The guide will focus on what to aim for and tips to achieve them. The goals that the guide will focus on are:

• what to aim for/ useful items
  
• Crop managing
  
• money making
  
• breeding a final monster; a optimal worker or warrior
  
• cooking

each section may have a long explanation and short summary for an easier overview, some things i won't cover are better covered in other guides.

Update: Forgot to mention that this guide is focused and biased toward the farming aspect of the game there is some advice for fighting but minimal to some at best

Made some edits to make some points clearer to understand and address the advice of the comments, will do a full re-haul of the guide if there is an update that changes the management aspect of the game

Short Summary
Goals

• get to floor 8 as soon as possible
  
• get the max farm upgrades before summer
  
• upgrade a crop to 5 stars
  
• start breeding to get progenitor/base monster
  
• Breeding a farmer monster is better than a fighting monster early game

Useful items

• floor 6 - echo stone; fast travel back to Katarina outpost
  
• floor 8 - Orichalcum Flask- changes the gender of the monster (refill at the tree)
  
• floor 8 - Gift of Mero - changes the colour of a monster to pink

Long explanation
Spring is not a time to be farming; most of the best food that can be crafted comes from Summer and so Spring is less of a time to be focused on crop management, and more on money making, breeding and prepping for Summer
Goals
Get to floor 8 as soon as possible
this may be hard for newer players however, it is possible. It is key for breeding and just making money in general, getting to floor 8 will allow you to obtain the echoing stone(return to Katarina outpost from anywhere in the dungeon) and more importantly Orichalcum Flask before the second week, which if started breeding on the third day, gives you more freedom to breed the most optimal monsters as 2 charges are available with the dungeon resetting.

Also, the process to floor 8 lets you get the materials to upgrade your farm. Throughout the level, you get around 20-40 wood, stone and metal from each respective node. This saves cost as each upgrade of a farm plot is 25 wood which is 250 korona, 750 in total for each upgrade which adds up. Overall, getting to floor 8 before the second week puts you in an optimal position for Spring.

Get the max farm upgrades before summer
not mandatory but makes life a whole lot easier, having access to 21 plots allows you to maximise crop yields, while also still having some room for training grounds and pastures. if you are having trouble getting the Korona (around 490k for 49 ley crystals), the money-making section can help with that.

Upgrade a crop to 5 star
not a requirement but makes life easier, you can comfortably do this in your first spring with macrinas, other spring crops are not so much and not the best option to do so. Macrinas are the best crop as it is the most versatile, being turned into flour for when you make food, or just a health crop by itself (not better than bread though). This access to 5-star crop allows you to make average food with poor ingredients, making an overall better food stats-wise.

start breeding to get progenitor/base monsterBreeding a base monster by focusing on getting traits such as Atlas will and Herculean will simplify getting maxed out farmers and battle monsters. It isn't very optimal in maximising the stats of fighting monsters however it does make it easier to make a farmhand monster.

With this template, I could specialised the monster into being either a farmer plankton farmer or mill worker while still making use of unused monsters since they have higher stats

Breeding a farmer monster is better than a fighting monster early game
Simply, it is better to focus on being self-sustainable in the beginning before breeding fighting monsters not only that but breeding farmhands will help get the ingredients to high-tier food that will help in getting max stats

Short Summary

• bigger plots: farming plots>pasture or training
  
• aim to have between 2-4 monsters for each plot
  
• mill is better than silo; mill>silo>hot house>water balloon
  
• Plankton is quality of life; not necessary

Long explanation
Bigger plots = better farm management
This allows you to exploit some economies of scale with stats; it would be a waste of a monster if they were overqualified for a small farm plot
each action; watering, harvest/digging and fertilising is 125 of each respective stat for 1/hr. This means that if you want to semi-automate the biggest farm plot you can have (4 farm plots= 88 crops) you would need 460 physique minimum to water the crops daily and 750 physique max considering the need to harvest, dig new holes, plant new crops and water them during harvest day.

• total water time for when it's harvest day is 15 hours
  
• This is considering that multiple farms are present ( i'm farming heavy)
  
• 9 hours estimated max for digging and planting considering monster help
  
• not considering fertilising, not mandatory for the plant to survive in most cases
  
• always good to have more than needed for farming, more versatile

getting a total of more than 460 physique with 4 monsters is not all difficult, 1 monster needs 115 physique which you can get by feeding a monster food or using unused monsters from breeding to fill the gap for a time being until you get your farmer
For example, this guy with some save scumming and stats from food, was able to get him to 295 physique, with the average between all my farmers being 200 in the last week of Summer, this was more like bashing my head until it worked with save scumming meaning with some patience, it's possible to get a farmer far better than mine with some planning and organisation.

