You know that terrible feeling when you wake up in Stardew Valley, and 40-plus crops are waiting for you to water them. It’s a sunny morning, and you desperately go to TV to see the weather forecast, only to find out that it will be sunny again tomorrow. There is nothing else for you to do except pick your watering can, go outside, and watch your energy bar go down as you water your crops.
Trust me when I say that most Stardew players (including myself; especially because I tend to plant more than I can handle) have been there.
That’s where the Quality Sprinkler comes in, ready to ease all the pain and suffering.
What is a Quality Sprinkler
Quality Sprinkler is one of the most helpful items during an early and mid game in Stardew valley.
This bad boy will take away all the pain of endless watering as it waters eight surrounding tiles every morning. You won’t have to spend so much time watering, and you can increase your farm because it will be easier to maintain.
However, keep in mind that it doesn’t work for pots and animal bowls.
How to Obtain the Quality Sprinkler in Stardew and Stardew Expanded
There are several ways to obtain this item throughout your playthrough:
- By crafting it with 1 iron bar, 1 gold bar, and 1 refined quartz. You will unlock the recipe once you reach Farming Level 6. Some players have trouble figuring out how to get refined quartz so I’ll tell you how just in case. You can get it by placing 1 quartz and 5 coal into a furnace or by recycling waste with a recycling machine.
- By completing Summer Crops Bundle and Garden Bundle in Comunty’s Center Pantry.
- By buying it from a Traveling Merchant for 1,350–2,250 gold.
- By finding it in the Skull Cavern.
Once you get deep into the mines, unlock the Quarry and the Skull Cavern; you will craft them easily.
How to Use the Quality Sprinkler: A Step-by-Step Guide
1. Find a fresh part of the dirt, some seeds, and the Quality Sprinkler.
2. Place the Quality Sprinkler on the ground.
3. Use your hoe to prepare 8 surrounding tiles for planting.
The Quality Sprinkler will water your fresh seeds in the morning and don’t forget to place a scarecrow nearby so that you won’t end up like me in the picture with imperfect crops square.
The Best Way to Use Quality Sprinklers
I’ll share a strategy I’ve been using for four years of playing this masterpiece. This strategy is the best for early and mid-game while this item is sacred and before you unlock the iridium sprinkler. I say it like that because, in the beginning, you’ll need to use the maximum potential of the Quality Sprinkler by making sure that it covers eight surrounding tiles. Later as you progress, the Quality Sprinkler won’t be so special, and you can place it on some parts of the farm where it will cover less than eight tiles.
Quality Sprinklers should be used on parts of your farm that are symmetrical squares or rectangles to avoid wasting their potential. You can use the watering can to tend your crops on the weird parts, by the farm lake or grass, where the Quality Sprinkler won’t be able to cover the surrounding eight tiles.
The Quality Sprinklers in the Greenhouse
I’ll let you in on a little secret now, and that’s how to use the Quality Sprinklers in your Greenhouse and make a farm that you will only need to visit for harvest.
Also, I have one more tip. Plant regrowing crops in your greenhouse (no matter what the season is) such as cranberries.
As for the Quality Sprinkler placement, I made a layout you can follow by using free online software called Stardew Valley planner v2.
You will need sixteen Quality Sprinklers to cover all tiles and ensure one of the best passive incomes in the game.
How to Upgrade the Quality Sprinkler
Before I continue explaining, I must warn you that this part contains heavy spoilers for the game and the Ginger Island update. If you want to enjoy the story and discover things by yourself, I advise you to skip this part.
Throughout the game, you will meet a mysterious man called Mister Qi, and once you unlock Ginger Island and collect one hundred walnuts, you will be able to enter his secret room. In there you can take Qi’s special requests, and after fulfilling them, you will get new crystal currency that you can use to buy sprinkler upgrades.
A sprinkler enricher can be loaded with fertilizer and placed on a sprinkler to improve the growth speed and quality of crops.
Pressure Nozzles can increase the sprinkler’s range.
Mods Regarding the Quality Sprinkler
For all my fellow modders out there, there is a good number of mods for the Quality Sprinklers and sprinklers in general that are worth mentioning and trying out. They will freshen up your game a little and make things easier if you want to chill a bit.
The first mod is the Better Sprinklers Mod by Speeder. It allows you to use any sprinkler pattern as you can create it, plus, if you want to go extreme, you can modify the configuration file and enable infinite range. It will also highlight the tiles the sprinkler covers so you can plan the layout more easily.
The second one is the Immersive Sprinklers by Aedenthron. This mod modifies all sprinklers to have more range and not take up any space. For example, the quality sprinkler will cover sixteen tiles instead of eight, and you can place it in the corner of a tile.
Conclusion
There is nothing more to be said about the Quality Sprinkler except that it is one of the most valuable items in the game even after unlocking the Iridium ones. They are efficient, easy to make, and will never let you down.
