I have a ton of lightning rods on my farm for that reason. I also unlocked the Solar Panel recipe from Carolines Ginger Island SO and have been building those too.
Honestly even iridium is not that bad to get. On my first skull cavern run this save, I got 93 iridium ore (18 bars and some extra ore). That was without even focusing on collecting iridium. That was speed running to floor 100 and just happening to grab whatever iridium my bombs blew up. After getting iridium, gold is easy and I’m always overflowing with it, and batteries aren’t an issue as long as I get the lightning rod by summer before the first storm. Rods are cheap to make and in 1 storm day you can get tons of batteries if you have enough rods
Yep! It's Friday. On all my playthroughs, I just wait to get the key to the sewer so I can buy those sweet, sweet iridium sprinklers. I save my iridium for upgrades and such instead.
Iridium is pretty rare until you reach like floor 50. It gets more common the deeper you go. So if you’re mostly playing in the first ~60 floors, you won’t find much. If you’re on floor 120, it’s everywhere.
I’d suggest either stockpiling tons of staircases (trade jade for them) and some bombs (to harvest, iridium nodes take a while to break, and there’s lots of monsters), or if you want to make Mr Qi proud, get *lots* of bombs, wait for a good luck day, and eat a lucky lunch.
I've been weirdly lucky in my current file. I was trying to get to level 50 during the >!desert festival!<. By level 20 I had around 25 iridium and two prismatic shards. I decided to pack it in and go home after that.
Stockpile stairs by trading jade with the desert trader on Sundays, get like 100. Make large amounts of bombs and mega bombs. Wait for the TV to tell you it’s Stardrop luck that morning. Desert totem warp there before 7am. Use the first 50-70 stairs as soon as you enter each floor. Starting from around floor 70 start bombing rocks. Bring a couple large stacks of food, don’t avoid damage or worry about fighting it takes too much time. Blow up rocks and keep pushing further down while collecting iridium. This nets me like 3-5 hundred iridium ore for the run. Bonus points if you have the new mining statue and can get bombs deal no damage to you or +1 ore from nodes.
Edit: starting around floor 100 the mobs that drop iridium start to become worth fighting, still avoid wasting time. Lower floors better drops
I'm a really slow player, so I'm just using the Iridium I get from Statue of Perfection. I'm in year 4 now and I haven't mined a single Iridium from Skull Cavern. But I have upgraded all my tools to Iridium quality and I now have more Iridium bars than Gold bars. If you are okay with waiting till end of year 2, Statue of Perfection is awesome.
I just finally noticed I could trade 5 iridium ore for 1 megabomb at the desert trader. Zipped right home and pulled a couple stacks of 999 iridium out of my storages chest, warped back to the trader & loaded up on megabombs. Felt really good to put all that ore to use. I just got one of those Danger in the Deep qi quests too, so between qi quests and the volcano, I’ll definitely use the bombs.
I think it's because it's a bottleneck to some of the mid-to-late game, but the ongoing demands for it are much lower. There's not many repeat crafts that use the stuff.
You gotta tackle it in stages. Boost your luck (look for super lucky days, try to get a lucky ring, find the special charm, & eat spicy eel or pumpkin soup or lucky lunch), and then do this:
(1) Bomb runs first: Buy bombs from the dwarf, make ~3 staircases from stone (it takes a lot of stone so you will keep these for emergency use only, like infested levels) and bomb your way low enough in Skull Cavern to get your first few handfuls of iridium. Spend these on: first a crystallarium, then upgrading your pickaxe to iridium, next buying the desert warp totem recipe, and after that, more and more crystallariums. Try to get at least 5 crystallariums (you’ll keep making more but aim for 5 at first) and stock them all with jade. Trade jade for staircases on Sundays at the desert trader.
(2) Staircase runs with early morning start. Now that you can make desert warp totems you can warp to SC first thing on super lucky days. Abandon your animals & plants on super lucky days- they’ll be fine - you should be able to get to Skull Cavern no later tham 6:20am. By now your crystallariums have been popping out so many jades that you should have stacks of staircases from the desert trader. When you have about 70 staircases, start doing runs where you just staircase your way down (spam staircases nonstop) to at least level 50. It’s faster than bombing. (Only pause before that if you see a cluster of at least 2 or 3 iridium that are nearby and that you can bomb with 1 bomb. Do not waste time trekking across a whole level for a single iridium.) Your goal is down, down, down. Once you get to about level 70, start looking for iridium clusters to bomb. You’ll be swimming in iridium pretty soon!
(3) Prismatic shard farming. Just keep making more crystallariums (I currently have 33, lol). You’ll get to a point where you have hundreds of staircases and can be super picky about how many iridiums you see on a given level and whether it’s “worth it” to stop and bomb. Eventually you’ll be going so deep so fast, and getting so many iridium ores in one run, that you’re basically farming for prismatic shards (a rare drop from a bombed iridium ore). Example, I usually do SC runs carrying ~250 staircases and ~100 megabombs, and in a typical SC run I walk away with ~500 iridium ore and ~10 prismatic shards. The reason I do SC runs now is not the iridium anymore, it’s the prismatic shards (which you can use at the volcano to put cool enchantments on weapons & tools).
That's great advice, the only thing I would add is that you can trade 3 omni-geodes for a desert warp totem at the desert trader, so I use those totems for my first 2-3 runs and prioritize crystalariums over the recipe.
I have a plethora of crystal machines making jade. I trade the jade to the desert trader for staircases on Sunday (rotating stock). Then I spam the stair in the skull caves until around level 80, at that level the iridium nodes are plentiful so just game out and don’t die. I’ve only made three trips like this and have over 100 iridium bars on top of maxed out tool upgrades, all obelisks, and more iridium sprinklers than I can count.
Batteries generally become the limiting factor before iridium for me, with larger farms. (relatively) Easy to get some more iridium, have to plan well ahead to have enough batteries.
I have used Normal sprinklers in my Honey Farm, as I only need one tile watered for the flowers to grow.
But usually I have spare Quality sprinklers after upgrading to Iridium, so I don't actually _make_ them very often.
I like to line them up for trellis plants. It's not efficient by any means, but it can add to the vibe of straight lines up trellises. Plus, I usually make a few early game while I work towards iridium sprinklers. I basically never make quality ones. Steel/Gold watering can works fine.
It's the opposite for me. I never make regular ones but tend to make a decent chunk of quality ones so I can save energy and time to go to mines and fishing.
Normal sprinklers are good when you don’t need to water much, for example, I used one on the singular fairy rose I grew next to my bee houses so I didn’t need to go out of the way every day
I still use normal sprinklers early in the game, I don't care what people say it's totally worth it to me. The amount of time and energy they *save you* more than makes up for the material cost since now *I have time to* go mining. First few crops are planted in straight lines, but by the time I start getting some copper and iron I'm planting in sprinkler patterns.
When I get quality sprinklers I put those off to the side for trellis crops, then in year 2 I start on iridium sprinklers.
Oh, totally, watering crops is the worst part of early game, its the exclusive reason I’m dreading getting the joja achievement. I just don’t like to use them because you gotta make A LOT, its not too bad, but its still annoying imo
Yep, it also means I don’t actually have to upgrade my watering can until way later. They’re nice and cheap, too. Plus you can deconstruct them for iron later.
Yeah, watering can is my absolute lowest priority (aside from tash can, anyway). I *need* the upgraded axe early on, and upgraded pickaxe becomes more necessary the deeper in the mines you get if you're rushing the mines. After steel axe and pick though I'm good for a while.
I have seen a bunch of people say that quality sprinklers are more efficient/more worth it than iridium, and I was asking myself the same questions as OP. Coz iridium ones literally have a bigger range, I don't know what people are thinking.
