As you level up different skills in Stardew Valley, you will get to decide on unique professions which give you specific buffs to help your gameplay. For example, your farming skill will go up as you continue to plant and harvest crops. Once you reach level 5, you can pick between the Tiller and Rancher professions. If you choose Tiller, making all crops worth 10% more, you are given two new profession choices when you reach level 10: Agriculturist and Artisan. But which should you pick?
While being an Artisan increases all selling prices of artisan goods by 40%, being an Agriculturist makes all crops grow 10% faster. Is it worth the speed boost over that bonus? Can it actually give you more profit? Is an Agriculturist secretly better than the fan-favorite Artisan?
The Benefits of an Artisan
Being an Artisan is by far the most popular choice and for good reason! Not only is 40% a big price bonus, but it goes to many different goods that are made from casks, preserve jars, bee houses, and animals. However, it can be a bit overwhelming to know what all of the goods affected by the profession are. The easiest way to remember is knowing that every artisan good comes from a machine.
Bee Houses
Bee houses create honey over time, and the type of honey is affected by the flowers nearby in its radius. Depending on the flower the more the honey will sell for, with Fairy Rose honey selling for 952g with Artisan! These houses are easy to make too, only requiring 40 wood, 8 coal, 1 iron bar, and 1 maple syrup to craft while past Farming level 3.
Cheese Press
As the name suggests, cheese presses produce, well, cheese! Specifically they make cow and goat cheese. These cheeses sell for quite a bit, but they only go up to gold quality. For iridium, you must use a cask and wait for it, but the Artisan profession helps increase the price of the gold quality to where it’s much more worth it to simply sell your cheese to save room in your cellar for wine. One cheese press requires 45 wood, 45 stone, 10 hardwood, and one copper bar to craft while being at least at Farming level 6. It is also wise to either place this machine in either a shed or in barns to quickly place your milk.
Mayonnaise Machine
Mayonnaise machines make different types of mayonnaise depending on the eggs you place in them. For example, a dinosaur egg will make dinosaur mayonnaise! You must be at Farming level 2 and it needs 15 wood, 15 stone, 1 earth crystal, and 1 copper bar to make. With how easy it is to acquire more coop animals with an incubator, it is easy to mass produce a ton of mayonnaise. This fact alone may tempt players to go for the Rancher profession(Raises all animal products by 20%) in the early game and choose Coopmaster next which makes increasing friendship and incubation times a lot faster. However, Artisan still trumps both of these professions as it still makes iridium mayonnaise worth more by 76g!
Loom
At farming level 7, you can craft a loom with 60 wood, 30 fiber, and 1 pine tar. Looms will take sheep or rabbit wool and turn it into cloth. While the Shepherd profession will increase the speed at which sheep produce wool, it isn’t really worth it as cloth only sells for 470g, making it less than gold quality wool at 510g. However, with Artisan, this makes all cloth worth 658g, making a dramatic difference of 188g from its base price!
Oil Maker
Oil makers are available at Farming level 8, but they can be a bit expensive to craft requiring 20 hardwood, 1 gold bar, and 50 slime! But these machines can make up for this by being able to produce oil out of corn, sunflowers, and their seeds, but also most famously truffle oil. while regular oil is mainly useful for cooking, truffle oil makes major profits. At base price, it sells for 1,065g, but it is still less than Iridium truffles which sell for 1,250g. Artisan fixes this though, making truffle oil sell all the way up to 1,491g, a 241g difference from the highest quality truffle! This makes it worth crafting plenty of oil makers to make as much truffle oil as possible!
Keg
Kegs can make many different drinks that cannot only give certain buffs but can sell for a lot when sold as an Artisan, especially after using a cask! They can be made at Farming level 8 with 30 wood, 1 copper bar, 1 iron bar, and 1 oak resin. Below are the drinks that can be made from kegs as well as their sell price at regular quality with the 40% bonus.
