Stardew Valley is one of the most popular farming simulator video games out there and for good reason. Everyone loves the colorful game, fun characters, and relaxing gameplay.
But the best part for many people is being able to turn their passion for playing this game to cash.
Yes, you can actually make money playing games on Stardew Valley!
Stardew Valley offers literally hundreds of ways to make gold, but much of it doesn’t produce much profit. In this article, we will give you the best ways to make money off the different things you can do in the game as well as things to avoid doing.
Table of Contents
Best Ways to Make Money on Stardew Valley
Here are all the different ways you can earn money while playing this fun game.
Farming
This is the main point of the gameplay for Stardew Valley, which is why it has so many profitable ways to make money.
FreeCash: It pays you to test apps, play games & take surveys. Get paid up to $497.82 per offer! Start Earning!
Earn Haus: Earn up to $25 per survey. Plus same-day payments via PayPal, Venmo & Check! Join Earn Haus!
Swagbucks: Get paid to watch videos, shop online, take surveys and more. Join now & get $10 instantly!
InboxDollars: Paid over $57 Million to members to watch videos, take surveys, shop and more. Get $5 instantly!
iPsos iSay: If you have to only sign up for one paid survey site, go with Ipsos (high paying surveys!)! Join iPsos Now
KashKick: Get paid directly into your PayPal for watching videos, surfing, shopping and more. Join KashKick Now!
Here are the best ways to use farming to your advantage.
-
Clean Your Farm Up
When you first start the game, you receive a very messy and overgrown farm. Before doing anything else, spend the first few days cleaning up the whole area.
Not only will this help you save money on resources, but it will also help you plan out your farm layout so you don’t have to spend tons of money later on rebuilding.
-
Plant Berries
Berries are without a doubt one of the best things you can get. At the start of summer, plant a ton of blueberries. In the fall, plant cranberries. They take 13 days to grow and they produce three to four more berries every four days.
Later on, you can turn these berries into wine, which is the most profitable type of product your farm can create.
-
Greenhouse
If you repair the Greenhouse, you’ll be able to plant whatever seeds you want whenever you want, regardless of the season. That means you can make a profit even in the Winter.
-
Alcohol
After planting your berries, you should create as many Kegs as possible. Then, put your berries into the kegs. After seven days, it will turn into wine which triples the value of the fruit. If you take Artisan perk, it’s worth even more money.
-
Starfruit Wine
Now, if you’re ready to make a ton of money, get the bus fixed through the Community Center. Then go to the Oasis shop and buy Starfruits. The seeds for Starfruit are 400 gold each, however, the Starfruit wine sells for 2400g each. This means you make a profit of 2000 gold each time.
-
Ancient Fruit Wine
As soon as you find an Ancient Seed artifact, plant it around spring in your greenhouse. After 28 days, it will start producing fruit each week for Spring, Summer, and Fall.
Now, instead of doing something with the fruit, toss it into a seed maker and replant the seed. Continue to do this until you have an entire Greenhouse producing the crop.
Advertisements
You can plant 116 Ancient Fruit into the greenhouse along with sprinklers to save you time from watering. That means you can produce 116 kegs of Ancient Fruit wine. With the artisan perk, each wine is worth 2310g to 4620g, depending on quality. That means you can make a maximum profit of 535920g per harvest.
-
Fast Flips
If you don’t want to wait a long time for your crops, invest in fast flip ones like Parsnip or Potatoes. Your money practically doubles if you grow enough of them and they don’t take a long time to grow.
-
Fertilizer
Use fertilizer on big crops to earn rare qualities on your produce. If you can get special quality crops like silver star cauliflower or gold star melons, you’ll make a lot more money selling it.
-
Preserves
Drop your cheaper produce into the Preserve Jars to make it worth more. The Preserves Jar increases the profit of a crop using the following equation: (2 × Base Crop Value + 50); while the Keg multiplies the base value of Fruits by 3, and Vegetables by 2.25.
Because of this, low-value, high-yield crops like Corn or Tomatoes are more valuable in the preserves jar. The general habit you want to have is:
- Sell rare quality produce
- Put the rest on preserves or kegs
-
Value Per Season
Learn which are the most valuable crops per season. Here are profits you can make per seed sold at Pierre’s General Store for each season. We’ll put a star by the two most profitable seeds to get for easy understanding.
Spring:
- Parsnips – 35g
- Potatoes – 80g
- *Cauliflowers – 190g
- Green Beans – 40g
- Kale – 110g
- *Strawberries – 500g
Summer:
- *Hops – 25g (These are especially useful in kegs, as you can sell Pale Ale for 300g to 840g.)