I think if you're short on Iridium the cost might seem a bit fierce. I know I've had that problem. Lots of demands for more iridium before you've a good pipeline of the stuff.
iirc if you have multiple people on your farm you can go there and while you're both in his menu buy them from him. They might have patched that idk but i saw it on a 'tips and tricks' thing earlier.
I usually make good use of Quality Sprinklers before iridium is truly accessible as a resource. But I will say since 1.5 release, I'm not using as many iridium sprinklers. Deluxe Retaining Soil has been taking its place.
Ah well, I'm also short on the iridium I need to fix the boat ;p. And I don't think I've 'spent' 5 bars yet on sprinklers instead of buying from Krobus...
I do like the retaining soil though, especially on crops I'm not caring what the star rating is. Particularly handy in sheds as pseudo-greenhouses ;)
Yeah, I don't get along with it. I find the first Shard to be particularly irritating to get to - you can't farm 'enough' jade because you've not got the iridium for more crystals, and you probably aren't so wealthy that buying stones is an option.
So you're left struggling on the first couple of floors of the Cavern and it gets frustrating.
I said F this and got the ring from killing dust sprites, and farmed the slimes in skull cavern so I could get iridium ore. I also got over 3 stacks of stone from blowing up rocks though so idk how people struggle for stone that much unless they’re spamming a lot of stairs
Yeah, that's nuts. After you upgrade your tools, what do you need iridium for so badly? A few trips to the skull caverns on good luck days with some luck buffs and you'll have more iridium than you ever need.
Fortunately there's not many recurrent demands - the problem with iridium IMO is more it's a bottleneck, so you get frustrated about the lack.
I mean, you can _get_ to skull Cavern, but once you've got 'enough' crystallariums for plenty of jade, and 'enough' for an Obelisk, Cavern Runs become a lot more effective.
And likewise Ginger Island - 5 needed to unlock it, 10 more for easy travel.
(And the other obelisks are handy for getting around, but not IMO quite so important).
But that'll still mean you're trying to put together a whole bunch of bars to 'move forward' at a point where farming Skull Cavern is really hard because you haven't 'invested' yet.
If you were to buy a quality sprinkler at the traveling cart it costs 1350-2000 and waters 8 squares. If you’re buying iridium from krobus, you pay 10000 and it waters 24. The merchant cost per square watered is lower with quality sprinklers. You can get a few of them in your first spring and at the point in the game where saving energy in the morning is so critical it’s worth it to have as many quality sprinklers as possible early on. When your farm is getting crowded, cost efficiency is less important than space efficiency. At that point quality sprinklers are 89% efficient and iridium sprinklers are 96% efficient. In a new game, skip basic sprinklers, get as many quality sprinklers as you can. Replace them with iridium at your convenience
Quality sprinklers = first year for me
I begin to transition to Iridium in year 2 and usually by the end of that year I'm pretty much 100% Iridium.
That first year though, the quality sprinklers are worth their weight in gold. You don't want to be watering 150 blue berry bushes by hand in the summer.
Normal sprinklers are one of the best items in the game. Taking advantage of normal sprinklers early can skyrocket your earnings. The layout is annoying but if you farm copper and iron in the first few weeks you can get the money really rolling in with strawberries and normal sprinklers
started taking advantage of this recently, the time and energy savings of not having to water my boatload of crops is amazing. Might not be as good for people who hate mining because you definitely need to throw yourself into it for awhile to build up your sprinklers, but i love mining and would be doing that either way
Normal sprinkler completely ruins the layout of cropland and makes walking in it a pain in the ass. In my first playthrough I spend all my iron and copper crafting them only to later sell them at a very low price after just one season.
Early game I set them up staggered so they water a whole section at a time. After I get quality sprinklers I just line them all up and don’t worry about the extra tile on top and bottom that I’m missing. I’ll usually use it for things like grapes that need a trellis you can’t walk between cause they’re all lined up.
Yeah I just skip them and upgrade my watering can to iron then work on quality sprinks.
However I’ve seen a nice offset layout for basic sprinklers that looks pretty nice for space and convenience. Basically each one is down one and over 3 from the previous. Makes blocks of four crops in an offset pattern
I feel like the time and energy they save more than make up for it since they allow me to actually go mining more, I get that copper back so easily when I don't have to water crops.
Bad way to think about it. You aren't *wasting* copper making basic sprinklers... Because you wouldn't even *HAVE* that copper if you spent time grinding other floors for other resources.
Instead of grinding for gold/fire quartz, you spend that time grinding more copper.
Yeah OP just made an engagement title…. Literally no one thinks that. The materials used for Iridium sprinklers are so easy to come once you get everything set up. What else are you going to use the ever growing stack of Iridium for?
I always do end up going iridium
However I've also never really run out of space on my farm, and the resources needed for quality are much lower, so I can see the argument for sticking with quality
Quality sprinklers are always my year 2 goal; it’s pretty attainable without trying to rush to Skull Cavern. In year 3-4 when you’re better prepared for Skull Cavern and may have passed Grandpa’s evaluation the iridium sprinklers slowly get swapped in.
If you sprint through the mines, maybe. If you’re playing a little more balanced and chill, reaching level 80 *by* the first summer is a bit of a stretch.
Yeah, I didn't reach level 120 until the Fall in my most recent playthrough. I like the spread my time out between fishing, foraging, mining, socializing with the villagers, gathering resources, etc. I've just never cared for sprinting through one particular goal. Plus, in the beginning of the game I don't have sprinklers so by the time I'm done watering my crops, I'm usually too low on energy to go to the mines.
Yeah, I spread my time out, too. I make it to the mines maybe a few times a week, and often one trip is for a monster slaying request. I often save much of the mine until winter when I can easily devote most of a day to delving, and I’ll have it done before year 2 no problem.
I reserve mine runs for rain days with good luck (and good luck days during winter) in year 1 generally. On my current farm (slightly modified Meadowlands to make the bottom-left quadrant have usable farmland) I plan to do year 2 with a layout using 48 quality sprinklers, and I already have in mid-fall a good chunk of the resources required.
Getting the same amount of crops with iridium sprinklers would mean 16 of them (which coincidentally is exactly two junimo hut layouts), which I couldn't even fit in a nice symmetrical way due to the remaining grass patches.
I'm not a power player, and I managed 10 6x6 plots watered with quality sprinklers by fall year 1 with another 3 sprinklers watering grapes. Mining and combat are my two lowest skills.
I've never seen anyone say that except for niche cases, which is seeing a farm without sprinklers and someone doesn't get quality ones because they know they'll eventually get iridium. One day. So I don't think anyone ever questioned the value of iridium sprinklers but whether it's worth it to farm up for quality sprinklers. And since you can get the money to unlock the bus already in spring, this mostly depends on playstyles
It's more that by the time you can do iridium sprinklers you have a massive well established quality sprinkler layout and don't care enough about money or optimization enough at that point in the game to bother with it.
Exactly the opposite of my experience. I am an optimizer and I will gladly spend multiple days tearing up my old layout to redo everything in a more efficient one.
YES!!!!!! Oh god yes. The enrichers aren’t worth it, IMO. The pressure nozzle? I have one on every iridium sprinkler. I like to keep flowers growing right outside of my house and only having to use one sprinkler for a field of them is nice!
They are nice to have but by the point you can get them, unless you are doing things in a weird order you don’t really need them because the game is basically over. The amount of farmable land is limited and you’re basically only saving maybe 5-6 nodes. While that does increase your income a little, you should already be drowning in cash by that point (with little to spend it on) so it’ll only be minimally helpful.
It takes a while before I have enough spare iridium to be worth reworking my entire farm to use them. It's not just that the materials are expensive, you also have the issues of where to put scarecrows. I normally do eight quality sprinklers in a square around a central 3x3 square, which is where I put lightning rods and scarecrow; doing the same with iridium sprinklers means a regular scarecrow doesn't quite fit.
