Solar Panel
| Solar Panel | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Crafted Item |
| Recipe | "Island Ingredients" Special Order |
The Solar Panel is a machine that slowly charges a Battery Pack from sunshine. Left outdoors, it delivers one fresh Battery Pack after it has soaked up a week of sunny days. That makes it the steady partner to the Lightning Rod, which only charges during thunderstorms. The recipe is a reward from Caroline, who asks for a large shipment of tropical crops. Battery Packs feed some of the best machines in the game, so a row of panels quietly keeps those projects supplied.
Recipe
Caroline teaches the recipe through her special order, Island Ingredients. The order only appears once Ginger Island is open. It asks for a hundred of one tropical crop to be shipped within four weeks: Taro Root, Ginger or Pineapple. The crops must be harvested while the order is running, so a stockpile kept in a chest from earlier does not help. Along with the recipe, Caroline pays half the base value of the crops shipped.
Growing the crops is the easiest way to fill it. The Island Trader on Ginger Island swaps Taro Tubers for Bone Fragments, and they grow on the island farm. Ginger grows wild on the island and has to be dug up with the Hoe. Tiger Slimes also drop it.
Each panel needs Refined Quartz, Iron Bars and Gold Bars. Smelting Quartz with Coal in a Furnace makes Refined Quartz, and a single Fire Quartz smelts into three of them at once. Iron and Gold Bars come from the matching ores, smelted the same way.
These are the ingredients one batch needs.
| Name | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Refined Quartz | 
|
10 |
| Iron Bar | 
|
5 |
| Gold Bar | 
|
5 |
Use
A Solar Panel only charges outdoors. Out in the open, it counts sunny days, starting with the day it was put down. After seven of them, a Battery Pack is waiting the next morning. Rainy days simply do not count, so a wet spell stretches the wait instead of resetting it.
Sunny weather is far more common than thunderstorms. A Lightning Rod has to wait for a storm and then for a strike, and even then a given rod may be missed. A panel only needs ordinary fine days, so it turns out Battery Packs on a steady schedule.
Notes
Battery Packs are worth stockpiling. The Iridium Sprinkler, the Crystalarium, the Slime Egg-Press, the Farm Computer and the Mini-Jukebox all need one. Robin's Wood Lamp-post and Iron Lamp-post recipes call for them as well. A Battery Pack also starts The Mysterious Qi quest when it is placed in the lockbox inside the tunnel west of the Bus Stop. Spare packs can be sold to Robin at the Carpenter's Shop.
All Crafting
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
