Stardew Valley - Artisan Goods

Artisan goods are what machines make of raw produce. A keg turns fruit into wine and vegetables into juice, a preserves jar makes jelly and pickles, and cheese presses, looms and mayonnaise machines handle animal produce. The Artisan profession raises every one of these prices.

Overview

Artisan goods are the step between a harvest and real money. A machine takes one raw item, keeps it for a few hours or a few days, and hands back something worth several times as much. That single idea is what turns a farm from a seasonal wage into a business, because a field can only be harvested when the calendar allows while a Shed full of machines works every day of the year.

The branch divides into two kinds of equipment. Production machines make something out of nothing once they are placed, and the Bee House is the one that matters. Processing machines sit idle until something is put inside them, and every other machine in the branch works that way. The distinction decides where they go: a Bee House has to stand outdoors near a flower, while a keg or a jar is happiest indoors in a building where nothing can reach it.

Quality is mostly irrelevant on the way in, which is the most useful thing to learn about the branch early. A gold-star blueberry and a plain one make exactly the same jelly, so the good fruit should go to the shipping bin or a gift and the ordinary fruit into the machine. Three things break that rule: mayonnaise made from an Ostrich Egg, Smoked Fish, and cloth, where better wool gives a better chance of a second bolt rather than a better bolt.

Timing has a quirk of its own. An hour of processing is sixty minutes of clock time during the day, but it stretches to a hundred minutes between two and six in the morning, so a machine started late in the evening finishes later than the arithmetic suggests.

Groups

The keg is the heart of the branch and takes four kinds of input. Fruit becomes wine, worth three times the fruit. Most vegetables become juice at a little over twice their value. Wheat becomes beer, hops become Pale Ale, and honey becomes mead. Coffee beans and Tea Leaves also go in, and those two are the only keg products that finish inside a single morning.

The Preserves Jar is the keg's rival rather than its partner. Fruit becomes jelly and vegetables, mushrooms and most forage become pickles, and in both cases the price is double the ingredient plus a flat bonus on top. That flat bonus is the whole argument: on a cheap item it dwarfs the multiplier, which makes the jar the right machine for anything plentiful and low in value. The jar also handles roe, turning sturgeon roe into caviar and everything else into Aged Roe.

The animal machines are simple and fast. A Cheese Press turns milk into cheese in a few hours, a Mayonnaise Machine turns any egg into mayonnaise in three, and a loom turns wool into cloth in four. All three are quick enough to run several times a day.

The dehydrator and the Fish Smoker are bought rather than learned. The dehydrator takes five pieces of fruit or five edible mushrooms at once and returns one package the next morning, with grapes treated separately and turning into raisins. The smoker takes one fish and one lump of coal, works in under an hour, doubles the fish's price and keeps its star.

The tappers and the Oil Maker sit slightly outside the branch. Tree syrups are labelled as artisan goods but take their bonus from the tapping profession instead. The Oil Maker makes cooking oil out of corn or sunflowers and Truffle Oil out of a truffle, and only the second of those is about money.

Last comes the cask, the only machine that improves something already finished. It lives in the Farmhouse cellar and slowly raises the star of wine, beer, Pale Ale, mead and both cheeses.

Order

The farming levels set the sequence. A Mayonnaise Machine arrives at level two, a Preserves Jar at level four, a Cheese Press at level six, and a loom at level seven. The keg and the Oil Maker both wait until level eight, by which point a farm is usually in its second season at the earliest.

The dehydrator and the Fish Smoker are bought with gold rather than earned with experience, from Pierre and from Willy respectively, and both are priced as a mid-run investment. The cask needs the third Farmhouse upgrade, which is the most expensive building step in the game, so casks belong to a second or third year.

A sensible first year builds one jar as soon as the level allows and runs it on whatever is cheapest in the field. Kegs come in a batch rather than one at a time, because a single keg processing one fruit a week changes nothing while thirty of them change everything.

Best

Wine is the best thing in the branch and wine from Ancient Fruit is the best wine, because the plant regrows instead of being replanted and so needs no seed money after the first pack. Starfruit wine is worth more per bottle and worth less per season, since every bottle costs a new seed and a full growing period.

Truffle oil is the best single-item conversion on the farm, and the pigs that supply it are the reason a Deluxe Barn is worth building. Caviar is the best thing a Fish Pond can be turned into, and a single sturgeon pond quietly produces it forever.

