Iridium is one of the most valuable resources in Stardew Valley. It’s used to upgrade your tools and craft a wide variety of useful items. How do you get your hands on it? Let’s find out!
What Is Iridium?
Iridium Ore is one of the most rare and valuable resources you can find in Stardew Valley.
What Can you use Iridium For?
Iridium Ore can be used to craft Deluxe Scarecrows, Warp Totem: Desert, and to sew the Energy T-shirt. However, the primary use of Iridium Ore is to craft Iridium Bars. Like all other metal bars, Iridium Bars can be crafted using five Iridium Ore and one Coal at a Furnace. Since this is the most valuable bar, it also takes the longest to craft. It takes eight in-game hours to craft a single bar of Iridium.
Iridium Bars are used for many things:
1. Upgrading your Tools
You’ll require five Iridium Bars and 25000 gold to upgrade each of your tools to their final version. You can upgrade your Hoe, Pickaxe, Axe, Watering Can, and even your Trash Can in this way.
In order to upgrade to Iridium Tools, you’ll need to first have the gold version of your tools. In total, to upgrade each of your tools from scratch, you’ll need five Copper Bars, five Iron Bars, five Gold Bars, five Iridium Bars, and 42000 gold per tool.
2. Crafting
There are seven craftable items that require Iridium Bars:
- Crystalarium: You’ll need two Iridium Bars, five Gold Bars, one Battery Pack, and 99 Stone to craft a single Crystalarium. This machine can replicate any inserted Gem, Geode Mineral or Foraged Minera. The higher the value of the gem, the longer it takes to replicate. Quartz, for example, takes just 7 hours to replicate, whereas Diamonds require a full five days. You can sell these replicated Gems without losing the original! To acquire the recipe for this item, reach level nine in Mining.
⠀ - Deluxe Fertilizer: You can snag the recipe for Deluxe Fertilizer for 20 Qi Gems, and then craft it with 50 Sap and one Iridium Bar. Pricey, but highly worth it! Deluxe Fertilizer will increase the chance for a higher quality crop exponentially.
⠀ - Hopper: This item lets you automate the process of refining materials, such as Ore into Bars or Milk into Cheese. You’ll need ten Hardwood, one Iridium Bar, and one Radioactive Bar to craft this sophisticated item. The recipe can be purchased for 50 Qi Gems.
⠀ - Iridium Band: This accessory is fantastic for any eager miner. It glows, attracts items, and also increases your damage to monsters. To craft it, first reach level nine in Combat to acquire the recipe, then merge five Iridium Bars, 50 Solar Essence, and 50 Void Essence.
⠀ - Iridium Sprinkler: This is the best sprinkler available, watering 24 adjacent tiles each morning. If you plan on focusing on farming at all, you’ll want to have several of these. One Iridium Sprinkler requires one Iridium Bar, one Gold Bar, and one Battery Pack. You need to reach level nine in Farming to acquire this recipe.
⠀ - Slime Incubator: This item requires two Iridium Bars and 100 Slime. Incubators can be placed in Slime Hutches to hatch slime eggs into slimes. You’ll receive the recipe for this contraption when you reach level eight in the Combat skill.
⠀ - Wedding Ring: This accessory is only available in multiplayer. It will allow you ask for your co-op’s hand in marriage. It requires five Iridium Bars and one Prismatic Shard, and the recipe for this ring can be acquired from the Traveling Cart for just 500 gold.
3. Construction
Iridium Bars are necessary to craft any of the Obelisks, as well as a Slime Hutch.
A Slime Hutch can be used to raise Slimes. Slimes generate Slime which you can collect and use for crafting. You need 10000 gold, 500 stone, ten Refined Quartz, and just one single Iridium Bar to construct a Slime Hutch.
Obelisks allow you to teleport from your map to different locations. The Earth Obelisk transports you to the mountains. The Water Obelisk transports you to the Pelican Town beach. The Desert Obelisk teleports you to the Calico Desert. The Island Obelisk transports you to Ginger Island. And, finally, the Farm obelisk warps you from Ginger Island back home.
You can purchase any of the obelisks from the Wizard at the Wizard’s Tower once you’ve completed the Goblin Problem quest. In addition to Iridium Bars, you’ll also need a lot of gold to construct these buildings and some other miscellaneous items.
4. Gifting
Most villagers don’t like ore or metal bars, but Clint, Krobus, Maru, and Willy love Iridium Bars. If you’re looking to befriend any of those lovely people, try handing them one of these purple bars.
5. Selling
If you have no better use for Iridium Bars, you can consider selling them. Just one bar is worth 1000 gold, and 1500 gold if you already have the Blacksmith profession. You can select the Blacksmith profession when you reach mining level ten.
6. Fixing Willy’s Boat
You’ll need five Iridium Bars to fix Willy’s Boat and gain access to Ginger Island. Before you get the option to help, you’ll need to first finish the Community Center or the Joja Community Development Form, and then wait for WIlly to send you a letter.
Four Pro Tips to Farm Iridium
1. Pilfer the Skull Cavern
The Skull Town is your best bet for collecting the most Iridium Ore and Iridium Bars. However, this mine isn’t for the faint of heart, so come prepared! In order to reach the Skull Cavern, you’ll need to travel by bus to the Calico Desert.
How do I fix the bus?
There are two ways to fix the bus, and they both involve money.
- Complete the Vault Bundle in the Community Center. You’ll need a grand total of 42500 gold to complete it.
⠀ - Purchase the Bus Repair from the Joja Community Development Form. You’ll need a grand total of 40000 gold to fix the bus this way.
How can I prepare?