Mill is better than Silo
Hot house and water balloon are useless compared to these 2 buildings.
Mill will allow you to upgrade crops and gain access to new recipes since the only restriction to cooking is the ingredients, Silo is a good option as well if you want to focus on breeding more than min-maxing since you can buy bread and other food items instead of farming them but the cost of food will add up and scale with how much you are breeding, early to mid-game, food isn't a concern cause you can just sustain it with the food you got from the dungeon and 1-star crops you got from farming (always mill 2 star and above crops, you can buy 1-star seeds from Jaero) for your small monster pop

I have never used Plankton produce so I can't give an accurate explanation to its usefulness but to me, it's just an extra ingredient and a way to get high-quality salt for fried Bose

Early-game crop managing is a lot more manual until you get monsters, i recommend save scumming until you get Jerikan on the second travelling merchant day and get some dragons or if you get tired of save scumming some wolfs, these have universal fertilisers so can be used in every season, dragons are better since they can get pureblood flat out increasing stats and have a base max of 500 for each stat

I would also recommend getting or breed more monsters to build up your workforce before buying new plots for farming cause it will just waste your time and money if you have to farm manually to fill the lack of farmers

Short Summary

• essence Capitalism; capitalism wins
  
• essence farm; lucrative but long-term
  
• selling products and crops; somewhat profitable but not encouraged
  
• clearing the dungeon; early game money- falls off

long explanation
Essence Capitalism
One of the most lucrative methods of making money outright, this method involves buying large amounts of essence from Montalvo at the guild when it's at low prices and then selling when they are high. For example, buying 999 cat essence for 4 995 total then selling the 999 cat essence when each are at 15 korona for a total of 14 985 for a profit of 9 990. Then with this you can snowball buy investing that into the market again until you get enough money for max Ley crystals. However, prices are unpredictable and so are most times unlikely to be at their max ranges, and you still need some start up money to begin the investment.

essence farm
This involves breeding dragon or chimeras to output the maximum amount of essence each day in mass, similarly with essence capitalism but instead producing the essence instead of buying it, removing the cost. This is the end game money making method and takes a large amount of time to make effective since you need to save scum and search for traits such as loads of ♥♥♥ and quick shot to even start making money, but when started is very lucrative

selling products and crops and clearing the dungeon
Both are good starting money making methods but are not very lucrative and should be used to start either of the previous methods. Selling crops and byproducts can make some money but takes too long and clearing the dungeon can at most make 2 000 korona each week

Short Summary

To be honest i'm not good at breeding still even after making excel spreadsheets to organise the family trees, would like some advice to add to this section if possible
• Video buy 𝐃𝐔𝐍𝐄✧𝑫𝑶𝑮#1517 from the cloud meadow discord
  
• some info graphics on how to visualise the process

Always plan before breeding
A helpful Quality of life tool is making a family tree for what you are trying to go for,it will also help to show which traits you are missing for the maxed monster you need. this will help in organising what you want for each monster for future breeds and prevent messing up a bloodline because you bred the wrong monsters.

NoticeIf you rather save scumm Jerikan than eggs to get the traits you want, there is little to no advantage of getting breeder's dream or blessed blood, even rerolling eggs these traits have little use since you can just retry if you don't want the traits. But, the traits are still useful if rerolling eggs even if a little to reduce rerolling.


A helpful way to breed the best monster is combining monsters with single traits then keep repeating until you get a maxed out monster. not only would this avoid the problem of inbreeding but you could also use the same monsters to breed for other roles. Like using the monster that has stat increasing traits in breeding for a combat monster

Link to a video on breeding by Dune Dog, couldn't add the file to the guide so this is the original post on the cloud meadow discord. Awesome guide that showed me that breeding battle monsters was actually worth it.
https://discord.com/channels/265695481630294016/600922802832408586/1122960572586151996

Some pictures from the discord about the basics to breeding and presets to roles on the farm-

mind map on breeding by PlussunBat
little bit outdated with the left hand side however the video by Dune Dog explains it optimally

Presets to roles on the farm, wasn't able to find who did make these present.But if someone found the original poster i like to credit them
There are also some really good posts and other images on the Gameplay questions and general pinned images on the discord

Short Summary

• Not needed for normal play but very useful
  
• Bose Jerky- best for physique
  
• Gempas Fruit Shake- best for intuition
  
• Forbidden Fruit- best for swiftness
  
• Sloppy Joe-best for stamina

Long Explanation

Cooking is a very useful since it maximises the amount of stats a monster can get per day since they can only be feed once a day.
This also connects to why i think Summer is the best season to farm crops and start cookingFrom what i collected, the best food for each stat is mostly collected in Summer with

• Bose Jerky- increasing physique by 13 each star + 69% increase in xp
  
• Gempas Fruit Shake- increasing stamina by 14, intuition by 19 and swiftness by 3 each star
  
• Forbidden Fruit- increasing both swiftness and stamina by 10 and intuition by 7 each star

From this it should be concluded that Summer is the time for farming crops since anything in white can be farmed in any other season since they are just refined goods

early game, instead of cooking you should just put the ingredients into the food bin since it's a hassle hand feeding cooked food without the silo.

