Stardew Valley - Daggers

Daggers stab quickly for less damage a hit, and their special move is a fast flurry at close range.

Overview

A dagger is the quickest thing a farmer can hold. It stabs instead of swinging, and the stab lands on the single square directly ahead rather than sweeping an arc, so the whole branch trades reach for speed. The right hand turns over fast enough that a monster takes several hits in the time a heavier weapon lands one, and that steady drumbeat of small hits is what the branch is built around.

The secondary attack is the branch's signature. Holding it down drives four stabs home in quick succession and pins the monster in place while they land, which is the closest thing in the valley to a guaranteed kill on something dangerous. A skeleton or a serpent that would otherwise get a swing in simply stands still and takes the flurry.

The second thing that sets daggers apart is critical hits. Almost every dagger carries a critical chance well above what swords and clubs offer, and several carry critical power on top of it. That makes the branch the natural home of a build that chases big occasional numbers rather than reliable average damage, and it is why the two highest critical stats in the game both sit on daggers rather than on anything larger.

Sixteen blades fill the branch, and they are met mostly by accident. A few sit on the Adventurer's Guild counter, a few are prised from chests inside the volcano on Ginger Island, four are bought with festival currency from the farmer's own neighbours, one washes up in a fishing Treasure Chest, and the rest are simply lying on the floor of The Mines.

Groups

Three bands run through the branch. The first is the scrap turned up on the first forty levels underground: a Carving Knife, a swift little spire, an elf-made blade and a common dirk. Their damage is almost decorative, but each one already carries critical chance, and any of them beats the Rusty Sword the game starts a farmer with.

The second band is the working daggers of the middle game. A shank taken from the deep floors adds critical power, a quartz blade adds a great deal more of it, a shadow blade doubles the damage of everything above it, and an iridium-alloy kris brings the critical chance up to six percent. Four festival souvenirs match that kris exactly, so a farmer who has made friends can buy into this band without digging for it.

The third band belongs to the island and the late game. Two blades come out of Volcano Dungeon chests, one of them carrying the heaviest defence bonus on any dagger and the other the heaviest critical power short of the specialist. Above them sit the galaxy blade bought at the Guild, the Infinity Blade forged from it, and the needle that drops from the special slimes.

Order

The Guild starts selling once fifteen floors are behind the farm, and its early daggers are cheap enough to be impulse purchases. The deeper floors do the rest of the work: a shank and a shadow blade turn up between the sixties and the hundreds, and the floor sixty chest holds the quartz blade outright. A farm that fishes rather than fights can skip all of that, because a fishing Treasure Chest occasionally yields a trident blade that hits harder than anything the mine gives up at the same point.

Spring is the branch's shortcut. The Desert Festival puts four daggers on four different stalls at seventy Calico Eggs each, and the eggs come from challenges around the festival grounds rather than from gold. Any one of them is worth more than a season of mine drops to a farm that has not yet reached the ninetieth floor.

After that the branch waits on two things. Carrying a Prismatic Shard to the three pillars in the desert earns the Galaxy Sword, and the Guild then stocks the Galaxy Dagger for anyone who can pay for it. The volcano supplies the rest: two blades from its chests, and the Forge on its tenth floor to turn the Galaxy Dagger into the Infinity Dagger with three Galaxy Souls and a heap of Cinder Shards.

Best

The Infinity Dagger is the sensible answer. It has the branch's highest damage, keeps the galaxy dagger's swing bonus, adds defence, and still carries six percent critical chance, so nothing is sacrificed for the upgrade. A farm that fights at all should treat its three Galaxy Souls as spoken for.

The specialist's answer is the Iridium Needle, which holds the highest critical chance and the highest critical power of any weapon in the game. Loaded up with critical equipment and the right profession it reaches roughly half of all hits landing as criticals, each one multiplied many times over, and luck food pushes that further still. The catch is that its ordinary hits are feeble, so a run with the needle depends on the criticals arriving. It drops from the special slimes in The Mines while the Shrine of Challenge is lit, which puts it behind the island and Mr. Qi rather than behind depth.

Between those two, the dragontooth blade from the volcano is the honest middle: strong damage, a large slab of critical power and a decent critical chance straight out of the chest. The Galaxy Dagger matters most in practice, because it comes off a shelf. A good Summer buys a late-game weapon outright and starts the infinity ladder at the same time.

Prices

A dagger's resale value follows its level, rising by fifty gold with each one, so the festival souvenirs and the kris all fetch the same price while the deepest blades fetch the most. The Adventurer's Guild is where they are sold, and it will take any of them. Because the mine keeps dropping the same few blades on the same floors, a season underground produces a drawer of duplicates whose only use is that counter.

Buying is the other direction and the prices are steep. The Galaxy Dagger costs thirty-five thousand gold, the quartz blade four and a half thousand, and the early Guild stock a few hundred each. Everything else is found, so the real cost of this branch is measured in floors rather than in coins.

Strategy

Build around criticals or do not bother. Two aquamarine rings, the Scout profession and a Jade Ring all multiply the same figure, and forging a dagger three times with aquamarines adds a flat slice of chance on top. A farmer who then takes Desperado at the tenth combat level doubles what each critical hits for, which is the point at which a modest dagger starts outperforming far heavier weapons.

Use the flurry deliberately rather than constantly. The four stabs lock a single monster in place, which makes them the right answer to a mummy, a serpent or anything else that hits hard and moves fast, and the wrong answer in a room full of slimes where the farmer needs to be somewhere else. The Artful enchantment halves the cooldown on that move, and the Acrobat profession halves it again, which turns the flurry from an occasional trick into the main attack.

Carry a dagger alongside something wider. The branch's weakness is the single square of reach, so the tidy loadout pairs a dagger for dangerous individuals with a sword for crowds, and lets the floor decide which one is in hand.

Notes

Daggers are treated generously by the formula that sets weapon level, which counts their speed as though it were far higher than any other weapon's. That is why a dagger with modest damage sits several levels above a sword with the same numbers, and why a dagger's shop and resale prices look inflated next to its hitting power.

The speed bonus a dagger can gain from forging is capped, so the fourth point is the last one that does anything. Critical power and critical chance keep climbing instead, which is another reason the branch rewards aquamarines and jades over emeralds.

All Daggers

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Type	Level	Damage
Abby's Planchette		Dagger	8	24-30
Broken Trident		Dagger	5	15-26
Burglar's Shank		Dagger	4	7-12
Carving Knife		Dagger	1	1-3
Crystal Dagger		Dagger	4	4-10
Dragontooth Shiv		Dagger	12	40-50
Dwarf Dagger		Dagger	11	32-38
Elf Blade		Dagger	2	3-5
Elliott's Pencil		Dagger	8	24-30
Galaxy Dagger		Dagger	8	30-40
Infinity Dagger		Dagger	16	50-70
Iridium Needle		Dagger	12	20-35
Iron Dirk		Dagger	1	2-4
Shadow Dagger		Dagger	4	10-20
Wicked Kris		Dagger	8	24-30
Wind Spire		Dagger	1	1-5