Stardew Valley - Crafting

Crafted items are made from gathered materials, without a shop or a machine. Sprinklers water the fields, machines process produce, bombs clear the caves, and fences, lamps and signs dress the farm. Recipes come from skill levels, villagers and shops.

Overview

Crafting is where a farm stops working by hand. Everything in this branch is made from gathered material at the hammer tab of the player menu, with no shop counter and no machine in the way, and almost every lasting improvement a farm makes is a crafted object: the sprinkler that waters the field, the keg that triples the value of a crop, the chest that holds the surplus, the bomb that opens a cavern floor.

A farmer knows ten recipes on the first morning and learns the rest from four places. Skill levels hand out the backbone of the list, friendships with villagers deliver recipes by post, shops sell a scattering, and the order boards pay out the machines that nothing else provides. The menu shows a recipe greyed out until its materials exist, with the missing ingredient written in red, which makes the crafting screen a reasonable shopping list in its own right.

The branch is also one of the longest tallies in the game. Crafting every item is a tenth of a perfect save, and three achievements mark the way at fifteen, thirty and all of them, with the Wedding Ring left out of the count.

Groups

Sprinklers are the group that decides how big a farm can be. A basic sprinkler waters the four tiles beside it, a Quality Sprinkler the eight around it, and an Iridium Sprinkler twenty-four, which is the difference between a garden and a field. Two attachments bought with Qi Gems change them again: a nozzle adds another ring of coverage, taking the best sprinkler to forty-eight tiles, and an enricher applies fertiliser to seeds as they are planted.

Artisan equipment is the group that decides how much the farm earns. Kegs, preserves jars, cheese presses, mayonnaise machines, looms, oil makers, casks, bee houses, smokers and dehydrators each take one kind of produce and hand back something worth more. Each machine works on one item at a time, so output is a question of how many machines are standing.

Refining equipment is the quiet middle. Furnaces turn ore into bars, kilns turn wood into coal, tappers turn trees into syrup, crystalariums copy gems overnight, lightning rods turn storms into battery packs, and recycling machines turn fished rubbish into useful material.

Then come the smaller groups: fertiliser and speed gro, the craftable wild seeds, bombs in three sizes, fences and gates, lighting from torches to braziers, storage from a plain chest to a linked Junimo chest, warp totems and the four obelisks, and a long tail of signs, flooring and decoration.

Order

The first day's ten recipes cover a chest, a torch and the basics, and the first two things a farm should actually make are a chest and a scarecrow. Crows start eating crops once more than fifteen are growing, so a scarecrow is cheaper than the harvest it saves.

A furnace follows, handed over by the dwarf's letter after the first Copper Ore, and it is the gate to everything metal. Sprinklers then arrive in steps with the farming skill: a basic one early, the quality one at the sixth level, and the iridium one at the ninth. Most farms skip the basic tier and save for quality sprinklers instead, because the jump from four tiles to eight is what pays.

Artisan equipment arrives alongside. A Preserves Jar comes early in the farming skill and is the better machine while crops are small and cheap; a keg comes near the top of it and takes over the moment fruit is involved. A Bee House is the cheapest passive income in the game and is worth building in numbers in the first Spring.

The last layer waits on the island and on money. A Heavy Furnace, a hopper, a Geode Crusher and a Bone Mill all smooth out jobs a farm has been doing by hand for years, and the four obelisks and the Gold Clock are the final purchases, bought with gold rather than earned with skill.

Best

The keg is the single most valuable recipe in the branch, because wine sells for triple what the fruit did and ages further in a cask. A Preserves Jar is the better machine for vegetables and for a farm that cannot yet afford copper by the stack. Between them they turn a field into an income rather than a harvest.

The Iridium Sprinkler with a nozzle fitted is the second pick, since it removes watering from the day entirely and lets one farmer run a field that would otherwise need a morning. A Lightning Rod belongs in the same sentence, because the battery packs it collects during storms are what the sprinklers are made from.

For convenience, nothing beats a workbench surrounded by chests. It reaches into every neighbouring chest while crafting, which ends the business of carrying materials. A linked chest bought with Qi Gems goes further and shares one stash across every building on the map.

Deluxe fertiliser is the quiet best of the growing group, because it is the only one that allows iridium quality, and iridium quality is what makes a crop worth processing. Staircases and mega bombs are the best of the consumables, since together they turn a Skull Cavern run from an exploration into a descent.

Strategy

Craft to remove a daily chore rather than to fill the list. The order that works is watering first, then processing, then storage, then travel. Each of those replaces something a farmer was doing with their own hours, and the hours freed pay for the next one.