You should only start to invest into cooking when you have the silo or started training your monsters to maximise their gains

This isn't supposed to be a step by step walkthrough but some advice and tips to help through the game.I would not recommend this walk through for first time players, it is better to first play the game for the first spring,then if you are still struggling or need some advice use this little guide

For the first week, clearing floor 8 should be top priority. clear up to floor 3 defeating Ripper, going back and defeating Kelpie and the giant lizard on floor 6

From this point it should be smooth sailing to floor 8 and should take around 3 days to finish getting the Orichalcum Flask after defeating the Duo on Sunday


keep a diamondnium key to unlock the vault on floor 7 for the pirate quest, if you have 2, use one on the treasure chest on floor 5 where you can get some pirate-themed items that increase gold rewards.

throughout this reroll the travelling merchant until you get the monster or egg merchant then reroll until you get a good dragon to use as a worker on your farm and to get the dragon's blood for future breeding.

If you have the money to max your farm outright while having some leftover before the third week, do it on Sunday even if you don't have the workforce currently, this is because every third week of every season, the week-long event doesn't allow travelling merchants to appear therefore if you keep breeding your farming monsters, there will not be enough food production to keep up with the breading, even with the bread.

In essence monsters early game, quickshot and loads, are not as profitable and should be used as farmers instead of harvesting them only do so when you level up their traits around 3 times.

strong back, green thumb or fast reflexes are not good traits once you think about it.

with traits such as Herculean and Atlas Will increasing stats by 100% when maxed out increase each stat to 1200 if you have the maximum range of a stat (600). This would mean that each monster can do 9.6/hr of watering, harvesting and fertilising when maxed. This therefore makes stat increasing traits while working on farms overkill since with 1200 physique, will only need 9 hrs to full water the largest plot possible (88 crops). So i will recommend breeding for other traits such as life maker and bountiful yields. then making the farmer into an essence monster with the extra trait slots.

Edit: This is true late game but early game every stat-enhancing trait counts, until you get the gold traits that enhance stats, keep them and replace them when they become obsolete.

Party comp can be anything you are comfortable with if you have already played the game but AoE is highly suggested, the MC becomes more of a supporting character the stronger the opponents you face, like Klepie, so their focusing on healing and buffing is the best option while using the transformation as a trump card. This is my usual party whenever i'm clearing the dungeon

Food shouldn't be a problem, the food given should be enough to sustain the first week if you haven't bought too many monsters. I never farm the first week until I get the farm upgrade for the new plots then start to upgrade my farm. If there is not enough food in the food bin then the food collected in the dungeon should be substituted ( i also just dump all my 1 star food into the bin aswell) or buy some bread from a npc.

make sure to add the best monster to your windmill whenever you can instead of adding them to a farm plot; there are only 2 spots in the windmill and a lot more in the farm plots.

Pro tip: you can predict if a monster sold by Jerikan has a gold or silver trait by the price and stats for example, a dragon is being sold for around 500 is typically a positive trait, 0 has 1 negative trait, anything above 500 is a gold or silver, if a stat of a dragon is 60 then it has a golden trait like Wiz or Herculean(gold), if 55 then something like strong (silver). some stats like bountiful yields can only be predicted by it's price being over 550 and anything over 700 has either 2 silver traits or better. This is what i found through my save scumming for dragon traits but this is just through my experience, typically if the price is over 500 for any monster, it's a good monster, buy it and look if it's the trait you want, if not reload the save and keep trying.

use essence market to make money buy the essence from cat to Holstaurs low and then sell high, keep save scumming because RNG is a crime(also before you enter the village, save, you can roll which merchant appears during merchant day on Wednesday or Thursday)

keep yourself busy, any progress is good progress. Clearing the dungeon, tending to the farm, or reading the dialogues of each NPC that you skipped in the tutorial or just didn't talk too. Anything to pass the time while still having fun, essence market takes a day to change and dungeon runs become less important so try new party composition since levels are shared between all recruitable NPC members

Edit: kinda regret having this mentality when playing, it was great seeing the progress i could do before the 3rd week, but it burnt my drive playing the game. So I suggest playing however you want if you have downtime talk to the NPCs that you skipped in the tutorial.

This was my first try at making a guide so it may be a little rough, it may also be that when i'm making this i haven't slept for a day or so, but i hope this was a helpful guide to Cloud meadow, i saw that alot of helpful advice was drowned out in the Discord and wanted to at least make a somewhat organised guide of advice from what i saw.

I would also like to say that i lean towards the farming aspect of the game rather than the breeding and combat so i would not know the optimal tips for breeding combat monsters since NPCs finish the battles just aswell in the current content.

There is still alot of helpful advice on the discord pinned messages that are still being added especially Punkrockatiel's post on training if you are more focused on monsters than farming. There are also existing guides that cover stuff that i didn't.

I still feel like i'm lacking a bit of knowledge especially in breeding. But i was still able to make a self sufficient max farm with around 2.5mil korona on the third day of the first summer so if there was anything i missed i would love some feedback and advice because i abandoned that farm cause my breeding ruined it.

At the start of writting this i started a new farm so i will keep updating this guide with the knowledge that i keep remembering and discovering throughout my playthrough

Overall, Thanks for going through my guide and wish you good luck on your playthrough :)

𝐃𝐔𝐍𝐄✧𝑫𝑶𝑮#1517- Video about breeding
plussunbat - for the mind map for breeding