A comprehensive guide: Making money in Stardew Valley

A guide made to help newcomers and those looking for some guidance on how to make more, and do it faster

Preface

To start off, I'll say that not everything I do is 100% optimal, but I certainly try my best.
This is a strategy that I've basically pulled out of my anus, and as such I do not claim that this is the best way make money in stardew, nor the fastest. What this is, is a compilation of what I've done in game, condensed down into checklist goals to simplify the process and make things go a lot faster than the time it took for me.
Take everything I say with a grain of salt, and be on the lookout for places I screw something up, because I very well might have.

So what's the plan?

To make lots of money, we're going to mass farm singe crops that will give us back the maximum profit per seed, and eventually create setups to double (or even triple) the value via making artisan goods. To achieve our goal, we need to gain access to the most expensive crops, which will be half the battle.

The best crop to farm all around is the ancient fruit, however we won't be able to get them for quite some time. Besides ancient fruits, the best crop per season will vary, but the top across all seasons is starfruit, which grows in the summer, and is sold in the calico desert. Issue is, we can't reach the desert until be finish the vault bundle, which will cost us money. The other issue is, we don't have the resources, infastructure, or tools to farm en masse.

The three major goals

• Our first major goal will be to set up mass farming operations and gain access to starfruits
  
• The second major goal will be to set up breweries for starfruit (and later ancient fruits), which will help maximize profit per seed
  
• The third will be to reach the final house upgrade to gain access to casks, which will further increase profits

In this guide we'll address how to achieve all three of these goals, as well as tips, tricks, and strategies to speed up progress along the way.

Year 1

Starting off, you aren't going to make much. In fact, for the first year you will make very little, but that's okay. Year one is all about the setup; clearing off your farm, gathering important resources, upgrading equipment, unlocking the bus, and so on.

So what do I need to do in year one?

The key tasks we need to complete are as follows

• Clear off around a quarter or more of your farm by Summer 1
  
• Make visits to the mine as much as possible to gather copper, iron, coal, and quartz
  
• Seek to upgrade your hoe, watering can, and pickaxe (Prioritize watering can, but keep in mind you won't be able to water your crops for 3 days)
  
• Complete the vault bundle at the community center (In total costing 42,500g)

Secondary tasks would include

• Clearing off roughly half your farm by the end of year one
  
• Finishing the miner bundle at the community center to unlock minecarts ( gets you around WAAAY faster )

Crops

During spring 1, your best bet is to farm potatoes. The game starts you off with 500g, and I suggest you invest 100% into potato seeds, which will run you 50$ per seed. With the 15 parsnip seeds, and 10 potato seeds to look after, and 4-6 days to wait, you will have plenty of time to allot to clearing space on your farm, and finding your way to the mines. To try and maximize profits, use the sap you find on your farm to make fertilizer, which will give you a bigger chance at high quality crops.

Getting more money without crops

Along the way, you will start accumulating types of items that (for now at least) can be safely sold to get some more money, and buy more seeds. Starting off, there is a vast amount of trees on your farm, and growing these back won't be a priority for a while. This means you can feel safe in selling off tree seeds, or any wild growing plants you find while wandering in the city. Once every 3-6 days, find your way down to the beach and collect the shells you find on the beach to make a quick buck. Doing this should net you enough within the first 6 days to buy more seeds, which you can plant right away. Don't be afraid about staggering the days you plant seeds. As long as you plant them with enough time to grow before the next season kills them, then it just means more profit.

Mining

Mining is important to infastructure, as copper, iron, gold, and quartz are vital to growing crops en masse. If you are ever walking around your farm, especially before noon and thinking,
"Man, there's not really much to do is there?", then you are wasting time that could be spent mining, and you're going to fall behind this guide QUICK.

As for being in the mine, make sure to bring along some form of food with you to heal yourself with. You probably won't make it past level 40, but do your best, as iron is most common around levels 40-50, and can be farmed from dust sprites[stardewvalleywiki.com] for ez gains. Copper appears the most around levels 31-39.

A final note on mining, you are able to return down to the nearest checkpoint level, which occurs every 5 levels you reach. This means you can pull out if you have to, so don't blow it.

