What is Solar Panel in Stardew Valley
During your stay in Stardew Valley, you will spend most of your time on your farm doing the basic activities that you will repeat throughout the stay. These are planting regular and seasonal crops, catching fish to reproduce them on ponds, as well as taking care of farm animals in your barn. However, you have to learn that there are also other tools and equipment you can place on your farm to harvest resources. That being said, we made this Solar Panel guide to tell you everything that you need to know about Solar Panels which is a refining equipment.
Just like how it is in real life, Solar Panels are houses or other building equipment that you can construct and place on a surface that can be exactly under the sunlight. By doing so, the sunlight is collected and used as electricity or power. Similar to the game, you can also use Solar Panels to collect items that have power and energy. You can harvest these items once produced, and use them for future needs.
How to Obtain a Solar Panel
Unlike other equipment, buildings, and items, Solar Panel is not something that you can easily get by purchasing from Pierre’s General Store or letting Robin construct it for you.
In order for you to have the ability and capability of crafting a Solar Panel, you have to first complete Caroline’s Special Order. Caroline is one of the villagers that you can meet in Pelican Town. If you still have not known, she is the spouse of Pierre and the mother of Abigail.
What is a Special Order
Special orders are villager requests that are similar to the ones that you can see on the Help Wanted board. However, the requests that you will see here are larger than those in Help Wanted. You can unlock the Special order board in the fall of the first year situated in front of the Mayor’s house.
Upon choosing the requests you want to do, there is no need for you to talk with the villager who requested it. Plus, there is no way for you to cancel or back out of the quests you have started.
One more important thing to know about the requests from the Special Order Board is that they have a time limit. Once the timer runs out and just finished part of the quest, it is considered failed and will appear again on the board. But there’s no need for you to worry about the items that you have already donated! You can still see them in the Lost and Found box inside the Mayor’s house and retrieve them.
How to Complete Caroline’s Special Order
You can find Caroline’s request by finding the Island Ingredients quest name on the Special Order board. Here, you will be asked to harvest a total of 100 specific crops which are Taro Root, Ginger, and Pineapple. In terms of how you divide the number of crops, it is entirely up to you. What’s important is you collect a total of 100 crops.
However, the harvested crops will only be counted once you start the quest. So, if you already have 14 Taro Roots before you start the quest, those in your inventory will not be counted. You will always have to start from 0 in completing this quest.
It might sound a little tedious because of the number of crops you need to collect to complete this. But you will be given 28 Stardew Valley days to complete it.
How to Obtain the Needed Crops
Taro root, Ginger, and Pineapple are all available on Ginger Island throughout the year regardless of the season.
Inside the valley, you can also find Pineapple and Taro Roots during the summer seasons. You can also grow them on your farm during summer. Pineapple grows after 14 days. Taro Roots fully mature after 10 days, but can fully grow in 7 days when the soil is irrigated.
On the other hand, Ginger can also be obtained by killing Tiger Slimes aside from foraging on Ginger Island.
Crafting a Solar Panel
Upon successfully harvesting 100 island ingredients and submitting them to the Special Order, you will be rewarded with gold that costs half of the crops you have donated, and the Solar Recipe crafting recipe.
Now that you already have the recipe, can now craft Solar Panels using 10x Refined Quartz, 5x Iron Bar, and 5x Gold Bar. Once crafted, you can place them anywhere on the map even outside your farm and outside Pelican Town.
Use of Solar Panel
As mentioned, Solar Panel is a refining equipment. This item is crafted to generate an important item that has power — yes, batteries!
Once you have done setting up your Solar Panels anywhere, you have to wait for seven sunny days for them to produce Battery Packs. Each Solar Panel can give you 1 Battery Pack after every seven sunny days.
There are several things where you can utilize your Battery Packs. The first thing is gifting. Maru loves Battery Packs more than anyone as the village tinkers herself.
Plus, some quests ask for Battery Packs such as the first subquest of Mr. Qi’s Mysterious Quest, and in repairing Willy’s boat.
Other than these things, Battery Packs are also good crafting materials. The items you can make using this item are an Iridium Sprinkler, Crystalarium, Slime Egg-Press, Wood Lamppost, Iron Lamppost, Mini-Jukebox, and Farm Computer.
Knowing that Solar Panels only produce one Battery Pack each and there are also rainy days that stop the production of batteries, you must understand how precious this item is. That being said, make sure to prioritize the most important ones first before using them mindlessly. Otherwise, it will be another waiting game for you.
