Alternate iridium source

Worblehat

Planter
When the ratio of game days to real days drops below one, that suggests a problem worth thinking about solutions for. I finished the Community Center bundles in the second week of Summer Year 2 (red cabbage), which I think is pretty typical for a new player or a more experienced player who doesn't try very hard to push for it in Year 1. The next stage of the game is Ginger Island, which requires 5 iridium bars (I'm ignoring the hardwood and batteries, because they're trivial to acquire). Before the start of Year 3, Skull Cavern is the only place to get it (yes, the Traveling Cart can sell a bit of ore, but very rarely). Which leads to "Ugh, a high luck day, I guess I should head to SC. Or just play a different game/post on the forum/read a book/etc." and < 1 game day played per actual real life day...

Possible solutions:
  1. Clint sells iridium ore at extortionate prices. What that price would be, I have no idea - what's the "value" of unlocking Ginger Island? If he sold it for 10k per ore piece, that's a quarter million to unlock, if the player buys it all. I'd jump at the chance, personally.
  2. Introduce a mechanism to summon Grandpa early, to get the Statue of Perfection before Spring 1 Year 3. Cost, again, not sure. Five diamonds? Seems really cheap... A prismatic shard? Pretty rare and seems to primarily drop in SC, which defeats the point of this suggestion. Give the wizard some stuff (what? void essence seems plausible; maybe just some of that, solar essence, purple mushrooms, and super cucumbers?) to do a Grandpa-summoning ritual?
 
You can easily get 200+ iridium ore just by staircase and megabombing the skull cavern not a need for this as it's supposed to be hard to get. You only need 25 ore.

Heck farm magma geodes in the caverns 110-120.

Or farm omnigeodes from ginger.(from was supposed to be from the mines not ginger even though ginger has an over abundance)

Or farm shadow brutes

Or farm purple slimes by putting a statue of darkness and !killing so many any other day (purple eggs can be obtained from slimepress and purple slimes in sc)

Or set up multiple super cucumber fishponds
 
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ISSsloth

Farmer
I finished the Community Center bundles in the second week of Summer Year 2 (red cabbage), which I think is pretty typical for a new player or a more experienced player who doesn't try very hard to push for it in Year 1.
I- I'm on year 3 and have never once completed the cc.
 

Odin

Moderator
Staff member
Hey everyone, I wanted to jump in and say few words:

@Worblehat Please keep in mind people are free to recommend suggestions to deal with the issue you might be facing!

I also want to encourage everyone to add suggestions on top of OP's suggestion, please keep in mind that people posting in Game suggestion aren't necessarily looking for help, and while it's fine to give, that isn't necessarily why people are posting in this board. Everyone has a distinct way to playing the game so we encourage suggestions that provide more options for the players!
 
One other suggestion is to go to the casino and purchase the cat statue from the shifty dude. One of the items it generates is iridium bars. The mil dollar price tag is expensive but achievable and with the prior options I provided it could get those 5 iridium bars easily by spring of year 2.

Hopefully this will help someone that is facing a similar problem as worblehat. It just happened tonight on a farm of mine it generates 3 bars back to back
 

imnvs

Local Legend
One other suggestion is to go to the casino and purchase the cat statue from the shifty dude. One of the items it generates is iridium bars. The mil dollar price tag is expensive but achievable and with the prior options I provided it could get those 5 iridium bars easily by spring of year 2.

Hopefully this will help someone that is facing a similar problem as worblehat. It just happened tonight on a farm of mine it generates 3 bars back to back
I eventually build a shed just for my statues... perfection et al. The one from "the shifty dude", as you call him, I buy as many as I can afford late game, after getting all the other major investments. (It's a way to turn raw cash into resources that can't just be purchased, specifically the iridium bars.)
 

Worblehat

Planter
The Statue of Endless Fortune is not a solution to the problem (any more than "build a super cucumber pond" or "kill 500 shadow brutes per 1 iridium bar drop (0.2% chance)" is). The problem is gaining iridium during the interval between completing the CC and getting the Statue of Perfection on Spring 1 Year 3. Any purported solution that takes longer than just waiting for Year 3 is irrelevant. I might reach 1 million cash available in mid to late Winter Year 2, but probably it will take until early Spring Year 3.

I also note that the Statue of Endless Fortune is functionally identical to one of my proposed solutions. You guys are acting like being able to hand money to Clint in exchange for iridium ore is an outrageous suggestion, yet giving 1 million g to "the shifty dude" is totally fine. What's the difference, exactly? Other than the latter being very unlikely to be useful in Year 2, as I've already said. Let's assume a time horizon of one year for caring about the iridium income from the SoEF. That's 79 non-birthdays * 0.25 chance for iridium ~ 20 iridium bars, so 50000g/bar. Which is exactly the cost I suggested in the OP, 10k per ore.

Another solution is to follow up on the geode idea (that part of Zen_the_Ogre's suggestion was indeed constructive). The first 142 geodes in my game produced zero iridium, so I was not aware it was possible. Thanks to Stardew Predictor and abusing the exploit (at least, I assume it's a bug) that geode crushers are offset by one from the geode sequence as opened by Clint, the next five geodes produced 10 iridium. Lesson learned, start abusing Stardew Predictor from day 1 of future saves. I'll also note that if a player feels pushed toward exploit-y gameplay, that indicates a problem that ought to be addressed in the game.
 
I dunno by end of summer of year 2 I tend to have full iridium gear on an xbox. The items that throw me for a loop are the dino eggs and prismatic shard. I know that I use the super cucumber/magma geodes to get the the first bar, and usually I have mines enough jade through normal play to get to level 60 then I megabombs and chug garlic oils to avoid serpents/heal.

