Learn how to earn money in winter in Stardew Valley!
There is much to be said for Stardew Valley and its expansive content. You could spend most of your hours running around town while tending to your farm, and you will still be left with thousands of tasks to finish at the end of the day.
Thankfully, you wouldn’t need to worry about raising mass crops in winter; you could explore the game more relaxedly. Although this begs the question, will you still be able to make money in Stardew Valley during Winter?
The answer is yes. Below is a list of activities you can do in winter and how your virtual farm can be cultivated and earn money in Stardew Valley.
Mining
Mining in caverns is the best way to obtain valuable artifacts, which can be sold, crafted, or donated to the local museum. Selling a few ores may only grant you a small fortune, but doing copious amounts of mining is beneficial and practical in leveling up your character’s skills and collecting various treasures.
Before exploring the mines, pack a good amount of consumables to replenish your energy and health. You could purchase some food from The Stardrop Saloon, although it would be cheaper to prepare it alone. But if you don’t have access to the kitchen yet, you could do some foraging along the way to the mines.
In winter, there are crystal fruits that you can pick up throughout Stardew Valley. You might see worms in the ground or artifact spots you can see using a hoe. There’s a good chance that you can dig up some fruit yams or winter roots in these spots.
Keep an eye out for colorful rocks or nodes that drop minerals. You can dig up a diamond worth 750 gold each with a stroke of luck. A cherry bomb or a bomb in your inventory can be useful in stunning enemies and looting items. Try to hoard as many items in the mines as possible before you run out of energy and time.
Raise Animals
Raising animals in this game requires saving up a lot of money and resources. You may feel discouraged after spending a fortune building a coop or a barn, but it will all be worth it, especially during the wintertime.
Building a basic chicken coop is the first step in building your ranch. This season, having at least two coops or upgrading your chicken coop is recommended. An iridium-quality egg can give you 100 gold per piece, so petting your chickens daily will help you build your relationship with them and raise the quality of their eggs. Buying a heater for their coop will also make your chickens happy.
Purchasing dairy animals like cows and goats is also a worthy investment in the long run. A high-quality cow’s milk is worth 380 gold per jug.
Even as they remain all cozied up inside their barn, pigs can still give you truffles in winter. One iridium truffle costs around 1,250 gold, so it’s also a good idea to have a deluxe barn during this period.
Make sure you’ve got plenty of hay inside your silo. Remember to visit Marnie’s Ranch, accessible each day from 9:00 am to 4:00 pm, except on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Special orders
If you become good friends with your neighbors, you will frequently receive items from them. Food, recipes, and sometimes, money enclosed in letters are some of the things they give you once they have taken a liking to you.
To effectively increase your affinity with the NPCs, you must go out of your way to provide them with gifts they like, or you can regularly check the notices outside of Pierre’s shop to do some tasks for them.
Special orders have been an added feature in the version 1.5 update, and the quests you can fetch here take much longer to complete but can give you decent rewards. For instance, gathering 100 pieces of bug meat for Willy and successfully finishing the task will earn you a quality bobber and 3,000 gold.
Another special order that is worth completing in winter is Cave Patrol. If you accept this quest, you will be tasked to slay different kinds of monsters in the local cavern, and if successful, you will receive a Geode Crusher and 6,000 gold.
Farming
It goes without saying that in this game, most crops don’t grow in the snow. Farming this season and making a profit can only be made possible if you have unlocked the greenhouse by completing a bundle quest in the community center in your first year.
Nevertheless, if you miss caring for crops after days of mining and fetching, planting wild seeds is the way to go. Wild seeds are like fiber seeds; both are resilient enough to withstand winter, but crops that grow from wild seeds are unquestionably more profitable.
Raising your foraging skill to level 7 will yield a crafting recipe for wild seeds. These seeds will produce various foraged crops like crystal fruits and snow yams.
Crows aren’t a problem in winter, so you can plant these seeds just as usual and care for them like how you grew crops in the previous seasons. These crops will quickly mature after watering them for seven days.
Fishing
Players who are into collecting items deem fishing a rewarding activity to do in this game. The satisfaction you can get from reeling in a perfect catch is already an achievement. Perfecting your catch, of course, will grant you iridium-quality fish. An iridium-quality ice pip, for example, is worth 1,000 gold. Along with the blobfish, you can catch them in the mines on the ice-bound 60th floor.
An icy climate doesn’t mean you can no longer fish outside the mines in winter. You can still spot most of these fish in the mountain lake, the ocean, or the Cindersap forest.
The Night Market is an event that occurs on the beach from Winter 15 to Winter 17, and these are the best moments to catch some exotic and valuable fish. Spookfish is one of the most unusual-looking, costing around 220 gold.
Glacierfish is a legendary fish that only spawns in winter. You can only catch one per season, and an iridium-quality Glacierfish sells for 2,000 gold.
Keeping these fish in fish ponds is always an option instead of selling or cooking them. You’d be surprised at the profit you can get from sturgeon roe that you can preserve into caviars. You can sell caviars for 500 gold per jar. Imagine shipping a whole bunch of these every day during this season!
What winter activities do you enjoy doing the most in Stardew Valley?
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