Among the quick machines, mayonnaise is the standout for how little it asks. An ordinary egg nearly quadruples in value in three hours, and a farm of hens with one machine in the Coop is profitable from the first week. The dehydrator is the standout for throughput: five mushrooms from the cave become one package worth far more than the five, overnight, with no waiting at all.

Cloth deserves its own mention because its value is not only in gold. Tailoring, the Mill and several crafting recipes all want it, and a loom is the only way to get it in quantity.

Prices

One profession governs the branch. Artisan, taken at the top of the farming skill, lifts most of these goods by two fifths, and the two exceptions are oil and coffee. In a shared game the bonus applies to everything sold as long as one farmer in the household has taken it. Tree syrups answer to the tapping profession instead, which lifts them by a quarter.

The keg and the jar can be compared in one line. The keg multiplies, so it wins on anything expensive. The jar multiplies less but adds a fixed sum, so it wins on anything cheap and plentiful, and it finishes faster into the bargain. Blackberries, green beans and corn all belong in the jar; Ancient Fruit, starfruit and melons belong in the keg.

Casks reward patience unevenly. Cheese climbs through its stars in a fortnight, while wine needs two full seasons to reach the top, so a cellar of wine is a long-term holding and a cellar of cheese is a weekly cycle.

Strategy

Decide per crop, not per machine. The useful habit is to look at a harvest and ask which machine gives more for that particular item, then commit the whole stack. Mixed handfuls spread across whatever is free is how a farm ends up with cheap jelly and slow juice.

Put the machines indoors. A Shed, a Barn or a Coop holds dozens of them, nothing on the farm can disturb them, and a single walk round the room empties and refills the lot. Barns and Coops take artisan equipment happily and the animals walk round it.

Place bee houses in threes or fours around one good flower. A hive looks five tiles in each cardinal direction and takes the nearest bloom, so a cluster of hives sharing a Fairy Rose in Fall all make the same expensive honey. Flowers in garden pots count.

Keep the fast machines close to their inputs and the slow ones out of the way. A Cheese Press and a Mayonnaise Machine belong where the animals are, kegs belong in a building visited once a week, and a Fish Smoker belongs near wherever the fish are unloaded.

Notes

Honey's value follows the flower beside the hive, and the Fall bloom of the Fairy Rose makes the most valuable honey of the year. A hive standing on its own makes the wild kind, which still pays for its own wood.

A Golden Egg handed to a Mayonnaise Machine comes back as three gold-star jars, and an Ostrich Egg comes back as ten, which makes those two eggs the most lopsided inputs in the branch.

One artisan good cannot be made at home at all. The Piña Colada is poured by Gus at the bar of the Island Resort, and that is the only place it comes from.

The Fish Smoker is the one machine where the best catch of the day is the right thing to feed it, because the star on the fish carries straight through to the smoked version. Every other machine levels its input, so the gold-star harvest is better sold or given away.

All Artisan Goods

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Machine	Time
Aged Roe		Preserves Jar	4000m (3-4 days)
Beer		Keg	1750m (≈29h)
Cask Productivity	-	-	-
Caviar		Preserves Jar	6000m (4 days)
Cheese		Cheese Press	200min (3.3h)
Cloth		Loom	240m (≈4h)
Coffee		Keg	120m (2h)
Dinosaur Mayonnaise		Mayonnaise Machine	3h
Dried Fruit		Dehydrator	1750m (≈1d)
Dried Mushrooms		Dehydrator	1750m (≈1d)
Duck Mayonnaise		Mayonnaise Machine	3h
Goat Cheese		Cheese Press	200m (≈3h)
Green Tea		Keg	180m (3h)
Honey		Bee House	6100m (≈4d)
Jellies and Pickles	-	-	-
Juice		Keg	6000m (≈4d)
Keg Productivity	-	-	-
Maple Syrup		Tapper; Heavy Tapper	9 or 4 days
Mayonnaise		Mayonnaise Machine	3h
Mead		Keg	10h
Mystic Syrup		Tapper; Heavy Tapper	7 or 3 days
Oak Resin		Tapper; Heavy Tapper	7 or 3 days
Oil		Oil Maker	Varies by ingredient
Pale Ale		Keg	2250m (37.5h)
Pine Tar		Tapper; Heavy Tapper	5 or 2 days
Preserves Jar Productivity	-	-	-
Raisins		Dehydrator	1750m (≈29h)
Smoked Fish		Fish Smoker	50m
Truffle Oil		Oil Maker	360m (6h)
Void Mayonnaise		Mayonnaise Machine	3h
Wine		Keg	10,000m (≈7d)