Every aspect of this game is related to one of five skills and they each have their own individual leveling system that only increases by performing certain actions. Every level of a skill grants you specific rewards, and at levels five and ten you are allowed to pick one of two perks that are highly beneficial. The perks at level ten are different based on which skill you picked at level five.
Each skill requires a total of 15,000 experience points to level up all the way to level ten, with the largest amount of experience points required being from level nine to level ten.
Farming Farming skill is increased by planting and harvesting crops that are available from the shop each season except Winter. The crops must be planted and harvested to yield experience. Foraging crops, like the cactus plant, will reward foraging experience, not farming experience. In general, the more expensive a crop is, the more experience it gives when it's harvested. A crop that yields multiple harvests gives experience each time you harvest, but crops that yield multiple fruit or vegetables each time they are harvested only give experience for one crop, not the totals that are harvested at once. Several crops, such as corn, coffee beans, and ancient fruit, can be grown in multiple seasons and will be valuable multi-season crops.
As a quick example, if you grew solely coffee beans, which are the lowest experience yielding crop, you'd have to harvest them 3,750 times to reach level ten. If you could only harvest sweet gem berries, which are the highest experience yielding crops, you'd only have to harvest 235 crops. Experience yield is not affected by the quality of the crop. Below is a list of all available crops and their experience yields.
Spring Coffee Bean: 4
Tulip: 7
Unmilled Rice: 7
Parsnip: 8
Green Bean: 9
Blue Jazz: 10
Garlic: 12
Cactus Fruit: 14
Potato: 14
Kale: 17
Strawberry: 18
Cauliflower: 23
Rhubarb: 26
Ancient Fruit: 38
Summer Coffee Bean: 4
Hops: 6
Wheat: 6
Hot Pepper: 9
Blueberry: 10
Corn: 10
Tomato: 12
Sunflower: 14
Cactus Fruit: 14
Radish: 15
Summer Spangle: 15
Taro Root: 16
Poppy: 20
Melon: 27
Red Cabbage: 28
Pineapple: 30
Ancient Fruit: 38
Starfruit: 43
Fall Wheat: 6
Corn: 10
Eggplant: 12
Bok Choy: 14
Cranberries: 14
Grape: 14
Sunflower: 14
Cactus Fruit: 14
Beet: 16
Amaranth: 21
Artichoke: 22
Yam: 22
Fairy Rose: 29
Pumpkin: 31
Antient Fruit: 38
Sweet Gem Berry: 64
Foraging Foraging is just what the word suggests: finding things in the world and picking them up. Most items that are found on the ground and can be gathered count towards foraging. That includes items picked up from the mines and the skull cavern, the beach, Ginger Island, the Calico Desert, and the farm cave if the fruit bat option is chosen when asked. There are also a few other ways to earn foraging experience that are unrelated to picking up items from the ground. The only exception to the rule is that items gathered in the mines that count towards foraging are the purple and red mushrooms, as well as fiddlehead ferns. All gems and other items count towards other skills. If you chose the gatherer skill at level five and a foraged item yields two items, then double experience is rewarded.
The availability of foraging items is on a weekly timer, which resets every Sunday. There are a maximum of six available foraging items every week for each unique map section and gathering any item does not reset the counter for the given week. Below is a full list of foraging experience.
Foraging any item off the ground around the world: 7
Chopping down the top half of any tree: 12
Chopping down the trunk of any tree: 1
Chopping down a large stump or large log: 25
Spring onions in the Cindersap forest: 3
Items grown from Wild Seeds: 7
Truffles via pigs: 7
Fishing Personally speaking, fishing is my favorite part of Stardew Valley. The minigame is very simple to understand and get skilled in, and the variety in the fish's difficulties leave every minigame feeling more random and challenging than boring and repetitive. I genuinely love fishing in this game.
As far as the minigame is concerned, the controls are as simple as can be. To start, stand near most bodies of water with your given fishing rod equipped, then hold
to fill up a bar. Releasing the bar as it becomes full will result in a "Max" cast. There will be a fish in the bar that moves according to its behavioral pattern and difficulty level. The green bar is your effective area and is how you actually catch the fish. You use
to move the bar up and release
to move the bar down. An orange bar on the right side will dictate how close you are to catching the fish, which rises, and falls based on whether the fish is within the green bar that you are controlling. That's it.
There are three rods that can be used to fish, one of which is given to you by the fish shop owner. Starting on the third of Spring, you'll get a piece of mail urging you to meet "Willy" at the beach. Go there for a cutscene where he gives you the bamboo pole. At fishing level two, you can buy the fiberglass pole for 1,800 gold, which allows you to attach bait to the pole. At fishing level six, you can buy the iridium pole for 7,500 gold, which allow you to attach bait and a tackle to the pole. The poles do not affect the size of the green bar in the minigame.
There are also items called crab pots that reward experience every time something is collected from them, regardless of what is collected. Crabs give the same experience as driftwood.
