Tool Upgrades Guide: When and How to Upgrade Every Tool
Every tool upgrade in Stardew Valley — exact costs, bars needed, what each tier unlocks, the best upgrade order, and how to time them so you're never stuck.
Tool upgrades are the quiet engine of your whole first year. A better pickaxe mines faster, a better watering can turns a 40-tile chore into two button-holds, and the right axe tier is the only thing standing between you and hardwood. Here’s exactly how upgrading works, what each tier does (with real 1.6 numbers), and the order that pays off fastest.
At a glance
- Upgrade at Clint’s Blacksmith (on the road north of town, past the river). Cost: gold + 5 metal bars per tier.
- Tiers: Copper (2,000g) → Steel (5,000g) → Gold (10,000g) → Iridium (25,000g).
- Each upgrade takes 2 days — you can’t use the tool meanwhile.
- Upgrades must go in order; you can’t skip to Gold.
- Best Year 1 order: Pickaxe → Axe → Watering Can → Hoe → Scythe.
The upgrade table
| Tier | Bars needed | Gold |
|---|---|---|
| Copper | 5  Copper Bars |
2,000g |
| Steel | 5  Iron Bars |
5,000g |
| Gold | 5  Gold Bars |
10,000g |
| Iridium | 5  Iridium Bars |
25,000g |
(Yes — the “Steel” tier is built from iron bars.) Each bar is 3–5 ore + 1 coal in your furnace, so a Copper tier is roughly 15 copper ore and 5 coal plus your 2,000g. Bars you smelt but don’t upgrade with still sell for a healthy markup, so nothing is wasted — ore comes from the mines (see our mining guide) and coal from geodes and Dust Sprites.
Two rules people learn the hard way: you lose use of the tool for the full 2 days, and if Clint’s shop is shut when the job finishes (Sundays, festivals), you wait longer to collect it. On rainy days and in Winter those days cost you almost nothing — plan around them.
What each tool’s upgrades do
Pickaxe
Every tier knocks one hit off every rock and ore node (Copper −1, Steel −2, Gold −3, Iridium −4) — which is the difference between grinding floors 1–40 and eating them alive. It also gates the world:
- Copper: can break the large stones inside the mines.
- Steel: breaks the boulders on your farm and removes the obstruction that blocks talking to the dwarves — which opens the Skull Cavern shortcut.
- Gold: mines the meteorite that lands on your farm (Stardrop inside, later).
- Iridium: raw speed, and a prerequisite for endgame bombing routines.
Axe
Same hit-reduction ladder, plus the hardwood gate:
- Copper: chops Big Stumps (2 hardwood each) — your first steady hardwood supply.
- Steel: chops Big Logs (8 hardwood each) and opens the Secret Woods, whose daily hardwood + mushroom + slime loot is one of the best foraging spots in the game.
- Gold/Iridium: faster tree-felling and easier giant-crop harvesting.
Watering can
The tier that changes your daily routine most. Capacity and maximum charged-water area per swing:
| Tier | Water capacity | Area at full charge |
|---|---|---|
| Basic | 40 | 1 tile |
| Copper | 55 | 1×3 (3 tiles) |
| Steel | 70 | 1×5 (5 tiles) |
| Gold | 85 | 3×3 (9 tiles) |
| Iridium | 100 | 3×6 (18 tiles) |
Higher tiers cost more energy per swing (2 at Basic → 10 at full-charge Iridium), but cover far more ground per point — a full Iridium can waters eighteen tiles for the energy of nine with a Basic. Refilling is free of cost and instant at any water source (or in the rain).
Hoe
Identical area ladder (1×3 / 1×5 / 3×3 / 3×6) for tilling. Its biggest single win is Copper+: tilling a new field in rows of 3 instead of tile-by-tile, and one charged swing on Gold+ can cover an entire sprinkler’s worth of farmland.
Scythe
The lowest priority. Scythes don’t cost energy to swing, upgrades mostly widen the weed-cutting sweep, and the 1.6 golden/Iridium scythe variants are Mastery content you’ll reach long after your real tools matter. Ignore until everything else is Iridium.
The best upgrade order
- Pickaxe to Copper, then Steel. Faster mining feeds bars to every other upgrade — this is the engine that runs the whole system.
- Axe to Copper the moment hardwood is your bottleneck (you need it constantly for chests, kegs, and house upgrades), then Steel for the Secret Woods.
- Watering can — hand-watering is your biggest daily tax until sprinklers replace it. Upgrade during rain or Winter so the 2 lost days hurt less.
- Hoe — mostly for seasonal replanting days; after sprinklers it’s your least-used tool.
- Finish Pickaxe and Axe to Gold/Iridium, then sweep the rest.
Timing tricks that cost nothing
- The rainy-day swap: water everything the night before, hand Clint the can, and let the storm farm for you while it’s on his bench.
- Winter is shop day: no crops need watering from Winter 1. You can realistically push three tools through upgrades during a single Winter.
- Batch it: you can leave multiple tools with Clint at once (as long as you can cope without them) — two rainy days can absorb a watering can and a hoe.
- Don’t pre-season upgrade the axe if you’re mid-orchard: trees you can’t fell still regrow their taps.
- Never start a pickaxe upgrade right before a planned mine run — the 2 days always balloon into 4 when a festival lands in between.
The bottom line
Upgrade the pickaxe first to feed the bar economy, get the axe to Steel to open the Secret Woods, then hand the watering can to Clint on every rainy day until it’s Iridium. Every bar you smelt doubles as savings, so the mines are also your bank. Once your tools are caught up, the natural next investment is sprinklers — start with our sprinkler guide — and keep your gold strategy aligned with our year-one money plan.