Stardew Valley - Geode Minerals

These minerals come out of geodes rather than the rock face. Most go straight to the museum or into a Crystalarium.

Overview

These are the stones that arrive only inside a sealed shell. Every one of them comes out of a geode, which means the only way to meet one is to break the shell at the anvil or in a crusher on the farm. That single rule shapes the whole branch. The shell decides which stone appears, luck and food buffs have no hand in it, and the farm's only choices are which geodes to collect and how fast to open them.

What they are for is the Museum. Gunther has a case waiting for each one, and the name and the description stay hidden on the item until a copy is behind his glass, which is why a bag of these stones reads as gibberish on a first run through the mine. Filling those cases is the largest single block of the Museum collection, and it is what carries a farm through the donation milestones, from the early seed packets right up to the stardrop waiting at the top.

Once a stone has been donated, the spares are simply money. They sell for a little or a lot depending on which shell they came from, and a farmer who took Gemologist at the top of the Mining skill gets three tenths more for each. A chest of duplicates is one of the tidiest cash reserves a mid-run farm has, because nothing in it spoils and nothing in it is needed anywhere else.

Groups

The branch divides cleanly by shell, and the division is also a ranking. The plain grey geode holds the cheap stones: the building rubble, the common rock types, the pink shards and the fossilised slime. Nothing in that group is worth much, and a few are worth almost nothing, which is why the first year of mining produces a chest of stones that feel like a disappointment.

The Frozen Geode holds the middle tier. Its stones run from the pale ornamental ones up to the Fairy Stone and the glassy blue one, and most of them are worth two or three times a plain-geode stone. The Magma Geode holds the expensive end outright. Star Shards, the triangular column, the jet-black crystal and the red-spotted opal all come from that shell, and the first of them is the dearest stone in the branch by a clear margin.

The Omni Geode sits across all three groups, because it can produce any stone in the branch. That makes it the only shell worth hoarding for collection purposes, and the only one that can close the last gap in a case that the right depth of mine has refused to fill.

Order

A farm meets the plain-geode stones in its first fortnight and will go on meeting them for years, since the rocks on the farm itself keep producing the shell. Those early donations fill the Museum fastest and pay the least, which is the correct order: the rewards are tied to the count of items donated rather than their value.

The frozen stones follow once the icy floors are in reach, and again every Winter, when tilling the farm's own soil starts turning that shell up. The magma stones arrive on the lava floors, and with them the first stones in the branch worth carrying home for their own sake rather than for the case.

The last gaps close slowly and almost always through omni geodes. A farm that reached the bottom of the mine quickly often finds itself missing three or four plain-geode stones a year later, simply because the early shells were opened before the habit of checking the collection began. The Desert Trader's artifact troves and a chest of omni geodes are the usual cure.

Best

Rank this branch by what a stone does once the Museum has its copy, and three names come out on top for reasons that have nothing to do with price. Lemon Stone is the Dwarf's loved gift, which makes it the cheapest route to the dwarvish translation and to buying from his counter underground. Obsidian is Sebastian's loved gift, and Sebastian is one of the harder villagers to reach with ordinary presents. Tigerseye is Sam's loved gift, and it is worth more than most of the stones around it.

Marble is the only stone in the branch with a crafting job. One of them, with a blue-green gem and a pile of stone, makes a Marble Brazier, which is the best-looking permanent light the Carpenter's Shop sells a recipe for.

By money alone the answer is Star Shards. It is worth several times a plain-geode stone, it comes only from the magma shell and the omni shell, and it is the one stone in the branch worth putting into a Crystalarium while waiting for a diamond to spare. Below it sit the triangular column, the jet-black crystal and the red-spotted opal, all from the same shell, which is the simplest argument for spending the mid-run weeks on the lava floors rather than the icy ones.

The Wizard is the branch's quiet friend. He likes every stone in it, which means the whole chest of duplicates works on him, and nobody else in the valley makes that offer.

Locations

The shells are the route, and each shell has its own home: the grey one in the shallow floors and in farm rock, the frozen one in the middle floors and in winter soil, the magma one on the lava floors and in Skull Cavern crates, the omni one from the twenties downwards and from almost everywhere on Ginger Island.

A handful of stones have a second door. Black Slimes drop the dark cubic stone and the jet-black crystal, which makes a Slime Hutch a slow source of two of the dearer stones. A Slime Ball in the hutch sometimes holds the fossilised slime. A Coral Fish Pond produces the coral-reef stone and the cheapest rock in the branch. Panning and fishing treasure chests both turn up geodes rather than the stones themselves, so even an angler meets this branch through the anvil.

Uses

Donation is the first use and the Sewing Machine is the second. Every stone in the branch goes into the spool to make a shirt, and most of them work as a dye at the pots in Emily and Haley's house, which gives a chest of duplicates a purpose on a rainy day once the Museum is finished.

Fish ponds are the third. Several of the common stones are asked for when a pond wants to grow: the volcanic one, the speckled construction stone, the cheapest rock, the fine-grained clay rock, the mermaid mosaic and the fossilised slime all turn up in those requests. Keeping two of each cheap stone in a chest saves a trip to the blacksmith when a pond asks.

The rest is gifts and gold. Beyond the three loved stones and the Wizard's blanket approval, most villagers would rather not be handed a lump of rock, so the branch is a poor choice for friendship in general and an excellent one for the four people it suits.

Prices

The price of a stone tracks the depth of the shell that held it, so the branch pays better the deeper a farm has been. That makes magma geodes the ones to open last, when the Gemologist bonus is already in hand, and it makes the plain-geode stones the ones to donate first and forget.

The duplicates are worth more as a buffer than as income. A mature farm earns more in a morning from kegs than from a whole chest of these stones, but the chest is immune to seasons, needs no machine and can be emptied into the bin on any day a payment falls due.

Notes

A gap in the cases is always answered by more shells rather than by more digging, since the shell is the only door these stones come through. The sensible habit is to check the collection in the player menu before a trip and then choose the floors that match the gap.

Opening the shells in bulk is where the branch is actually played. A pair of Geode Crushers working through a chest overnight turns a week of mining into a full donation run the next morning, and a crusher asks for one coal per stone, which makes coal the real limit on how fast this collection fills.

The stones carry some of the best writing in the game. One is described as a dwarvish delicacy when powdered, one claims to be made from the bones of ancient fairies, and one admits that nobody knows how it forms. The descriptions only appear after donation, which turns the Museum into the place where the branch finally makes sense.

All Geode Minerals

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Price
Aerinite		125g
Alamite		150g
Baryte		50g
Basalt		175g
Bixite		300g
Calcite		75g
Celestine		125g
Dolomite		300g
Esperite		100g
Fairy Stone		250g
Fire Opal		350g
Fluorapatite		200g
Geminite		150g
Ghost Crystal		200g
Granite		75g
Helvite		450g
Hematite		150g
Jagoite		115g
Jamborite		150g
Jasper		150g
Kyanite		250g
Lemon Stone		200g
Limestone		15g
Lunarite		200g
Malachite		100g
Marble		110g
Mudstone		25g
Nekoite		80g
Neptunite		400g
Obsidian		200g
Ocean Stone		220g
Opal		150g
Orpiment		80g
Petrified Slime		120g
Pyrite		120g
Sandstone		60g
Slate		85g
Soapstone		120g
Star Shards		500g
Thunder Egg		100g
Tigerseye		275g