Stardew Valley - Quests

Quests come from the bulletin board, the post and the villagers themselves. Help Wanted notes ask for an item or a monster hunt in return for gold and friendship, while the story quests move the valley along. Special orders set longer tasks for bigger rewards.

Overview

Three separate systems in the valley hand out jobs, and they behave nothing alike. Story quests arrive in the post or start themselves, and they are the game's way of teaching a new farmer what a hoe is for before it starts handing out keys to locked places. Help Wanted requests appear on the Bulletin Board beside Pierre's General Store, one a day at most, and they are small paid errands for the townsfolk. The two special orders boards, one outside the Mayor's Manor and one on Ginger Island, post the long jobs that pay in recipes and in Qi Gems.

Everything accepted lands in the same journal, which opens from the small exclamation mark beneath the date display or from one keypress. Each entry can be expanded for its text and its requirements, and the counter under the icon tracks items or kills as they come in. The journal also holds the cancel button, which works on anything except an order taken from a special orders board.

The difference that matters most is the clock. Story quests never run out: one received in the first Spring can be closed in the fourth year with no penalty, and a story errand deleted from the journal by accident costs nothing either. A Help Wanted request gives the day it was accepted and the day after, which is a tight window if a festival falls inside it, because most shops and homes are locked on festival days. The special orders boards run on their own calendar entirely.

Rewards also differ in kind. Story quests mostly pay gold with a heart of friendship attached, and a few pay in access instead, which is where the real value sits. Help Wanted requests pay gold worked out from what was asked for, plus friendship with the person who asked. Special orders pay recipes, furniture and machines.

Order

A new farm meets the story quests first, and it has no choice in the matter. The opening pair are already in the journal: one explains tilling, sowing and watering, and the other sends the farmer round the town to introduce themselves. Those two lead into gift-giving, a scarecrow, a coop and a furnace, each a small nudge towards a system the farm will live in for years.

The Bulletin Board starts offering work from the second day onwards, marked by a yellow exclamation mark floating above it. That board is the main source of early gold that does not depend on crops, and it is the only one of the three systems that is available every single season of every year.

The mines open the next layer. Entering the shaft starts a chain that asks for floor five, then floor forty, then the bottom, and reaching floor five brings a letter from the Adventurer's Guild offering membership in exchange for ten slimes. Membership matters because the Guild sells weapons, boots and rings, and because it is where the monster-slaying goals are tracked. The bottom of the mine yields a strange key, and working out what the key opens leads to the Skull Cavern in the desert.

Autumn of the first year brings the town's special orders board, which is roughly when a farm has the tools and the storage to take on a hundred of anything. The Community Center chain runs alongside all of this, and finishing it or the Joja alternative opens a scene at the railroad that starts the Wizard's errands: a talisman from the sewers, a goblin outside a witch's hut, and finally Magic Ink, which puts the Wizard's own buildings on Robin's list.

Ginger Island closes the sequence. A note found deep in the Skull Cavern, a scavenger hunt signed by a stranger, an old woman missing a keepsake and a board of impossible challenges all belong to the last stretch of a run, long after the farm has stopped needing gold.

Rewards

The quests worth planning around are the ones that pay in doors rather than coins. The Adventurer's Guild, the Skull Cavern, the Casino behind the Oasis, the Witch's Swamp and the Wizard's buildings all sit behind a quest, and none of them can be bought. The strange notes pay best of all. One scavenger hunt, started by a battery left in a lock-box, ends with a membership card for the Casino behind the Oasis. Another sends a farmer into the Secret Woods carrying Maple Syrup, and the bear's knowledge granted there trebles what wild blackberries and salmonberries fetch for the rest of the run.

Ordinary story errands are straightforward trades. Somebody writes asking for a cauliflower, a melon, a squid or an Iridium Bar, and the payment is gold with a heart of friendship on top. A heart is a large amount of goodwill for one item, which makes these letters the cheapest way to move a difficult villager towards their next scene. The gold scales with the difficulty of the request, so the later letters, which want starfruit, Truffle Oil or a pufferfish, pay several times what the first ones do.

The Bulletin Board pays by formula rather than by generosity. An item delivery is worth considerably more than the same item would fetch at the shipping bin, so a request for something already sitting in the bag is free money with friendship attached. A fishing request pays for each fish asked for and leaves the catch in the bag afterwards, which makes it the one job in the valley that pays twice for the same morning's work. Monster and gathering requests scale with the number involved and with the farmer's skill levels.

Persistence on the Bulletin Board is tracked separately. Reaching ten completed requests brings a letter of thanks and a payment from Lewis, and reaching forty brings a far larger one. Both are achievements, and the mouse running the shop in the Abandoned House puts a new hat on its shelf for every achievement earned. Special orders from either board count towards those totals too, which is the quiet reason to keep taking them long after their gold stops mattering.

Strategy

Read the post every morning before leaving the house. Story quests arrive by letter on fixed days, and a letter left unread sits in the mailbox rather than expiring, but the quests themselves often ask for something seasonal. A letter wanting a melon read in late Summer is a race; the same letter read on the day it arrives is a planting.

Check the Bulletin Board on the way through town rather than making a trip for it. The two-day window means an errand noticed on the way home is usually already half spent, and a gathering or monster request has to be filled from scratch after accepting, since ore sitting in a chest does not count.

Let the three systems feed each other. A week spent in the mines for a special order also clears monster goals for the Guild and turns up the geodes a museum quest wants. A fishing week fills bundle slots, a fishing order and a Help Wanted catch at once. Choosing which board job to take by what the farm is already doing that week is the single biggest saving available in this branch.

Keep an eye on the gating quests. The Community Center or the Joja warehouse has to be finished before the railroad scene will fire, and the Wizard's chain cannot start until it does. That chain ends in buildings worth having, so a farm that wants obelisks should not leave the Center half done into the third year.

Notes

The three small stars in the corner of the Bulletin Board are a counter rather than a difficulty rating, which is a common misreading. Each completed request lights one star, and the third one turns the next completion into a Prize Ticket before the counter resets. The board tries to flag which upcoming job pays the ticket, but it cannot know which of several open jobs will finish first, so the flag is only a hint. Tickets buy seeds, tools and oddments from the machine in Lewis's house.

Several other doors in the valley open the same way these quests do, through a reward that goes into the wallet rather than the bag. Donating steadily to the museum earns a Rusty Key to the sewers, the four dwarf scrolls earn a translation guide for the dwarf by the mine entrance, and finishing a winter mystery earns the Magnifying Glass that makes the valley's hidden notes readable. Those notes in turn start more quests, which is how the branch keeps feeding itself late in a run.

The quest journal is worth opening more often than most farmers open it. The counter under the exclamation mark is the only place a gathering or monster job shows its progress, and an errand can sit forgotten in there for years while the item it wants passes through the shipping bin every week.

All Quests

The four kinds of work the valley hands out.