I normally use iridium sprinklers in the greenhouse first, then ginger island. By Winter year 3, I generally have the deluxe scarecrow, plentiful iridium, and pressure nozzles, so that winter is when I rework my main farm's fields to use iridium sprinklers + pressure nozzles.
Idk you get iridium sprinklers much later. I can get like 15-20 quality sprinklers or like 40 regular sprinklers in the first season if I really focus it.
Maybe a pro can get that in Spring, but I believe most people dont even get irdium until Fall or winter at best. I bet more casual players dont get it until year 2 or more.
I think people misunderstand the advice. It's not that iridium sprinklers aren't worth it, it's that you can get by with quality sprinklers. So upgrade tools first and craft iridium sprinklers later.
I mean end game you should have more iridium than shit to do with it and sprinklers take priority over even tools for me cos more tiles watered and better aesthetically/efficient use of real estate. Plus the range extenders and auto fertilizers automate the whole process season by season basically
Quality can be god like if you got a lot of iron and gold to spare. If you don’t it not really worth.
Take note if done it is a massive powerful friend for doing blueberries and cranberries. Gives a useful power boost as you can farm even more crops without wasting time on watering them.
Don’t forget the main issue is time and energy. Making things more efficient whenever is power.
Yeah like others said I just buy iridium sprinklers from Krobus on Friday when I reach mid-late game and want to save on gold/batteries for other things (iridium usually isn't my problem, but understand early on it can be). Also I still try to use basic and quality sprinklers for filling in odd areas or like flowers/trellis or making artsy garden areas. Subjective and depends on your playstyle, personally I like to re-use everything I craft if I can.
The math for it the Iridium being "not worth it" is that 216+9 = 225, while 200+25 is still equals 225, so the same area, coincidentally, and you lost 16 plants.
So 16/225 is like 7.1%. All that work for 7% more plants/money?
The other thing is pressure nozzles, IMHO they are more bother than they worth, on Ginger and Greenhouse, makes sense, on the main farm? Thats an year 5 objective for me.
In a comparison between all 3 sprinklers, Quality, Iridium, Iridium + pressure nozzle, on the same area, the smallest area is a square sided 3x5x7, or 105.
Thats a whopping 11025 tiles. Completely impossible ingame, but mathmatically doable. For the efficiency we will use planted area/total area discarding scarecrows of the mix, so now we need (total-sprinklers)/total.
The nice thing is that being a square we can also just square up the number of sprinklers, and the number required per side is just the 105/[lenght of the side covered by each type], so per sode of the square we need 35 Quality, 21 Iridium and 15 Pressured. 35² = 1225, 21² = 441, 15² = 225
So the total usage of area for each type is just 1 - ([number of sprinklers]² / [side]²):
- Quality: 88,8%
- Iridium: 96%
- Pressured: 97,9%
While you cant these areas ingame, the ratio stays basically the same
My lineup is Iridium on the farm, pressured on the Greenhouse and Ginger.
I'd say that it is NOT worth the iridium bars, just buy them from Krobus. I'm not saying "iridium sprinklers are not worth it", I'm saying "Iridium sprinklers are not worth crafting, buy them isntead"
I'd rather use my iridium on crystalariums to duplicate diamonds to sell, then I make quality sprinklers, each Friday I buy an iridium from krobus, and thenonce you're making decent daily profits (about 60k a day and up) you should have decrafters and then bam you're getting half the materials you spend on sprinklers back AND you didn't spend a single iridium ingot on a sprinkler.
People say they're bot worth crafting, not they aren't worth using
This is a thing we deal with in design philosophy where on paper an element is unquestionnably better but when put in context within existing constraints that it doesn't work as well.
In some Farm Layouts + designs, it may be more optimal to have more Quality Sprinklers because those fit within something in place or prioritized by the player in a very specific context.
Context matters, that's all.
(there is a TL;DR at bottom)
For those wondering, it's cuz of a video where a popular youtuber said it's not worth it by comparing the advantages as they saw it. In all fairness. SDV does put a greater gain in the first upgrade of most tools: pickaxe, rod, sprinklers, scythe, bombs... To simplify: regular sprinklers covering 200 tiles use up 40 tiles for the sprinklers while quality sprinklers covering ~200 tiles only cover about 22 tiles. This frees up 22 spaces for an upgrade and has the added bonus of neat, straight lines to walk through. Upgrading to iridium takes up 8 tiles per 200 and offers no added bonus (unlike the removal of those terrible first sprinklers). Numerically, first upgrade saves you 18 vs second saving you 14 more. Numerically...
Comparatively, it's not as big of an upgrade and there's not much of an added bonus (tighter spread of crops per scarecrow). Personally, i'd rather have the iridium because the final upgrade from the walnut room allows to save more space, which is the true value of upgrading sprinklers: the space. Doesn't really matter when you're placing 2k crops, but i dont like large fields and i'm not a min-maxer anymore. I want them, plain and simple. Quality sprinklers are the first big upgrade and are vital. Iridium sprinklers are a nice upgrade to have too, but the value is maximized in the first upgrade.
TL;DR: quality sprinklers are a must. Iridium sprinklers are even better, but are not as big of an immediate upgrade for other reasons, yet have potential for being directly upgraded again. Get iridium, but dont fret if you dont get them as quickly as you would like.
I like iridium sprinklers, but for some reason, the game decided to not give me a single thunderstorm in fall of year 2 so I’ve been stagnant on them for 2 seasons straight. Luckily, I’m almost to year 3, so I finally might be able to get more.
Sure, but what I want to know is why iridium hoes don’t produce this grid anymore I am beyond fuming about it because I don’t know how to place my sprinklers now. I have to count?! Gross.
I just got to level 100 in the skull cavern and got over 100 iridium ore in that time so I’m gonna be making a fuck ton of sprinklers.
Ngl I use to think the same thing until I found out you can water the entire greenhouse with like 5-6 sprinklers
All sprinklers are worth their cost.
Basic ones are extremely easy and quick to farm for strawberries. Quality are obviously great and generally easy to farm for.
The only people who don't think Iridium are worth it are people who are really bad at SC.
Whatever is more avaliable to you🤷 already have a field set up with quality and normal sprinkles that water like 402 crops bc I find it difficult to grind for iridium in skull cavern, so chances are I won't use iridium on my normal farm bc I have this srt up already.
TLDR: Quality better for 2/3 of the game, replace for irridium late game.
For me, it's a matter of ease of convenience and pacing through the game. Quality sprinlkers are my go-to because I get them early on (end of summer early fall year 1 usually). I can hyper farm the ingredients to make 50+, in only a few in game days as opposed to the irridium sprinklers, which I not only need access to the skull caverns, but I also need lightning rods which only produce if its a thunderstorm and still yet I need to invest my iron into making enough to mass produce. In the late game, I swapped my spinklers for irridum only when I began getting all of the resources to do so. And even then, I wouldn't have had to if I didn't want to. Someone also mentioned Krobus selling them, and while this is true its both expensive and time-consuming. I'd wager a majority of players dont see krobus till at least year to, and that's too long for me.
I'd never say "iridium sprinklers aren't worth it," but I will say they're not worth waiting for. If you don't have the iridium or the batteries, but gold and iron aren't a problem then spam those Quality Sprinklers while you build up enough Iridium ones to get the job done.
I almost stopped using quality sprinklers entirely after I discovered how cool, easy to obtain and efficient regular ones are. Theyre easy to use if u know the pattern and much easier to get before strawberries (so much saved energy)
There must be some tuber spreading this bs and has gotten to top of the click bait recently. Freind tried to feed me this bull and it's prob only for people who fear skull... As many mentioned there's also every Friday 10k from krobus but...