While I can understand your frustration the reason these items are hard to get is to encourage a feeling of accomplishment. If you remember omnigeodes used to be able to be bout in bulk from sandy and krobus on Tuesday and Wednesday. People use to use this to speed the prisma shards/iridium or mineral completions for the museum. This exploitive practice was removed for balancing purposes.

The reason why this might not be a good idea is just balancing purposes. To much iridium up front and nobody "farms". They rely on sprinklers (which is why the beach map is the way it is). The earliest you would want Clint to offer the iridium would be after the price hike and then should be in limited supply like maybe only 2-3 bars worth of ore to encourage players to at least to try to find it on their own.
 

imnvs

Local Legend
You used to be able to buy coconuts in bulk too... which can now be used to get golden coconuts... which can be used to get iridium pretty regularly. Sadly, that's all out on Ginger Island, too.

And, I dunno... I usually do buy a statue of endless convenience (they really take forever to pay for themselves, so "fortune" is a bit of a misnomer) fairly early. It's piles of them that I buy later to fill a shed with them when I have nothing left to spend on... but earlier? Getting an iridium bar or two per week is handy. It's also low-stress.

Look, I'm not saying buying iridium should never ever happen. It's not a bad idea. I'm just not 100% sure it is necessary, but that I don't find acquiring iridium as tedious as you do doesn't mean it shouldn't be implemented. My only real concern, however, is that it would effectively make the statue of endless convenience worthless. Literally the only reason I buy one is because it turns raw cash into iridium. I can get diamonds and omni geodes and gold bars all pretty easily. I don't care too much about those. And the food items you get on folks' birthdays? Unless you have a pile of statues, you're just getting 1 food item that takes up space. You get 30 of the same food item and now you've got a respectable stack for taking into the mines... but until then, getting food from the statue is worthless. Literally the ONLY thing the statue is good for is the occasional iridium bar, imho, and if I could just go BUY iridium, why would I EVER buy the statue?

That is the difference, or rather that is the real problem: making already existing features obsolete.

--

Another major concern... when does Clint have iridium available? From the beginning? Honestly, unless you REALLY work for it, I don't think you should be able to just go write a check for some iridium in spring of year 1.
 

Worblehat

Planter
when does Clint have iridium available? From the beginning? Honestly, unless you REALLY work for it, I don't think you should be able to just go write a check for some iridium in spring of year 1.
I'd say when the Community Center is rebuilt. Could also make it so he has a total stock of 25, and once you've bought it, that's it. Would that help with the "why buy the statue?" issue?

Why would one want iridium in Spring Year 1? How would you have the money for it? Would you have already done the copper, steel, and gold upgrades to a tool somehow? Crystalariums would be out of reach for quite some time yet. It's entirely possible that there are some weird expert-player edge cases here that I'm completely missing.
 
@Worblehat Honestly why don't you just request a joja Mart perk that allows you to pay for the repairs to the boat. That would fit more thematically with what you are wanting and honestly I can see it function better gamewise without trashing the play and pacing on a Hero of Stardew Valley route.

Also it's quite possible have all golden tools by the end of summer one and I tend to have a iridium watering can/pickaxe by the end of the first year. If I am playing joja I can have the greenhouse up by the end of spring completely filled with strawberries and fruit trees. Heck no Initial grow time through the first year for 116 strawberries plants. That's 2436 harvest total over the year yielding a minimum of $321552 easily paying for every coop/barn upgrades and having truffles and bunny feet by late fall /winter. Those coops bringing in money at a rate of 12 eggs a day at 600 profit that being completed by the end of summer means only two months at a rate of 3360 if you never pet them so you only receive unstarred egg. A barn with straight cows would earn 50000. And non of that is factoring in the star increase of values or putting together makers/kegs/preserve jars. So yeah you can easily be in a position to buy the million dollar statue or even the return scepter in your second year. None of that is done through exploits, mods, or even reloads. However you probably will not have anytime for socializing so the highest friend total is gonna be linus to get the wild bait recipe to gain excessive amounts of fish while trying to fish up a dino egg.
 

Odin

Moderator
Staff member
@Zen_the_Ogre @Freizeitfarmer I think the discussion may be getting a bit off topic again. I'm sure there are many people that would not need an alternate source of iridium as suggested, but I'm sure Worblehat isn't the only one that would find it beneficial. And it seems like you both agreed on a method that would fit into the game without altering the wide range of playstyles people have too much:
The earliest you would want Clint to offer the iridium would be after the price hike and then should be in limited supply like maybe only 2-3 bars worth of ore to encourage players to at least to try to find it on their own.
I'd say when the Community Center is rebuilt. Could also make it so he has a total stock of 25, and once you've bought it, that's it. Would that help with the "why buy the statue?" issue?
 
@Zen_the_Ogre @Freizeitfarmer I think the discussion may be getting a bit off topic again. I'm sure there are many people that would not need an alternate source of iridium as suggested, but I'm sure Worblehat isn't the only one that would find it beneficial. And it seems like you both agreed on a method that would fit into the game without altering the wide range of playstyles people have too much:
I think we both are fine, we have had a talk privately with the same finding: probably there is a nice way to have all ways covered. :-)
 

LRangerR

Local Legend
Perhaps instead of when the CC is finished, maybe when the Joja Warehouse is built you can buy Iridium from Clint?

FWIW, much of my early Iridium is sourced from geodes. It definitely makes the L10 mining perk where you get double the chance of geodes worth it.
 
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