# Compare Two Values - Stardew Valley Food

In the game, Stardew Valley, you can pick up items through farming, fishing, foraging, cooking, etc. Most tasks use up your character's energy, such as swinging an axe or using using a watering can. Most items in the game can be sold to get gold or consumed to increase your energy for the day.

A good portion of the early game involves balancing selling items to increase wealth versus consuming these items, to increase energy, in order to perform more tasks throughout the day.

I made a spreadsheet of all consumable items and their associated gold and energy values. I would like to place each consumable item into one of two different categories, EAT or SELL. I've been trying to form an equation that plugs both numbers in and tells me which category each item should go into, but I haven't had much luck.

For reference, items can be sold between 30 and 700 gold and have between -125 and 263 energy (Negative energy is detrimental to character health). Also, the character's maximum energy stored is initially 270, which can be further upgraded to 508 as the game goes on.

Some items can easily categorized, and the equation should be able to do so.

Stonefish
Price : 200
Energy:   0


Stonefish should be sold, since it doesn't provide the player any energy upon consumption.

Void Salmon
Price : 234
Energy:  88


Void Salmon should probably be consumed due to how much energy it gives versus its sales price.

Some items are a little more difficult to categorize because one of the properties doesn't dwarf the other.

Albacore
Price : 117
Energy:  35

Eel
Price : 132
Energy:  42


Without analysis, it's difficult to determine which category Albacore and Eel should fall into. I would like to make a hard-line that each item falls into one, and only one category. I broke out the old algebra/pre-calculus book looking for what this type of problem is called, but I'm drawing a blank.

• Unless you can say what the value of energy in terms of gold is, there is no way to answer this question. – saulspatz Jan 30 at 16:41
• I figured it could be based on all available items. Could average energy, average gold values, a ratio of the two per item, or some other metric be used to get a decent enough comparison? – Swiftmatt Jan 30 at 16:58