Every game has its own mysteries, even for farming games like Stardew Valley. After it first appeared on Steam for PC players in 2016, Stardew Valley has quickly taken over the market for farming games, not just on PC and Mac, but also for Android, iOS, and even the Nintendo Switch. Since its earliest release versions, Ancient Fruit in Stardew Valley has always been quite mysterious to even veteran players of the game. While mysterious, these fruits are actually quite profitable if you know what they are and how to grow them. To help you with that, here’s our guide to growing Ancient Fruits in Stardew Valley!
Inside This Article
What’s an Ancient Fruit?
First of all, what exactly is an Ancient Fruit? Those who have played Stardew Valley will know that this farming game has a lot of plants and crops that you can nurture and grow. Among these florae, Ancient Fruit is considered as some of the games’ premium crops. By using the rare and expensive Ancient Seeds, you have a chance to grow one of these wonderful berry-like fruits.
Also read: Best Stardew Valley Crops
How Much Do Ancient Fruit Sell For?
Growing Stardew Valley Ancient Fruits can be profitable. Even a normal quality Ancient Fruit can be sold for a hefty 550 gold per piece. The selling price is the third-best in the game as it comes just a little under normal quality crops of Sweet Gem Berries and Starfruit that sell for 3,000 gold and 750 gold, respectively. Farmers that take care of their Ancient Fruits and increase their quality, would also see a rise in their profits with silver, gold, and iridium Ancient Fruits selling for 687, 825, and 1,100 gold, respectively. Aside from that, Ancient Fruit plants are also quite hardy and can survive through the seasons of the year except for winter.
Knowing that Stardew Valley’s Ancient Fruit plants can continue growing in three seasons, you would also be happy to know that it only takes 28 days for a plant to fully mature through its six stages. Ancient Fruit plants only use two days for the first seed stage. It then needs another seven days each for the second, third, and fourth propagation stages. At the fifth fruit-bearing stage, it only needs another five more days to ripen until it is ready for harvest. After that harvest, you’ll only need to wait another seven days for the fruit to regrow and ripen.
How to Get Ancient Fruit in Stardew Valley?
Now that you know how much you can potentially get from these succulent fruits, you are probably wondering where you can get some for your own farm. Well, to get some Ancient Fruit in Stardew Valley, you would first need to get your hands on some Ancient Seeds (a.k.a Ancient Fruit Seeds). There are quite a few ways to get these, but they rely somewhat on luck.
Getting Stardew Valley Ancient Seeds Through an Ancient Seed Artifact
The first way to get Ancient Seeds is to get yourself an Ancient Seed Artifact. You can then trade them in Gunther’s Museum for a pack of Ancient Seeds. The trade is only available for the first museum donation, though. This happens since Gunther gives you a pack of Ancient Seeds and the recipe to convert Ancient Seed Artifacts into Ancient Fruit Seeds.
1. Digging for One
Now, the first method to get the artifact is by using your hoe. You would have to hit an Artifact Spot in the Cindersap Forest (the forest south of your farm) or in The Mountain (including the Quarry area). You do need to hope you get lucky, though, as both places only have a 0.7% chance of giving you an Ancient Seed Artifact with each Artifact Spot.
2. Fishing For One
Another way to get an artifact is through fishing one up inside a treasure chest. Again, you would need luck as you only have a 0.8% to 0.9% chance to fish one up this way. You would also need to have found at least one other artifact and at least a level two proficiency in fishing to begin this method.
4. Artifact Troves
The third way of getting the artifact is by getting lucky in Artifact Troves. The most reliable method to find these troves is to buy them for five Omni Geodes from the Desert Trader. Other ways include finding them in tier three supply crates on Beach Farms, Artifact Spots in Ginger Island’s Dig Site, and as drops by Haunted Skulls after you’ve completed the Vault Bundle. Your chances at getting an Ancient Seed Artifact from an Artifact Trove is a nice 3.7%.
5. Enemy Drops
Your last method to get an Ancient Seed Artifact is by fighting bugs, grubs, cave flies, mutant flies, and mutant grubs. All of these enemies have a 0.5% chance of dropping one as a loot item.
Getting Stardew Valley Ancient Seed By Buying Some
A better way to get some Ancient Seeds is to just buy some. On very rare occasions, the Traveling Cart that appears every Friday and Sunday in Cindersap Forest could carry an Ancient Fruit Seed. This chance is only a low 1.26%, though, and it might cost you anywhere from 100 gold to as high as 1,000 gold for just one seed.
Getting Stardew Valley Ancient Seed Using a Seed Maker
The most reliable way to get a pack of Ancient Seeds is, of course, through a seed maker. That does mean that you need at least one Ancient Fruit to start with since you would need that to use the seed maker. Aside from that, there is a tiny 0.5% chance that you could receive 1 to 3 Ancient Seeds from the seed maker instead of whatever crop you’ve placed instead.
How to Plant Ancient Fruit?
Now that you’ve finally gotten your hands on, hopefully, a good amount of seeds, you would now want to know where and when it is best to plant them. While you could just plop them down on a tilled plot and treat them like any normal crop, Ancient Fruits are best grown inside Stardew Valley’s greenhouse. Not only will they grow and bear fruit indefinitely, but they are also a perfect match for the sprinkler system since you can walk through each stalk, unlike with grapes or other vines. Growing Ancient Fruits inside a greenhouse will prevent them from dying every winter.
If you have not unlocked the greenhouse yet, though, you should treat them with a little more care than other crops. The first thing to remember when planting these rare crops is to use scarecrows to ward off crows on your farm and to have a sprinkler system set up ahead of time.
When it comes to the best time to plant Ancient Fruit Seed outside the greenhouse, that would be on Spring 1. This would mean that you can harvest your first batch on the first Monday of the next season and every Monday until winter. Doing this would give you a decent 4,400 gold at the end of the year. Not bad from just one seed, right?
If you are the type to use Speed-Gro, Deluxe Speed-Gro, or Hyper Speed-Go, we advise against using it for those planting Ancient Fruit in the greenhouse. Those that use them would see their crops grow to harvestable maturity in just 26, 22, and 19 days respectively.
What Can You Use Ancient Fruit For?
After harvesting your first batch of Stardew Valley’s Ancient Fruit, you probably want to know what they’re for instead of just selling them. Aside from giving them out as gifts to people in Pelican Town, you could make even more money after processing them into artisan goods.
You can make either wine or jelly using a keg or a preserves jar, respectively. While Ancient Fruit Jelly sells for 1,150 gold, it only has one quality level. Ancient Fruit Wine, on the other hand, sells for 1,650 gold. This amount only increases after “aging” the wine in a cask a few more times to increase its quality. Aged Ancient Fruit wine sells for 2,062, 2,475, and 3,300 gold, respectively, for silver, gold, and iridium quality wine.
What Next?
Hopefully, you are now set to create your own Ancient Fruit corner for your farm. While you may be raking in the gold, there are other ways to gain even more money with Ancient Fruit. The first thing you should do is level up your farming skill.
At level five and at level ten, you’re able to choose a specialist profession for your character. Those focused on farming should choose the “Tiller” profession to get a 10% bonus when selling your non-foraged crops. This makes your sold Ancient Fruit sell for 605, 755, 907, and 1,210 gold instead of the usual price.
Your second profession comes at level ten. At that point, you can choose the Artisan profession (if you chose Tiller previously). This makes your artisan goods worth 40% more. Due to that, your Ancient Fruit Wine would now sell for 2,310, 2,886, 3,465, and 4,620 gold depending on quality!