One thing that’s very important is to make sure your daily luck is high before you spend the time and money to delve into the Skull Cavern. You’ll need high luck to ensure you can reach the lower levels of the mine. You can check your daily luck by watching the Fortune Teller TV channel each morning.
You’ll also want to make sure you’ve got the right tools. You’ll need a good Pickaxe to be able to reach a low level in the mines. You’ll also want a good sword such as the Lava Katana (25000g at Marlon’s, after reaching level 120 in the mines) or the Galaxy Sword. If you like using Slingshots, make sure you bring enough ammunition. The strongest ammunition is Iridium Ore, but Gold Ore will do nicely too.
Staircases and bombs will be extremely useful as well. If you think you’re taking too long clearing a level, drop down a Staircase or a Bomb near a big cluster of rocks, and find the ladder down much faster than by manually pickaxing each stone.
Finally, be sure to bring some high-quality food. Gold or Iridium Cheese is a very simple food item that you’ll probably have if you have a Barn. You can also find great food at the Stardroop Saloon every day. High-quality food gives you the highest amount of Health and Energy, and you’ll want to keep both of those up during your foray into the mines.
What should I do in the Skull Cavern?
The best way to find Iridium is by destroying Iridium Nodes. These will be quite common once you reach the lower levels of the mines. After level 40, you can expect to find Iridium Nodes fairly commonly. If your main goal is to collect as much Iridium as possible, you’ll want to go through the first 40 levels wasting as little time as possible. All the good stuff is a lot further down.
Aside from cracking Iridium Nodes, you can find what you’re looking for by killing Purple Slimes, Iridium Crabs, and Iridium Bats.
2. Crack Open Geodes
Magma Geodes and Omni Geodes have a chance to contain Iridium Ore. Once you’ve amassed a large number of Geodes, head on over to Clint’s and see how lucky you get! You can also crack Geodes open at home by using a Geode Crusher, but you’ll need to supply one Clay per Geode and wait for one hour for the Geode to process.
Magma Geodes can be found on levels 81 to 119 of the Pelican Town Mines or by opening Treasure Chests.
Omni Geodes can be found anywhere. You can collect Omni Geodes by breaking regular rocks in the mines from floor 20 onwards, or in the Skull Cavern on any floor. You can purchase Omni Geodes from Sandy in the Oasis on Wednesday, or from Krobus on Tuesdays. When placed in Fish Ponds, Squids have a chance of producing Omni Geodes for you as well.
3. Visit the Quarry
You don’t need to go all the way to the Skull Cavern to find Iridium Nodes or Omni Geodes. You can find these things by visiting the local Quarry. Once you clear the Quarry out entirely, you’ll have to wait a few days for new rocks to spawn, but they will spawn infinitely. Check out the Quarry once a week and see if you’ve gotten lucky!
4. Raise Super Cucumbers
Another way you can collect Iridium Ore is by raising Super Cucumbers in Fish Ponds. The more ponds you have, the more ore you can get!
To start, you’ll need to construct a Fish Pond. You can do this at the Carpenter’s Shop using 5000 gold, 200 Stone, five Seaweed, and five Green Algae per pond.
You’ll only need one Super Cucumber to get this going, though having more will speed things up. To catch a Super Cucumber, you need to go fishing in the Ocean during Summer and Fall. You can fish at the Pelican Town beach, on your Farm if you have the Beach Farm layout, or on Ginger Island. To catch the Super Cucumber during Summer or Fall, you need to fish between 06:00 pm and 02:00 am.
You can also catch Super Cucumbers during the deep-sea submarine ride, which you can do on any day of the Night Market Festival in Winter.
Once you have a single Super Cucumber, you can place it in your Fish Pond and wait for five days for it to reproduce. Once the pond is at capacity, you’ll be prompted to give an item to the fish. Super Cucumbers can ask for Honey, Oysters, Emeralds, or something else, depending on how many fish there are in the pond.
Once there are at least nine Super Cucumbers in your pond, you’ll start to have a 5% chance to collect 1-3 Iridium Ore from the pond. If you have ten ponds, that’s a nearly 50% chance to get some Iridium Ore every day!
5. Acquire The Statue of Perfection
The Statue of Perfection will grant you 2-8 Iridium Ore each day, but getting this statue won’t be easy. You’ll need to pass Grandpa’s evaluation and have four candles lit at Grandpa’s Shrine.
Grandpa’s evaluation scores your farmer based on how many milestones they’ve completed during the first two years. There is a total of 21 points the farmer can earn, and you require at least 12 to be able to snag the Statue of Perfection.
Here is how you can earn those 12 points:
- Earn Money: You can get 1-7 points based on how much money you’ve earned in total over the course of the first two years. You’ll get one point for earning 50000 gold, and seven points for earning 1000000 gold.
⠀ - Master the Skills: If you reach a total of 30 levels in skills, you’ll earn one point. You’ll earn one additional point if you reach level ten in all your skills.
⠀ - Collect, Collect, Collect: You’ll earn one point for completing the museum collection, one point for catching every fish, and one point for shipping every item.
⠀ - Make friends: You’ll earn one point for reaching eight hearts with five villagers, and one more point for reaching that many hearts with ten villagers. You can also grab one point by reaching maximum friendship with your pet!
⠀ - Find the keys: You’ll get one point for finding the Skull Key, which you receive by reaching the bottom of the mine. You’ll get another point for finding the Rusty Key, which is given to you by Gunther once you donate 60 items to the museum.
⠀ - Become the pillar of the community: Completing the Community Center bundles nets you one point. You’ll get one additional point after watching the cutscene that ensues following the completion of the center.
