Stardew Valley - Weapons

Weapons are for the mines, the Skull Cavern and the volcano. Swords swing in an arc, daggers stab fast, clubs hit hard and slow, and slingshots fire ore from a distance. The Adventurer's Guild sells the early ones, and the best come from chests deep underground.

Weapon Groups

Weapons sorted by type.

Overview

Weapons sit outside the rest of the farm's equipment, and the differences are deliberate. Swinging one costs no energy, so a fight never competes with the watering. None of them passes through the blacksmith's furnace either, so the ladder that governs every tool does not apply: a better weapon is found, bought from the Adventurer's Guild or handed over for a pile of corpses, and it arrives whole rather than upgraded.

Four shapes cover everything. A blade sweeps an arc and can be raised as a guard, a blunt weapon swings slowly and throws things backwards, a short blade stabs the square ahead at speed, and the sling throws whatever is loaded into it. The farm's own axe, pickaxe and scythe will do at a pinch, and only the scythe swings without burning energy.

What actually separates one weapon from another is the stat line rather than the damage range. Speed changes how often a swing lands, weight decides how far a monster is flung, defence cuts the damage that comes back, and the two critical figures govern how often a lucky hit happens and how hard it lands. The game sums all five into one hidden level, and that level fixes both the shop price and what the Guild pays, which is why a modest blade with good speed and a fat critical figure costs more than a heavy one that hits harder.

Groups

Read the branch as four roles rather than four weapon racks. The all-rounder is the blade, and most saves keep one in hand permanently because its reach is wide and its guard is the only way to stop damage outright. Crowd control belongs to the blunt weapons, whose knockback buys room on a floor that has filled up. The assassin's work belongs to the short blades, which carry far higher critical figures and take one dangerous monster apart. The sling is the answer to anything out of reach.

A second grouping runs across all four: weapons that arrive with something extra written into them. Two blades come already enchanted, one returning health on a kill and one striking harder at the undead, and one short blade carries the heaviest critical statistics in the game. Several of each shape also sit on neighbours' stalls at the spring festival in the desert, bought with eggs rather than gold. The top of every shape is the same ladder: a Prismatic Shard carried into the desert produces the first galaxy weapon, the Guild sells the other two, and the forge on Ginger Island turns any of them into its infinity form.

Order

Combat skill opens the branch and then paces it. Killing things raises the skill, every level adds a little health, and the levels hand over the gear that makes fighting survivable: a Sturdy Ring at the first, a Life Elixir at the second, an Oil of Garlic that keeps monsters off at the sixth, a ring of Yoba at the seventh and the Iridium Band at the ninth. The fifth level forces a choice between hitting harder and critically striking half again as often, and the tenth splits each of those once more, into raw damage or extra health on one side and faster special moves or far deadlier criticals on the other.

The Adventurer's Guild unlocks alongside it. A letter arrives after the fifth floor of the mine asking for ten slimes, and killing them opens the door east of the mine entrance for the rest of the save. From then on Marlon's counter adds stock at measured depths, roughly every ten or fifteen floors from the tenth down to the ninetieth, and the bottom of the shaft puts the first genuinely powerful purchase within reach. Boots and rings unlock on the same ladder, which matters because those two slots usually do more for survival than the weapon does.

Only three moments in a run make an upgrade urgent. The twentieth floor is the first, where a chest and the shop between them replace the rusty blade the farmer started with. The bottom of the mine is the second, since it puts a weapon on sale that carries the whole Skull Cavern. The island is the third. Everything between is an improvement rather than a necessity, and gold spent on bombs and food usually buys more floors than a slightly better swing does.

Best

Across all four shapes the infinity weapons are the end of the road, and choosing between them is a question of playing style rather than of power. The gavel hits hardest and flings everything away. The blade is balanced and the only one that can be raised as a guard. The dagger is the quickest and keeps the best critical chance. All three cost the same three galaxy souls, so a farm that forges only one should pick by how it likes to fight.

One tier down, the volcano's chests answer for a farm that would rather not spend gold at all. Each shape gets a dwarvish version weighted towards defence and a dragontooth version weighted towards critical damage, and owning both and swapping by floor is the usual outcome.

For a farm still in its first year, the shop ladder beats the chests. The blade sold after the bottom of the mine is the single most important purchase in the branch, because it needs no luck, costs one good Summer and covers everything between the mine and the island.

Locations

The Guild is the branch's institution rather than merely its shop. Marlon sells, buys back and runs the recovery service that posts one lost item home after a farmer passes out underground, charging whatever it would have sold for. Gil keeps the rocking chair by the fire and hands over the eradication rewards. The board beside the counter tracks twelve kill tallies, and its rewards are the reason to care about them: a ring that makes slimes harmless after a thousand of them, one that returns health after two hundred bats, one that speeds the farmer up after a hundred and fifty void spirits, one that improves every monster's drops after five hundred dust sprites, one that makes corpses explode after two hundred and fifty serpents, and a phone number after a hundred and fifty magma sprites that brings the recovery service into the farmhouse. A back room opens once a thousand monsters have died, and the book inside it halves the recovery fee thereafter.

Everything else is scattered. The mine's reward chests hold specific weapons at six of its landings, and a remixed-rewards save shuffles those placements around. Monsters, crates and barrels give up the ordinary stock at every depth, and a fishing Treasure Chest occasionally hands a weapon to somebody who never goes underground. The volcano's chests carry the best found weapons in the game, and the forge at its summit does the rest.

