Hammer vs Sword in Stardew Valley: An In-Depth Look at Attack Speed and DPS

Swords and clubs use different attack animations, so a weapon’s speed field is not a complete attacks-per-second formula. The safest comparison separates three things: the weapon record, ordinary-attack timing, and the club special move.

Movement speed is not weapon speed

Spicy Eel and Coffee do not make a Lead Rod, hammer, or sword swing faster. In the local Stardew Valley 1.6.15 object records, each gives Speed: 1 for farmer movement and WeaponSpeedMultiplier: 0. They can help you move and reposition, but treating the two buffs as two weapon-speed points makes the experiment invalid.

Emerald forging is different: the local forge code adds five internal speed units per Emerald forge level directly to a melee weapon. Compare forged weapons only after recording the exact forge count on each one.

Base weapon records

The following are the unmodified fields in the local weapon data asset. “Internal speed” is the data field used by the game; it is not milliseconds and should not be presented as attacks per second.

How to run a reproducible timing test

1. Record the game version, platform, frame-rate setting, weapon ID, forge levels, enchantment, rings, professions, and every active buff.
2. Turn off combat mods and automation. Test ordinary attacks separately from special moves and do not mix animation-cancel inputs into the ordinary-attack sample.
3. Use the same target and position. Time a fixed number of completed attacks from the first attack’s active animation to the final attack’s completion.
4. Run at least three trials per setup and publish every elapsed time. Calculate attacks per second = completed attacks / elapsed seconds.
5. Only then estimate raw DPS as attacks per second multiplied by the weapon’s damage range. Enemy defense, critical hits, knockback, missed swings, and special attacks need separate models.

A table labeled “time for 130 attacks” cannot be paired with attacks-per-second values derived from roughly 30 attacks. Those sample counts and timings do not reconcile, so they cannot support a measured DPS result.

Sword or club?

• Sword: easier ordinary-attack cadence and a defensive special move; a practical default when consistency matters.
• Club: higher base damage on comparable late-game entries and an area special move, but slower ordinary attacks. Its value depends heavily on how often the special connects.

Rapid-input or animation-cancel behavior can vary by game version, input method, and frame timing. It should be reported as a separate exploit test, not folded into a universal club DPS number. The base data alone does not justify claiming that one class always has higher real combat DPS.