Summary

Maxing out your skills inStardew Valleycan take a while, as is. However, once you’ve reached level ten in each of the five skills, you may then start your journey to becoming a Master thanks to a surprise left behind by your farmer’s grandfather; the Mastery Cave.

Here, you will be able to access new abilities, new items, and new crafting recipes. The catch? You now have to gain a ridiculous amount of Mastery points. It’s a fancy way of saying that you have to keep earning experience. If you know the right activities to do to increase your experience, you can gain Mastery quickly. This list will help you with just that.

player standing on beach pier with a lot of crab pots placed

10Choose The Trapper Profession

In the world of fishing, in Stardew Valley anyway, most people choosethe Fisher profession, which does give you a boost to your sales when you throw your caught fish into the shipping bin. However, the longer your game goes on, the less you’re likely to fish because it doesn’t bring in a lot of money, and in Mastery terms, it doesn’t bring in much experience.

ButCrab Potscan be a passive way to gain a lot of experience, especially once you choose your second fishing profession. Mariner is better for experience while Luremaster can save you time and money, so you can choose either of these options, then you can just walk along your coastline of choice, collecting fish and experience.

Farmer standing in front of a Jade Node in Stardew Valley

you’re able to change your professions at any time once you’ve unlocked the Sewers. Approach theStatue of Uncertaintyand give it 10,000g. Once you go to bed, you can change both professions for one of your Skills.

9Choose The Geologist Profession

Again, a majority of players like to go down the Miner route when it comes to choosing a mining profession. However, when it comes to experience points gained, you’ll get a lot more from gemstones than you do for ores.

This will help set you up so that any mining trips orSkull Cavern plungesshould net you some gems, literally and figuratively. And the more you find and mine, the faster you will be on your way to your next Mastery level, and the value of each gemstone is as follows:

Stardew Valley farmer standing in the middle of the fruit bat cave, surrounded by fallen fruit

16

40

stardew valley villager holding auto-grabber in front of a barn.

80

150

A player catching a legendary fish in the mountains.

8Visit Fruit And Mushroom Caves

As you move onto bigger and better things, like building a wine empire based in the Valley, chances are you’ll forget to check on some things that didn’t retain their value later in the game. And that might mean some lonely bats and fungi.

If you visit your farm’s cave, as well as the mushroom caveProfessor Snailwas trapped in, you’ll gain experience for picking up whatever has spawned there. If you leave it for a while and come back to it, it will be a burst of points toward your Mastery.

Stardew Valley a large orchard full of fruit trees

7Hold Off On Or Remove Auto-Grabbers

If you have a lot of animals on your farm, gathering their “products” can be time-consuming, but every time you pick up an egg or milk an animal, you gain farming experience. So, at least while you grind out your Mastery levels, it might be more effective to do away with auto-grabbers.

The same mentality applies to any auto-petters you have, but if your farm animals don’t have full hearts with you yet, every time you pet them you gain five experience points. It’s a drop in the bucket, but enough drops fill that bucket, right?

Stardew Valley Truffles On The Ground

6Wait To Catch The Legendary Fish

Fishing isn’t the greatest way to gain your Mastery levels, and for how much time it takes, you don’t get a lot of experience from it. But there are a handful of fish that do give a pretty big chunk of EXP, and those arethe Legendary Fish.

If you hold off on catching these fish until after you’re on your Mastery journey, not only will that experience go toward your Mastery, but you’ll be in the best shape possible to catch them. Even at max level, the Legendary Fish can be difficult to net.

Farmer standing next to a special slime in Stardew Valley

5Re-Planting And Chopping Down Trees

Trees don’t give much experience; only 12 points, 13 if you remove its stump as well. However, if you have a lot of them, removing them all at once can give you a big spike in Mastery points, and that’s where tree farms enter the chat.

Many players have tree farms somewhere to produce eitherMaple Syrup, pine tar, or oak resin, and while you don’t have to tear down this resource, well, source, doing something similar can set you up for success. Or, if you do feel comfortable taking the hit, chop down your resource trees and let them grow back once you’ve become a Master.

A Stardew Valley player using bombs in Skull Cavern.

4Picking Up Truffles

Now, with most farm animals, removing the auto-grabbers will be the way to go to get you some extra Mastery points. But the same is not true for pigs; they don’t produce anything when indoors, instead they dig up truffles you can pick up.

You should invest and buy some if you don’t have pigs on your farm. Not only are truffles profitable, but they give you seven EXP whenever you pick one up; it’s not a lot, but it’s honest work, right?

stardew player standing next to giant melon crop

3Fighting High-Level Enemies

Combat can be lackluster, experience-wise. but in the last levels or the Mines, and when you’re in Skull Cavern, you can really start to rack up points. The stronger the enemy, the more you stand to gain from going head-to-head with them.

The harder, but most effective, way to do this is to fight foes inthe dangerous version of the Mines. After all, you’ll know that you’re fighting the highest-level enemies, thus gaining the most combat experience you can, just leave all your valuables at home.

2Mining With Bombs

Do you know a faster way to gain mining experience? Mining with explosives! The math should be mathing and, of course, the more stones and nodes you break at one time, the more experience you’ll gain in a shorter amount of time.

This beats being selective and only going after gemstone nodes, plus it gives you the chance to find geodes, which also gives you EXP, without busting apart each rock one by one. Not to mention, this can damage enemies at the same time, making for a real one-two combo by killing enemies, thus gaining combat experience, too.

As an honorable mention, reading any of the skillBooks of Powerwill give you experience that counts toward your Mastery, as opposed to experience toward their specific skill. If you find copies or can buy them, it’s a helpful EXP boost.

1Farming

Yes, just simple farming is one of the best ways to gain a massive amount of experience at one time. But, you have to have a lot of crops for this to break through the Mastery glass ceiling, and you’ll want to focus on the crops that give you the most EXP.

In Spring, plantCauliflower, in the Summer, plant eitherMelonorStarfruit, and in the Fall, it’sPumpkinseason. And, of course, it would be ideal to have a lot of ancient fruit as well and you’ll gain 38 farming experiences per fruit, so if you put all your efforts into big farming plots filled with these fruits, you’ll be rushing through your Mastery levels.