How to unlock mastery in Stardew Valley

After you have used all your skills Stardew Valleyyou unlock mastery of skills via the Mastery Cave in the Cindersap Forest. You can improve your skills (farming, mining, foraging, fishing and combat) even further with upgrades and item recipes that will help every endgame Star Dew player lost a ton.

Below we explain how to use the Stardew Valley‘s Mastery Cave and skill mastery, what each mastery unlocks, as well as suggestions on which one to choose.

How to unlock skill mastery and the Mastery Cave in Stardew Valley

To unlock the Mastery Cave, you must reach rank 10 in each skill. Once you do that, you’ll get a message in the morning that says “You feel a new way is open…” if you press max and haven’t entered the cave yet.

The cave is located in Cindersap Forest, on the southeast side:

Once everything is maxed out, start collecting Mastery points instead of experience points. Think of it as too high experience points. Each mastery point you gain from completing various tasks (fishing, fighting, harvesting, etc.) fills one mastery bar. When the bar is full, you can go to the Mastery Cave to learn a skill mastery. You can see how many you have in your skills menu.

Mastering skills costs more the more you unlock. This is the number of mastery points you need for each unlock:

That means you’ll need a whopping 100,000 Mastery Points to complete all five Masteries, but don’t worry. Since mastery points don’t correlate with a specific skill, you’ll quickly accumulate a lot just by playing the game, allowing you to master all five skills.

What do masteries do in Stardew Valley?

Each skill has a respective mastery, and mastering the skill unlocks a few recipes and a new passive skill:

You unlock the Iridium scythea tool that allows you to harvest crops with a swing of the scythe. Say goodbye to the days of having to harvest each crop individually. You also get the recipe for the Statue of Blessingswhich gives random buffs when you interact with it every day.

The passive ability allows you to find golden animal crackers, which you can give to a farm animal to permanently double the output of any farm animal except pigs.

You get two recipes: one for the Statue of the Dwarf King and one for the heavy oven. The statue allows you to choose two improvements from a list of five, including gaining extra ore, increased chances of finding things like geodes, coal, and ladders, and the ability to be immune to bomb damage. The heavy furnace melts multiple ores at once into bars, while saving ore.

The passive ability allows you to get double gems from gem-filled rocks.

Foraging Mastery gives you two recipes: one for the mystical tree seed and one for the treasure totem. The Mystic Tree Seed grows into a Mystic Tree that produces Mystic Syrup (needed to make Treasure Totems and Blue Grass Starters). The treasure totem, when used, places a ring of artifact dig sites around you.

The passive ability allows you to find golden mystery boxes, which are basically the same as regular boxes, although they may contain car smashers and golden animal crackers.

You get the Advanced iridium rodwhich allows you to attach two bobbers at the same time. You also get the recipe challenge acewhich will give you three fish if you catch it perfectly.

The passive ability allows you to fish out golden fish treasure chests, which contain more items than regular treasure chests.

You get two recipes: one for the anvil, one for the anvil and one for the mini forge. The Anvil allows you to reroll the stats of your trinkets in exchange for three iridium bars. The Mini Forge is a home version of the Volcano Dungeon Forge.

The passive ability allows you to equip trinkets.

What is the best skill mastery in Stardew Valley?

Honestly, it’s a bit neither here nor there, as you can get all five masteries. You need to prioritize the things that impact you your gameplay the most. If you spend a lot of time fishing, you must first acquire fishing mastery. If you like the Skull Caverns, definitely prioritize combat and mining. If you’re having trouble designing your museum due to missing artifacts, foraging mastery can help you.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, as none of these masterpieces will make or break your game. If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably doing pretty well in the valley. (I personally chose the agricultural mastery because the scythe and the golden animal crackers seemed very useful for what I do Stardew Valleybut mining and fishing were good second choices for me.)