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What is Iridium in Stardew Valley?
Building, crafting, and upgrading items and buildings are important tasks in Stardew Valley. These require different crafting recipes, even some of the rarest ones.
Iridium or iridium ore is one of the rare materials that can be found and obtained in Stardew Valley. It is an exotic ore with many curious properties. This is used in making and upgrading the most useful items inside the game. Plus, its purpose is not limited to crafting and upgrading items and structures, making it an essential resource during the first year of the game.
The first year of the game in Stardew Valley is a difficult stage to obtain iridium ores, especially if you are the type of player who spends time talking to NPCs. To get a higher chance of obtaining iridium ore in the span of your first year, you must focus on mining-related tasks.
Despite that, most players are still having a hard time farming iridium ores. So, we made this guide to help you grind easily on farming iridium ores, and start advancing your farm!
Where Can I Find Iridium in Stardew Valley?
Unlike other resources that can be found almost on any part of the map, iridium ore is relatively harder to locate. There are specific parts of the map wherein you can have a chance of getting an iridium ore or iridium bar.
As stated earlier, collecting iridium ore during your early year in the game is already crucial. During this stage of the game, these are the possible places where you can get drops of iridium ores.
The Mines
Usually, you can unlock the mines on the 5th day of spring, the first year. Explore the mines and collect geodes. Geodes are minerals that you can see anywhere while wandering the mines. You can go to the blacksmith to crack these open for you. Although copper, iron, and gold ore are the most common types that can be found inside a geode, there is still a chance of dropping an iridium ore.
There are different kinds of geode that you can find here — geode, frozen geode, magma geode, and omni geode. Among these four geodes, magma and omni geodes have the highest chance of dropping an iridium ore, located on floors 81 to 120.
Traveling Cart
The traveling cart is a shop located in the Cindersap Forest on Fridays and Sundays from 6:00 am to 8:00 pm, or during the night market from 5:00 pm to 2:00 am.
You can buy items here including special stocks, standard stocks, and even furniture. Iridium ores and iridium bars are included in these stocks. Although there is only a 2.5% chance of getting an iridium ore and a 1.26% chance for an iridium bar, it is still worth the risk if you try.
By Fishing
Compared to mining and going to the traveling cart, fishing has the least chance of getting iridium ore. But from time to time, you might want to consider fishing and you can get treasure chests from doing it. If lady luck’s on your side, you can actually obtain an iridium ore from these treasure chests.
As you continue to level up, there are new parts of the map that you can unlock. During the late game, these are some locations that you can grind to obtain iridium ores and iridium bars.
Skull Cavern
Finding the Skull Key allows you to enter the Skull Cavern. The key is located at the lowest part of Pelican Town’s Mines, specifically on floor 120.
Upon unlocking it, you can finally explore the cavern through all the floors. But before you reach the floor with plenty of iridium ore, you must first defeat enemies and crack open the nodes using a pickaxe.
Even though exploring the tavern is too risky and dangerous, it is guaranteed that you will find many necessary and rare items there. On floors 50 to 70, you can find 1 to two iridium nodes on each floor. While floors 70 to 100, you can find several iridium nodes everywhere. The most exciting part is when you reach floor 300 – this is where iridium nodes are as common as stones.
Along with the cavern’s abundance of iridium ore, you must keep in mind to bring only the necessary tools to help you survive. This is because the deeper you get, the more dangerous your enemies become.
Slime Hutch
The slime hutch is a building you can buy from Robin at the Carpenter’s Shop. This is a place where you can grow and farm slimes. Slimes vary in colors as well as the items you can get from them.
You can actually get iridium ores from purple slimes. There is an 8% chance of an iridium ore drop from random times. While if you own a slime hutch, there is always a 1% chance of getting a purple slime egg that you can hatch using a slime egg press to get random drops.
Statue of Perfection
The Statue of Perfection is furniture that can be owned by interacting and lighting four candles from Grandpa’s Shrine. Obtaining this furniture is a good way to obtain iridium ore without even taking the risk of going deep into the mines and caverns.
Each day, you can collect two to eight iridium ores. Owning this furniture allows you to easily farm iridium ore, and makes it easier and more convenient for you to craft iridium bars.
Uses of Iridium in Stardew Valley
There is a reason why players take their time grinding iridium ores in Stardew Valley – its wide range of uses explains everything. From crafting recipes to upgrading your tools, iridium takes care of it all.
Here’s a list of the different uses of iridium ore.
Crafting
Just like any other resource, iridium ore’s main purpose is for crafting items, especially farming items. Some examples of the items that include iridium ore as a recipe are a deluxe scarecrow, warp totem: desert, iridium bar, iridium sprinkler, iridium band, crystalarium, slime incubator, wedding ring, deluxe fertilizer, hopper, and iridium farming tools.
Money
Iridium ores can also be used as currency. The Desert trader is a merchant who is selling rare and exotic items and is located in the Calico Desert. In buying this merchant’s items, there’s no need for you to spend your gold. The Desert Trader practices barter or exchange of an item for another item. For example, in exchange for a mega bomb, you have to pay five iridium ores.
Conclusion
And that’s how to get iridium in Stardew Valley! Hopefully, this helped. Make sure to check out the other Stardew guides!