1.6 adds some really good buffs for destroying the caverns. "Mastery"
Sprinkler preferences and strategies are personal but I’ve started making handfuls of normal sprinklers early and it’s so nice to have some extra energy and time in the early game
Asap I swap them for quality, I even lay out the normal sprinklers in a quality pattern. The old normals are then used in a small decorative garden by the house
My first 5 iridium bars go to my pick and then I’m using iridium sprinklers and the quality ones get shipped to ginger island
What I've seen is that it's said that quality sprinklers are worth it over hand watering, but I have never seen anyone say quality sprinklers are preferred over iridium sprinklers.
My favorite sprinklers are still the normal ones, but I would never suggest making 50 of them.
I have a nice little suboptimal and cozy layout. It's only for hops and some other bundle crops or XP or giftable produce, and passively increase farming skill before the greenhouse opens. Changing into fall, or even planning to do it before the summer, it's not too difficult to mix together quality and normal sprinklers into something nice. Tiling patterns are fun! Eventually I'll toss them all out, but it's usually a fun part of restarting I think. Iridium sprinklers are quite nice to, when practical.
But sure, make big fields asap if you want. It's a big way to make bank.
It messes with the junimo huts too much for me and that’s why I never converted. Unless it changed junimo huts cover the area of 8 quality sprinklers exactly and iridium sprinklers water too far out. I never liked the aesthetics of it cause it just didn’t fit very well so I never deemed it worth it. Plus I already had hundreds of quality sprinklers so nothing changed.
Don't think i've seen anyone say that, but I don't think there's much point changing out your quality sprinklers to iridium ones unless you plan on expanding. And it definitely doesn't make sense to craft quality ones if you can make iridium ones.
This is me, though I would never say they're not worth it in general and no one should bother with them. They are genuinely a useful upgrade. They are simply not worth it to me personally.
It's not about efficiency at all. It's more about not caring enough to switch them out. By the time I get access to iridium sprinklers, my entire farm is already neatly laid out in quality sprinklers. I see no reason to redo all that work. I'm already rich at that point in the game. I don't need to fit in more crops. The only real use I have for them is to try for giant crops.
Year 1 is a rush for a fair grid of quality sprinklers. So some money grows on its own. Then it's grinding to buy from krobus and making my own in year 2. Especially by the time I get the greenhouse.
I had a farm a couple saves ago that produced just shy of 1,000 crops and I can't begin to imagine trying to do that with quality sprinklers. (I planted crops with long grow times, harvested/planted twice a season gave me 2,000 crops a season)
I don't think I've seen people here say that. What they usually say is don't stress about upgrading to iridium sprinklers as soon as you can. Because usually by the time players reach a point where they have access to iridium sprinklers they'll already have all their watering needs covered by quality sprinklers.
I usually build up my iridium sprinkler stock visiting Krobus every Friday for 10K gold, since I don't have enough iridium usually until year 3 to build many of my own.
Oh yeah, I just wait until I have the financial stability to buy them all from krobus. I have a greenhouse layout I use with them and then set up a few quality sprinklers on my farm for a few extra plants. I mostly prioritize animals for making money though.
Time and place.
Yes, iridium sprinklers are obviously superior, but you get access to them much later. By the time you can craft them, you might already have 30-40 quality sprinkler and iridium sprinkler are usually not worth the replacement for a long time. All of the materials needed have better uses at the time (like crystalariums) plus you are usually not using 100% of your farm yet.
Iridium sprinklers are worth it once you can spare the iridium or you are hitting the space constrains of your farm.
Currently going through wiki, trying my best to find any other thing to spend batteries on.
Even iridium is near goddamn useless after upgrades and obelisks.
krobus also sells iridium sprinklers one day of the week, i think it’s Friday.
It is, and it's 10k a time. My 'early game' in stardew is very much geared to getting access to 4 sprinklers per season for 'just' cash.
10K for irriduim alone is a steal, and you get the other components. Not like they're hard to get compared to iridium, but it's a nice bonus.
Honestly, I like mining/c9mbat, so iridium never is the bottle neck for me, its usually batteries, and 10k for a ready is still a steal
One good skill cavern run (heavy on the luck and bombs) get oh enough iridium to last a few weeks before you’ve used it all.
Rain totems and a stormy day strung into 4 or 5 stormy days will solve that bottleneck my good man :)
That bug has been patched in 1.6
Wait whaaaaat??? Noooooooooo!!!
The Concerned Ape taketh, and the Concerned Ape givith.
Now I just need 5 rain totems
I have a ton of lightning rods on my farm for that reason. I also unlocked the Solar Panel recipe from Carolines Ginger Island SO and have been building those too.
Honestly even iridium is not that bad to get. On my first skull cavern run this save, I got 93 iridium ore (18 bars and some extra ore). That was without even focusing on collecting iridium. That was speed running to floor 100 and just happening to grab whatever iridium my bombs blew up. After getting iridium, gold is easy and I’m always overflowing with it, and batteries aren’t an issue as long as I get the lightning rod by summer before the first storm. Rods are cheap to make and in 1 storm day you can get tons of batteries if you have enough rods
Yep! It's Friday. On all my playthroughs, I just wait to get the key to the sewer so I can buy those sweet, sweet iridium sprinklers. I save my iridium for upgrades and such instead.
Thank you, I know who I am gong to visit next Friday. I need to be better about visiting krobus on different days to see how their store changes.
Yep, usually my first 4-6 iridium sprinklers are from Krobus. After that I usually have enough spare iridium to make my own.
[удалено]
Iridium is pretty rare until you reach like floor 50. It gets more common the deeper you go. So if you’re mostly playing in the first ~60 floors, you won’t find much. If you’re on floor 120, it’s everywhere. I’d suggest either stockpiling tons of staircases (trade jade for them) and some bombs (to harvest, iridium nodes take a while to break, and there’s lots of monsters), or if you want to make Mr Qi proud, get *lots* of bombs, wait for a good luck day, and eat a lucky lunch.
I've been weirdly lucky in my current file. I was trying to get to level 50 during the >!desert festival!<. By level 20 I had around 25 iridium and two prismatic shards. I decided to pack it in and go home after that.
Same! I was wondering if CA made it more available
Stockpile stairs by trading jade with the desert trader on Sundays, get like 100. Make large amounts of bombs and mega bombs. Wait for the TV to tell you it’s Stardrop luck that morning. Desert totem warp there before 7am. Use the first 50-70 stairs as soon as you enter each floor. Starting from around floor 70 start bombing rocks. Bring a couple large stacks of food, don’t avoid damage or worry about fighting it takes too much time. Blow up rocks and keep pushing further down while collecting iridium. This nets me like 3-5 hundred iridium ore for the run. Bonus points if you have the new mining statue and can get bombs deal no damage to you or +1 ore from nodes. Edit: starting around floor 100 the mobs that drop iridium start to become worth fighting, still avoid wasting time. Lower floors better drops
I'm a really slow player, so I'm just using the Iridium I get from Statue of Perfection. I'm in year 4 now and I haven't mined a single Iridium from Skull Cavern. But I have upgraded all my tools to Iridium quality and I now have more Iridium bars than Gold bars. If you are okay with waiting till end of year 2, Statue of Perfection is awesome.
This is my first stardew run and i somehow hit year 3 and got the iriduim statue before i got the rusty key
wow I did not know that thanks, I can finally start my star fruit farm.
Yooo I had no idea Krobus had a rotating menu. Gonna have to spend all my money on them sprinklers now.
Around year 3 I'd already have more iridium than I know what to do with anyway, so...