- Beer – 1 Wheat (280g)
- Coffee – 5 Coffee Beans (150g)
- Green Tea – 1 Tea Leaves (100g)
- Juice – 1 of Any Vegetable (1.4 x Base Juice Price)
- Mead – 1 Honey (280g)
- Pale Ale – 1 Hops (420g)
- Wine – 1 of Any Fruit (1.4 x Base Wine Price)
Preserves Jar
Preserve jars are available at Farming level 4 costing 40 wood, 40 stone, and 8 coal. While these jars aren’t as profitable as their keg cousins, they still can add a lot to your funds and shouldn’t be overlooked. Below are the preserves and their prices with the Artisan bonus.
- Pickles – 1 of Any Vegetable/Ginger (2 x Base Vegetable Price + 50 + 40%)
- Jelly – 1 of Any Fruit (2 x Base Fruit Price + 50 + 40%)
- Caviar – 1 Sturgeon Roe (700g)
- Aged Roe – 1 of Any Roe Except Sturgeon (1.4 x Base Aged Roe Price)
Cask
Casks are unlocked after you have upgraded your house to earn a cellar. They can be crafted with 20 wood and 1 hardwood, but you will have to craft a lot of these to maximize potential profits. Casks are infamous for the amount of insane wealth you can achieve with them but only if your patience is strong enough(unless you farm for Fairy Dust). Without the Artisan profession, you will still make loads of money with the casks, but if you wish to achieve record profits and make the most out of this machine, then this profession is the way to go. Below is the selling price and time with Artisan when going for Iridium quality products.
- Wine – (3 x Base) x 2 + 1.4 x Base Wine Price (56 Days)
- Pale Ale – 840g (34 Days)
- Beer – 560g (28 Days)
- Mead – 560g (28 Days)
- Cheese – 644g (14 Days)
- Goat Cheese -1,120g (14 Days)
The Benefits of an Agriculturist
The Agriculturist profession is appealing to players who have a bit less patience. I don’t blame them, as it is easy to think that when combined with planting as many seeds as possible and fertilizers such as Speed-Gro, great profits are sure to come quickly. This can also be proved useful needing certain crops for quests or for speed-running the Community Center bundles. While all of this is certainly true, just how effective is this profession profit-wise when applying this strategy?
A good example to put this into action is by looking at blueberries. Blueberries usually take 13 days to grow when watered every day. With just the profession, it takes 11 days to grow, shaving off only 2 days. Looking at just that, the speed bonus doesn’t seem very effective. But with Speed-Gro, that is where the bonus begins to shine. With regular Speed-Gro along with the profession, there is only a 10-day wait for your blueberries. When you go all the way up to using Hyper Speed-Gro, you only have to wait 7 days!
While this seems well and good, you have to rely on constantly crafting Speed-Gro in order to make this speed effect worth it. With regular and Deluxe Speed-Gro being available at Pierre’s General Store unless crafted and the Hyper version unlocked at Ginger Island, it would probably be more of a tedious annoyance and money drain rather than a help, especially when growing a mass amount of crops. Not only that but fertilizers and the Agriculturist boost do not affect regrowth times, so it may be more appealing to use this profession when growing single harvest crops like Starfruit.
So…Which One?
Both professions have their perks at the end of the day as the choice is there to fit the unique play styles and farms of every player. However, there is a good reason why the Artisan profession is so popular (and often abused) as it is. With its lucrative price points, it gives you and how it can borderline break the game and make you a millionaire in what feels like overnight at times, its potential is hard to pass up. That’s not even including Fairy Dust, which can cause kegs, casks, and other machines to finish producing in an instant. Imagine how crazy things can get with that!
However, that doesn’t make being an Agriculturist all bad either, as depending on how you play, it may actually be more helpful for you. If you are more focused on speed-running then the speed boost may help just a tad, or maybe casks and kegs just aren’t your thing.
Either way, don’t be afraid to experiment a bit and try them both out once in a while, whether that is on a new save or a current one. In the sewers, you can find the Statue of Uncertainty, in which after paying a price of 10,000g you can choose a different profession of your choice. You can do this as many times as you’d like in a save. Whether you are an Artisan or Agriculturist connoisseur, both have their perks, so try them out and have fun!
