At Stardew Valley, your most important items are the tools you use to get things done. All of them can be upgraded from a basic form to an iridium format, but all of these upgrades are costly.
Usually, each individual upgrade requires a large amount of mineral, money and several days, and usually takes more than a year in the game to get an iridium grade quality until everything is free to use.
That said, knowing what to prioritize first is a great help. I’ve listed these in the order I think are most important, but I usually recommend going for the first upgrade with most tools before proceeding with all the tools.
However, prioritizing one tool over anything else during the early game is very beneficial. So, especially if you’re going to shoot one thing, this is the order I came up with to maximize your efficiency.
1
Backpack
I hid it
As you’d expect, backpack upgrades are the easiest of all upgrades, and the most useful upgrade across the entire game with all skills and all playstyles.
Doubled, and finally Three times Stock size lifts the heavy burden of inventory management off the shoulder and can carry more crops, ores, fish, berry and monster booty.
Every time I start a new playthrough, the first large purchase I make is always a big pack. Then cut down enough money to buy a deluxe pack before upgrading any other tools.
This will save you on a trip home, alleviate the problem of throwing away potentially valuable items to save you space in stock, and are around the obvious best options of your top priorities.
2
Pics
mining
While writing this guide from the perspective of players who want to prioritize all skills equally, it is an obvious choice to invest first after upgrading your tools.
In the first few layers of the mine, you can do perfectly well with the default pikacuse and some bombs, but once you mine iron, gold, especially iridium, you’ll definitely need to upgrade.
Gold collarbones are completely easy to do, making it a much easier task to collect minerals for Pitax upgrades as well as other basic tools.
If you are not mining at maximum efficiency, I highly recommend going all the way to Iridium as the skull will be a much larger blockade.
3
fishing rod
Hooks, lines, sinkers
This may come as a bit of a curveball, but it is highly recommended to jump into a fishing rod upgrade whenever you get a chance. This is mainly because fishing is perfect for early game money and is easy to get.
You can purchase an Iridium rod at Fishing Level 2 for your first rod upgrade and an Iridium rod at Fishing Level 6. This is a skill that is fairly easy to level up. The rod is only 7500g, which greatly improves fishing capacity.
This allows you to attach both the bait and the tackle. This dramatically improves catch rates, whatever your tackle abilities are, and fishing will use your time even more advantageously than before.
If these upgrades are installed in the ore, they will probably be low, but I think this is the number one priority if you want a way to make easy early game money due to their relatively low cost and high profitability.
4
ax
Breaker Buster
Getting a steel axe is a huge priority. Because without it you cannot cut down the huge logs that live on a farm. That’s a big deal considering they can block important areas from time to time.
These logs block the secret forest you do. So, making ASAP steel, meaning an Axe upgrade, is something that many people see, including themselves, sometimes.
That said, there is little reason to make a gold x. Making iridium x is not particularly effective. They are not because of their own benefits, but because they improve efficiency when carving the trees.
Simply place a few mega bombs nearby and you can cut down all the regular trees. This is much more ranged and much more efficient than manually chopting, making the upgrade much unnecessary.
5
Can be watered
It’s sprinkled
Min-Maxxers may be a waste of effort to upgrade your watering, but for the vast majority of people who don’t want to spend 100% of their time making iridium sprinklers, gold watering cans are incredible.
Water one tile then water it to 9, then go to Golden and it becomes 9. You can double that range by going to Iridium, and manual farming is much less hassle to spare time.
That said, if the sprinklers aren’t that good, they’ll be much more expensive. If you already set up a sprinkler to automate your farm, we recommend going to the steel or gold level here.
But for the majority of us who have large crop fields to get water manually every day, this upgrade is a lifesaver and allows us to make the most of our time and energy, rather than wasting everything on our crops.
6
how
Until we part ways
Apart from the beginning of the game, Hoe is a rather super-trend upgrade. You can do the same job of plowing a large area with bombs, and if you have cash, they are much more effective against it.
Hoe is like a long-term financial investment to get the same thing done, and upgrading it really helps with clay and snow yum farming as well. But that’s the scope of it.
In the past, there is little reason to use Hoe in large areas. Upgrading past steel to the past is almost unfair.
The only reason I upgraded Hoe to Iridium was because it had more purple than I knew what to do. And I wanted all my toolsets to be the same color.
7
trash can
It was abandoned
Upgrading the garbage can to the right side of stock is completely unnecessary and I rarely do that. It gives you a little rebate every time you throw away an item, but you can’t simply throw things away.
A hit to your overall profits is of little value by cluttering and messing around with your inventory. And regaining 10g from that rock pile doesn’t really help your income.
If you’re really worried about losing money from what you’re throwing away, that’s not that important. Because you still lose 40% of the value of the item in the absolute best scenario.
In early games, if you’re worried about losing money, it’s much more effective to go back home and stuff items into the collection bin. Later in the game, this is totally unworthy as you already have a lot of money.
8
Sickle
You die to you
I’m not too passionate about Scythe upgrades because I don’t have any money on you, but they’re still pretty worthless to prioritize. They are really given as a reward for things that are really difficult.
You can obtain a golden scythe by completing a small dungeon in the quarry.
On the other hand, the iridium sickle can tear all crops and collect them a little earlier, but nothing deserves the effort to earn 100,000 master points just for additional purposes.
Instead, I often go through the struggle to get these two upgrades and receive a scythe upgrade by pure coincidence. It’s not a priority at all and I recommend trying to be proactive.
9
pot
Sieve the garbage
I’ve made it pretty clear before, but again for the people behind me. Panning is terrible and one of the worst ways to spend time.
The only reason I recommend these upgrades is when I try to maximize the ring combination. Breading on Ginger Island for rack rings is the most effective way.
That said, I recommend doing this outside of the end of the game. The upgrade makes the experience a little easier, but fortunately enough to win another pan spot.
This is a terrible way to get ore, a much more effective use of money and ore than any other option in the entire game, and a completely unworthy outlook that benefits only the most dedicated players.
