Top 10 Easiest Ways to get rich in Stardew Valley

Quick answer: These are mostly setups to build toward once your farm is established. Pick one that matches the tools, professions and machines you already have, then expand it instead of trying to build everything at once.

1. Get rich in Stardew Valley using Golden Animal Crackers

Animal Crackers will make you so rich you’ll feel funny in places you didn’t know existed! However, when it comes to animals one remains the alpha of the pack. Let’s quickly run through all of them and see which animal is the king of animal crackers. 

Chickens are actually kind of insane with these crackers. A single chicken will make fifty six eggs in a single season, and if you turn those into mayonnaise you’ll make a very impressive 22400 gold per chicken. That is around 270 thousand gold for a full coop of twelve chickens per season. Not insignificant. 

A Golden animal crackers up Sheep high as heck will get you nine harvest per season, totaling eighteen wool! Now if your sheep love you, and you get iridium quality wool only. You’ll get a very gosh darn impressive thirty six cloth per sheep per season. That is 24  thousand gold per sheep, and 285 thousand gold for twelve sheep. Slightly better than chickens it seems. 

A cracker up Goat will get you twenty eight goat milk per season, naturally we should expect only large goat milk meaning we will exclusively get gold quality goat cheese! Making us 23 thousand 500 gold per goat, and 282 thousand gold for twelve. Sheep are still winning. However we can easily age these in one week to iridium quality in our basement causing us to make about 30% more gold. 

Dinosaurs are interesting… They only produce an egg every seven days, and with golden animal crackers they will produce two on these days meaning eight eggs per dinosaur per season. Now you absolutely need the dinosaur appraisal guide to ensure we get good money for these eggs. Unfortunately it is still just 17 thousand gold per dinosaur, and 201 thousand gold for twelve. lagging behind everything so far. 

Cows are cracked!!! These golden crackers cause cows to just absolutely cook and will make you rich!!! A single cow will get you fifty six milk per season, with large milk and gold quality cheese that is 27 thousand gold per season. And with a full barn of twelve cows, that is over 320 thousand gold per season. The current king. Can the golden crack dusted duck or ostrich beat this??

Ducks are unfortunately not gonna do it… One duck gets you 28 eggs per season, turning that into duck mayonnaise will only make you around 15 thousand gold per season… and only 176 thousand gold for a full coop. The worst animal so far.. Skip the duck. 

Ostriches are the hardest to obtain, but are they worth it ??? A golden animal crackered up ostrich will only get you eight eggs per season… Now if your ostriches just absolutely adore you, and they only give you iridium quality eggs… That is crazy eighty iridium quality mayonnaise and a mind blowing 42 thousand 500 gold per ostrich… And yes, that is over 510 thousand gold for twelve ostriches. Half a million gold with only twelve ostriches, truly unmatched. 

2. Fish Ponds with Golden Animal Crackers

Golden Animal Crackers can also be used on Fish Ponds. For money, the Legend and Legend II are strong choices because their aged roe is so valuable. Lava Eels remain useful for income and extra drops. The older percentage comparison in this video predates the 1.6.15 increase to legendary roe production, so do not use those seasonal totals as a current ranking. See my best fish ponds guide for the updated recommendations.

3. Tapper profession with mystic trees

Mystic trees have been truly overlooked. They are extremely easy to craft!! If you use heavy tappers, you will get a mystic syrup every three days.Meaning you will get 9 mystic syrup per season.  With the tapper profession these will sell for 1250 gold each. Yes, that is 11 thousand gold per season.  Now I know what you’re thinking, that is just nothing right?

Well, you could just easily plant over one hundred of these in your desert… and yeah, that is 900 mystic syrup per season… and yes, that is one point one million gold per season… Naturally can take this further and plant even more trees!! So yeah, don’t underestimate mystic syrup!

4. Mushroom log

Mushroom logs are unique, besides for trees with tappers they are the only item in the game that can produce something from nothing that can be placed outside of your farm. Naturally you can turn raw produce into artisan goods outside of your farm but mushroom logs produce mushrooms outside of your farm. So craft up tons of these, load them up somewhere random and absolutely rain in on the mushrooms.

You might as well drop all of those mushroom logs by your mystic trees in the desert or the quarry to get many more purple mushrooms.  If you combine this with your mystic tree empire, your desert will be the most valuable area in your entire playthrough…

5. Get rich in Stardew Valley with Combat??

You can, and you should be turning your regular skull cavern runs, into absolute pure profit machines!! 

