If you find yourself spending more and more time planning your pleasant farm line in Stardew Valley, you have plenty of company. But customizing your home and growing your farm requires plenty of crafting, which sometimes leads to new challenges.
Take clay for example. This resource is used in a variety of important building and farming crafts, but you can’t buy or it craft it, so it can become difficult to find when you need it most. Fortunately, there are still plenty of natural ways to get clay, especially if you’re ready to head out for a trip into the wilderness. Here’s what to do.
Further reading
Haunted Chocolatier: release date, trailer, rumors, and more
Stardew Valley's influence on gaming is only becoming stronger
Everything we know about Stardew Valley cross-platform support
How to find clay in Stardew Valley
Step 1: Till either the soil you want to farm or the sand in caves, beaches, etc. You’ll need a hoe to till, but a basic hoe is a starter tool (and can be upgraded easily to affect more ground). Tilling can reveal a variety of resources, which includes clay. Pay close attention to tiles that are guaranteed to yield artifacts, which have little twisting stems/worms in them. There’s a possibility that these spots will yield clay — in fact, the chances seem to be higher than most other kinds of resources.
Step 2: Head to the Ginger Island Dig Site. This is in the northern part of the island, where you will find a broken bridge near the Field Office which you can repair with 10 Golden Walnuts. Take the bridge to the Dig Site, and look for the brown Clay Nodes while you’re exploring here.
Step 3: Break open Geodes. You can find Geodes in a variety of places, but they’re most common in the mines. Blacksmiths can break them open (or you can build your own crusher), and they can yield a variety of artifacts, including clay.
Step 4: Get clay as a gift. This can occur during the “Secret Santa” phase of the Feast of the Winter Star, where a village is assigned to give you a gift. If your village ends up being Vincent or Jas, there’s a chance they’ll gift you some clay. It’s not the best gift, but at least there are lots of things you can do with it.
What can I do with clay in Stardew Valley?
Clay is a basic resource that’s used in a wide variety of crafting, from important building items to odds and ends you may want to collect. Here are some of the things you can create with your clay (and other materials).
Quality Retaining Soil: This soil can be added to tilled soil to help increase the chance of the soils staying watered overnight so you don’t have to spend as much time watering. It’s a key upgrade as you begin building out your farm.
Deluxe Retaining Soil: This soil is guaranteed to hold water overnight, and is an important transition when you’re ready to create top-notch farming plots.
Garden Pots: You can plant a variety of crops in these, either inside or outside.
Brick Floors: These look nice.
Fiber Seeds: This mix of seeds can be planted at any time and does not need to be watered.
Bone Mills: You can grind bones with these to create fertilizers.
Silos: Silos are where you store grass as feed. This is an important addition as you enlarge your farm and want to start caring for multiple cows.
Shirts: It sounds odd, but you’ll need some clay when creating a sewing machine, so keep that in mind if you have a quest to get a shirt. Clay is also an ingredient that can be turned into orange dye at dye pots.
Completing fish pond quests: After fishing at a fish pond a certain number of times, you may get a quest pop-up to feed a certain kind of fish, allowing the pond’s fish supply to grow in size. Clay is a requested item from some species, especially shellfish.