Build machines in batches. One keg is an experiment and twenty is an income, and the same is true of bee houses, jars and tappers. The materials for a batch are usually a single mining trip and a single felling session, so the sensible habit is to craft the whole row at once rather than one at a time.

Place crafted things carefully off the farm. A villager walking over a crafted object in town destroys it, so the safe places to leave kegs and chests outside the fences are the Backwoods, the Tunnel, the southern half of Cindersap Forest, the Quarry and the Railroad above the tracks. A chest is the exception and is simply pushed aside.

Notes

Fences rot. A freshly placed fence can be taken back as an item, an older one cannot, and a damaged one disappears if it is left long enough. A Gold Clock on the farm stops the decay altogether, and a spouse will mend some broken sections before the farmhouse door opens.

Flooring laid outside on the farm gives a small permanent speed increase, and it also keeps grass and trees out of the paths a farmer walks every morning, which is the larger benefit.

Turning on the advanced crafting information option adds a count of how many of each item has been made, which is the only in-game way to see how far the long tally has come.

Two of the best items in this branch are bought rather than levelled into: iridium sprinklers appear on Krobus's shelf once a week, and the Traveling Cart carries the cheaper sprinklers at random.

All Crafting

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Recipe
Anvil		-
Bait Maker		-
Barrel Brazier		-
Basic Fertilizer		Farming Level 1
Basic Retaining Soil		Farming Level 4
Bee House		-
Big Chest		-
Big Stone Chest		-
Bomb		-
Bone Mill		-
Bug Steak		Combat Level 1
Campfire		-
Carved Brazier		-
Cask		-
Charcoal Kiln		-
Cheese Press		-
Cherry Bomb		-
Chest		-
Cookout Kit		-
Crab Pot		-
Crystalarium		-
Dark Sign		-
Dehydrator		-
Deluxe Fertilizer		Qi's Walnut Room (20)
Deluxe Retaining Soil		Island Trader for Cinder Shard (50)
Deluxe Scarecrow		-
Deluxe Speed-Gro		Farming Level 8
Deluxe Worm Bin		-
Desert Obelisk		-
Drum Block		-
Earth Obelisk		-
Explosive Ammo		-
Fairy Dust		"The Pirate's Wife" quest
Farm Computer		-
Farm Obelisk		-
Fertilizer	-	-
Field Snack		Foraging Level 1
Fish Smoker		-
Flute Block		-
Furnace		-
Garden Pot		-
Gate		-
Geode Crusher		-
Gold Brazier		-
Hardwood Fence		-
Heavy Furnace		-
Heavy Tapper		-
Hopper		-
Hyper Speed-Gro		Qi's Walnut Room for 30
Iridium Sprinkler		-
Iron Fence		-
Iron Lamp-post		-
Island Obelisk		-
Jack-O-Lantern		-
Keg		-
Life Elixir		Combat Level 2
Lightning Rod		-
Loom		-
Marble Brazier		-
Mayonnaise Machine		-
Mega Bomb		-
Mini-Forge		-
Mini-Jukebox		-
Mini-Obelisk		-
Monster Musk		-
Mushroom Log		-
Oil Maker		-
Oil of Garlic		Combat Level 6
Ostrich Incubator		-
Preserves Jar		-
Quality Fertilizer		Farming Level 9
Quality Retaining Soil		Farming Level 7
Quality Sprinkler		-
Rain Totem		Foraging Level 9
Recycling Machine		-
Return Scepter		-
Scarecrow		-
Seed Maker		-
Skull Brazier		-
Slime Egg-Press		-
Slime Incubator		-
Solar Panel		-
Speed-Gro		Farming Level 3
Sprinkler		-
Staircase		-
Statue Of Blessings		-
Statue Of The Dwarf King		-
Stone Brazier		-
Stone Chest		-
Stone Fence		-
Stone Sign		-
Stump Brazier		-
Tapper		-
Tent Kit		-
Text Sign		-
Torch		-
Treasure Totem		Foraging Mastery
Tree Fertilizer		Foraging Level 7
Tub o' Flowers		-
Warp Totem	-	-
Warp Totem: Beach		Foraging Level 6
Warp Totem: Desert		Desert Trader for Iridium Bar (10)
Warp Totem: Farm		Foraging Level 8
Warp Totem: Island		Volcano Dwarf for 10,000g
Warp Totem: Mountains		Foraging Level 7
Water Obelisk		-
Wedding Ring		-
Wicked Statue		-
Wood Fence		-
Wood Lamp-post		-
Wood Sign		-
Wooden Brazier		-
Worm Bin		-