Stardew Valley - Collections

Collections are the long games: the museum's minerals and artifacts, the secret notes, the golden walnuts on Ginger Island, the stardrops that raise energy for good, and the achievements behind them. Finishing them all is what Perfection means.

Overview

This branch is the game's memory. Behind the Collections tab in the player menu sit the records of what a farm has shipped, caught, dug up, donated and cooked, and alongside them the achievements, the letters, the Secret Notes and the island Journal Scraps. None of it is an item in a chest. It is the running total of a save, and it is the reason a farm in its fourth year still has a reason to ship one unfamiliar vegetable.

Around those records sit the objects that move them along: the keys that open locked doors, the pendants that change a relationship, the currencies that buy things gold cannot, the fossils that fill a museum case on a distant island, and the permanent powers that quietly raise what foraging is worth for the rest of the run. Those things only make sense as a group, because every one of them is a step in a long tally rather than a tool for a single day.

Each record has its own rule about when it counts. A shipped item counts only through a shipping bin, so a crop sold over Pierre's counter is money without progress. A fish counts the moment it comes off a rod or out of a Crab Pot, with no shipping needed. A dish counts when it is cooked. An artifact or a mineral appears with its name and its description only once Gunther has it behind glass.

Groups

The records are the spine: shipping, fishing, the museum's two cases, cooking, and the achievements that sit on top of them. The keys and passes are the group that changes where a farmer can walk, and they include the Rusty Key to the sewers earned through steady museum donations, the Skull Key from the bottom of The Mines, the casino card, the Magnifying Glass that makes hidden notes readable, and the talisman that opens the witch's swamp.

The currencies are their own group and behave nothing like gold. Golden Walnuts are the parrots' money on Ginger Island and are shared across a multiplayer farm. Qi Gems come from Mr. Qi's tests and buy from his own shelves. Calico Eggs are earned and spent inside a single festival.

The permanent powers are the smallest group and the most valuable per item. A note found in the wild teaches what the bear knows and trebles the value of blackberries and salmonberries. A scene with two children teaches Spring Onion Mastery and multiplies those by five. A stardrop raises maximum energy for good.

Order

A farm meets the records in its first week without noticing. The shipping bin starts counting on the first day, and the fish list starts the first time a rod goes in the river. The museum opens as soon as Gunther is given something, and the sixty-donation mark is the first reward in the branch that changes the map.

The mines supply the next layer. Floor one hundred holds a stardrop in a chest, floor one hundred and twenty holds the Skull Key, and the key is what turns the desert into a second dungeon. The cooking record waits for the first farmhouse upgrade, because a kitchen is where it begins.

The island closes the branch. One hundred of the hundred and thirty Golden Walnuts open Qi's Walnut Room, which is where the perfection tracker lives and where Qi Gems start being useful. The fossils for the island's field office come from the same ground, as do the mummified specimens from the volcano.

Perfection itself is the last line. It averages a set of categories rather than adding them, and the weights are uneven: shipping every item carries the largest share, friendship with every eligible villager the next, and the Gold Clock, the monster goals, the stardrops, every recipe cooked, every item crafted and every fish caught each carry a tenth. Skill levels and the walnuts carry a twentieth each, and the four obelisks the smallest slice of all.

Best

Rank this branch by what a line on the tracker actually gives back. The seven stardrops are the best of it, because each one permanently lifts maximum energy and the set nearly doubles what a farmer can do in a day. They come from the Fair, a mine chest, a spouse at full friendship, Krobus's shelf, a Sweet Gem Berry given to the old man in the Secret Woods, Willy's letter after every fish is caught, and a finished museum.

The permanent foraging powers are next, because they pay every time a bush is picked for the rest of the run and cost nothing but a note or a conversation. After that come the keys, because a locked door in the valley never has a price on it.

Qi's shelves hold the most useful purchases in the game for a mature farm. The Key To The Town removes shop opening hours from the rest of the run. A linked chest that shares one stash across every building ends the sorting problem. A flute that calls the horse ends the walk back to the stable.

Strategy

Keep one of everything. A single chest beside the shipping bin holding one of each item a farm has ever produced costs nothing and removes the branch's commonest frustration, which is realising in the fourth year that a crop nobody grows twice was never shipped. The quickest check on whether something has gone through the bin is the shipping record itself, read before a season ends.

Do the time-locked things first and the gold-locked things last. Fish are tied to seasons, weather and festivals, so the fishing record is the one that can actually be missed by a year. The clock and the obelisks are only money, and money arrives on its own.

Use the parrot for the walnuts. The bird in Leo's hut squawks hints that update as the count rises, which turns a hundred and thirty scattered nuts into a short list of places left to dig.

Notes

There is a paid shortcut at the end. Once the tracker has been touched, a Joja employee writes offering waivers from a watery cave on the island, and each one adds a percentage point for half a million gold. It is cheaper than building the obelisks and the clock, which together cost nearly twice as much for the same slice of the score.

Finishing the branch outright changes the farm itself. A rumbling sound opens the Summit, a flock of island parrots flies over the fields, a stone stardrop appears above Grandpa's Shrine, golden chickens become available, a monkey in the volcano caldera hands over a hat, and the tracker itself turns into a statue.

Most achievements put a new hat on the shelf in the Abandoned House in Cindersap Forest, which is the quiet reward for every record in this branch. Lewis also pays for persistence on the Bulletin Board, twice, and Willy sends a stardrop to whoever catches every fish.

All Collections

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image
Achievements	-
Artifact Trove
Bear's Knowledge
Bouquet
Butterfly Powder
Calico Egg
Club Card
Coffee Maker
Dark Talisman
Deconstructor
Dragon Tooth
Dwarvish Translation Guide
Ectoplasm
Enricher
Far Away Stone
Fireworks (Green)
Fireworks (Purple)
Fireworks (Red)
Forest Magic
Fossilized Leg
Fossilized Ribs
Fossilized Skull
Fossilized Spine
Fossilized Tail
Friendship	-
Galaxy Soul
Gold
Golden Animal Cracker
Golden Bobber
Golden Coconut
Golden Mystery Box
Golden Pumpkin
Golden Tag
Golden Walnut
Hay
Horse Flute
Journal Scraps	-
Junimo Chest
Key To The Town
Lost Books	-
Magic Ink
Magic Rock Candy
Magnifying Glass
Mermaid's Pendant
Mini-Fridge
Mini-Shipping Bin
Movie Ticket
Mummified Bat
Mummified Frog
Mystery Box
Old Master Cannoli	-
Ornate Necklace
Pearl
Perfection	-
Pierre's Missing Stocklist
Piña Colada
Pressure Nozzle
Prismatic Jelly
Prize Ticket
Qi Gem
Qi Seasoning
Rusty Key
Secret Notes	-
Secrets	-
Sewing Machine
Shipping	-
Skull Key
Slime Egg
Snake Skull
Snake Vertebrae
Spring Onion Mastery
Squid Ink
Stardrop
Stardrop Tea
Supply Crate
Telephone
Void Ghost Pendant
Wilted Bouquet
Wood Chipper
Workbench