Stardew Valley - Rings

Rings grant a bonus each, and two can be worn at once. The Forge combines two into one, which frees the second slot.

Overview

Rings are the valley's only form of passive equipment the farmer chooses freely. Boots are worn for their defence and hats are decoration, but a ring is a deliberate decision about what the next trip underground is for. Two can be worn at once, slotted into the two spaces in the player menu, and nothing has to be activated, aimed or refilled.

The effects split into things that keep the farmer alive and things that change what the trip brings home. Because only two slots exist, the whole branch is an argument about which pair of those jobs matters most today.

Then the forge at the bottom of the volcano changes the question entirely. Two rings fed into it come out as one ring carrying both effects, which frees a slot for a third, and a second combination fills the fourth. A farm that has reached Ginger Island therefore wears four effects rather than two, and the ranking below is written with that in mind, because the best ring in the game is whichever one pairs well with the three others already on the hand.

Groups

Five families sit inside the branch. The gem rings are the shop stock: amethyst for knockback, topaz for a point of defence, aquamarine for critical chance, jade for critical damage, emerald for swing speed and ruby for raw attack. They are the only ones a farm can simply buy.

The utility rings do nothing in a fight and shape every trip anyway. The two glow rings light a radius around the farmer and the two magnet rings pull dropped items in from further away, and both stack with themselves and with each other. The Glowstone Ring is a glow and a magnet already welded together, and the Iridium Band is a glow, a magnet and a ruby in one.

The kill-trigger rings fire on a slain monster. The Vampire Ring returns a little health, the soul sapper returns energy, the Savage Ring grants a burst of speed, the Warrior Ring occasionally hands over a damage buff, the Napalm Ring detonates the corpse, and the Hot Java Ring makes coffee drop far more often than it should.

The survival rings are the defensive answers: crabshell for a solid block of defence, the Immunity Band, the Sturdy Ring that halves the duration of anything unpleasant the mines inflict, the Protection Ring that extends the moment of invulnerability after a hit, the Thorns Ring that returns damage to whatever caused it, Yoba's ring that sometimes shields outright, and the Phoenix Ring that picks a knocked-out farmer back up once a day.

The last family is the loot rings. The burglar's ring rolls each monster's drop table a second time, the Lucky Ring adds a point of luck to everything the day touches, and the Slime Charmer Ring makes an entire species harmless.

Order

The first rings a farm sees are the small ones that fall out of the mine. Slimes in the upper floors drop the small glow and small magnet rings, the full-sized versions appear from the fortieth floor down, and the crates and barrels scattered through the shaft produce all four.

Crafting opens next and it opens early. One point of combat skill is enough for the Sturdy Ring, four points of mining skill gives the Glowstone Ring, and a few more combat levels bring the Warrior Ring, the Thorns Ring and Yoba's ring.

The Adventurer's Guild is the middle of the branch. Finishing the initiation errand puts the amethyst and topaz rings on Marlon's counter, reaching the fortieth floor adds aquamarine and jade, and the eightieth adds emerald and ruby. Gil's eradication list beside him is the long game: sixty rock crabs pay for the Crabshell Ring, two hundred bats for the Vampire Ring, a hundred and fifty void spirits for the Savage Ring, two hundred and fifty serpents for the Napalm Ring, five hundred dust sprites for the burglar's ring, and a thousand slimes of any colour for the Slime Charmer Ring. Those totals accumulate across a year or two of ordinary mining rather than being hunted down.

The last rings are on Ginger Island. The chests in the volcano hold the hot java, protection, soul sapper and phoenix rings, the forge at the bottom of it combines anything the farm already owns, and the Iridium Band waits behind nine points of combat skill and a serious pile of essences.

Best

The Iridium Band is the one ring almost every farm ends up wearing. It carries three effects on its own, which makes it the most efficient single slot in the game.

The burglar's ring is the other near-automatic pick, because its effect compounds with everything else a farm is trying to do underground. Rolling each drop table twice means more ore, more essences, more coal from dust sprites and more of the rare items that only monsters carry, and it improves every hour spent fighting rather than any single fight.

After those two the choice depends on the trip. For the deep floors of the desert cavern the Lucky Ring is the quiet favourite, since its point of luck improves ladder chances, treasure rooms and geode contents at once. For a farm that keeps dying, the Crabshell Ring and the Phoenix Ring together turn a bad run into a survivable one.

The gem rings are honest but ordinary. Ruby is the pick of them, because raw attack applies to every weapon and every monster, while the others are small percentage gains that only matter once attack is already high.

Two rings are misjudged more than any others. The Napalm Ring is superb for a farmer clearing floors in a hurry and a hazard for one standing over a chest, because the blast wrecks whatever is nearby. The Thorns Ring looks weak and is excellent against the fast flying monsters that land dozens of small hits.

Prices

The shop rings are priced in tiers that track the mine floors they unlock on, from a modest sum for the two early gem rings up to a serious amount for the strongest attack and crit rings. Those prices are fair for a second-year farm and painful for a first-year one, which is an argument for reaching the eightieth floor before buying anything rather than buying early and cheap.

The reward rings are the expensive ones if they have to be bought back from Marlon, and those numbers run into the tens of thousands. Earning them from Gil costs nothing but the kills, so keep inventory space free on a mining day.

Strategy

Decide the pair before leaving the farm rather than in the lift. A fighting trip wants attack and survival. A gathering trip wants luck, magnetism and the burglar's ring. Mixing the two halves usually produces a loadout that is mediocre at both.

Save cinder shards for rings before anything else the forge offers. Twenty shards buys one combination, and the first two combinations a farm makes are worth more than any weapon enchantment, because they permanently double what the two slots can hold.

Pair effects that cover each other's weakness. Health back on a kill goes well with speed back on a kill, and defence goes well with the ring that shortens debuffs, because the deep floors punish with status effects as much as with damage.

Notes

The light from the glow rings adds up rather than overriding, and the magnetism works the same way, so a doubled pickup radius makes clearing a floor after a bomb far quicker than walking over every tile.

Rings created in a save through an item identifier quirk work properly now, which is how the Jukebox Ring reaches a farm. Worn, it plays a random run of whatever music the save has already heard.

Stingrays are worth knowing about for this branch. A pond stocked with enough of them produces cinder shards on the farm, which turns the forge from an island errand into something a farm can feed from home.

All Rings

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Price
Amethyst Ring		100g
Aquamarine Ring		200g
Burglar's Ring		750g
Crabshell Ring		1000g
Emerald Ring		300g
Glow Ring		100g
Glowstone Ring		100g
Hot Java Ring		100g
Immunity Band		250g
Iridium Band		1000g
Jade Ring		200g
Jukebox Ring		100g
Lucky Ring		100g
Magnet Ring		100g
Napalm Ring		1000g
Phoenix Ring		100g
Protection Ring		100g
Ring of Yoba		750g
Ruby Ring		300g
Savage Ring		750g
Slime Charmer Ring		350g
Small Glow Ring		50g
Small Magnet Ring		50g
Soul Sapper Ring		100g
Sturdy Ring		750g
Thorns Ring		100g
Topaz Ring		100g
Vampire Ring		750g
Warrior Ring		750g