When starting a new life on an idyllic tropical island in Coral Island, farming the game's best crops is a great way to make a quick profit and make new friends. This chill, laid-back farming sim takes the genre to the tropics, where you can farm, fish, and scuba dive. However, money still matters even in paradise, and prioritizing the game's best, most profitable crops lets you hit the ground running in your new home.

There are many excellent ways to make money in Coral Island, but your island farm will likely be your most reliable source of income. Each of the four seasons has seasonal crops that can be sold, eaten for health and energy, or even gifted to friends and potential romantic partners. As such, the best crops will vary by season and growth time, and you'll also need to consider whether they can be processed into high-quality artisan goods.

Related: "A Cozy Experience In The Tropics": Coral Island Review

10 Potatoes

The Best Rank F Crop For Spring

Before you can grow rare, high-value crops in Coral Island, you will have to gradually increase your town rank to unlock new crop seeds. As you work towards that goal and gradually unlock more Skill Points, you must grow basic starting crops such as the Potato. As a Rank F crop for Spring, Potatoes can be grown from the beginning of the game and are likely to be one of your staple crops when you're just starting.

To raise your Town Rank, focus on donating to the museum, healing coral, and completing offerings.

However, Potatoes are an excellent choice for a few different reasons. At five days, their growth time is relatively short, and you also have the chance to receive extra Potatoes when harvesting. Thanks to their strong sale price, this gives you a particularly big profit margin. You will be spending money on a single seed that might yield extra produce, which is an essential advantage, especially early in the game when your farm is barely up and running.

According to the fan resource Koenig's Coral Guide, Potatoes can also be used as ingredients in cooking recipes that require an extra vegetable ingredient, such as Vegetable Jerky. As such, Potatoes can be used in nearly 20 cooking recipes, making them a relatively cheap and easy-to-grow ingredient in any farmer's pantry.

9 Poppies

The Best Rank E Crop For Spring

Spring is a lovely season for growing flowers, and once you've reached Town Rank E, you'll have access to seeds for growing Poppies. Flowers make good gifts in Coral Island, but you will also want to check which kinds the Villagers like best.

Poppy Seeds don't cost much; the flowers sell for a reasonable price, and you can even use them to craft Scent for catching bugs and critters. You can donate anything you catch to the museum and level your Catching skill. However, Poppies become especially valuable when processed with a Bee House. This produces Poppy Honey, an Artisan Good that sells for an impressive 245 Coral Coins, much more than many starter crops.

You can also use Poppy Honey as an ingredient for Apple Pie.

Once you've gotten an Aging Barrel, you can take things a step further by processing Poppy Honey into Poppy Mead, which sells for 1,105 Coral Coins a bottle.

8 Sugarcane

The Best Rank D Crop For Spring

According to Quick Tips on YouTube, Sugarcane is a fantastic cash crop that you can grow once your town reaches Rank D. It grows in the same amount of time as Potatoes but regrows every single day afterward as long as it's properly maintained. This gives you a bumper harvest almost daily for nearly a whole season. It's worth noting that raw sugarcane crops don't sell well. Like Poppies, you'll get the most value from processing them.

Despite Coral Island's cozy vibe, there's a surprising depth to what you can make and sell. Sugarcane can be processed into Syrup, Green Dye, Cane Nectar, and Sugar in different machines. Combined, these sweet ingredients are used in dozens of cooking recipes, and you'll need some if you want to cook a sweet treat for a bachelor or bachelorette.

7 Hot Peppers

The Best Rank F Crop For Summer (And Fall)

Hot Peppers are one of Coral Island's star crops. They can be grown in Summer and Fall, and mature plants can produce up to 17 peppers in a single harvest. Best of all, they regrow after three days and don't have to be replanted as long as you carefully maintain them. They're actually a Rank F crop, so they're a priority for farmers spending their first summer on Coral Island.

They can also be used as ingredients to give dishes a spicy kick and processed into Kiracha Sauce using the Mason Jar. The spicy condiment is a key ingredient in several dishes, including the Vegan Taco. If you're hoping to romance Kenny or Wakuu, two of Coral Island's marriage candidates, then the Vegan Taco is a dish you will need to add to your list.

6 Melons

The Best Rank E Crop For Summer

Melons don't have an exceptional sell price compared to the high price of Melon Seeds, and you'll rarely receive more than one crop per harvest. Combined with a lengthy growth time of 12 days, it's easy to overlook this particular fruit.

However, Melons are fantastic ingredients for fruit-based recipes in Coral Island, such as Fruit Tart. They also become incredibly high-quality Artisan Goods when processed by the Mason Jar and Keg. This includes Melon Jam, which sells for 365 Coral Coins a jar, and Melon Juice, which sells for 515 Coral Coins a bottle.

These Artisan Goods are easy to make if you've made some progress leveling up your farming skills and selling well. After all, cool drinks are always welcome in the summer. You can even process Melon Juice into Melon Wine in the Aging Barrel, which sells for 2,320 Star Coins a bottle. This is a fairly substantial amount, even for Wine, which tends to have very high sales prices.

