Farming simulator Stardew Valley gives complete freedom to the player – build relationships, learn magic, sacrifice your children, become a master sword fighter, you name it. However, the foundation of all these abilities lies in money. The ultimate goal? Make enough money to buy the golden clock, the final step in most players’ roads to “perfection,” the end of all possible achievements. To reach this level more efficiently, you need to make maximum profit in a short amount of time. In honor of Stardew Valley’s recent 1.6 update, let me share with you some of the best ways you can make money from early to late game.

Early Game 

You start off in spring of Year 1, where you’re at your lowest financially. Most players can’t afford to buy much, and you shouldn’t. Don’t waste your precious money on stuff like upgrading backpacks. In the first few days, fishing is the name of the game. In the first week of spring, use all your money to buy kale, the most profitable spring crop. While you wait for your kale to grow, start fishing. Get the fiberglass rod as soon as possible, and sell all your fish and kale before Spring 13.

Crops:

During Spring 13, the Egg Festival takes place. Here, use all your profit gained over the past two weeks to buy as many strawberry seeds as possible. Strawberries this early in the game translate to pure gold. If planted as soon as acquired, two full harvests can be reaped before they wilt on the first day of summer. 

In the first year, your farm won’t be remarkably developed and you’ll most likely be relying on raw crops for your main income. Here are the best crops for each season:

Spring: Kale (110~181g) and strawberries (120~198g)

Summer: Blueberries (50~82g; they regrow every four days so you don’t have to buy seeds again) and starfruit (750~1237g; available for sale in the desert and the most valuable crop in the game. However, the seeds are expensive and non-regrowable).

Fall: Cranberries (75~123g; just like blueberries but more valuable)

Winter: As of the 1.6 update, powdermelons (60~90g) aren’t very profitable but no other crop grows in winter.

Tea saplings:

Besides crops, there’s one more extremely easy way to make a huge profit early in the game. Due to the overly simple nature of the method, some players even consider it cheating. The game developer made a change in the latest 1.6 update, cutting its profit in half, but it remains an easy way to make income. It’s called the tea sapling method, and here’s how to do it:

As soon as you accumulate two hearts by giving Caroline presents (summer spangles are the easiest to obtain out of her favorites. If not, give her daffodils in spring), you will unlock the recipe for tea saplings. They only cost 2 wild seeds, 5 wood, and 5 fiber to craft. They can be shipped off for 250g each, which can add up to make a considerable amount of money in a short amount of time. 250g is worth more than an iridium quality tuna (with no fishing profession bonus).

Mid-Late Game

After getting settled into your farm, hopefully you’ll have access to more sources of income other than raw farming and fishing. Below are the best passive ways to diversify your farm that produce a regular income.

Animals:

Animals add fun to the game, but they can easily become tedious to take care of. Instead of buying a building full of each species, two of each is just enough for your collection. When you upgrade your barns and coops to the maximum level, these are the animals you want to raise more of:

Coops:

Rabbits produce rabbits’ feet when they build friendship with you, and iridium quality rabbits’ feet are the best gift for any NPC (it’s universally loved except by Penny). They also sell for more gold than Dinosaur Mayonnaise.

 

 

 

 

Barns: 

Pigs earn the title as the most profitable animal in Stardew Valley by far, and here’s why. They require no care or love, and as long as you open the barn door for them and let them eat wild grass every day, they will sniff out multiple truffles in a day. If you are level 10 foraging with the botanist profession, pigs easily turn into one of the most cracked methods of income. 

Because truffles classify as foragable items, the botanist profession will turn every truffle your pigs find into iridium quality, selling for 1,250g each. The only downside: animals don’t go outside during winter, so pigs are basically useless during that month. You can still get dozens for every non-rainy day, though – perfect for the lazy rancher.

