Stardew Valley Tool Upgrades: Costs, Best Order, and Timing

The best first upgrade depends on what is slowing down your farm. Prioritize the pickaxe for mining, work toward a Steel Axe for the Secret Woods, or improve the watering can if daily watering is the bottleneck. Do not commit your last bars just to make every tool the same color.

This guide covers unmodded Stardew Valley 1.6 mechanics. The budgets below separate the next payment from the total investment, and the watering-can plan includes the days when rain will not solve the problem.

How much do tool upgrades cost?

Each main-tool tier requires five matching bars plus its listed fee. Taking one starter axe, pickaxe, hoe, or watering can all the way to iridium costs 42,000g total, including the final 25,000g payment.

Upgrade	Pay for this step	Bring these bars	Gold spent from starter tier
Copper	2,000g	5 Copper Bars	2,000g
Steel	5,000g	5 Iron Bars	7,000g
Gold	10,000g	5 Gold Bars	17,000g
Iridium	25,000g	5 Iridium Bars	42,000g

These are Clint’s main-tool prices, excluding the cost of acquiring materials. The cumulative column is the sum of the payments above it. A fully upgraded tool consumes five bars of each metal: 20 bars in total, not 20 Iridium Bars.

For all four main tools, the complete budget is 168,000g plus 20 Copper Bars, 20 Iron Bars, 20 Gold Bars, and 20 Iridium Bars. That is a planning ceiling for the full set, so do not treat it as an early-game shopping list. A Copper Pickaxe and a Steel Axe together cost 9,000g, 10 Copper Bars, and 5 Iron Bars from starter tools—a much smaller commitment toward two useful goals.

Which tool should you upgrade first?

Buy the upgrade that removes your next obstacle. The following order is a decision guide; no single route is optimal for every farm.

Your immediate goal	Prioritize	When to stop and reassess
Spend more time progressing through the Mines	Pickaxe	When rocks in the area you use no longer feel like the limiting task
Collect hardwood and reach the Secret Woods	Axe through steel	Once the access requirement is met, compare further speed improvements with other needs
Reduce manual watering work	Watering can	Reassess when sprinkler coverage changes how often you use it
Prepare a large new planting area	Hoe	Upgrade before the planting day, not while you need to prepare it

For an unenchanted axe, copper opens Large Stumps and steel opens Large Logs, including the log blocking the Secret Woods. Higher tiers reduce chopping work. These are concrete access gains, which can make the axe progression more urgent than improving a tool you rarely use.

The pickaxe progression has different gates: steel breaks the large boulders on the farm, while gold can break a meteorite. A Copper Pickaxe needs two hits for a Copper Node; steel needs one. Match the purchase to the rocks you encounter instead of assuming every upgrade unlocks a new area.

If money is tight, choose one next job and keep a separate reserve for your other plans. An upgrade can be useful without being the best purchase this morning.

When will Clint return your tool?

Count two nights from the handoff, then allow time to collect it. Use the tool before delivering it, spend the following day without it, and collect it on the next day when Clint is available.

For a normal visit, reach the Blacksmith between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. Check both the handoff and collection day. Work can finish during a festival even when collection is unavailable; completion and access to the counter are separate issues. The Blacksmith schedule explains that distinction.

Clint’s routine also changes with your save. After the Community Center is restored, he normally leaves the shop on Fridays, although rain can override that routine. Winter 16 includes his clinic visit, and other special schedules can interfere. Check Clint’s schedule before choosing a critical pickup day.

Do not interpret a ready notification as proof you can collect immediately. If tomorrow’s plan depends on that tool, confirm the shop visit first.

How do you upgrade the watering can without missing a day?

Water first, hand the can over before a forecast rainy day, and collect it the day after the rain. This works for outdoor crops only if Clint is available on the planned collection day.