The Ginger Empire on YouTube has a great guide that explains how to craft the Mason Jar.

5 Pineapples

The Best Rank D Crop For Summer

One of the best things about Coral Island is its tropical theme, and Pineapples fit that theme perfectly. They're a seasonal crop for Summer that sells for reasonable prices even when low-quality. They're also the perfect gift if you're trying to befriend Joko, the local carpenter since they're one of his loved gifts. On top of that, they grow faster than Melons, and their seed packs cost less.

Pineapples can also be processed into Artisan Goods that have great value. Pineapple Juice sells for 440 Coral Coins a bottle, and Pineapple Jam sells for 315 Coral Coins a jar, making them a worthy export from your farm.

As a nice bonus, Pineapple Juice can be processed into Pineapple Wine, which sells for a hefty 1,980 Coral Coins a bottle. They're an essential crop for the summer season, and as a neat bonus, they'll also help you relax and immerse yourself in the game's tropical setting.

Pineapples are also an essential ingredient for cooking Hawaiian Pizza. It's a notoriously divisive dish in real life and in Coral Island, where some NPCs love it, and other NPCs hate it with a passion.

4 Cranberries

The Best Rank F Crop For Fall

Fall will be the busiest season for your farm in Coral Island, as the season features lots of high-value crops. Curiously, Hot Peppers are still available to grow and harvest in the Fall and are still one of the best choices for your farm. However, you shouldn't neglect new seasonal crops such as Cranberries.

Cranberries are one of the few crops in the game whose seed price exceeds their sell price, so on paper, they might seem like a net loss for your farm. However, a single Cranberry plant can yield up to 12 berries per harvest and regrows every two days, significantly increasing its value.

Best of all, you can process a single berry into a new Cranberry seed with the Seed Maker machine and then plant it to grow even more Cranberries. With some careful timing, you can plant lots of new seeds, increasing your farm's output within days and creating a bumper harvest of Cranberries that's likely to require at least one inventory space upgrade.

3 Lilies

The Best Rank D Crop For Fall

Not to be confused with the Coral Island's marriage candidate, the Lily is one of the best flowers you can grow in-game. As shown by Gaming Tornado on YouTube, Lily seeds cost much less than their selling value, so you can earn a decent profit whenever you sell them. Most villagers and romance candidates like it when gifted to them; lilies are an excellent and generally easy-to-grow gift item.

Much like Poppies, Lilies are also one of the best flowers for processing into Honey. Lily Honey sells for 445 Coral Coins, making it one of the most high-value Honey variants in the game. Your Fall farm will likely be packed with plots seeded with many different crop types. However, if you enjoy being a beekeeper, it's well worth setting aside some land for planting Lilies.

2 Cactus

The Best Rank B Crop For Fall

The idea of growing Cactus in Coral Island can be slightly off-putting, as Cactus Flower Seeds cost a lot of money. They are the most expensive seeds you can purchase. However, Cacti can be harvested and processed into extremely high-value Artisan Goods, making them the perfect choice for late-game farmers who've got their farms set up to produce lots of Artisan Goods for sale.

Cactus can be processed into Cactus Honey, which sells a jar for an absurd 1,215 Coral Coins. No other Honey variant in the game even comes close, and you can increase its value even further by processing it into Cactus Mead. Cactus Mead sells for 5,470 Coral Coins, making it one of the game's most high-value items.

You can technically obtain even better Honey by processing Rafflesia and Titan Arum flowers. However, these flowers can only be found while foraging. This limits their overall usefulness for making Honey.

1 Winter Crops

An Off-Season For Your Island Farm

Winter in Coral Island is essentially the off-season for your farm. Only some crops will grow, and you should generally focus on other activities such as mining, fishing, and attending some of Coral Island's biggest festivals. You can plant Wild Seeds, which will produce Tea Leaves in Winter: an excellent gift for Raj.

You can also process Tea Leaves into Green Tea, a loved gift for Anne, Ben, Betty, Eleanor, Emma, Kenny, and Raj.

A few other hardy crops, such as Cotton and Snowdrop Flowers, can also be grown, and some fruit trees will still bear fruit. Your farm won't stop making money in Winter, but you can take the opportunity to make some progress with other aspects of Coral Island life or just relax and sit back for a bit.

Overall, your farm is at the heart of this farming sim, but planting and harvesting the best crops should take up only some of your time. You can fish, dive, repair and upgrade your house, and perhaps most importantly, meet and make new friends. Life in Coral Island is all about going with the flow, so don't spend too much time thinking about how to really max out your profits.

Source: Coral Guide, YouTube/Quick Tips, YouTube/The Ginger Empire, YouTube/Gaming Tornedo

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  Coral Island

  Released:

  2023-11-14

  Developer(s):

  Stairway Games

  Genre(s):

  Life Simulation, Simulation

  Platform(s):

  PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

  Publisher(s):

  Humble Games

  ESRB:

  E10+

  How Long To Beat:

  22h 20m