Scarecrow
| Scarecrow | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Crafted Item |
| Recipe | Farming Level 1 |
The Scarecrow is the first piece of protection most farms ever build. Crows visit the farm and peck away at growing crops, and a Scarecrow keeps them off a wide circle of fields around it. The recipe comes with the very first Farming level, and the materials are cheap, so a field can be guarded within days of the first harvest. Building one also finishes Advancement, one of the early story quests. Rarecrows, the collectable versions sold at festivals and shops, do exactly the same job with a different look. Gathering the whole Rarecrow set leads to the Deluxe Scarecrow, which guards a much larger area.
Recipe
The recipe unlocks at Farming level 1. The usual way to get there is to plant the starting Parsnip Seeds, harvest them and ship the Parsnips. The level comes in overnight, and the Scarecrow is in the crafting menu the next morning.
All three materials are easy to find on a new farm. Chopping trees and fallen branches with the Axe gives the Wood. Cutting weeds and tall grass gives the Fiber. Coal is the only part that takes a little luck, since it only drops now and then from rocks broken with the Pickaxe.
Crafting that first Scarecrow completes the Advancement quest, which follows on from the opening Getting Started quest. The reward is a small sum of gold, collected from the quest entry in the journal.
Rarecrows cannot be crafted at all. Most of them are bought: at the Stardew Valley Fair for Star Tokens, at Spirit's Eve, at the Flower Dance, at the Festival of Ice, at the Casino for Qi Coins, from the Dwarf in the Mines and now and then from the Traveling Cart in Fall or Winter. The last two are rewards for donating to the Museum. After the first copy arrives, further copies of those two can be bought at the Night Market.
These are the ingredients one batch needs.
| Name | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | 
|
50 |
| Coal | 
|
1 |
| Fiber | 
|
20 |
Use
Once placed, a Scarecrow guards a roughly round patch of ground. It reaches eight tiles straight out to the north, south, east and west, and a little less along the diagonals. A square field seventeen tiles wide with the Scarecrow in the centre is almost entirely covered. Only a few tiles in each corner fall outside its reach.
Crops planted inside that circle are safe from crows. Crops outside it are fair game, so a large farm needs several Scarecrows spaced so their circles meet. Crops grown from Wild Seeds are never touched by crows, so a patch of foraging crops can go without one.
Clicking on a Scarecrow shows how many crows it has frightened off since it was put down. Picking it up and placing it somewhere else starts that count again from zero.
Notes
Every Rarecrow has the same reach as the plain Scarecrow. Their only extra is style, so they suit fields near the farmhouse where a bit of character is welcome. The alien Rarecrow from the Casino is the one exception with a small trick of its own: it can wear a hat.
The first Rarecrow is a nod to Turnip Head, the scarecrow from the film Howl's Moving Castle.
Soon after the last Rarecrow is collected, a letter arrives with the Deluxe Scarecrow recipe. That model covers twice the distance of a normal one in every direction. On a farm with big fields, a handful of Deluxe Scarecrows can replace a crowd of the basic ones.
All Crafting
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