Day	Action	What covers outdoor watering
Day A	Check tomorrow’s forecast, water everything that needs it, then deliver the can	You water before the handoff
Day B	Leave the can with Clint	Forecast rain, if it occurs as expected
Day C	Collect the upgraded can and resume watering	You water after pickup

Before relying on that plan, check crops outside the rain’s reach. Greenhouse crops and indoor Garden Pots still need their normal watering arrangements. Winter is not automatically a free window either: Winter Seeds and Powdermelon need water. An unwatered immature crop ordinarily loses a growth day rather than immediately dying, but that delay can matter near a season’s end. See the watering-can reference for the crop and weather exceptions.

From version 1.6.9, Clint also refills the can when upgrading it, as confirmed in the official changelog. That is convenient after pickup; it does not water crops while the can is away.

Why does an upgraded hoe or watering can still affect one tile?

You must charge it to use its wider area. A quick tap still performs the small action; on PC, hold the tool-use input and release when the intended area is highlighted.

Tier	Maximum hoe area	Watering-can capacity
Starter	1 tile	40 charges
Copper	3 tiles in a line	55 charges
Steel	5 tiles in a line	70 charges
Gold	3 × 3, or 9 tiles	85 charges
Iridium	6 × 3, or 18 tiles	100 charges

The hoe reference documents its charged areas. The watering can follows the same area progression, with its own water consumption; capacity is not the number of full-strength charges. These figures describe ordinary metal tiers; the Reaching enchantment is separate.

Use a smaller charge when it suits the layout. Unlocking a large rectangle does not mean every row should be watered at maximum power. Controller and mobile inputs differ; check your control scheme rather than looking for a PC mouse command.

Does the same upgrade table apply to pans and trash cans?

Not exactly. Pans start at copper, and trash cans use lower gold fees. Neither belongs in the four-starter-tool total above.

In 1.6, a Copper Pan can progress through steel, gold, and iridium at Clint’s. The three steps cost 5,000g, 10,000g, and 25,000g, each with five bars of the corresponding metal. That is 40,000g plus five Iron, Gold, and Iridium Bars from an existing Copper Pan. Upgrades improve panning rewards, but do not guarantee a particular rare item. The pan reference covers acquisition and reward behavior; ConcernedApe’s 1.6 notes establish the new upgrade path.

Trash-can tier	Gold fee	Bars	Value recovered from eligible discarded items
Copper	1,000g	5 Copper Bars	15%
Steel	2,500g	5 Iron Bars	30%
Gold	5,000g	5 Gold Bars	45%
Iridium	12,500g	5 Iridium Bars	60%

Your existing trash can remains usable during the upgrade. Recovery is only partial, and some item types return nothing. If you rarely discard valuable items, this is a lower-priority convenience than a tool that opens access or saves daily work. Those limits are documented in the trash-can reference.

What should you bring, and which tools go elsewhere?

Bring finished bars, not raw ore. A regular Furnace turns five ore and one coal into one Copper, Iron, Gold, or Iridium Bar, so five bars require 25 ore and five coal. That calculation assumes an ordinary Furnace, not a different processing method. If you still need to build one, the Furnace recipe costs 20 Copper Ore and 25 Stone; those construction materials are additional.

Fishing rods are a different purchase path: Willy’s Fish Shop sells rods when their requirements are met. Do not bring a Bamboo Pole and metal bars to Clint expecting a pickaxe-style upgrade.

Scythes are different again. The Golden Scythe comes from the statue at the end of the Quarry Mine. The Iridium Scythe is a Farming Mastery reward. Neither is another 25,000g Blacksmith order.

Do enchantments replace metal upgrades?

No. Enchantments are a separate layer, and upgrading an enchanted tool keeps its enchantment. At the Forge, a tool enchantment costs one Prismatic Shard and 20 Cinder Shards; the result is random rather than a selected metal tier.

Before spending a rare shard, check the competing priorities in our Prismatic Shard guide. If reaching the island’s later facilities is the obstacle, our Golden Walnut locations guide covers that separate progression task.