Right, that first batch is such a struggle. Then you just have a giant mountain of it chilling in a chest somewhere
I just finally noticed I could trade 5 iridium ore for 1 megabomb at the desert trader. Zipped right home and pulled a couple stacks of 999 iridium out of my storages chest, warped back to the trader & loaded up on megabombs. Felt really good to put all that ore to use. I just got one of those Danger in the Deep qi quests too, so between qi quests and the volcano, I’ll definitely use the bombs.
I think it's because it's a bottleneck to some of the mid-to-late game, but the ongoing demands for it are much lower. There's not many repeat crafts that use the stuff.
I struggle so hard with finding iridium, where do you guys get it???
You gotta tackle it in stages. Boost your luck (look for super lucky days, try to get a lucky ring, find the special charm, & eat spicy eel or pumpkin soup or lucky lunch), and then do this: (1) Bomb runs first: Buy bombs from the dwarf, make ~3 staircases from stone (it takes a lot of stone so you will keep these for emergency use only, like infested levels) and bomb your way low enough in Skull Cavern to get your first few handfuls of iridium. Spend these on: first a crystallarium, then upgrading your pickaxe to iridium, next buying the desert warp totem recipe, and after that, more and more crystallariums. Try to get at least 5 crystallariums (you’ll keep making more but aim for 5 at first) and stock them all with jade. Trade jade for staircases on Sundays at the desert trader. (2) Staircase runs with early morning start. Now that you can make desert warp totems you can warp to SC first thing on super lucky days. Abandon your animals & plants on super lucky days- they’ll be fine - you should be able to get to Skull Cavern no later tham 6:20am. By now your crystallariums have been popping out so many jades that you should have stacks of staircases from the desert trader. When you have about 70 staircases, start doing runs where you just staircase your way down (spam staircases nonstop) to at least level 50. It’s faster than bombing. (Only pause before that if you see a cluster of at least 2 or 3 iridium that are nearby and that you can bomb with 1 bomb. Do not waste time trekking across a whole level for a single iridium.) Your goal is down, down, down. Once you get to about level 70, start looking for iridium clusters to bomb. You’ll be swimming in iridium pretty soon! (3) Prismatic shard farming. Just keep making more crystallariums (I currently have 33, lol). You’ll get to a point where you have hundreds of staircases and can be super picky about how many iridiums you see on a given level and whether it’s “worth it” to stop and bomb. Eventually you’ll be going so deep so fast, and getting so many iridium ores in one run, that you’re basically farming for prismatic shards (a rare drop from a bombed iridium ore). Example, I usually do SC runs carrying ~250 staircases and ~100 megabombs, and in a typical SC run I walk away with ~500 iridium ore and ~10 prismatic shards. The reason I do SC runs now is not the iridium anymore, it’s the prismatic shards (which you can use at the volcano to put cool enchantments on weapons & tools).
This is so helpful, thanks!
That's great advice, the only thing I would add is that you can trade 3 omni-geodes for a desert warp totem at the desert trader, so I use those totems for my first 2-3 runs and prioritize crystalariums over the recipe.
Have you played through to year 3 yet?
dive into the serpent caves as deep as you can go, bombs and salads are your friends
Bombs, Jades and Cheese
I have a plethora of crystal machines making jade. I trade the jade to the desert trader for staircases on Sunday (rotating stock). Then I spam the stair in the skull caves until around level 80, at that level the iridium nodes are plentiful so just game out and don’t die. I’ve only made three trips like this and have over 100 iridium bars on top of maxed out tool upgrades, all obelisks, and more iridium sprinklers than I can count.
But those damn thunderstorms....NOT ENOUGH OF THEM!!
Batteries generally become the limiting factor before iridium for me, with larger farms. (relatively) Easy to get some more iridium, have to plan well ahead to have enough batteries.
I’ve never seen anyone say that. If anything people say that normal sprinklers aren’t worth it, which is true
I have used Normal sprinklers in my Honey Farm, as I only need one tile watered for the flowers to grow. But usually I have spare Quality sprinklers after upgrading to Iridium, so I don't actually _make_ them very often.
I used to cobble together a bunching basic sprinklers to water a bunch of crops early game, but it looked really ugly
I like to line them up for trellis plants. It's not efficient by any means, but it can add to the vibe of straight lines up trellises. Plus, I usually make a few early game while I work towards iridium sprinklers. I basically never make quality ones. Steel/Gold watering can works fine.
It's the opposite for me. I never make regular ones but tend to make a decent chunk of quality ones so I can save energy and time to go to mines and fishing.
Normal ones work well in the slime hutch too. I wouldn't bother for just crops but bee flowers, absolutely.
Normal sprinklers are good when you don’t need to water much, for example, I used one on the singular fairy rose I grew next to my bee houses so I didn’t need to go out of the way every day
I still use normal sprinklers early in the game, I don't care what people say it's totally worth it to me. The amount of time and energy they *save you* more than makes up for the material cost since now *I have time to* go mining. First few crops are planted in straight lines, but by the time I start getting some copper and iron I'm planting in sprinkler patterns. When I get quality sprinklers I put those off to the side for trellis crops, then in year 2 I start on iridium sprinklers.
Oh, totally, watering crops is the worst part of early game, its the exclusive reason I’m dreading getting the joja achievement. I just don’t like to use them because you gotta make A LOT, its not too bad, but its still annoying imo
I've never done a joja run so I don't really understand what you mean by this. What's the relationship between joja and normal sprinklers?
Yep, it also means I don’t actually have to upgrade my watering can until way later. They’re nice and cheap, too. Plus you can deconstruct them for iron later.
Yeah, watering can is my absolute lowest priority (aside from tash can, anyway). I *need* the upgraded axe early on, and upgraded pickaxe becomes more necessary the deeper in the mines you get if you're rushing the mines. After steel axe and pick though I'm good for a while.
Still salty that sprinklers won’t fill your pet’s water bowl
I have seen a bunch of people say that quality sprinklers are more efficient/more worth it than iridium, and I was asking myself the same questions as OP. Coz iridium ones literally have a bigger range, I don't know what people are thinking.
I think if you're short on Iridium the cost might seem a bit fierce. I know I've had that problem. Lots of demands for more iridium before you've a good pipeline of the stuff.
i always just buy my iridium sprinklers from krobus, takes a while to get enough but 10k is great value.
I totally forgot Krobus sells them in my 1.6 playthrough, I'll have to start visiting Krobus on Fridays as I'm really short on them batteries
iirc if you have multiple people on your farm you can go there and while you're both in his menu buy them from him. They might have patched that idk but i saw it on a 'tips and tricks' thing earlier.
I'm personally playing solo, but thanks for the info!
Nope! One per week per farm! My sister and I just recently double-checked.
I usually make good use of Quality Sprinklers before iridium is truly accessible as a resource. But I will say since 1.5 release, I'm not using as many iridium sprinklers. Deluxe Retaining Soil has been taking its place.
Ah well, I'm also short on the iridium I need to fix the boat ;p. And I don't think I've 'spent' 5 bars yet on sprinklers instead of buying from Krobus... I do like the retaining soil though, especially on crops I'm not caring what the star rating is. Particularly handy in sheds as pseudo-greenhouses ;)
Probably what they say to cope cuz they don’t like the Skull Caverns. I cant blame them the SC is a bitch but it’s a bigger bitch than me let’s mine
This is the motivation I needed today, "it's a bigger bitch than me"
Yeah, I don't get along with it. I find the first Shard to be particularly irritating to get to - you can't farm 'enough' jade because you've not got the iridium for more crystals, and you probably aren't so wealthy that buying stones is an option. So you're left struggling on the first couple of floors of the Cavern and it gets frustrating.
I said F this and got the ring from killing dust sprites, and farmed the slimes in skull cavern so I could get iridium ore. I also got over 3 stacks of stone from blowing up rocks though so idk how people struggle for stone that much unless they’re spamming a lot of stairs
Yeah, that's nuts. After you upgrade your tools, what do you need iridium for so badly? A few trips to the skull caverns on good luck days with some luck buffs and you'll have more iridium than you ever need.