Crops:

Starfruit:

In middle to late game, you’ll probably have finished the vault in the community center (or used money to fix the bus if you chose the Joja route) and unlocked the desert. This gives access to the Oasis, where Sandy sells starfruit seeds daily. Starfruits are the most valuable crops in the game, selling at a base value of 750-1500g per fruit. They take 13 days to grow in summer but the profit gained for one is only 350-1100g, because the only way to get the seeds is to buy them from Sandy for 400g each (unless you use a seed maker). The best way to utilize these fruits is to use kegs to turn them into starfruit wine, which are sold at 2,250g for a single bottle (or 3,150g with the artisan profession).

Ancient Fruit:

Besides starfruit, the most valuable crop in the game and most profitable overall is the ancient fruit. Its seed isn’t up for purchase anywhere, but Gunther from the museum gives a single plantable seed if you donate the artifact “ancient seed.” The artifact can be found in the mines (dropped by bugs) or in treasure chests found fishing. 

The ancient fruit takes 28 days (or one full season) to grow, but it produces fruit every 7 days after its first harvest. It can also be planted in any season besides winter, which means if you plant one in spring it will keep producing fruit until the end of fall. Put the harvested fruits into seed makers, and build an endless amount with 100% profit. Ancient fruits sell for 550-1100g (base value). If you want to keep them growing all year without them dying in the winter and having to wait another 28 days in spring for them to regrow, you can plant them in the greenhouse and on ginger island, where any crop can grow any time of year.

Artisan Goods:

Out of all the professions in Stardew Valley available starting from level 5 in your character skills, the artisan (level 10 farming) is the most useful when it comes to making money. If you choose the wrong profession, you can easily change it by paying the statue in the sewers.

Honey:

Bee houses can be expensive, costing 8 coal and 1 maple syrup every time you craft one. However, it’s worth it in the long run. Honey requires absolutely no effort to make because it reproduces every 4 days throughout all seasons except winter. Wild honey by itself is not that profitable, only selling for 100g at once. 

However, honey increases in value if a fully grown flower resides within a radius of around 4-5 tiles. The more expensive the flower, the higher the value of honey. Fairy rose, the most pricy of them all, can be grown in fall. By keeping a fairy rose near multiple bee houses, you can make a whopping 680g (or 952g with artisan) for each bee house every 4 days in fall, or the entire year if you’re on ginger island. The picture to the right depicts one of the best layouts for an efficient and aesthetically pleasing honey farm. Honey farming comes about as the perfect passive source of income; Patience and collection is all that’s required.

Kegs:

Experienced Stardew Valley players utilize keg farms as one of the most prevalent late game methods. Using any space on the map from sheds on your farm, the quarry, the train station to ginger island, you should make as many kegs as you possibly can for the most expensive artisan goods.

Instead of selling your ancient fruits and starfruit raw, make sure to save them up and put them in kegs every 7 days. If you have more fruit than your kegs can take, only sell the highest quality ones as wine and preserve base quality products. Having a few keg farms can easily earn you hundreds of thousands of gold every week. 

Additionally, if you fully upgrade your house, you gain access to casks, which increase the quality and overall price of your wine. If you don’t own starfruit or ancient fruit, the second best crop to keg is hops, a summer vegetable that regrows every single day. Hops produces pale ale when kegged, and it only takes 1-2 days. Due to the frequency, mountains of pale ale is just enough to be compared with week-long wine.

Fish ponds:

Lastly, one of the additions to the game as of update 1.5 from 2021 is fish ponds, where you can raise a certain species of fish until they multiply up to a population of 10. These fish ponds regularly produce roe that turn into aged roe when used in preserve jars, exponentially increasing its value. 

The price of roe is proportional to the base price of the providing fish. Legendary fish cannot be put into ponds, but alternative options exist. Lava eel, found on floor 100 of the mines, are one of four fish that are able to change the color of the pond, and lava eel aged roe sells for 760g base price, 1,064g with the artisan profession. This is similar in price to fairy rose honey. Another expensive fish, sturgeon, produces a special roe that preserve jars can turn into caviar, which sell for 500g (700g with artisan profession).

ConcernedApe, the developer of Stardew Valley, continues to update the game and regularly adds new approaches to expand your economic advancement. Hopefully, utilizing some of these methods will bring you one step closer to the purchase of the golden clock, and ultimately perfection. Happy farming!