Stardew Valley - Hats

Hats are worn for looks alone. Most are earned: bought from the Hat Mouse, won at festivals, fished out of the water or given for an achievement.

Overview

A hat changes nothing about how a farm works, which is exactly why this branch is interesting. Every one of them drops into the single slot above the shirt in the player menu, does no damage, carries no defence and asks for no upkeep. What a hat carries instead is a story: where it came from, what had to be finished before it existed, and how long the farm spent on that. The branch is the valley's trophy cabinet, and it is far and away the largest group of items in the game that exists purely to be looked at.

The cabinet has a keeper. A mouse living in the ruined house at the southern edge of Cindersap Forest writes a letter the morning after a farm earns its very first achievement, and from that day its shelf is open. Nearly every achievement after that puts another hat on the shelf, which turns the shop into a running record of what the save has managed. Milking the achievements for hats is the cheapest motivation the game provides for finishing the long, dull goals nobody would otherwise bother with.

Once a hat is owned it is owned for good. The shipping bin, the shops and the mouse itself all decline to take one back, so the only things to do with a hat are wear it, store it in a dresser, or put it on something else. That last option is broader than it sounds: a hat fits a horse, a child, a cat, a dog and a Sea Urchin kept in a Fish Tank, and a handful of ornaments around the valley will wear one too.

Groups

Five routes supply the whole branch. The mouse's shelf is the largest, and almost everything on it is keyed to an achievement. The Sewing Machine is the second: one piece of Cloth plus one other item produces a hat, and the other item decides which. Feed the spool a pearl and a Bridal Veil comes out. An Ostrich Egg yields a warrior's helmet, a Dwarvish Helm yields a wearable copy of itself, a blobfish yields a mask of its own startled face, a Cinder Shard yields sunglasses, and a dragon's tooth yields a swashbuckler's hat.

The third route is the festival circuit. Winning the egg hunt in Spring, the fishing contest at the Festival of Ice and the two fishing derbies each pay a hat, and the Desert Festival runs a stall of bows and masks priced in Calico Eggs rather than gold. The fourth route is pure chance during ordinary work: felling a tree, smashing a crate, digging an Artifact Spot, panning a riverbed, rummaging through a bin and killing a monster all carry a small chance of a hat falling out.

The fifth route is the traders. A short rack of helmets and masks sits on the Adventurer's Guild counter at the same steep price each, the Casino sells one for tokens, the Traveling Cart carries one occasionally, the trader out in the desert deals in sealed shells rather than coin, and the trader on Ginger Island asks for taro on three set Days of the Week.

Order

The branch opens on whichever morning the first achievement lands, which for most farms is earning a modest pile of gold or catching a first fish. The shelf then fills in the order a farm happens to tick things off, and the prices rise with the difficulty of the achievement behind each hat, so the early cabinet is cheap and the late cabinet is expensive.

The Sewing Machine joins in as soon as a piece of Cloth and a sunny morning bring Emily to the farmhouse door, which is usually in the first year. From there tailoring is opportunistic: whatever odd item the day produced goes on the spool to see what comes out, and several hats are made from things a farm would otherwise have sold without thinking.

The festivals pace themselves on the calendar and come round once a year each, which means a hat missed at a competition is a hat waiting twelve months. The desert stall and the island counter both wait on larger unlocks, the bus and the boat, so those hats belong to a second or third year. The last few in the branch sit behind the longest goals in the game: a turban for earning every achievement, a cap woven from Forest Magic for reaching the summit, and a crown for forging the most powerful weapon.

Best

Rank this branch by what a hat proves rather than what it looks like. The turban on the mouse's top shelf is the hardest purchase in the valley, because it only appears once every achievement in the game has been earned, and the price on it is appropriately absurd. The Junimo cap behind it belongs to a farm that has reached the summit, which is the end of everything. Between them they are the two hats that cannot be mistaken for anything else.

The best value in the branch is the hat Mr. Qi sells in the room behind the walnut door, which costs five of his gems. Next to everything else on his shelves that is pocket change, and it is the only hat in the game bought in a currency that has to be earned by passing his tests.

Among the hats that come by luck, three are worth knowing about because their odds are so long that most farms never see them. One grows on the mushroom trees and falls when a mature tree is chopped. One comes out of a town bin with an explosion and sends the lid flying across the alley. One is alive, and it drops only from the golems on the wilderness map or, with absurd rarity, from cutting weeds.

