Scooping water is a great way to getting the following:

• Tons of Money (for 5000g Steam Achievement).
  
• Days passed (for 365-day Steam Achievement).
  
• Worldpieces (very) quickly.
  
• Tons of water (duh!).

(Note: If you only need one of the above goals, other methods may be better. For instance, having multiple wells (late-game) is more than good enough for getting clean water quickly. Likewise, If you're looking for early game food and water (with good worldpiece farming and a solid money maker), just spam-click huckleberry bushes (and cut them down afterwards for more huckleberries, as the bushes also seem to regrow quicker this way - but that could change in the future). For getting 3 worldpieces super-quickly, go to any cropfield (mid-late game) and start swinging your axe.)

The good news is that you can start scooping water very early. Make sure you got the following items, to set up a basic hut and start scooping:

• 1 log floor
  
• 1 log step (optional)
  
• 1 log wall
  
• 1 log roof
  
• 1 basic bed
  
• 1 cooking station
  
• 1 stack (30x) of, say, Huckleberry Bowls (for sating hunger; recipe: 3 Hucklerberries).

(Image below also shows some archway beams, but just ignore those.)



Be sure to have trees nearby (1-3 trees are fine) for branches (and logs) whenever you need more, since we'll be cooking the water (as clean water sells for 3g while dirty water is only 1g, and the cook ratio is 1:1 - that means 90g per 30 water scooped and cooked, which adds up over time).



Secondly, be sure to get better food (+Hunger) later on, since Huckleberry Bowls tend to go down rather quickly. For that, fishing can be really nice (although the actual fishing can take some time), if you add more lake tiles near your farming spot. I got about 10-15 fishing spots nearby, myself. (Fishing may also give you Scrap Parts and other things, not just fish.) Make sure you gut the fish first (in inventory), then cook the meat (recipe: 3 fish meat for the best recipe).

The basic rotation is simple. Scoop water to get dirty water and fatigued. Then immediately sleep (you can sleep at any time while fatigued). When you wake up, your Fatigue is replenished whereas your Thirst and Hunger drops a little. Rince and Repeat.

After a few sleeps, your Thirst and Hunger goes critical. Drink some of your clean water (or cook more) and eat some food, and then just keep scooping and sleeping.

As you scoop, you get more dirty water and worldpiece progression. As you sleep, you get +1 day passed. Wait with cooking most of your dirty water until you got your inventory filled up, then cook it all in one go. The reason to wait is because lit cooking stations also replenish your fatigue (which is exactly what you don't want, if you want to farm days passed).

Once you have enough clean water, just leave it off in chests or get to the nearest trader to sell it off. If the scooping gets too boring, just start doing other things and progress the game, then come back to this method now and then throughout your playthrough. I think I had 7800g total last time I checked (the image shows 6449g, so yeah - not exactly poor).

I decided to write this guide after beating the game with 210 in-game days played and having to spam-sleep to get to the 365-day achievement. (Upon writing this guide, I'm currently at 301 days after maybe 1-2 hours of play. So I'll probably get the achievement tonight.)

The good thing about this method is how early it can be done. This not only means ease of access, but also that you can take breaks from it and just play the game normally, then come back to doing this once in a while. By the time you beat the game, you could very easily end up with a large world, 5000+ gold, 365+ days passed and enough water to feed a Black Hole.

I hope this guide helps. And guys, be sure to keep yourselves...
...above snakes!

Peace!