Book Of Stars
| Book Of Stars | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Book |
| Location | Bookseller; Giant Stump; Mystery Boxes; Golden Mystery Boxes |
| Sell Price | 2500g |
The Book Of Stars is the skill book that pays into everything at once. One reading pushes a full block of experience into every skill a farmer has, which makes it worth as much as five of the single-subject books read together, and that is why the Bookseller asks several times their price for it. Once all five skills have been taken to their ceiling and the Mastery Cave has opened, the same reading converts into a very large pile of Mastery points instead, far more than the ordinary skill books manage. The raccoon family at the Giant Stump sometimes hands one over for their later requests, and Mystery Boxes start producing them once a Book of Mysteries has already been found. Traded back across the Bookseller's counter it is worth eight Fairy Dust, which is one of the strongest swaps in the whole shop.
The in-game description reads: Read this to gain some experience in all skills.
Overview
The Bookseller is the only place to buy it, and even then it is not a given. His table is rolled afresh for each of his two days a season, and the Book Of Stars appears on roughly a quarter of those rolls, so planning around it means saving the money and checking the calendar rather than expecting it on demand.
Two other routes exist and both come late. The raccoon in the repaired Giant Stump in Cindersap Forest asks for a long string of items, and once the fifth request has been cleared the rewards for the ones after it are picked at random, with this book among the possibilities. Mystery Boxes and Golden Mystery Boxes can also produce it, but only after a Book of Mysteries has turned up first, which puts it behind a chain of its own.
What makes it worth the chase is the arithmetic of mastery. Reading it while a skill is still climbing spreads the experience across all of them, which is handy for dragging a neglected skill up without taking up fishing or swinging a sword. Reading it after everything is maxed is better still, because the Mastery Cave below Leah's cottage then turns the whole lot into Mastery points, and those buy the five totems inside the cave. For a farmer grinding towards perfection, this is one of the few things gold can be converted into progress with directly.
The trade is the other reason to keep one back. Fairy Dust finishes whatever a piece of crafting equipment is working on, instantly, and in a Cask it pushes the contents up one quality step at a time. Eight of them from a single book means eight kegs of wine ready a season early, or a run of casks lifted most of the way to iridium. For a farmer running a shed full of machinery that is worth considerably more than the experience.
Reading consumes the book, as always, and every copy found can be read. Copies can be stockpiled and read in a row on an evening when the numbers will do the most good.
Notes
On a shared farm the experience goes only to the farmer who reads it, so a hoard of these books is shared out rather than pooled.
Penny loves receiving one, Elliott takes it kindly, and Alex is the one villager who dislikes it. In the dye pots at Emily and Haley's house on 2 Willow Lane the book counts as purple, and the spool of the Sewing Machine gives it an iridium sheen on a garment in the feed.
All Books
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
| Name | Image | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Animal Catalogue | 
|
2000g |
| Bait And Bobber | 
|
500g |
| Book Of Stars | 
|
2500g |
| Book of Mysteries | 
|
3000g |
| Combat Quarterly | 
|
500g |
| Dwarvish Safety Manual | 
|
1000g |
| Friendship 101 | 
|
3000g |
| Horse: The Book | 
|
1000g |
| Jack Be Nimble, Jack Be Thick | 
|
500g |
| Jewels Of The Sea | 
|
800g |
| Mapping Cave Systems | 
|
4000g |
| Mining Monthly | 
|
500g |
| Monster Compendium | 
|
2000g |
| Ol' Slitherlegs | 
|
1000g |
| Price Catalogue | 
|
1000g |
| Queen Of Sauce Cookbook | 
|
10000g |
| Raccoon Journal | 
|
1000g |
| Stardew Valley Almanac | 
|
500g |
| The Alleyway Buffet | 
|
3000g |
| The Art O' Crabbing | 
|
1000g |
| The Diamond Hunter | 
|
1000g |
| Treasure Appraisal Guide | 
|
500g |
| Way Of The Wind pt. 1 | 
|
5000g |
| Way Of The Wind pt. 2 | 
|
10000g |
| Woodcutter's Weekly | 
|
500g |
| Woody's Secret | 
|
500g |