The quietest trick in the branch has nothing to do with collecting. A pan dropped into the hat slot sits on the farmer's head and still works, which clears a space in the backpack for the rest of the day. It is the only hat in the game that does a job.

Locations

The ruined house in the forest is the centre of everything, and its shelf is worth checking after every milestone rather than once a year. The Adventurer's Guild beside the mine entrance keeps its helmets and masks behind the counter at a price only a mature farm notices. The Casino behind the Oasis trades one for tokens, and the prize machine in the Mayor's Manor hands one out as a late prize before the mouse starts stocking it.

The desert and the island hold the strangest shops in the branch. The trader beside the Oasis sells a plain turban for a pile of sealed shells and two magical ones for an eye-watering quantity of them, alternating between the two on odd and even days of the month. The trader on Ginger Island takes thirty taro roots for a cap, with a different cap on offer on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Three hats are lying in the dark waiting to be found. The treasure rooms of the Skull Cavern hold cowboy hats in three colours, the volcano holds a pirate's hat and a bow in its chests, and a Golden Coconut cracked open gives up a Golden Helmet. A monkey in the volcano's caldera hands over one last hat to a farm that has finished absolutely everything. Finally, on one morning in Spring a pot of gold appears at the foot of the forest waterfall, and whoever reaches it gets a hat and a handful of coin.

Uses

Wearing a hat is the obvious use and dressing the household is the better one. A horse in a hat, a child in a hat and a dog in a hat are three of the small pleasures the valley offers for free, and a hat put on an animal can be taken back off again, so nothing is risked by experimenting.

Beyond that the branch is a display case. A dresser in the farmhouse holds the whole collection without taking up backpack space, and a farmer who rotates hats by season or by job gets a surprising amount out of items that do nothing at all. Several hats also exist as the visible half of a reward that is otherwise invisible: the eradication goals at the guild, for instance, pay out in headgear as well as in rings, which makes a mask the only outward sign that hundreds of monsters have fallen.

Prices

The mouse prices its stock by how hard the achievement behind it was, running from a modest sum for a first harvest or a first fish up to the enormous figure on the turban for earning everything. The pattern is consistent enough to be useful: a cheap hat on the shelf means an easy goal is still outstanding, and an expensive one means the save is nearly finished.

Elsewhere the currencies are the interesting part. Calico Eggs buy bows and masks at the Desert Festival and are worthless the rest of the year. Taro roots buy caps on the island, which makes an island crop into a wardrobe. Sealed shells buy turbans in the desert, and the magical pair cost so many that only a farm with a mine habit of several years can afford one. Qi's gems buy his own hat for next to nothing.

Strategy

Treat the achievement list as the shopping list. Almost every hat on the shelf is downstream of a goal that a farm will reach eventually, so the efficient approach is to pick off the cheap achievements deliberately: cook a handful of recipes, craft a handful of items, ship one of each crop, reach five hearts with a few people. Each one is a hat, and most of them are an afternoon's work.

Go to the festivals with a plan. The competitions that pay hats are won by preparation rather than luck, and the stalls that sell them only exist for a few days a year, so a note of which hat is still missing saves an entire year of waiting.

Pan, chop and rummage regularly. The random drops in this branch are the only ones that cannot be earned deliberately, and the farms that end up with a full cabinet are the ones that kept panning the riverbed and checking the bins out of habit.

Notes

The lids of the town bins behave differently when a hat is in them. The usual rummage is a quiet animation, and the one that produces a hat is a bang loud enough to be startling, after which the can sits lidless for a while.

A hat lost somewhere in a save is not lost forever. The secret shop that appears behind the fallen column in the Secret Woods sells back the one-off items a farm has managed to mislay, at a flat and painful price, and several hats are on that list.

One hat drops from a particular armoured monster on a strict counter rather than on a chance, which means the first one takes a long and oddly precise grind and arrives exactly when the count says it should.