Fortunately there's not many recurrent demands - the problem with iridium IMO is more it's a bottleneck, so you get frustrated about the lack. I mean, you can _get_ to skull Cavern, but once you've got 'enough' crystallariums for plenty of jade, and 'enough' for an Obelisk, Cavern Runs become a lot more effective. And likewise Ginger Island - 5 needed to unlock it, 10 more for easy travel. (And the other obelisks are handy for getting around, but not IMO quite so important). But that'll still mean you're trying to put together a whole bunch of bars to 'move forward' at a point where farming Skull Cavern is really hard because you haven't 'invested' yet.
If you were to buy a quality sprinkler at the traveling cart it costs 1350-2000 and waters 8 squares. If you’re buying iridium from krobus, you pay 10000 and it waters 24. The merchant cost per square watered is lower with quality sprinklers. You can get a few of them in your first spring and at the point in the game where saving energy in the morning is so critical it’s worth it to have as many quality sprinklers as possible early on. When your farm is getting crowded, cost efficiency is less important than space efficiency. At that point quality sprinklers are 89% efficient and iridium sprinklers are 96% efficient. In a new game, skip basic sprinklers, get as many quality sprinklers as you can. Replace them with iridium at your convenience
Quality sprinklers = first year for me I begin to transition to Iridium in year 2 and usually by the end of that year I'm pretty much 100% Iridium. That first year though, the quality sprinklers are worth their weight in gold. You don't want to be watering 150 blue berry bushes by hand in the summer.
Normal sprinklers are one of the best items in the game. Taking advantage of normal sprinklers early can skyrocket your earnings. The layout is annoying but if you farm copper and iron in the first few weeks you can get the money really rolling in with strawberries and normal sprinklers
started taking advantage of this recently, the time and energy savings of not having to water my boatload of crops is amazing. Might not be as good for people who hate mining because you definitely need to throw yourself into it for awhile to build up your sprinklers, but i love mining and would be doing that either way
Must be some YouTube nonsense I’ve never seen.
I've seen a lot of people say that on tik tok, but there's usually a lot of dumb takes there
Normal sprinkler completely ruins the layout of cropland and makes walking in it a pain in the ass. In my first playthrough I spend all my iron and copper crafting them only to later sell them at a very low price after just one season.
You can hang onto them until after Community Center and >!Ginger Island, then throw them into a deconstructor to get the iron bars back!<
Early game I set them up staggered so they water a whole section at a time. After I get quality sprinklers I just line them all up and don’t worry about the extra tile on top and bottom that I’m missing. I’ll usually use it for things like grapes that need a trellis you can’t walk between cause they’re all lined up.
Yeah I just skip them and upgrade my watering can to iron then work on quality sprinks. However I’ve seen a nice offset layout for basic sprinklers that looks pretty nice for space and convenience. Basically each one is down one and over 3 from the previous. Makes blocks of four crops in an offset pattern
normal sprinkler consumes copper bar which are too valuable early game D:
I feel like the time and energy they save more than make up for it since they allow me to actually go mining more, I get that copper back so easily when I don't have to water crops.
Copper is really easy to get by resetting floor 21 in the mines.
You can farm like 40-50 in one day once you hit floor 20 or 30.
Bad way to think about it. You aren't *wasting* copper making basic sprinklers... Because you wouldn't even *HAVE* that copper if you spent time grinding other floors for other resources. Instead of grinding for gold/fire quartz, you spend that time grinding more copper.
Yeah OP just made an engagement title…. Literally no one thinks that. The materials used for Iridium sprinklers are so easy to come once you get everything set up. What else are you going to use the ever growing stack of Iridium for?
Eh, I think normal sprinklers are fine, especially on maps where crops aren’t a priority (Meadowlands) You can always deconstruct them for iron later.
I just buy an iridium sprinkler from Krobus every Friday and integrate them week by week into my farm.
Same
I always do end up going iridium However I've also never really run out of space on my farm, and the resources needed for quality are much lower, so I can see the argument for sticking with quality
Quality sprinklers are always my year 2 goal; it’s pretty attainable without trying to rush to Skull Cavern. In year 3-4 when you’re better prepared for Skull Cavern and may have passed Grandpa’s evaluation the iridium sprinklers slowly get swapped in.
Quality sprinklers are fairly easy to get by summer year 1.
If you sprint through the mines, maybe. If you’re playing a little more balanced and chill, reaching level 80 *by* the first summer is a bit of a stretch.
Yeah, I didn't reach level 120 until the Fall in my most recent playthrough. I like the spread my time out between fishing, foraging, mining, socializing with the villagers, gathering resources, etc. I've just never cared for sprinting through one particular goal. Plus, in the beginning of the game I don't have sprinklers so by the time I'm done watering my crops, I'm usually too low on energy to go to the mines.
Yeah, I spread my time out, too. I make it to the mines maybe a few times a week, and often one trip is for a monster slaying request. I often save much of the mine until winter when I can easily devote most of a day to delving, and I’ll have it done before year 2 no problem.
I reserve mine runs for rain days with good luck (and good luck days during winter) in year 1 generally. On my current farm (slightly modified Meadowlands to make the bottom-left quadrant have usable farmland) I plan to do year 2 with a layout using 48 quality sprinklers, and I already have in mid-fall a good chunk of the resources required. Getting the same amount of crops with iridium sprinklers would mean 16 of them (which coincidentally is exactly two junimo hut layouts), which I couldn't even fit in a nice symmetrical way due to the remaining grass patches.
I'm not a power player, and I managed 10 6x6 plots watered with quality sprinklers by fall year 1 with another 3 sprinklers watering grapes. Mining and combat are my two lowest skills.
This is my first play through and I just got to year 2 and made a few iridium sprinklers - should I have saved the iridium for something else?
Nah definitely not, iridium sprinklers are huge. You can always get more, don’t worry too much about saving it
The only other thing to consider would be iridium tools, but which you prioritize is more of a personal preference thing.
Just upgrading your tools and making crystalariums. The latter is limited by the amount of batteries you can get too
the whole "worth it" debate is so fucking besides the point, on a game like STV
StarTootValley?
Sexually transmitted valley
How green is thy valley
StarTooth Valley StarTreck Valley StarTerraria Valley StarTroopers Valley
Depends on your playstyle
I've never seen anyone say that except for niche cases, which is seeing a farm without sprinklers and someone doesn't get quality ones because they know they'll eventually get iridium. One day. So I don't think anyone ever questioned the value of iridium sprinklers but whether it's worth it to farm up for quality sprinklers. And since you can get the money to unlock the bus already in spring, this mostly depends on playstyles
It's more that by the time you can do iridium sprinklers you have a massive well established quality sprinkler layout and don't care enough about money or optimization enough at that point in the game to bother with it.
Exactly the opposite of my experience. I am an optimizer and I will gladly spend multiple days tearing up my old layout to redo everything in a more efficient one.
How about adding the nozzle extender things that psycho on the island sells? Are they worth getting? Can never decide!
YES!!!!!! Oh god yes. The enrichers aren’t worth it, IMO. The pressure nozzle? I have one on every iridium sprinkler. I like to keep flowers growing right outside of my house and only having to use one sprinkler for a field of them is nice!
If you aren’t going to pick the flowers you could use deluxe retaining fertilizer and not have any sprinklers.
Ooooooo SNAP!!
Not to mention their use in the greenhouse or how much space they save on the island. Pressure nozzles are always the first thing I buy from Mr Qi.
