Stardew Valley Forge Guide: Best Enchantments and Upgrades

You might be using the Forge wrong, but you need not worry. This Stardew Valley Forge guide separates the upgrades that are easy to confuse: enchanting tools, forging weapon stats, creating Infinity weapons and combining rings. Let’s make those Prismatic Shards count.

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.

How to reach the Forge

The Forge is on floor 10 of the Volcano Dungeon on Ginger Island. Bring your Watering Can for the lava, a reliable weapon, healing food and a way home. Coffee and Spicy Eel help you move quickly, but the main trick is simple: focus on reaching the next floor instead of clearing every room.

Once you reach the top, use the exit route and activate the shortcut gate back toward the entrance. That saves you from climbing the whole dungeon every time you want to enchant something. Combat Mastery later unlocks the Mini-Forge recipe, giving you the same functionality at home.

Stardew Valley Forge guide: costs at a glance

How I collect Cinder Shards

The Forge has a currency. Most upgrades here cost Cinder Shards. And there are only a few ways to get Cinder Shards in this game. First, you can find these cinder shard nodes within the volcano. Always mine these when you see them, these Magma Sprites and Magma Sparkers can also drop Cinder Shards when you defeat them. If you are after more shards, wear a single burglar ring and defeat all of them.

After a couple runs in the volcano you should have a useful stockpile of shards. However, if you are looking to passively gain shards then you can catch some stingrays in the Pirate Cove. Drop them into a fish pond, and collect some free Cinder Shards every now and then.

Best tool enchantments and what they actually do

Okay, let’s talk about your tools. A normal enchantment costs one Prismatic Shard and 20 Cinder Shards. The enchantment is random, but simply restarting the same day and repeating the same action will not give you a fresh random roll. Changing the order in which you enchant tools can change the outcome.

Efficient removes energy use from eligible tools. It is useful if energy is still your bottleneck, but I often prefer an enchantment that saves time. Powerful applies to the Axe and Pickaxe; it improves how much work each hit does.

Swift is one of my favourites. Once you get used to faster swings, going back feels painful. Reaching belongs on the Hoe or Watering Can and expands their maximum charged area to 5×5. Bottomless is exclusive to the Watering Can, so you never need to refill it.

Shaving belongs on the Axe and gives extra tree-related drops. Archaeologist and Generous are useful options for the Hoe, and the Pan has its own eligible versions of these effects. Generous gives the Hoe a chance to double what you dig up; Archaeologist helps when hunting artifacts.

For fishing, Auto-Hook starts the encounter when something bites; you still play the fishing minigame yourself. Master adds a fishing level while the rod is held. Preserving gives a 50% chance that bait and tackle are not consumed on use. Efficient is another rod option.

Do not assume every tool accepts every enchantment. The Pan can also receive Fisher, and scythes, the Trash Can and slingshots are not ordinary enchantment targets. Check the effect for the actual tool you want to improve before spending your shards.

Infinity weapons and combat enchantments

This is where it gets extra interesting. As you know you can bring a prismatic shard to the three pillars in Calico Desert to get a galaxy sword. But you can turn this galaxy sword into an Infinity Blade at the forge! All you need is three galaxy souls. To get galaxy soul, just do a bunch of Qi Special Order Requests and buy them from him, or buy them using Radioactive Bars on the last day of any season at the island trader.

Once you have three of them, use them with your Galaxy weapon, it will cost three Galaxy Souls and sixty Cinder Shards. You can do this with the Galaxy sword, dagger and even the Hammer. Now that you have an amazing weapon, let’s just you know, Make it even better. Weapons can also be Enchanted. There are five enchantments that any weapon can have. First we have the Artful enchantment, this will reduce the cooldown of the weapons special move.

This is absolutely amazing on a hammer where you always use the special move, especially if you pair this with the acrobat profession. Next we have the bug killer enchantment, this will increase your damage to bugs by a massive amount, and it will allow you to defeat those unkillable bugs in the skull cavern. I would avoid this one to be honest. The Crusader Enchantment is pretty good, it will increase your damage to mummies, ghosts, skeletons and void spirits by fifty percent.

Additionally it will allow you to defeat mummies without using a bomb on their corpses. This will save you time as there are always mummies in the skull cavern, and you will seriously stockpile cloth if you use this method. The vampiric enchantment is perfect if you love tanking the enemies head on. Whenever you defeat any enemy in the game, there is a nine percent chance that you will regain a small amount of health based on that monster’s maximum health.

This is surprisingly reliable and I often pick it when I am doing some challenging Qi quests. Now we have the Haymaker Enchantment. This is a strange one, this will cause weeds to drop more fibre when you harvest them and can add hay when you cut weeds. This is not a combat enchantment, this is for utility. If you are often hitting weeds for fibre, then use this enchantment on a secondary weapon.

Like your old Lava katana for example.

Which gems should you forge into your weapon?

You can forge a melee weapon up to three times. Those three slots are separate from its normal enchantment. I usually start with Ruby upgrades for reliable damage, then change the plan when I am building around critical hits, defence or a hammer’s special attack.

A Diamond fills the remaining forging slots with random upgrades for 10 Cinder Shards. It saves shards, but you give up control. If you want a very specific build, spend the gems deliberately.

Combine rings without wasting a slot

Combining two different rings costs 20 Cinder Shards. You receive their effects while using only one equipment slot. You cannot combine two identical rings together, and you cannot combine a combined ring with a third ring.

If you made a bad combination, place it in the left Forge slot and use the red unforge button. The original rings return. Unforging a weapon removes its gem upgrades and resets its appearance, but it does not remove its enchantment. Only some spent Cinder Shards are returned.

Innate enchantments and the Mini-Forge

Version 1.6 adds another upgrade layer: eligible lower-level melee weapons can receive innate bonuses using a Dragon Tooth and 10 Cinder Shards. Galaxy and Infinity weapons are excluded, and eligibility also depends on weapon level. Treat this as a way to improve a suitable weapon, not a fourth gem slot for your Infinity Blade.

The Mini-Forge is a convenience reward from Combat Mastery. It follows the same upgrade rules and material costs. I love being able to do this on the farm, but unlocking the portable version does not make enchanting free.

My first Forge priorities

Improve the weapon and tool you actually use every day. For a general Skull Cavern setup, Ruby upgrades and Crusader are a sensible starting point. For a hammer build, Artful and Acrobat can be more useful. Then combine rings around the job: loot, survival or damage.

Keep some Prismatic Shards in reserve. Chasing a perfect enchantment on a rarely used tool is much less useful than making your next mining run successful.

Watch the original video

Keep exploring the valley

Browse more mining & combat guides, or continue with one of these related guides:

• 7 Ways to Get Prismatic Shards in Stardew Valley
• Best Rings In Stardew Valley 1.6
• How to Farm Thousands of Iridium Ore Fast in Stardew Valley (1.6 Guide)

Game-mechanics references: Forge, Volcano Dungeon, Cinder Shard. Screenshots and video by MGaud.