In Stardew Valley players take on the role of a farmer making their way in Pelican Town. Like any starting business, players begin the game with fairly inefficient tools. As the farm grows and players progress there are better tools to acquire. The best tools you can get in the game are Iridium tools. To learn more about the tools here’s a complete Stardew Valley Iridium tools guide.
How to Get Iridium Tools
Iridium tools are the highest quality of tools that a player can acquire in Stardew Valley. You begin the game with a set of standard tools and can upgrade them by bringing material and Gold to the Blacksmith Clint on the east side of Pelican Town. Tools have to be upgraded following a specific order which is:
Base (starting) > Copper > Steel > Gold > Iridium.
In order to gain access to Iridium quality tools you have to reach the Iridium quality tool upgrade. Once you’ve reached that upgrade take 25,000g and 5x Iridium Bars to Clint per tool you want upgraded. This means to fully upgrade all tools it costs players 112,500g and 25x Iridium Bars.
When you are upgrading a tool at Clint’s the tool being upgraded is removed from your inventory and Clint becomes unavailable for two days. This means you are not able to purchase things from him or use him to break open Geodes during this time frame. Once the tool is ready you will see a notice when you wakeup in the bottom left corner of the screen. Simply visit Clint to pick it up.
Benefits of Iridium Tools
Getting all of your tools to Iridium quality takes quite a bit of hard work. This work may cause you to wonder if the benefits of Iridium tools are worth the effort. The answer to that question is yes, yes they are. Iridium tools, when used, give players the highest amount of efficiency that each tool is capable of. This makes all tasks involving tools much faster if you use the tools. To learn more about the upgrade bonuses here’s the benefit that each Iridium tool gets (via Stardew Valley wiki):
| Tool (Iridium Quality) | Upgrade Bonus |
|---|---|
| Hoe | Increases maximum area of effect to 6×3 tiles. |
| Pickaxe | Can break rocks in the Quarry Mine and Skull Cavern in one hit. |
| Axe | 2 hits to chop a fully-grown tree, and 1 hit for a small stump. 1 hit for a stage 4 tree and below. |
| Watering Can | Capacity increased to 100 charges. Increases maximum area of effect to a 6×3 area (18 corresponding tiles). |
| Trash Can | When trashing items, reclaim 60% of their monetary value. |
As you naturally make your way through Stardew Valley you will eventually work your way to Iridium tools. Once you have these tools you will notice that your efficiency has greatly increased. This allows you to be more productive doing things around the farm and in the mines.
This is just one of many Stardew Valley guides we’ve created. Be sure to check out our Stardew Valley guide hub page for more guides like this one dealing with a variety of different aspects of ConcernedApe’s popular farming game.
Thoughts on our Stardew Valley Iridium tools guide? Drop them in the comments below.
Comments
I’ve been grinding to upgrade all my tools to Iridium quality and it’s been a wild ride. The efficiency boost is totally worth the 25,000g and 5 Iridium Bars per tool, though—makes farming so much faster! Now if only Clint wouldn’t be unavailable for two days every time I need to upgrade something…
Haha. It is definitely worth the upgrade.
As to grinding…. First buy a crapton of stones (some thousands) and bombs (about a hundered should be enough) and a truck of food, then travel to the desert and go to Skeletal caves. You do not even need to bring tools/weapon. Craft stairs until you reach level 100, then bomb the living hell out of that place and scavenge the loot (do not forget to eat often, as you WILL get hurt a lot). Depending on your speed and skill, you should earn 300-1000 iridium ore per day of doing this, so about 2 days this should see you with more iridium than you will ever need. Well, the initial cost for stones and bombs can be quite high, but who really cares about money with full greenhouse of ancient plants and kegs 😀
If only you knew this much about getting women…
… You’ll thank me when you need to chop a tree down in two swings
Women? Is that some kind of exotic crop? Are they even good for anything?
Haha. Do the sell for a lot of gold?
Nerd…