot of things that aren't otherwise very attractive to farm (apples, tomatoes) to become some of top earners. I think that'd be so much more fun and require some good long-term planning from the player to get the best rewards. Or imagine accumulating cheese all year so you can combine it with hot peppers into pepper poppers, or waiting with your apples from your orchard until the cranberry season to make cranberry candy for sale. To combine all those multiple sources of produce into fish tacos to get a much larger income than you'd get on any single ingredient. Imagine a farm that'd be focused on making fish tacos for example, planting wheat and red cabbage when in season, fish ponds producing tuna, chicken coops to turn eggs into mayo. This way we could have entire farms specialized in producing specific foodstuffs, rather than just churning out truffle oil and wine. But complicated things that'd require getting ingredients from multiple different sources, fishing, foraging, animals, farming, especially in different seasons, they should make you big bucks. Straight up things like fried egg where you turn a single thing into another thing shouldn't offer any extra income.

Why aren't ready meals more profitable than the sum of their ingredients? Prices for every recipe should be audited and boosted depending on how rare and how hard to get the ingredients are. Such wasted potential here, an entire module with dozens of cooking recipes that you almost never have to interact with. Make them make 25% more than sheep make and it'll still be plenty. They should be toned down to the level of other animal produce.

They make other animals look completely unattractive and make them function as decor instead. Especially combined with Botanist and Artisan, they just bring way too much dough. Every time someone asks how to get rich quickly, someone else writes pigs, pigs, pigs. Just think about it, endless spicy eel, endless staircases, endless bombs, cheese, coffee.

Infinite amounts of stock in this store should be done away with. You basically are freed from interacting with multiple game systems (like cooking), thanks to this shortcut. He allows to buy too many complicated items way too easily and cheaply since you can just replicate endless amounts of gems in Crystalariums (and gems in general are very easy to farm even without those). Here are a few thoughts on things that I think could use a balancing pass in terms of gameplay and income.

Stardew valley silo not working