Combine the burglar ring, the monster compendium book, monster musk and the oh so impressive level 4 parrot trinket. If you didn’t know, you need to drop your parrot trinket onto the anvil until it is level 4. It is otherwise worthless. 

Then Dive into the mines, crush as many enemies as you can. Naturally you need a good build to destroy them efficiently but just look. Look at how often enemies are giving me gold! And with monster musk, there are bound to be loads of enemies for you to defeat! So Collect the gold with the parrot, and sell the various monster loot you get from the enemies for pure absolute profit . You might as well make some money while you farm for iridium ore.

6. Fish Smoker

The fish smoker is undoubtedly the most insane new addition to this game…. Lemme show you how to absolutely print without smoking legendary fish. Okay, get the Advanced Iridium Rod and enchant it with the master enchantment at the forge. Then use two dressed spinners if you are confident in your fishing ability. This will dramatically reduce the time in between bites.

If you need some fishing help, use a cork bobber and a trap bobber to help you catch the fish. The fact of the matter is that we want to catch lava eels, they are hard to catch, but you’ll see shortly that they are worth it. Go to the tenth floor of the volcano, and catch those lava eels. They are hard! But you can do it. With deluxe bait and dressed spinners, you will catch many of these suckers. Then make absolutely sure that you have both the fisher and angler profession.

Then ensure that you have the artisan profession.  Now smoke those lava eels. 360 no scope smoke them all!!! At gold quality these sell for 4,410g each with Angler and Artisan; iridium quality reaches 5,880g. If you spend the entire day fishing, you could catch 30, 40 , even 50 of these! You could make 220 thousand gold a single day using this method!

7. Fish smoker with legendary fish

Now if you do happen to get the extended family Qi Quest you can use this same method to make absolute bank with Legend II in the Mountain Lake. Now this guy is hard to catch, however each of these sell for 42 thousand gold when smoked… You might not be able to rely on this method, but every now and then you can quickly print loads of gold. Best of Luck out there.

8. Heavy furnaces and iridium ore

Listen… You can very easily grind for over one thousand iridium ore in a single day.. Check out my latest iridium grinding video that incorporates all the new 1.6 features to see how you can reliably do it with ease. Now, let’s use all of this excess iridium to just get rich, just absolutely ridiculous rich.. We will go and buy ten golden clocks after this…  How?

Get Heavy Furnaces. Heavy furnaces can burn five bars at the same time, they also use three coal for five bars instead of five and they have a gosh darn high chance to give you a bonus iridium bar and yeah, look at this.. It gets crazy really quickly… then with the black smith profession, sell the bars and easily make three hundred thousand gold on a single day. That is actually an understatement of how much you can make per day.

9. Get More Than one greenhouse in Stardew Valley.

This method will effectively allow you to get more green houses on your farm. Hear me out, the green house has 120 plantable tiles, remember that for later. Now, get yourself a deluxe shed. Fill up the entire shed with Garden Pots. Garden pots are annoying to make, however when you enchant your hoe and combine  that with the artifact totem, you can get clay much easier now. Then, use deluxe retaining soil on all of those garden pots.

Deluxe retaining soil will effectively be your sprinkles. You only need to water your crops once, and never again. Then plant pineapples. This is the best crop to use for extreme profits, they regrow, they produce fruit every seven days and once turned into wine, they sell for a heck ton of gold. Now why do i say this is a second greenhouse? We can plant 137 Pineapples here. That is more than the greenhouse!!! This is absurd!! Go and make ten of these!

10. Junimo hut, plus deluxe fertilizer

This next method is just absolutely unhinged…. Hear me out… Sweet gem berries are the most expensive crop in the game… And you know that if you use Deluxe Fertilizer, you can get iridium-quality sweet gem berries. Yeah, that is 6,000 gold per iridium crop!!! This new upgrade has now given us the ability to make even more money when we pair our sweet gem berries with a Junimo Hut!! Get some grapes and dehydrate them to make raisins.

Drop those raisins into your Junimo hut, and your Junimos will have a chance to harvest two sweet gem berries on a single plant!! That is unhinged!!! Just remember to use deluxe fertilizer so that you can get iridium crops and ensure max profits. This sounds absurd but in the best case scenario, a single Junim Hut surrounded by sweet gem berries can make you almost one million gold on a single harvest… that’s crazy.

Mechanics reference: Fish Pond on the Stardew Valley Wiki.

Keep building your farm

Read next: From Broke to Rich: Stardew Valley Best Money Making Methods, How to Farm Thousands of Iridium Ore Fast in Stardew Valley (1.6 Guide), Best Fish Ponds in Stardew Valley 1.6.