Stardew Valley: How to Level up Foraging [FAST]

Foraging is one of the skills in Stardew Valley that come in handy a lot and is tied to making progress early on in the game. Foraging also comes in handy later on in the game when you have to make items with forageable items that you find around Pelican Town. This plays a huge part in upgrading your home, making additional buildings, and making the crafting stations that are necessary for making higher-value items so that you can start earning some major bucks.

Before we get into leveling up foraging fast, examining the sub-skills, and some useful spots, let’s first see what counts as foraging. Foraging in Stardew Valley is a little different from other games because it also counts chopping trees and collecting wood as foraging, as well as the products that you can forage for like mushrooms, roots, and fruits.

This means that it allows players to start leveling up the foraging skill as soon as they start the game. You start with an axe that can chop down the basic trees so you can immediately start gathering wood and ensuring that you start getting a few levels in foraging.

Leveling Up Foraging Fast

Foraging is a skill that you are going to be working on until you have it to the max. The skill is used throughout the game and it will be integral at getting most of the useful upgrades in the game. There are a few things that you should keep in mind when leveling up foraging as they will help you get better at it, unlock more sub-skills, and just do more with what you have.

Tools

There is one tool that is absolutely necessary for progression and that is the Axe. You start off with a normal axe but it can be upgraded to Copper, Iron, Gold, and Iridium once you find the prerequisite materials and have enough money to get them upgraded. Getting the axe to at least Iron level is one thing that I highly advise and it is the second tool that I get upgraded, right after the Pickaxe.

The upgraded axe will not only allow you to chop down normal trees faster, but it will also allow you to chop wood that you couldn’t before. It allows you to chop down both Stumps and Logs that appear naturally in the game and that will start netting you some hardwood which is an incredibly useful resource to have.

Food

There are certain foods in the game that can up your foraging skill temporarily but that doesn’t affect the recipes that you have available, it just allows you to increase the chance of getting better resources when foraging and reducing the energy strain that each forage item takes.

Integral Areas

The big secret to leveling up foraging quickly is that it is essential to go to the areas that have a high density of forageable materials, areas that you know can have forageable materials spawn. There are many areas that you can go to that are excellent for foraging but here are some of the ones that I particularly use because of their proximity to the farm, the ease of getting there, and the abundance of forageables that these areas have.

The Beach

The beach is one of my favorite areas to forage around because it seems that every day there seems to be something to pick up off the ground. There are many reasons for this but the main one is that the area is open and doesn’t have much to block the spawns of forageable items.

It is really common to see coral, shells, and urchins on the beach but there is a way that you can increase their spawns further by expanding the area available to you. You can do this by using wood and repairing the bridge that connects the main beach to another division that spawns a lot of coral and urchins. The area is also one of the spots for a legendary fish and is one that you are going to need if you plan on getting married in the game. So getting this area as soon as possible is really worth the wood that you use.

Secret Woods

The secret woods is an area that you can unlock after you get your axe upgraded to iron. It will allow you to chop down the tree that is blocking the path into the secret woods left of Marnie’s Ranch. The area is a haven for late-game resources but it is a good idea to unlock it early on and start a stockpile of the resources that you will inevitably need.

The area contains 6 stumps that respawn each day. These stumps are going to be a lifesaver when it comes to getting hardwood so make sure to unlock this area and chop down the stumps as part of your daily routine.

Bat Cave/ Mushroom Cave

This is a choice that is highly debated in the Stardew Valley community because each of those choices gives you a pretty decent edge. This location is unlocked by Demetrius when you get a total of 25,000 gold earned. For people looking to increase their foraging skills, the best thing to get is the Fruit Bat Cave. The fruit counts for forage-ables have a decent spawn rate and can be turned into Jelly and Wine for maximum profit.

Sub-Skills

The foraging skill has sub-skills like all the rest but the path that you choose for these skills is very important. The first option is a choice between gatherer and woodcutter. I always try and go for woodcutter because at the end of the skill tree you can get the ability to have a chance of hardwood dropping from every tree that you chop. I cannot recommend this sub-skill enough because it makes the grind for hardwood so much easier, especially if you are playing in a multiplayer game.

Final Note

The thing to remember about foraging is to always keep an eye out for opportunity because forage-ables can appear almost anywhere so it is a more passive skill than active ones like mining or farming. Keep at it and your Foraging Skill should go up in no time.

Reference: Paste Magazine