Trash
| Trash | |
|---|---|
| Type | Resource |
Trash is the category the game keeps for the junk that comes out of the water and out of the bins: the crumpled Trash item itself, a piece of Driftwood, a Soggy Newspaper, a Broken CD, a pair of Broken Glasses, a Joja Cola and a Rotten Plant. None of it fetches a single coin at a counter, and handing any of it to a villager is close to an insult. A Recycling Machine changes the arithmetic completely, turning the pile into Stone, Coal, Iron Ore, Wood, Torches, Cloth and Refined Quartz. Linus posts a special order asking for twenty pieces, and in a third year a bear settles in the forest with its own opinions about the state of the valley. Junk is the one haul worth carrying home from a bad day's fishing.
Location
Fishing produces most of it, and the reason is worth understanding, because it explains where to go. A cast checks each kind of fish currently available in that water for a bite, and junk is what turns up when every one of those checks has failed. The more species a spot holds, the more chances there are for a real fish to take the line, so junk is thickest where the fish list is thinnest. The water in The Mines is the classic example. The Farm Pond on the Standard Farm and the Beach Farm goes further still: nothing swims in it, so every cast there lands junk, which makes it the one place in the valley to fish for rubbish on purpose.
Skill pushes the rate down hard. As Fishing climbs, real fish bite more readily, and at the top of the skill a spot with five or more catchable things in it hands out almost no junk at all. A junk catch is not wasted time, though. A piece hauled in on a rod still pays a little Fishing experience, a piece pulled out of a Crab Pot pays slightly more, and in the fishing contest at the Stardew Valley Fair a piece of junk is worth a point like anything else.
Crab Pots are the lazy route. A baited pot in any water may come up holding junk rather than shellfish, and that covers every type except the cola. The Garbage Cans standing beside the houses and shops of Pelican Town hold junk mixed in among their better finds, so a circuit of the town adds to the pile without a rod.
The Rotten Plant arrives by a different road entirely. A Jack-O-Lantern left standing outdoors when Fall turns to Winter decays into one overnight, which is a seasonal trap for anyone who decorates the farm for Spirit's Eve and then forgets to bring the lanterns in.
Uses
The Recycling Machine is the reason any of this is worth keeping. Its recipe arrives at the fourth level of Fishing, and the Field Research Bundle hands one over as a reward, so most farms have one running before the first year is out. Each piece takes about an hour inside. Plain Trash splits three ways between Stone, Coal and Iron Ore, with Stone the commonest, which turns a bag of litter into the fuel and the building material for a Furnace. Driftwood mostly comes back as Wood, with Coal as the alternative. A Soggy Newspaper usually gives a few Torches and now and then a single piece of Cloth, and that Cloth is the cheapest in the game for a farm with no Loom and no sheep. Both the disc and the glasses give Refined Quartz, which saves the Quartz and the Coal a Furnace would otherwise want.
A Wood Chipper beats the recycler for Driftwood alone, returning a far bigger pile of Wood from the same branch. Keeping both machines and sorting the day's haul between them gets the most out of a fishing trip.
Linus posts Community Cleanup on the Special Orders board. It asks for twenty pieces of junk inside a week, dropped into the dumpster by the train platform, and everything in the category counts except the cola and the Rotten Plant. A farm that has been saving junk for the recycler can clear it in an afternoon, and the junk-only Farm Pond makes it quicker still.
The Sewing Machine accepts junk in the spool, and most of the category sews the same shirt, while several pieces double as dyes at the pots on 2 Willow Lane. Mr. Qi's colour-sorting order in the Walnut Room is the other place junk earns its keep, since a cheap item of the right colour counts exactly as much as an expensive one.
Notes
Not every piece deserves the recycler. The disc and the glasses are the two worth hoarding, because Refined Quartz goes into sprinklers, Lightning Rods and most of the late machines. Newspapers are worth saving until a Cloth is actually needed. Driftwood has a second life as a gift, since Leah the sculptor is glad of a nice piece, which makes it the only junk in the valley that buys friendship.
The Trash Bear is the valley's answer to litter rather than to the junk item, and it does not ask for either. It settles on the cliff above the sewer grate in Cindersap Forest from a third year onwards, on a dry day outside the festivals, and what it wants is food: two things gathered or caught in the current season, then two cooked dishes. Meeting the fourth request sends it off under an umbrella, and the rubbish lying around several corners of the valley goes with it.
All Resources
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
| Name | Image | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Bat Wing | 
|
15g |
| Battery Pack | 
|
500g |
| Bone Fragment | 
|
12g |
| Broken CD | 
|
0g |
| Broken Glasses | 
|
0g |
| Bug Meat | 
|
8g |
| Cave Jelly | 
|
180g |
| Cinder Shard | 
|
50g |
| Clay | 
|
20g |
| Coal | 
|
15g |
| Copper Bar | 
|
- |
| Copper Ore | 
|
5g |
| Driftwood | 
|
0g |
| Fiber | 
|
1g |
| Gold Bar | 
|
- |
| Gold Ore | 
|
25g |
| Green Algae | 
|
15g |
| Hardwood | 
|
15g |
| Iridium Bar | 
|
- |
| Iridium Ore | 
|
100g |
| Iron Bar | 
|
- |
| Iron Ore | 
|
10g |
| Joja Cola | 
|
25g |
| Monster Loot | - | - |
| Moss | 
|
5g |
| Radioactive Bar | 
|
- |
| Radioactive Ore | 
|
300g |
| Refined Quartz | 
|
50g |
| Rice | 
|
100g |
| River Jelly | 
|
125g |
| Rotten Plant | 
|
0g |
| Sea Jelly | 
|
200g |
| Soggy Newspaper | 
|
0g |
| Solar Essence | 
|
40g |
| Stone | 
|
2g |
| Sugar | 
|
50g |
| Trash | - | - |
| Trash (item) | 
|
0g |
| Treasure Chest | 
|
5000g |
| Vinegar | 
|
100g |
| Void Essence | 
|
50g |
| Wheat Flour | 
|
50g |
| White Algae | 
|
25g |
| Wood | 
|
2g |