All Hats

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Location
??? (hat)		Volcano Caldera
Abigail's Bow		Desert Festival
Arcane Hat		Adventurer's Guild
Archer's Cap		Abandoned House
Beanie		Tailoring
Blobfish Mask		Tailoring
Blue Bonnet		Abandoned House
Blue Bow		Desert Festival
Blue Cowboy Hat		Skull Cavern
Blue Ribbon		Abandoned House
Bluebird Mask		Island Trader
Bowler Hat		Abandoned House
Bridal Veil		Tailoring
Bucket Hat		Trout Derby
Butterfly Bow		Abandoned House
Cat Ears		Abandoned House
Chef Hat		Abandoned House
Chicken Mask		Abandoned House
Cone Hat		Night Market
Cool Cap		Abandoned House
Copper Pan (hat)		Copper Pan
Cowboy Hat		Abandoned House
Cowgal Hat		Abandoned House
Cowpoke Hat		Abandoned House
Daisy		Abandoned House
Dark Ballcap		Desert Festival
Dark Cowboy Hat		Skull Cavern
Dark Velvet Bow		Desert Festival
Delicate Bow		Abandoned House
Deluxe Cowboy Hat		Island Trader
Deluxe Pirate Hat		Volcano Dungeon
Dinosaur Hat		Tailoring
Earmuffs		Abandoned House
Elegant Turban		Abandoned House
Emily's Magic Hat		Emily's 14-heart event
Eye Patch		Abandoned House
Fashion Hat		Tailoring
Fedora		Stardew Valley Fair
Fishing Hat		Tailoring
Flat Topped Hat		Tailoring
Floppy Beanie		Tailoring
Forager's Hat		Tailoring
Frog Hat		Ginger Island
Garbage Hat		Garbage Cans
Gil's Hat		Desert Festival
Gnome's Cap		Abandoned House
Goblin Mask		Abandoned House
Goggles		Tailoring
Gold Pan (hat)		Gold Pan
Golden Helmet		Golden Coconuts
Golden Mask (hat)		Tailoring
Good Ol' Cap		Abandoned House
Governor's Hat		Abandoned House
Green Turban		Desert Trader
Hair Bone		Tailoring
Hard Hat		Adventurer's Guild
Hunter's Cap		Abandoned House
Infinity Crown		Abandoned House
Iridium Pan (hat)		Iridium Pan
Jester Hat		Abandoned House
Joja Cap		Desert Festival
Junimo Hat		Abandoned House
Knight's Helmet		Adventurer's Guild
Laurel Wreath Crown		Desert Festival
Leprechaun Hat		Cindersap Forest
Living Hat		Weeds; Wilderness Golems; Iridium Golems
Logo Cap		Tailoring
Lucky Bow		Abandoned House
Magic Cowboy Hat		Desert Trader
Magic Turban		Desert Trader
Mouse Ears		Abandoned House
Mr. Qi's Hat		Qi's Walnut Room
Mummy Mask		Desert Festival
Mushroom Cap		Mushroom Trees
Mystery Hat		Mystery Boxes; Golden Mystery Boxes
Official Cap		Abandoned House
Pageboy Cap		Abandoned House
Panda Hat		WeGame exclusive
Paper Hat		Abandoned House
Party Hat (blue)		Tailoring
Party Hat (green)		Tailoring
Party Hat (red)		Tailoring
Pink Bow		Volcano Dungeon
Pirate Hat		Tailoring
Plum Chapeau		Abandoned House
Polka Bow		Abandoned House
Propeller Hat		Tailoring
Pumpkin Mask		Tailoring
Qi Mask		Tailoring
Raccoon Hat		Giant Stump; Raccoon Wife's Shop
Radioactive Goggles		Tailoring
Red Cowboy Hat		Skull Cavern
Red Fez		Traveling Cart
Sailor's Cap		Festival of Ice
Santa Hat		Abandoned House
Skeleton Mask		Adventurer's Guild
Small Cap		Island Trader
Sombrero		Abandoned House
Sou'wester		Abandoned House
Space Helmet		Abandoned House
Sports Cap		Mayor's Manor; Abandoned House
Spotted Headscarf		Tailoring
Squid Hat		SquidFest
Squire's Helmet		Metal Heads; Hot Heads; Metal Head (dangerous)
Star Helmet		Tailoring
Steel Pan (hat)		Steel Pan
Straw Hat		Egg Festival
Sunglasses		Tailoring
Swashbuckler Hat		Tailoring
Tiara		Abandoned House
Tiger Hat		Tiger Slimes
Top Hat		Casino
Totem Mask		Tailoring
Tricorn Hat		Desert Festival
Tropiclip		Abandoned House
Trucker Hat		Abandoned House
Warrior Helmet		Tailoring
Watermelon Band		Abandoned House
Wearable Dwarf Helm		Tailoring
White Bow		Abandoned House
White Turban		Tailoring; Skull Cavern
Witch Hat		Tailoring