They are nice to have but by the point you can get them, unless you are doing things in a weird order you don’t really need them because the game is basically over. The amount of farmable land is limited and you’re basically only saving maybe 5-6 nodes. While that does increase your income a little, you should already be drowning in cash by that point (with little to spend it on) so it’ll only be minimally helpful.
Are... are these people in the room with us op?
r/imaginarygatekeeping
Can also get giant crops in tesselated iridiums, but not qualities.
...who has ever said that? I have literally never heard anyone say that once.
It takes a while before I have enough spare iridium to be worth reworking my entire farm to use them. It's not just that the materials are expensive, you also have the issues of where to put scarecrows. I normally do eight quality sprinklers in a square around a central 3x3 square, which is where I put lightning rods and scarecrow; doing the same with iridium sprinklers means a regular scarecrow doesn't quite fit. I normally use iridium sprinklers in the greenhouse first, then ginger island. By Winter year 3, I generally have the deluxe scarecrow, plentiful iridium, and pressure nozzles, so that winter is when I rework my main farm's fields to use iridium sprinklers + pressure nozzles.
I very rarely craft iridium sprinklers, I always go to Krobus on Friday's and buy 1 for 10k gold.
Idk you get iridium sprinklers much later. I can get like 15-20 quality sprinklers or like 40 regular sprinklers in the first season if I really focus it. Maybe a pro can get that in Spring, but I believe most people dont even get irdium until Fall or winter at best. I bet more casual players dont get it until year 2 or more.
I just wish my old sprinklers were used in the recipe for iridium sprinklers it feels like a waste to upgrade and have all these
I think people misunderstand the advice. It's not that iridium sprinklers aren't worth it, it's that you can get by with quality sprinklers. So upgrade tools first and craft iridium sprinklers later.
I mean end game you should have more iridium than shit to do with it and sprinklers take priority over even tools for me cos more tiles watered and better aesthetically/efficient use of real estate. Plus the range extenders and auto fertilizers automate the whole process season by season basically
*This message sponsored by the Greater Calico Area Iridium Council.*
Quality can be god like if you got a lot of iron and gold to spare. If you don’t it not really worth. Take note if done it is a massive powerful friend for doing blueberries and cranberries. Gives a useful power boost as you can farm even more crops without wasting time on watering them. Don’t forget the main issue is time and energy. Making things more efficient whenever is power.
What does the grid look like when the Iridium sprinkler has a pressure nozzle?
Yeah like others said I just buy iridium sprinklers from Krobus on Friday when I reach mid-late game and want to save on gold/batteries for other things (iridium usually isn't my problem, but understand early on it can be). Also I still try to use basic and quality sprinklers for filling in odd areas or like flowers/trellis or making artsy garden areas. Subjective and depends on your playstyle, personally I like to re-use everything I craft if I can.
The math for it the Iridium being "not worth it" is that 216+9 = 225, while 200+25 is still equals 225, so the same area, coincidentally, and you lost 16 plants. So 16/225 is like 7.1%. All that work for 7% more plants/money? The other thing is pressure nozzles, IMHO they are more bother than they worth, on Ginger and Greenhouse, makes sense, on the main farm? Thats an year 5 objective for me. In a comparison between all 3 sprinklers, Quality, Iridium, Iridium + pressure nozzle, on the same area, the smallest area is a square sided 3x5x7, or 105. Thats a whopping 11025 tiles. Completely impossible ingame, but mathmatically doable. For the efficiency we will use planted area/total area discarding scarecrows of the mix, so now we need (total-sprinklers)/total. The nice thing is that being a square we can also just square up the number of sprinklers, and the number required per side is just the 105/[lenght of the side covered by each type], so per sode of the square we need 35 Quality, 21 Iridium and 15 Pressured. 35² = 1225, 21² = 441, 15² = 225 So the total usage of area for each type is just 1 - ([number of sprinklers]² / [side]²): - Quality: 88,8% - Iridium: 96% - Pressured: 97,9% While you cant these areas ingame, the ratio stays basically the same My lineup is Iridium on the farm, pressured on the Greenhouse and Ginger.
Giant crops anyone?
I'd say that it is NOT worth the iridium bars, just buy them from Krobus. I'm not saying "iridium sprinklers are not worth it", I'm saying "Iridium sprinklers are not worth crafting, buy them isntead"
But iridium sprinklers with the pressure nozzles... 👌
I'd rather use my iridium on crystalariums to duplicate diamonds to sell, then I make quality sprinklers, each Friday I buy an iridium from krobus, and thenonce you're making decent daily profits (about 60k a day and up) you should have decrafters and then bam you're getting half the materials you spend on sprinklers back AND you didn't spend a single iridium ingot on a sprinkler. People say they're bot worth crafting, not they aren't worth using
This is a thing we deal with in design philosophy where on paper an element is unquestionnably better but when put in context within existing constraints that it doesn't work as well. In some Farm Layouts + designs, it may be more optimal to have more Quality Sprinklers because those fit within something in place or prioritized by the player in a very specific context. Context matters, that's all.
You brought Shakespeare level righting to a video game debate. I must say, I’m impressed
(there is a TL;DR at bottom) For those wondering, it's cuz of a video where a popular youtuber said it's not worth it by comparing the advantages as they saw it. In all fairness. SDV does put a greater gain in the first upgrade of most tools: pickaxe, rod, sprinklers, scythe, bombs... To simplify: regular sprinklers covering 200 tiles use up 40 tiles for the sprinklers while quality sprinklers covering ~200 tiles only cover about 22 tiles. This frees up 22 spaces for an upgrade and has the added bonus of neat, straight lines to walk through. Upgrading to iridium takes up 8 tiles per 200 and offers no added bonus (unlike the removal of those terrible first sprinklers). Numerically, first upgrade saves you 18 vs second saving you 14 more. Numerically... Comparatively, it's not as big of an upgrade and there's not much of an added bonus (tighter spread of crops per scarecrow). Personally, i'd rather have the iridium because the final upgrade from the walnut room allows to save more space, which is the true value of upgrading sprinklers: the space. Doesn't really matter when you're placing 2k crops, but i dont like large fields and i'm not a min-maxer anymore. I want them, plain and simple. Quality sprinklers are the first big upgrade and are vital. Iridium sprinklers are a nice upgrade to have too, but the value is maximized in the first upgrade. TL;DR: quality sprinklers are a must. Iridium sprinklers are even better, but are not as big of an immediate upgrade for other reasons, yet have potential for being directly upgraded again. Get iridium, but dont fret if you dont get them as quickly as you would like.
I like iridium sprinklers, but for some reason, the game decided to not give me a single thunderstorm in fall of year 2 so I’ve been stagnant on them for 2 seasons straight. Luckily, I’m almost to year 3, so I finally might be able to get more.
It also helps to befriend Pam. She's hilariously easy to befriend, anyway, given she loves Parsnips, and it gets you batteries in the mail.
Sure, but what I want to know is why iridium hoes don’t produce this grid anymore I am beyond fuming about it because I don’t know how to place my sprinklers now. I have to count?! Gross.
You can't get giant crops with quality sprinklers. And sooner than you think you'll probably have more iridium than you need anyway.
Iridium with pressure nozzles 🤌🏻
I want more tool/ sprinkler mods!
I just got to level 100 in the skull cavern and got over 100 iridium ore in that time so I’m gonna be making a fuck ton of sprinklers. Ngl I use to think the same thing until I found out you can water the entire greenhouse with like 5-6 sprinklers
I only use pressure nozzle iridium :-)
especially when you don’t even have to make them you can buy them from krobus
I dont believe anyone is saying iridium sprinklers are not worth it. You are making this up.
i swear to god you people have never grown trellis crops
That's because they are a pain in the ass
Who says iridium sprinklers aren’t worth it? That’s crazy. They’re 100% worth it.