Prices

Buying is where the branch becomes expensive, and the three galaxy weapons are the reason. Between them they ask more gold than a greenhouse, and the hammer alone is the priciest item on Marlon's shelf. The blade below them costs a quarter of that, the two nine-thousand-gold mine weapons rather less, and everything in the Guild's early stock is a few hundred apiece.

Selling is pocket money, because both figures come from the same hidden level and the counter pays half of what it charges. The eradication rewards are the exception worth remembering: anything Gil hands over can be bought again from Marlon at a steep price, which turns a lost reward into an annoyance rather than a disaster.

The forge charges in cinder shards instead of gold, and those come out of the volcano's own rock, its magma-dwelling monsters and a pond stocked with stingrays.

Strategy

Spend on the slots that are not the weapon. Boots and rings unlock at the same mine depths for a fraction of the price, and a pair of defence rings with decent footwear changes survival far more than another ten points of damage. Food that raises defence does the same, more cheaply still.

Carry two shapes rather than one. A corridor of slimes and a single serpent want opposite tools, and switching slot is faster than repositioning.

Let the eradication board set the itinerary. Every tally on that wall is filled by fighting a farm does anyway, so picking floors by which reward is still outstanding costs nothing. The slime tally is the long one and worth starting early.

Enchant the tools, not only the weapons. The same forge will put a random effect on a watering can, a rod, a hoe, a pickaxe, an axe or a pan, and some of those are transformative: endless water, no energy cost, a far wider charged swing, a doubled chance of artifacts, bait and tackle that survive a cast. An enchantment survives a trip to the blacksmith for an upgrade, so it can go on early.

Notes

Enchanting is deliberately uncontrollable. The result is drawn from a list, a second attempt at the same price replaces the first, and tools remember the last two they were given so those two stay out of the draw. The draw depends on how many things have been enchanted in total, so reloading the day and changing the order produces a different outcome.

Reaching Combat Mastery allows a miniature forge to be crafted and placed anywhere, which removes the long trip to the volcano for every future improvement.

Unforging is free, hands back some of the cinder shards and strips the gem upgrades while leaving any enchantment in place. Two weapons of the same shape can also be merged, so the first keeps its statistics and takes the second's appearance, though a galaxy weapon loses a borrowed look the moment it becomes an infinity weapon.

All Weapons

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image	Type	Level	Damage
Abby's Planchette		Dagger	8	24-30
Alex's Bat		Club	7	40-55
Bone Sword		Sword	5	20-30
Broken Trident		Dagger	5	15-26
Burglar's Shank		Dagger	4	7-12
Carving Knife		Dagger	1	1-3
Claymore		Sword	5	20-32
Crystal Dagger		Dagger	4	4-10
Cutlass		Sword	3	9-17
Dark Sword		Sword	9	30-45
Dragontooth Club		Club	14	80-100
Dragontooth Cutlass		Sword	13	75-90
Dragontooth Shiv		Dagger	12	40-50
Dwarf Dagger		Dagger	11	32-38
Dwarf Hammer		Club	13	75-85
Dwarf Sword		Sword	13	65-75
Elf Blade		Dagger	2	3-5
Elliott's Pencil		Dagger	8	24-30
Femur		Club	2	6-11
Forest Sword		Sword	3	8-18
Galaxy Dagger		Dagger	8	30-40
Galaxy Hammer		Club	12	70-90
Galaxy Slingshot		Slingshot	-	Depends on ammo used
Galaxy Sword		Sword	13	60-80
Haley's Iron		Sword	6	30-45
Harvey's Mallet		Club	7	40-55
Holy Blade		Sword	7	20-27
Infinity Blade		Sword	17	80-100
Infinity Dagger		Dagger	16	50-70
Infinity Gavel		Club	17	100-120
Insect Head		Sword	6	20-30
Iridium Needle		Dagger	12	20-35
Iron Dirk		Dagger	1	2-4
Iron Edge		Sword	3	12-25
Kudgel		Club	5	27-40
Lava Katana		Sword	10	55-64
Lead Rod		Club	4	18-27
Leah's Whittler		Sword	6	30-45
Master Slingshot		Slingshot	-	Depends on ammo used
Meowmere		Sword	4	20-20
Neptune's Glaive		Sword	5	18-35
Obsidian Edge		Sword	6	30-45
Ossified Blade		Sword	6	26-42
Penny's Fryer		Club	7	40-55
Pirate's Sword		Sword	2	8-14
Rapier		Sword	4	15-25
Rusty Sword		Sword	1	2-5
Sam's Old Guitar		Club	7	40-55
Seb's Lost Mace		Club	7	40-55
Shadow Dagger		Dagger	4	10-20
Silver Saber		Sword	2	8-15
Slingshot		Slingshot	-	Depends on ammo used
Steel Falchion		Sword	8	28-46
Steel Smallsword		Sword	1	4-8
Tempered Broadsword		Sword	7	29-44
Templar's Blade		Sword	5	22-29
The Slammer		Club	7	40-55
Wicked Kris		Dagger	8	24-30
Wind Spire		Dagger	1	1-5
Wood Club		Club	2	9-16
Wood Mallet		Club	3	15-24
Wooden Blade		Sword	1	3-7
Yeti Tooth		Sword	7	26-42