In the world of Stardew Valley, there are plenty of different slice-of-life aspects to enhance and immerse you in your gameplay. In this game, one of the most important is the quality of items.
Iridium quality items, otherwise known as purple star items, are extremely beneficial to the player. It means an increased selling price, better efficiency, or higher relationship points when gifting to NPCs. Purple stars hold great value.
You can get purple stars anywhere. Your tools, your crops, animal products, artisan items, and forage items can all be “iridium quality” or “purple star” items. These are identifiable by the titular purple star accompanying them in your UI, as shown in the image above.
Iridium Quality Tools
Tools are vital items to the player in Stardew Valley, and they’ll need to be upgraded to progress through the game. Once you begin using your pickaxe tool and get yourself some ore, Pelican Town’s local blacksmith, Clint, will arrive at your house and introduce blueprints for a furnace to you.
This allows you to craft your own, and through this furnace, you can create ore bars. You make these by inputting five ore and one coal piece to melt a bar of that specific ore.
Once you have five of these bars, you can use them and a varying sum of money to upgrade your tools to these different qualities or materials. However, you cannot just jump to iridium quality tools.
The way the game works, it doesn’t allow for that. Instead, you must start by upgrading to different ranks. Starting with copper tools for 2000g each, then iron for 5000g, gold for 10000g, and finally iridium, also known as purple star quality, for 20000g.
Iridium Quality Grown Crops
Farming is a core part of Stardew Valley, so understandably, you need more effort and time put into getting purple star crops. While not entirely needed, regular quality or especially good quality fertilizers are good ways to boost the star rating of your crops.
You either make fertilizer yourself with sap and fish or get them at Pierre’s shop. Fertilizers must be placed prior to the seeds themselves, or the fertilizer will not be applied to that single crop and subsequent harvest from that plant.
However, the more vital piece of farming you need to focus on is the farming skill itself. With ten ascending levels, you can unlock different helpful farming items. These items can be useful self-sufficient items such as sprinklers, scarecrows, speed grow, and fertilizers.
As your farming skill grows, so will the rating of your crops. After that, the more likely you’ll reach purple star quality just from experience alone.
| Crop | Starting Price | Iridium Price |
|---|---|---|
| Ancient Fruit | 550g | 1100g |
| Parsnip | 35g | 70g |
| Corn | 50g | 100g |
| Starfruit | 750g | 1500g |
| Fairy Rose | 290g | 580g |
Iridium Quality Forage Items
Foraging is another vital skill in getting Stardew Valley’s purple star items, but no doubt the easiest to work on and rank up. All it takes is searching through the town and outside land for various items of value on the ground. Berries, though, are on bushes as well.
Over time, as your proficiency grows through leveling up, items you forage will inevitably grow in rank. Much like crops, quality varies on how much time and grinding you’ve put into the skillset.
This is no doubt the easiest way to achieve the purple star quality of items. Depending on your skill tree choices, you may even get more than one purple star item with each forage.
| Forage Item | Starting Price | Iridium Price |
|---|---|---|
| Red Mushroom | 75g | 150g |
| Purple Mushroom | 250g | 500g |
| Crystal Fruit | 150g | 300g |
| Rainbow Shell | 300g | 600g |
| Magma Cap | 400g | 800g |
| Coconut | 100g | 200g |
Iridium Quality Artisan Items
Artisan purple star items are a little trickier to achieve. These items are goods that are transformed into other products through artisanal equipment on the farm. Items such as wines, beers, cheese, and various pickled items. However, only some have quality levels to them.
Wine, cheese, beer, pale ale, mead, and, controversially, mayonnaise are all ranked in no-star to purple star quality (or iridium quality). You can make these through varying craft-able equipment that may take a higher farming level. For example, casks come with upgrading the farmhouse to the point of gaining a basement full of them.
| Artisan Good | Starting Price | Iridium Price |
|---|---|---|
| Wine | Fruit Price x3 | (Fruit Price x3)2 |
| Beer | 200g | 400g |
| Pale Ale | 300g | 600g |
| Cheese | 230g | 660g |
| Goat Cheese | 400g | 800g |
| Mead | 200g | 400g |
Iridium Quality Animal Products
Iridium quality animal products in Stardew Valley are simple. You can get your own coops and barns with enough wood, stone, and money and help from Robin’s store. Animals you have on the farm consist of chickens, ducks, cows, rabbits, dinosaurs, goats, pigs, and sheep. These provide you with a variety of potential purple star quality items.
Items such as eggs, milk, wool, feathers, truffles, and, oddly enough, rabbit feet. However, rabbits will not actively lose their feet, so there is no need to fret.
Much like the crops, farming skill comes heavily into play with Stardew Valley‘s purple star rankings. Although, much like real animals, these virtual creatures require attention. With regular petting and providing the animals with food, the products will increase in rank over time along with improving the crops and doubling the selling price.
| Animal Product | Starting Price | Iridium Price |
|---|---|---|
| Large Egg | 95g | 190g |
| Large Milk | 190g | 380g |
| Wool | 340g | 680g |
| Truffle | 625g | 1250g |
Iridium Quality Fish
Fishing is a fun game feature that also results in merchandise for you to sell, use, or gift: fish. Purple stars are also obtainable through skill. However, other factors come into play. Your fishing rod, bait, and lure all come with different buffs and abilities that affect your fishing and subsequent fish.
Though, one thing that makes fishing unique is its minigame. It requires genuine attention and skill to play a fun but challenging fishing minigame, where you keep a colored bar within range of the fish, which moves at a myriad of different speeds depending on the fish. The less you are out of range, the higher chance for a purple star (iridium quality) fish.
| Fish | Starting Price | Iridium Price |
|---|---|---|
| Sturgeon | 200g | 400g |
| Lingcod | 120g | 240g |
| Halibut | 80g | 160g |
| Stingray | 180g | 360g |
| Void Salmon | 150g | 300g |
| Scorpion Carp | 150g | 300g |
Iridium Quality Fruit
Fruit is similar to artisan products in that you must wait. Iridium Quality of the fruit increases over the seasons, which takes at least a year, if not longer, to achieve the purple star ranking.
However, there is a cheat to this, where choosing the fruit bat cave from Demetrius at the beginning of the game, you could instead rely on your foraging skill to pull through and gain your purple star fruit. Often times picking up some fruit on the floor of the cave will result in higher quality fruit.
| Fruit | Starting Price | Iridium Price |
|---|---|---|
| Apple | 100g | 200g |
| Apricot | 50g | 100g |
| Banana | 150g | 300g |
| Cherry | 80g | 160g |
| Mango | 130g | 260g |
| Orange | 100g | 200g |
| Peach | 140g | 280g |
| Pomegranate | 140g | 280g |
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