This Stardew Valley Mastery guide covers the rewards that arrive after you have mastered the five ordinary skills. Some make farming faster, some make combat considerably more fun, and one can turn your mining routine into something ridiculous. Here is my preferred order, with the reasons you might choose differently.
Watch my original YouTube video for the gameplay demonstration, or jump to the section you need. The written guide includes corrections and additions for Stardew Valley 1.6.
In this guideOpen contents
How to unlock Mastery in Stardew Valley
Reach level 10 in Farming, Mining, Foraging, Fishing and Combat. Then enter the Mastery Cave in Cindersap Forest, south of your farm. The door stays closed while even one skill is below level 10.
After all five skills reach level 10, further experience fills a shared Mastery bar. You can spend the next unlock on any mastery; you do not need to earn Fishing experience specifically to claim Fishing Mastery. Ordinary non-farming experience contributes at its full rate, while Farming experience contributes at half its rate.
Mastery XP requirements
The first unlock takes 10,000 points. Each later unlock costs more, so the old idea of 10,000 for every mastery is wrong. The total for all five is 100,000.
| Unlock | Additional points | Cumulative total |
|---|---|---|
| First | 10,000 | 10,000 |
| Second | 15,000 | 25,000 |
| Third | 20,000 | 45,000 |
| Fourth | 25,000 | 70,000 |
| Fifth | 30,000 | 100,000 |
My recommended Mastery order
For a mixed farm, I choose Farming, Mining, Combat, Foraging, then Fishing. That is a preference based on what I spend my time doing, not a rule every player must follow.
If fishing is your main income, take Fishing earlier. If combat is stopping you from completing dangerous mine quests, the trinket slot can be your most useful first reward. If you are building a Mystic Syrup business, Foraging moves right up the list. There is no permanent penalty for choosing a different order: you can eventually claim all five.
Fishing Mastery: two tackles and golden treasure
Let’s get started with the fishing mastery. In my opinion this is the least important one that you should most likely get last, unless you really need the help with the fishing minigame. Gaining mastery in fishing will give you access to challenge bait, a unique type of bait that will let you catch three fish at the same time as long as it’s a perfect catch.
Each time the fish exits the bar, you’ll lose a fish. I find Challenge Bait unforgiving, but it can be valuable if you consistently keep fish inside the bar. You can now also see Golden Treasure chests when fishing, which is nice. There is better loot in these and in these golden treasure chests you’ll find something incredible from one of the other masteries but to really make use of this, you need to fish often… Now the main benefit from the fishing mastery is access to the new and improved Advanced Fishing Rod.
This is the iridium fishing rod but considerably better. Now you’ll have two spots for tackle, allowing you to get really creative and make your life considerably easier. You can combine tackles that make fishing easier or you can combine two tackles that give huge benefits like two Treasure Hunter tackles to dramatically increase the likelihood of treasure. Either way, the Advanced Iridium Rod is the headline benefit of the fishing mastery.
Foraging Mastery: Mystic Trees and Treasure Totems
The foraging mastery is next. It’s a good one, but still not nearly as good as the others. The foraging mastery will give you the ability to craft mystic seeds which grow into Mystic Trees. Mystic trees have the advantage of looking awesome but they will cause your mushroom logs to produce purple mushrooms and if you drop a tapper on these, you’ll get mystic syrup, the most valuable product you can get from tapping trees.
Instead of selling the mystic syrup you could use it to craft up treasure totems which will cause a r ring of artifact spots to appear around you. Always use these in an open area so that they do not get wasted. And lastly the foraging mastery will give you the ability to find golden mystery boxes during your adventures! These golden boxes contain some really good rewards but nothing that crazy, the rewards are a bonus rather than the reason I choose this mastery.
Combat Mastery: trinkets, the Anvil and a portable Forge
Combat Mastery unlocks the trinket slot, the Anvil recipe and the Mini-Forge recipe. The Mini-Forge does what the Volcano Forge does, but at home. Convenient? Absolutely. The trinket slot is the part that changes how I actually play.
The Fairy Box is my favourite for general play. It heals you periodically, and the little fairy following you around is a nice bonus. The Ice Rod freezes enemies, making flying monsters much easier to handle. The Magic Quiver adds automatic ranged attacks, while Golden Spur rewards critical hits with a speed boost.