Infastructure

The key to growing crops is doing nothing. The less you have to do in order to grow a crop, the more you can grow, and the more money you make. Eventually that feeling you get from
hand-watering your crops is going to fade, turning you sour and wondering if there's an easier way. There is, and it's sprinklers.
There are 3 tiers of sprinkers

• Basic sprinkler, watering the 4 adjacent tiles from the center
  
• Quality sprinkler, watering the 8 adjacent tiles from the center
  
• Iridium sprinkler, watering the 24 adjacent tiles from the center
  Image from http://stardewvalleywiki.com

To start with, you will be forced to craft only basic sprinklers, as the level requirements to craft a Quality sprinkler is level 6, and Iridium level 9. Despite not having really OP sprinklers to cover lots of area from the get go, we can work around our limitations and make due like so




A checkered-ish pattern will allow you to grow more in a smaller area while not having to water your crops. If you are having trouble re-creating it, I've made a terrible outline that
should clarify it Here[imgur.com].

Intro to Summer 1

As I stated before, summer is THE most important season to make money. Since we can't get starfruits in year 1, we'll go with out next best bet, blueberries.

Blueberries are a one time plant, taking 13 days to first harvest and 4 days for every subsequent harvest, and yields 3 blueberries every time for a maximum of 5 harvests if planted on day one of summer.

Basically, this means we can grow a crapload of blueberries and make big bux, but to do this we need space, and sprinklers. If you farmed enough potatoes, you should be able to reach level 6 in farming fast enough to make quality sprinklers, meaning your life will become a whole lot easier in this next part.

Preparing for Summer

Depending on how you did in spring, you should have made a decent profit from your potatoes, cleared out some space on your farm, and have some copper, iron, and quartz from the mines.
Be prepared to BLOW ALL OF YOUR MONEY AND GIVE UP YOUR LIFE.

Roughly 3 days before summer, you want to start preparing by clearing out and making space for your sprinklers. If you have quality sprinklers, you want to place them so their surrounding crops will be touching, but not overlapping. This means no crops should be touching more than one sprinkler at a time, or you done screwed up. If you still don't have quality sprinklers, start expanding your basic sprinkler pattern as much as possible, and cry a little bit inside. If for some reason you didn't save up any copper or iron like I told you to, take a hike over to the blacksmith with your head hung in shame.

Dawn of the First Day: 72 hours remain.

Day 1, summer 1. It's time to bust ass and chew bubblegum, and I really hope you're out of bubblegum. Pierre's shop opens at 9, giving you ~3 hours to get your ♥♥♥♥ straight. If you did your setup the day prior, you should have all of your sprinklers in place, and the ground tilled, meaning all you have to do is fill in and water a few missing tiles. Haul ass to Pierre's, and buy as many blueberries as you can afford or if you can afford it, 400-500.

But that's a lot of blueberries!

Let's do some math real quick:

[C] Cost of blueberries = 80
[S] Selling price(base) = 50 x 3 (because the min yield is 3 per plant)
[A] Amount of blueberries total (per harvest) = (400 to 500) x 3
[P] Profit = x

Profit = (S - C) * A 
Profit = (150-80) * 400
Profit = 70 * 400
Profit  = 28,000

Total profit after summer = 28,000 * 5 = 140,000
 

And this is PER HARVEST. If you can plant 400 blueberries on the first day of summer, you are going to make some decent dosh. My recommendation is to aim for 500. It takes a lot of work, but the payoff will carry you into winter 2 easily.

If you really need to take 2 days for 100% planting, you will make quite a bit less, so keep that in mind.

Fall & Winter

When all is said and done, You should have some decent savings. From here, I would say to farm cranberries, as they are a similar crop to blueberries in the fall, and in winter start working towards building kegs.

Year 1 (Continued)

Vault Bundle

The vault bundle is pretty straight forward:
Give a total of 42,500g to the junimos and they'll fix the bus for you, and if you don't royally mess up summer 1, then you should easily have enough to invest.

