Stardew Valley - Resources

The raw materials the farm runs on: wood, stone, fibre, clay, coal, sap and the parts monsters leave behind.

Overview

Resources are the valley's raw materials: the things a farm gathers in bulk and spends rather than sells. Every building Robin puts up, every machine on the farm, every tool upgrade and every bomb traces back to this branch, and it works as a ladder. Wood and stone are the first bottleneck, copper and iron the second, gold and iridium the third, and the materials from the volcano and the deep mines are the last.

The branch is wider than ore and timber. It also holds the loot monsters leave behind, the junk that comes up on a fishing line, the ingredients bought by the sack at a shop counter, and the bars that sit between an ore and the thing it becomes. They belong together because the game treats them alike: they stack high, they carry no quality grades, and their worth is in what they turn into rather than in what they fetch. A sack of ore in the shipping bin is a few hundred gold, and the same ore in a furnace is a sprinkler, a keg or a better pickaxe.

Groups

Six sorts of material sit inside the branch. The building materials are wood, hardwood, stone, clay, fibre and moss, and they are what Robin, the crafting menu and the fences consume. The ores are copper, iron, gold, iridium and the radioactive sort, each with a bar smelted from it in a furnace, and the bars are what tools and the better machines ask for. Refined quartz and battery packs sit beside them as manufactured materials rather than mined ones.

Monster loot is its own family: bat wings, Bug Meat, the two essences and bone fragments, dropped by the things that live underground. Those are the materials behind rings, bombs, bait and fertiliser, which is why a combat trip pays for itself twice.

The fishing side covers algae and the three jellies, which come up on a line in fresh water, rivers and the sea, and the rubbish pulled out of bins and crab pots, whose sensible destination is a Recycling Machine. The last group is the shop shelf: sugar, flour, rice, oil and vinegar, which the kitchen gets through faster than any farm can grow the crops behind them.

Order

Wood and stone come first and dominate the first year. Everything a new farm wants is priced in them, and the farm supplies both, since the debris that scatters overnight is free material rather than a chore. Clay arrives alongside them from the hoe.

Copper comes on the first trip into the mine, and the furnace recipe Clint sends over turns it into the first real upgrade. Iron follows around the middle floors and unlocks the serious machines. Coal is the quiet constraint throughout, because every smelt burns one and a farm that forgets coal finds its furnace idle.

Gold arrives deep in the mine and is mostly spent on tools and sprinklers. Iridium belongs to the desert and the far floors below it, and hardwood becomes the next bottleneck instead, because the farmhouse upgrades, the stable and the boat all ask for it and no shop stocks it. The last tier is specialist: cinder shards from the volcano pay for everything the forge does, and Radioactive Ore, found only once the deep floors have been made dangerous, makes the strongest fertiliser and the bait that ignores the weather.

Locations

The mine is the obvious answer and not always the best one. Copper sits in the upper floors, iron in the middle, gold below that, and the quarry behind the repaired bridge gives stone and coal with no fighting at all. Geodes cracked at the blacksmith or in a crusher at home return ore in useful quantities, and panning the riverbeds is a slow but free supply of ore, coal and bone.

The Secret Woods is the most valuable spot on the map for this branch. Six large stumps stand there every morning and regrow overnight, so one copper axe and one walk a day yields hardwood that cannot be bought anywhere. The forest layout and a corner of the four corners layout do the same on the farm's own land.

Weeds are the source nobody plans for. Cutting them anywhere gives fibre about half the time, and the weed-choked floors of the mine and the Mutant Bug Lair produce it in quantities a farm cannot use. Moss comes off standing trees instead, knocked loose with any tool, and it arrives in heaps during a green rain. A stingray pond on the farm will quietly produce both cinder shards and battery packs once its population is large enough.

Uses

Crafting is the main destination and it is relentless. Stone and wood build the fences, paths, chests and sprinklers. Hardwood is the material behind the Cheese Press, the Oil Maker, the Worm Bin and the Mushroom Log, with moss pairing into that last one. Clay is the ingredient behind the retaining soils, the garden pots, the Bone Mill and the dehydrator, and fibre goes into the better fishing gear.

The furnace is the other hub. Ore goes in with coal and comes out as a bar, and bars are what Clint asks for on every tool upgrade and what the crystalarium, the obelisks and the Iridium Sprinkler are priced in. A Bone Mill grinds fragments into fertiliser, which gives a museum's surplus skeletons a second life, and a Recycling Machine turns a morning's fishing rubbish into Refined Quartz, ore and coal.

Two rooms in the Community Center run on this branch alone, the construction scroll asking for timber and stone in quantity and the boiler room wanting the metals, which makes the furnace an early priority rather than a late one.

Prices

Almost everything here is worth more as a component than as a sale, and the exceptions are worth knowing. The jellies pulled from rivers and the sea fetch a good deal more than the fish beside them. Radioactive ore is the most valuable raw material in the branch, and battery packs are wanted by too many recipes to part with.

Shop prices also move against the farm as the save ages. The common materials cost considerably more at Robin's and Clint's counters from the second year onwards, while the amount those shops pay for the same goods does not change, so the first farm's worth of stone is cheaper bought early.

The rubbish family is the point of the Recycling Machine, which turns the garbage cans in town into a free morning round rather than a curiosity.

Strategy

Keep a dedicated chest and never sell out of it. A farm's whole building programme is priced in this branch, and the usual way a project slips a season is a tidy evening at the shipping bin. The same chest is the answer to the Junimos, who want these materials in hundreds rather than in ones.

Fuel before ore. A trip that comes back with a bag of ore and no coal has achieved half of what it looks like, and the cheap answers are the dust sprites on the middle floors of the mine and a row of charcoal kilns turning spare wood into coal on the farm.

Automate what repeats. A Geode Crusher means geodes never need carrying to town again, a Bone Mill means skeletons pay for fertiliser, a Worm Bin means bait arrives free, and a tapper on every tree means wood is not the only thing a forest provides. Plant mahogany seeds early for the same reason, since they are the only renewable hardwood a farm can grow at home.

Notes

Felling a tree near water can lose the wood to the splash. The trunk falls away from the farmer, so standing on the side nearest the water keeps the harvest.

Mining a rock yields one to three stones and a boulder yields ten, which makes the large rocks worth the extra swings rather than worth walking around.

All Resources

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Price
Bat Wing		15g
Battery Pack		500g
Bone Fragment		12g
Broken CD		0g
Broken Glasses		0g
Bug Meat		8g
Cave Jelly		180g
Cinder Shard		50g
Clay		20g
Coal		15g
Copper Bar		-
Copper Ore		5g
Driftwood		0g
Fiber		1g
Gold Bar		-
Gold Ore		25g
Green Algae		15g
Hardwood		15g
Iridium Bar		-
Iridium Ore		100g
Iron Bar		-
Iron Ore		10g
Joja Cola		25g
Monster Loot	-	-
Moss		5g
Radioactive Bar		-
Radioactive Ore		300g
Refined Quartz		50g
Rice		100g
River Jelly		125g
Rotten Plant		0g
Sea Jelly		200g
Soggy Newspaper		0g
Solar Essence		40g
Stone		2g
Sugar		50g
Trash	-	-
Trash (item)		0g
Treasure Chest		5000g
Vinegar		100g
Void Essence		50g
Wheat Flour		50g
White Algae		25g
Wood		2g