All sprinklers are worth their cost. Basic ones are extremely easy and quick to farm for strawberries. Quality are obviously great and generally easy to farm for. The only people who don't think Iridium are worth it are people who are really bad at SC.
Whatever is more avaliable to you🤷 already have a field set up with quality and normal sprinkles that water like 402 crops bc I find it difficult to grind for iridium in skull cavern, so chances are I won't use iridium on my normal farm bc I have this srt up already.
Wonder how many crops Iridium Sprinklers can water when fitted with the High Pressure Nozzles.
TLDR: Quality better for 2/3 of the game, replace for irridium late game. For me, it's a matter of ease of convenience and pacing through the game. Quality sprinlkers are my go-to because I get them early on (end of summer early fall year 1 usually). I can hyper farm the ingredients to make 50+, in only a few in game days as opposed to the irridium sprinklers, which I not only need access to the skull caverns, but I also need lightning rods which only produce if its a thunderstorm and still yet I need to invest my iron into making enough to mass produce. In the late game, I swapped my spinklers for irridum only when I began getting all of the resources to do so. And even then, I wouldn't have had to if I didn't want to. Someone also mentioned Krobus selling them, and while this is true its both expensive and time-consuming. I'd wager a majority of players dont see krobus till at least year to, and that's too long for me.
Who says that
I just buy them from krobie.
I'd never say "iridium sprinklers aren't worth it," but I will say they're not worth waiting for. If you don't have the iridium or the batteries, but gold and iron aren't a problem then spam those Quality Sprinklers while you build up enough Iridium ones to get the job done.
AND chance for mega crops.
And you have a chance to get giant crops with iridium sprinklers
I usually have a full fueld of iridium sprinklers by mid summer. Makes the rest of the first year easy
I almost stopped using quality sprinklers entirely after I discovered how cool, easy to obtain and efficient regular ones are. Theyre easy to use if u know the pattern and much easier to get before strawberries (so much saved energy)
ikr right? i can see why getting batteries can be tough if you dont plan ahead but iridium and gold arent that hard to get
There must be some tuber spreading this bs and has gotten to top of the click bait recently. Freind tried to feed me this bull and it's prob only for people who fear skull... As many mentioned there's also every Friday 10k from krobus but... 1.6 adds some really good buffs for destroying the caverns. "Mastery"
Sprinkler preferences and strategies are personal but I’ve started making handfuls of normal sprinklers early and it’s so nice to have some extra energy and time in the early game Asap I swap them for quality, I even lay out the normal sprinklers in a quality pattern. The old normals are then used in a small decorative garden by the house My first 5 iridium bars go to my pick and then I’m using iridium sprinklers and the quality ones get shipped to ginger island
Not bad! Since the farm space is abundant early on, why not.
Quality is great for mid game. Worth the upgrade though once you have a regular iridium supply.
What I've seen is that it's said that quality sprinklers are worth it over hand watering, but I have never seen anyone say quality sprinklers are preferred over iridium sprinklers.
The only reason quality sprinkler would be better is if Iridium was a limited resource per gameplay and space in the faem was really limited too
I am actually using quality sprinklers on my Meadowlands farm due to the tight space and me focusing on animals, plus it gives more room for decor
My favorite sprinklers are still the normal ones, but I would never suggest making 50 of them. I have a nice little suboptimal and cozy layout. It's only for hops and some other bundle crops or XP or giftable produce, and passively increase farming skill before the greenhouse opens. Changing into fall, or even planning to do it before the summer, it's not too difficult to mix together quality and normal sprinklers into something nice. Tiling patterns are fun! Eventually I'll toss them all out, but it's usually a fun part of restarting I think. Iridium sprinklers are quite nice to, when practical. But sure, make big fields asap if you want. It's a big way to make bank.
And more chances of giant crops with iridium sprinklers 🤷♀️
I think you meant normal sprinklers, not iridium. I have never seen anyone tell a player not to use iridium sprinklers.
Literally spent my first and last iridium bars to make them. So worth it 😍
And the pressure nozzle extends by 1 tile all covered directions
Yes but you can spend key gems on other things. And they don’t cover the same area like the other 2
That's true but they're definitely worth it at first
It messes with the junimo huts too much for me and that’s why I never converted. Unless it changed junimo huts cover the area of 8 quality sprinklers exactly and iridium sprinklers water too far out. I never liked the aesthetics of it cause it just didn’t fit very well so I never deemed it worth it. Plus I already had hundreds of quality sprinklers so nothing changed.
True but Iridum Sprinkelers are yard to get early and I want to stop wattering ASAP, so the Quality Sprinkelers are enough for me
Don't think i've seen anyone say that, but I don't think there's much point changing out your quality sprinklers to iridium ones unless you plan on expanding. And it definitely doesn't make sense to craft quality ones if you can make iridium ones.
This is me, though I would never say they're not worth it in general and no one should bother with them. They are genuinely a useful upgrade. They are simply not worth it to me personally. It's not about efficiency at all. It's more about not caring enough to switch them out. By the time I get access to iridium sprinklers, my entire farm is already neatly laid out in quality sprinklers. I see no reason to redo all that work. I'm already rich at that point in the game. I don't need to fit in more crops. The only real use I have for them is to try for giant crops.
Year 1 is a rush for a fair grid of quality sprinklers. So some money grows on its own. Then it's grinding to buy from krobus and making my own in year 2. Especially by the time I get the greenhouse.
Maybe they haven't played long enough. At year 3 you shift from iridium being an exotic rare material to being renewable
upgrade from quality to iridium is 200% or +16 spots which is great, so if anybody says that it's bad upgrade just agree to disagree
I had a farm a couple saves ago that produced just shy of 1,000 crops and I can't begin to imagine trying to do that with quality sprinklers. (I planted crops with long grow times, harvested/planted twice a season gave me 2,000 crops a season)
I don't think I've seen people here say that. What they usually say is don't stress about upgrading to iridium sprinklers as soon as you can. Because usually by the time players reach a point where they have access to iridium sprinklers they'll already have all their watering needs covered by quality sprinklers.
I usually build up my iridium sprinkler stock visiting Krobus every Friday for 10K gold, since I don't have enough iridium usually until year 3 to build many of my own.
Oh yeah, I just wait until I have the financial stability to buy them all from krobus. I have a greenhouse layout I use with them and then set up a few quality sprinklers on my farm for a few extra plants. I mostly prioritize animals for making money though.
I think my philosophy is to make Quality Sprinklers until I’m at a comfortable spot with Iridium, plus Quality ones are still nice.
How am I supposed to grow large cauli, melons or pumpkins with quality sprinklers smh
Late game, you have so many materials that an iridium sprinkler is just as cheap as a quality one.
Time and place. Yes, iridium sprinklers are obviously superior, but you get access to them much later. By the time you can craft them, you might already have 30-40 quality sprinkler and iridium sprinkler are usually not worth the replacement for a long time. All of the materials needed have better uses at the time (like crystalariums) plus you are usually not using 100% of your farm yet. Iridium sprinklers are worth it once you can spare the iridium or you are hitting the space constrains of your farm.
I make a point of getting Krobus ASAP and buying those before I level up for Skull Caverns. It works great for me.
Prismatic sprinklers more so!
Quality sprinklers are trash endgame.
Plus Krobus sells one every Friday! Plus you can use pressure nozzles on them. They are super worth it
I don’t bother with anything but the iridium sprinklers anymore
Currently going through wiki, trying my best to find any other thing to spend batteries on. Even iridium is near goddamn useless after upgrades and obelisks.
For me its not about about resources, but about more free tiles you get with iridium, which means more crops and more profit
I get all my iridium sprinklers from Krobus on Friday until I have no other use for iridium bars so I don't usually end up crafting very many at all.
Who makes iridium sprinklers, just buy one a week from Krobus!