Boiler Bundle

The boiler bundle is rather straight forward if you are going mining. The only part that might cause some issues is the fire quartz[stardewvalleywiki.com].
Fire quartz starts appearing around level 80 and onwards, which is QUITE the way down. If you go mining a lot, you can probably do it, but don't sweat it and waste too much time down there. This is why unlocking minecarts isn't a major priority, but more of a luxury.

Ancient Fruit

During the course of year 1, make sure to visit the travelling cart[stardewvalleywiki.com] every Friday & Sunday with an eye open for an ancient fruit seeds[stardewvalleywiki.com]. They have a 1.26% chance of appearing at the cart, or can also be aquired by donating the Ancient Seed artifact[stardewvalleywiki.com] to the museum.

Ancient fruit are considered to be an end game crop for two reasons:

• They grow in Spring, Summer, and Fall
  
• If planted in Spring and left to span the 3 seasons, make ~57.4g/d, more than any crop

If given the year to grow, Ancient Fruit will make you more shipped raw than starfruit wine.

Year 2

You made it. Look at you! Hopefully you spent your winter season in the mines, and building kegs, because thats a really important step.

Spring

It's that time of year again! I didn't mention in in Year 1, but buying strawberries is a good idea, as they are the best spring crop to grow. (Stupid valve, give me more space)
Either than making sure you're ready for the starfruit invasion, spring 2 is practically rince and repeat of spring 1. Consider upgrading your hoe as much as possible during this time.

Summer

It's time. I hyped up summer 2 for a good reason, and that's because you're planting money seeds.
Day one of summer 2, you have roughly 3 hours to clean up your sprinkler setup, filling in some holes here and there and whatnot. If you prepared and bought your seeds ahead of time, you can start the plant right away and save yourself the headache of waiting till 10:10 for pam to open the bus stop.

Once you get your seeds planted, it's time to do a checkpoint:
How many kegs do you have?

hopefully a lot.

I am the liquor, Randy

In stardew valley, alcohol is in my opinion the best way to make money, not because you'll make a lot of money (and you will), but because you get to say, "I make wine for a living". Of course you don't tell them you're playing farming games, but it still makes you feel good, both the wine and the lying about having a cool career.

Kegs + fruit makes wine, and wine makes money. But how much?

3 × base Fruit value
Artisan profession:
1.4 × base Wine value

[Example: Starfruit]
3 x 750g = 2250g
Artisan profession:
1.4 x 2250g = 3150g 

Remember when I suggested you grow 500 starfruit?

[Starfruit]
500 x 2250g = 1,125,000g
Artisan profession:
500 x 3150g = 1,575,000g

Basically, anywhere between 400-500 Starfruits will guarantee you millionare status, but by when is a different question. How fast you get your million depends on how many kegs you have. Think about it like the lottery; Take your money upfront with a high percentage cut taken from it (this would be selling raw starfruit), or wait and take your large lump sum of cash in smaller, less lumpy sums. Luckly for you, the more kegs you have the more lumpy the sums.

Keg placement is another concern for newcomers. While most people(including me) use sheds to store their kegs, the most optimal setup is to put your kegs in deluxe barns.

Left: Optimal shed layout, 67 kegs
Above: Optimal barn layout, 90 kegs



One possible optimal deluxe barn layout, 136 kegs
All three images courtesy of stardewvalleywiki[stardewvalleywiki.com]

Whatever you end up chosing, do keep in mind that you can always fill the walking space with active kegs, just make sure if you plan on completely filling a building you start all your brewing on the same day.

Fall

You made it, you grew starfruit, you build your kegs, and set up operations to turn your goldstars into gold bricks. From here on out, grow whatever you please while you brew your starfruit wine, and sell it off accordingly. Maybe take some time to regrow some trees, or build more artisan contraptions. For me, I tend to grow wheat during the fall, so when the starfruit brewing dries up, I can fill with some beer. If you haven't somehow already gotten your hands on them, keep going to the travelling cart[stardewvalleywiki.com] every Friday & Sunday in seach of Ancient fruit. It's smooth sailing from here.