- Blueberries – 50g
- Hot Peppers – 40g
- Radishes – 90g
- Wheat – 25g
- *Melons – 250g
- Corn – 50g
- Tomatoes – 60g
Autumn:
- Cranberries – 75g (These are good in kegs as you can sell expensive wine.)
- *Pumpkins – 320g
- Grapes – 80g
- *Artichokes – 160g
- Bok Choy – 80g
- Eggplant – 60g
- Yam – 160g
- Amaranth – 150g
-
Giant Crops
When planting, plot out 3 x 3 plots of land wherever you plant Cauliflower, Melons, and Pumpkins. This is because there’s a chance it will grow a mega crop, which can sell for tons of money. Giant crops drop 15–21 items when harvested with an ax. It’s a slim chance but it’s definitely worth the extra effort.
Ranching
Another way to earn money through this game is by ranching. While this doesn’t make as much money as farming, there are still a few valid ways to earn or at least make it cheaper to do.
-
Treat Them Right
Treat your animals right when you are ranching, otherwise, you won’t get produce. Cows and chickens produce milk and eggs every day while goats produce every other day. Some animals, if you have a good relationship with them, produce deluxe versions of produce. Some things to keep in mind:
- If animals are not fed, they won’t produce
- If an animal has a bad mood, there’s a chance it won’t produce
- If the animal has a bad friendship, it won’t produce
-
Eggs!
25G Egg can turn into 100G Mayonnaise when you put them into a Mayonnaise Machine. Additionally, your duck eggs and blue chicken eggs can become worth more with that machine.
-
Hay
Save money on feeding your animals by building a silo. You can basically get free hay by cutting the grass in your farm that way.
Fishing
One of the first things you learn to do in the game is fish. It’s useful for completing your Community Center but also for earning money.
-
Beaches
Early on, fish at the beach rather than on your farm. You can sell your stuff to Willy easily because it doesn’t take long to get to this shop. Then, you’ll be able to spend your money on seeds and upgrades sooner.
-
Recycling
At level 3 fishing, start storing all your junk from fishing into a chest, then put that into recyclers. You can get a lot of great material simply from recycling junk.
-
Crab Pots
At level 5 fishing, stop fishing and use crab pots instead. Plant as many crab pots as possible and recycle all the junk. Use the cheap fish as quality fertilizer instead, so you can easily create gold star produce and mega fruit.
Mining
Not only is mining great for getting resources, but it’s also useful for making money and upgrading your farm so you can make even MORE money!
-
Free Coal
Don’t buy coal from the blacksmith. Instead, save your money and go to the mines. If you go to level 50, you’ll find a ton of Dust Sprites that will give you coal in swarms. Plus, you get more resources from the mine anyway.
-
Double Drops
The Adventurer’s Guild reward for killing 500 Dust Sprites gets you something called the Burglar’s Ring. This ring doubles the drop rate of items from monsters. This means you can get a ton of coal from Dust Sprites too.
-
Pickaxe Upgrades
Upgrade your pickaxe as quickly as possible. It will make quick work of the ore in the mines, which saves you time. As we all know, time is money in Stardew Valley.
-
Getting Started
The first 30 levels aren’t profitable in terms of gold but it is profitable for resources. Rush through these levels to get copper, coal, stone, and more.
-
Snowy Levels
In the icy levels of the mines, bring a good sword and start collecting as much coal and iron here. This is also where you can find the Dust Sprites.
-
Mushroom Floor
The deeper you go into the mines, the more valuable it becomes. Floors 80 through 120 contains a random mushroom floor. If you have level 10 foraging skills, you can make 40k in a day just by gathering all the mushrooms from this floor.
Foraging
When playing the game, you’ll find out that there are lots of ways to gather plants and resources without farming. Foraging, for instance, is one of those ways.
-
Free Wood
Wood and coal are extremely important. Gather as much of it as possible so you don’t have to spend money on it to build items or transmute your crops. Dedicate a part of your farm to be a tree lot so you can constantly produce more wood over the seasons.
-
Tree Tapping
Put tappers on as many trees as you can to get oak resin and maple syrup. These sell for decent money plus you need them for the Community Center and as gifts to people.
-
Wild Seeds
While you may think the Wild Seeds you find are for farming, it actually helps you level up your foraging skill. You also don’t need scarecrows for these crops, so don’t worry about the fruit being eaten. During the winter you can plant these to earn money when other plants are unable to grow.
