Your farming journey isn’t just about planting crops—it’s also about leveling up your skills and upgrading your tools efficiently. Focusing on the right skills and improving the right tools at the right time can save you energy, maximize your profits, and make your farm much easier to manage. In this chapter, we’ll break down the basic skill priorities, explain how tool upgrades affect your gameplay, and show you the optimal order to tackle them. Follow these tips, and you’ll be ready to handle anything Stardew Valley throws at you!

TOC [ close ]
  1. Skill Priorities & How They Work
    1. Why Farming Comes First
    2. Foraging Skills
    3. Fishing
    4. Mining
    5. Combat
  2. Tool Upgrades — Effects & Priority 🛠️
    1. Tool Upgrades — What They Actually Do & What to Prioritize
  3. Key Takeaways

Skill Priorities & How They Work

It depends on your playstyle, so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach… but there are some basic priorities. In general, here’s the order to follow:

  • Farming – Gain XP by harvesting crops. Different crops give different amounts of XP internally.
  • Foraging – Big XP from chopping trees, small XP from picking up items.
  • Fishing – Gain XP when you catch something (even trash gives XP).
  • Mining – Gain XP when you break rocks with your pickaxe or bombs.
  • Combat – Gain XP by defeating enemies.
Stardew Valley, Skills, guide

Why Farming Comes First

Farming is the easiest and most powerful early-game money maker, so it should be your top priority.
Higher-selling crops give more XP.
As your Farming level increases, Energy cost for using the Hoe and Watering Can decreases, and you have a higher chance to harvest high-quality crops.

Foraging Skills

Leveling Foraging makes it easier to collect large amounts of woods and helps you customize your farm layout efficiently.
Higher levels reduce Energy cost for the Axe, and at Level 4 and Level 8, you’ll sometimes get bonus items when foraging. The quality of foraged items also improves.

Fishing

Leveling Fishing increases the size of the fishing bar, improves the quality of caught fish, and reduces Energy cost.
I personally use fishing as a side money-making activity, so I rank it here, but if you want to be a full-time fisherman, go ahead and max it early.

Mining

Leveling Mining reduces Energy cost when breaking rocks.
Small stones on your farm break in one swing, so if you don’t spend much time in the mines, Mining is lower priority.
Also, leveling Mining doesn’t improve item quality, so it’s mainly for convenience.

Combat

Leveling Combat increases max health by 5 per level.
It makes a noticeable difference, but if you don’t go to the mines or dungeons often, it’s lower priority.

Energy Consumption

For all skills except Combat, each skill level reduces Energy cost by 0.1×level.

For example, watering a crop normally costs 2 Energy.
If your Farming is Level 10, it costs only half as much as at Level 0.

Energy Reduction & Skill Perks

For all skills except Combat, each skill level reduces Energy consumption by 0.1 × level.

For example, watering a crop or tilling soil normally costs 2 Energy.
If your Farming skill is Level 10, it only costs half the Energy compared to Level 0.

Level 5 & Level 10 Perks

When any skill reaches Level 5, you can choose one of two special perks, and gain one more park at Level 10.
You can always switch later if conditions are met, so just pick whichever seems most useful at the moment.

Tool Upgrades — Effects & Priority 🛠️

Tool Upgrades — What They Actually Do & What to Prioritize

Here’s the thing about tool upgrades that you might be wondering about:

Upgrading tools does NOT directly reduce Energy consumption.
(Some tools, like the Axe or Pickaxe, will use fewer swings to break objects after an upgrade, which indirectly saves Energy, but the Energy cost per swing itself doesn’t change.)

So, when upgrading tools, you’re mostly looking at effects other than Energy savings.

Upgrade Effects

  • Hoe: Hold to till multiple tiles at once.
  • Watering Can: Hold to water multiple tiles at once; higher levels also increase the water capacity you can store.
  • Axe: Fewer swings needed to chop trees; can chop harder stumps at higher levels.
  • Pickaxe: Fewer swings needed to break rocks; can break bigger boulders at higher levels.
  • Trash Can: Increases the amount of money you get back when disposing items.

My Experience

By the end of Summer Year 1, I upgraded all tools except the Trash Can — but honestly, only the Axe and Pickaxe were really necessary.

Why?

  • Fewer swings = time saved and Energy conserved.
  • Certain resources (like Hardwood) can only be collected with at least a Copper Axe, so these upgrades naturally boost productivity.

Hoe & Watering Can Are a Bit Tricky

  • The “hold to use multiple tiles” feature is annoying to control:
    • Once you start charging, you can’t change direction or cancel, which wastes Energy if misused.
    • The hit detection is a little inconsistent, so sometimes tiles right in front don’t get tilled or watered.
    • At Copper level, only 3 tiles forward are affected — not a huge time-saver.
  • The extra water storage in the Can didn’t feel very noticeable to me.

Key Takeaways

  • Skill Priority is Farming > Foraging > fishing > mining > combat
  • You can get Perks at Level 5 and Level 10.
  • Axe and Pickaxe are worth upgrading.
  • Don’t worry to hurry upgrading Hoe, Watering Can and Trash Can

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