As far as actual experience goes, the crab pots, regardless of what is collected, always yield five experience points. If you catch any trash, seaweed, or algae while fishing, you'll earn three experience points. The fish are where the experience earned gets weird.
Every fish caught has a quality level, from normal or no starts, to iridium, and each quality level has a number attached to it. Normal is zero, silver is one, gold is two, and iridium is four. Each fish also has a difficulty number, ranging from 5 to 110. Experience is multiplied by 2.2 if a treasure chest is caught, by 2.4 if the catch was "perfect", and by 5 if it was a legendary fish. The formula for experience gained is as follows, copied from the Stardew Valley Wikipedia, XP = ((Fish Quality + 1) * 3) + (Fish Difficulty / 3). Basically, take the quality of the fish plus one and multiply that by three, then divide the difficulty number of the fish by three and add those numbers together. Multiply that number by whatever multipliers you may have and cut off any decimal points if there are any to get your final experience gain from any given fish. Complicated.
To simplify the experience gained from fish, if you caught solely normal quality Sardines, which are the lowest difficulty fish, with no multipliers or additional experience, you'd have to catch a total of 1,154 fish. If you caught solely "perfect" iridium quality Legend legendary fish with a treasure chest, which is impossible, you'd only have to catch 13 fish. If you only used crab pots and never fished, you'd have to collect 3,000 crab pot items.
Mining Mining is very simple: whack things and get stuff. The mines will open on the fifth day of Spring, and you'll be told via mail. Head to the northeastern section of the map to find the mine.
For experience, each rock broken has a chance to give experience points but doesn't necessarily give experience unless specific things happen, i.e., a piece of coal comes out after breaking the rock. Specifically, breaking any normal rock in the mines yields no experience points unless a coal comes out, and breaking the large boulders outside of the mines yields no experience points. Breaking ores gives different experience points and breaking gem nodes gives different experience points. Below is a full list of actions that do yield experience points. If there are two numbers, then having a coal spawn changes how much experience is gained. For the nodes with two numbers, having the Geologist perk may cause two gems to spawn, thus increasing the experience gained by the amount listed, which will be smaller than the single node.
Break any normal rock inside the mines: 0/5
Break any rock outside the mines: 1/6
Gray rocks inside the mines: 3/4
Copper Node: 5
Mussel Node: 5
Bone Node: 6
Clay Node: 6
Geode Node: 8
Iron Node: 12
Cinder Shard Node: 12
Frozen Geode Node: 16
Amethyst Node: 16/8
Topaz Node: 16/8
Gold Node: 18
Radioactive Node: 18
Magma Geode Node: 32
Aquamarine Node: 40/20
Jade Node: 40/20
Iridium Node: 50
Mystic Node: 50
Omni Geode Node: 64
Emerald Node: 80/50
Ruby Node: 80/50
Diamond Node: 150/100
As an example, if you broke only rocks outside of the mines that never dropped coal, which only yield one experience point each, you'd have to break 15,000 rocks. If you broke only diamond nodes that always yielded an extra gem, which is the highest yield of experience points, you'd only have to break 60 nodes.
Combat Combat is unlocked at the same time as the mines and any experience cannot be earned before the fifth of Spring, year one. Killin monsters in the mines yields experience points, and killing monsters outside the mines, i.e., on the monster farm, does not yield any experience. Every monster, and some variations of the same monster, yield different experience points.
The weapons involved with the combat skill vary greatly and there are plenty of different weapons to use. From daggers to very long swords to hammers and some strange things in between. The weakest weapon, which is the Carving Knife, only deals one to three damage, while the strongest weapon, which is the Infiniti Gavel, deals 100 to 120 damage. Below is the list of all monsters and their experience points.
Bug: 1
Dust Sprite: 2
Grub: 2
Bat: 3
Green Slime: 3
Rock Crab: 4
Stone Golem: 5
Wilderness Golem: 5
Blue Slime: 6
Metal Head: 6
Mutant Grub: 6
Frost Bat: 7
Big Slime: 7
Pepper Rex: 7
Skeleton: 8
Cave Fly: 10
Red/Purple Slime: 10
Duggy: 10
Mutant Fly: 10
Lava Crab: 12
Lave Bat: 15
Ghost: 15
Squid Kid: 15
Shadow Brute: 15
Shadow Shaman: 15
Haunted Skull: 15
Iridium Crab: 20
Mummy: 20
Serpent: 20
Tiger Slime: 20
Iridium Bat: 22
As an example, if you only killed bugs, which only yield one experience per kill, you'd have to kill 15,000 of the. If you only killed iridium bats, which require a special attribute on the weapon to kill, you'd have to kill 682 of them.
That rounds out the experience yield for any individual action possible in the game, and you now have the knowledge to be as skilled as possible in the game. Enjoy your skill related achievements!
-AchieveDad