-
Train Station
Once you unlock the train station, plant trees here and tap them all. You’ll get 20k or so every week from basically doing nothing.
Miscellaneous
These are ways you can either make or save money that doesn’t fit with farming, mining, and so on.
-
Farming Equipment
In the game, much of your farm equipment will take a lot of time to finish processing. To maximize your profits, you’ll want to make sure you have enough equipment running at all times so you don’t have to wait around for stuff to get done. Make sure you have tons of these running:
- Kilns
- Crystalariums
- Furnaces
- Lightning Rods
- Recycling Machines
- Seed Makers
- Slime Incubators
- Tappers
- Worm Bins
-
Sprinklers and Food
“Sprinklers are free energy and time each day. This means that the more time you spend getting sprinkler material, the more time you have in excess, meaning you can spend even more time getting more sprinklers, clearing land, etc. Oh, also you should eat food to keep your stamina up and work until late at night. The amount of value you generate from 25 stamina is worth way more than the selling price of food that gives you that 25 stamina,” said one Redditor.
-
Sashimi
After you unlock the Sashimi recipe, take all the cheap fish you’ve collected and turn it into that. You’re likely to make more profit selling the food than you are selling the cheap fish.
-
Backpacks
Your inventory initially has 12 slots, but you can upgrade it to a total of 36 slots. The upgraded backpacks can be purchased at Pierre’s General Store. The “Large Pack” expands inventory to 24 slots and costs 2,000g. The “Deluxe Pack” expands inventory to 36 slots and costs 10,000g. Purchase these as soon as you can, because the more you can carry means less time walking around from place to place emptying your inventory. Remember: time is money.
-
Naming Cheats
Buy a chicken and name it [417]. That’s the item code for a sweet gem berry, which sells for 3000g. Keep selling and buying chickens over and over again to make a profit. You can also name your character [166][163] so when you interact with people you get a legend fish and a treasure chest.
-
Krobus Trick
This is a long one but it is worth it. On Saturday, the NPC in the sewer Krobus sells a random cooked dish that costs 50g to 500g. If the dish is lower than the selling price you make from Pierre, you can make a ton of money simply by reselling.
Krobus only sells 5 dishes at a time. However, if you close the shop dialogue and open it again, you’ll find it’s refreshed. That means you have infinite food to buy. The dishes you are sure to make a profit from are:
- Autumn’s Bounty (350g)
- Cheese Cauli (300g)
- Complete Breakfast (350g)
- Fish Taco (500g)
- Dish o’ the Sea (220g)
- Lucky Lunch (250g)
- Maki Roll (220g)
- Salmon Dinner (300g)
- Rice Pudding (260g)
- Rhubarb Pie (400g)
- Red Plate (400g)
- Pumpkin Soup (300g)
- Pizza (300g)
- Pink Cake (480g)
- Strange Bun (225g)
- Super Meal (220g)
- Tom Kha Soup (250g)
-
Upgrade Tools
It’s very important to do your tool upgrades as soon as possible to save time. However, you lose the tool a couple of days for the time that it’s being upgraded. Don’t upgrade your pickaxe if you need to mine in the next few days. Upgrade your axe when you know you have plenty of wood. Upgrade your hoe during the winter when you won’t need it. The same goes for your watering can.
-
Golden Pumpkin Glitch
Want to make 3 million gold in one day? Check out this video for the Golden Pumpkin Glitch.
-
Farm Planner
Once you get your farm cleared, you’ll want to plot everything out. To make this process less daunting, check out this website which will help you figure out exactly where everything should go.
-
Extra Resources
There are a lot of great resources out there about playing the game and making the most of it, anything from advanced fastest ways to earn money and Stardew Valley hints and cheats to learning how to sell crops and making fast money early.
For more tips, check out these videos from Youtube user thatdenverguy and guides on Reddit:
- Stardew Valley Top 10 Tips for All Players
- TOP 5 INTERMEDIATE TIPS Every Player Should Know
- ADVANCED TIPS | How to Make Money and Iridium Guide
- Guide to getting 5+ million your first year
If you’re really into the game or are just getting started, I would highly recommend joining the r/StardewValley subreddit. This is the subreddit dedicated to all things StardewValley. You’ll find a lot of great tips and tricks.
Final Thoughts
Hopefully after reading this article, you’ll be able to make the farm of your dreams in no time. Just remember to have fun and enjoy the process of making the perfect farm.
Are there any tips you have for making money in Stardew Valley? Let us and our readers know your tips in the comments below.
No
Weeee thanks