The Frog Egg can swallow enemies, but those swallowed enemies do not provide their normal drops. Keep that in mind when you are farming loot. The Basilisk Paw protects against debuffs, while the Parrot Egg gives a chance of gold from kills. Magic Hair Gel changes your hair colour and comes from Alex’s Desert Festival shop, rather than the usual monster drops.
The Anvil costs three Iridium Bars per reroll. It can improve eligible trinkets, but the result is random. A level-five Fairy is great; bankrupting your Iridium supply while trying to force one is not. Keep using a workable roll and upgrade it as resources allow.
Mining Mastery: Heavy Furnaces and the Dwarf King
The mining mastery is extremely good. First you will get access to heavy Furnaces. These can burn five bars at the same time, only use three pieces of coal effectively saving you resources and have a chance to yield extra bars. I don’t even need to convince you how good this is. Gem-bearing rocks now give double gems. So diamond hunting could be a valid use of your time now.
Now for the real true ultimate benefit. The Statue of the Dwarf King. This thing only costs twenty iridium bars to craft and it’s quite exceptional. Every day you can click on this statue and you will get to pick between two mining related buffs. All of these benefits are incredible.You can be completely immune to bombs giving you a stress free skull cavern run.
You can get an extra ore for every node that you mine which would be insane if you get deep in the skull cavern. Greater chance to find coal which worked out much better than I had expected. Greater chance to find geodes which isn’t too bad and my favorite benefit. A greater chance to find ladders and shafts. Listen, we all know that the main objective of any skull cavern run is just to get deep.
This means that If this benefit is up for grabs, I'll be taking this every single time. I will most likely even grab one of these buffs even if I have no intention of entering the mines. It is just that useful.
Farming Mastery: the reward I usually choose first
Now for the number one best mastery that I would always pick first. The farming mastery. Right off the bat, you will get an Iridium Scythe. This will harvest more hay from grass which is good but more importantly this thing will allow you to harvest any crop with a simple swing of your scythe. This is random, but emerald rings will increase your scythe attack speed allowing you to harvest more crops quicker which is a nice little bonus.
Next, we can find golden animal crackers throughout our adventure in the game. The best way to get these is from golden treasure chests and treasure rooms in the skull cavern. You can give one of these to your animals to double their production of animal produce. They do not work on pigs. Goats are a good fit for my cheese setup, but the best target depends on your animals and processing plan.
And the last benefit from the farming mastery is the glorious Statue Of blessing. This thing is extremely expensive to craft so start saving up early in your playthrough! Three hundred moss is not that easy to get your hands on. You can click on this once a day to get a random buff! The strangest buff which is more like a quest is the blessing of the butterfly.
This will spawn a butterfly somewhere in the world, if you manage to find this butterfly you will be given either some gold or a prismatic shard! Nice. Blessing of energy will give you infinite energy for the day which seems amazing, but at the end game you ‘ll most likely not run out of energy anyway. Blessings of fangs is great if you are heading to the mines as it gives you plus ten percent to your critical strike chance which is insane really.
Blessing of friendship gives you bonus friendship points, utilize this on someone's birthday with a loved gift to befriend them insanely quickly. Blessing of speed gives you a small speed buff which can naturally be combined with other speed buffs to be an absolute speed demon. The blessing of waters will make the next three fish you catch easier, mostly used to try and catch lava eels as they can be tricky and lastly the blessing of luck which gives you plus one to your luck stat, which means there is now a new highest possible luck!
You can get one of these incredible buffs every single day, so yeah, the farming mastery is most definitely the best and should be your first mastery.
How to earn Mastery points without turning it into a chore
Keep harvesting, fishing, chopping trees and fighting while progressing toward your normal goals. A big crop harvest gives a useful burst, even with Farming experience contributing at half rate. Skill books also help once Mastery is unlocked.
My main advice is to combine the grind with something you already need. Go mining for Iridium, harvest crops for a planned sale, or fish toward your collection. Buying every experience book is optional, and early farm upgrades may deserve that money more.
You do not need to return to the cave immediately when an unlock becomes available. Experience continues accumulating toward the next one. Claim the reward when it fits your route, then put its benefit to work.
Watch the original video
Keep exploring the valley
Browse more secrets & late game guides, or continue with one of these related guides:
- Ultimate Stardew Valley Fishing Guide [1.6]
- Best Rings In Stardew Valley 1.6
- How to Farm Thousands of Iridium Ore Fast in Stardew Valley (1.6 Guide)
Game-mechanics references: Mastery Cave, Trinkets, Statue Of Blessings. Screenshots and video by MGaud.