Winter

literally do whatever you want
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Kidding. If you haven't already started building Iridium sprinklers, that should become your main priority. Iridum[stardewvalleywiki.com] can be a tough substance to find.
Your options are limited to roughly level 30 and onwards of the Oasis' mines, or from omni-geodes.
Omni-geodes can be aquired from rocks on mine level 115-119, or from Sandy in the Oasis for 1000g, and yields 10-15 per hundred geodes cracked.
The math:

Cost for geodes(1000g):
100 x 1000 = 100,000g
Cost to break(25g):
100 x 25 = 2500g

Average Iridium per 100 geodes = 12.5
12.5/102,500
= 1/8541.6666
= 0.00012 Iridium per or 1 Iridium per 8642g

Basically what the math says, is iridium is expensive.

And with that, year 2 is over!

Year 3 and onwards

Year 3 is mostly about upgrading, and possibly enjoying yourself, get that huh?

Casks

Casks are an artisan contraption that increase the star rating of your artisan goods, and can only be placed in the basement of your house with the final upgrade. The idea with casks is similar to that of kegs.
Optimal basement layout, 125 accessable casks

Once you gain access to the basement and casks, you should start cycling your most expensive wine from keg to cask to maximize profits. Think back to the lottery analogy, but with an added layer.

There's Iridium in the water

Your other goal for year three is upgrading your quality sprinkler infastructure to Iridium sprinklers. To ease the slow and painful progress of getting iridium, you can visit Krobus in the sewers every Friday to buy a single iridium sprinkler for 10,000g.

Soon your farm will go from this:


To this:

With a full iridium setup, you'll be able to get some space back on your farm, and start enjoying the many different things to make and do, without worrying about money any longer.

Other useful resources and citations

All the information found in this guide can be found in parts on either:

The official Stardew Valley wiki[stardewvalleywiki.com] for general information on things
Carlsguides[www.carlsguides.com] For crop breakdowns
Upload Farm[upload.farm] For an easy to use way to share your progression in Stardew Valley (where I got my farm screenshots)

[Aki-San]

my two cents:

start with fishing
transition to mining
always hoe (pun intended)
-> ancient seed / rare seed are your best friends
-> as is the green house
ignore casks. they are not worth it at all.
kegs are your friend
-> thus buildings are your friend (barns/sheds)
gemberries are the best g/d crop. period. starfruit doesnt even come close.
automated farming is your friend (thus progression will make not only your life easier, but g/d higher).
=> try to get the community center build ASAP (you can literally get everything except two winter forages done prior to fall. (sadly, as they arent in the merchant circulation).

highest per crop yield of g/day:
gem berry + Lvl 14 farming (food) + hyper speed grow + greenhouse/island = 274 gdc
startfruit max is like 197gdc with lots of kegs (no aging). aging drops it to 90 gdc
(gdc = gold per day per crop/tile)

[Techhead7890]

Good guide, helped a bit to stay focused as I'm going for Obelisks and other expensive town upgrades.
I looked up Cask profitability on the wiki and saw they can net around 40/g/day for Ancient Wine and stuff (the quality that you end on doesn't matter apparently, because it's the same ratio of time to cost multiplier for each of silver/gold/iridium). Those Casks are not quite as insane as Kegs giving north of 175g/day but it's still extra value!

[sweets]

Probably, just plot out where you're putting your sprinklers better

[Shoebill]

can you do it for the river farm

[Venom Bryce]

Great Guide, although year one spring I do cauliflower as much as i can, as it is a good moneymaker, like strawberries.

[Bruchko]

doh! thanks :)

[sweets]

The amount of space in a barn or shed is much larger than the space it takes up on the farm.
barns are (7 * 4) = 28 tiles on the overworld, and can fit up to 136 kegs on the inside. The number is smaller with sheds but still, there's no reason why you should hinder your farm space with more kegs than you need to

[Bruchko]

Do you have to store your kegs in sheds? Why not place them outside?

[sweets]

Thanks bro!
I never did much fishing up until recently, so I had nothing to go off of

[AlexaTheGoddess]

I tried this and by year 7 i have 130.433.000 gold!Thanks alot developer :)(Also i posted some screenshots of my farm for you to see some things that were impossible for me to get without this guide!You have done such a good guide!! 9/10[Didnt mention fishing :/])