One of the most basic crafting materials in Stardew Valley is clay, which you’ll need for a few different recipes as well as one of the most important farm buildings. It’s not the hardest material to find, but you might find yourself just short on it at some points. There are a few other uses for clay as well, from fashion to fish. Here’s every way to find clay, how to use it, and everything else you might need to know about it.
How to Find Clay
There are a few different ways to find clay in Stardew Valley. The first and easiest is by using your hoe on the dirt around your farm, town, the mines, and basically anywhere. If you dig in the dirt or sand, you’re likely to find some clay pretty often. This is most readily obvious at the beginning of a new season when you’re tilling a bunch of dirt to plant new crops.
You can also find clay from geodes though, which can actually be frustrating. In Stardew Valley, geodes are a great source of gems, artifacts, and other resources that have more use than clay, like stone or coal. However, you’ll find that you receive clay from geodes more often than you’d like.
This isn’t really a repeatable or reliable method, but if Jas or Vincent are your Secret Gift-Giver at the Feast of the Winter Star, they may, unfortunately, give you some clay.
How to Use Clay
Luckily, there are uses for the abundance of clay that you’ll probably find yourself with. Stardew Valley has a pretty great crafting system, and there are a handful of recipes that use clay.
The following recipes use a single piece of clay: quality retaining soil, garden pots, fiber seeds, and deluxe retaining soil. Furthermore, five batches of brick flooring will use two clay, and a bone mill will use three clay. It’s worth noting that fiber seeds, deluxe retaining soil, and the bone mill were added in the Stardew Valley 1.5 update, which is not yet released on consoles or mobile but will be soon.
Our Other Stardew Valley Guides
Perhaps most importantly, clay is used for a farm building. Specifically, you’ll need ten clay in order to build a silo on your farm. This is one of the most important farm buildings, as you’ll need it to help keep your animals fed through the winter. It’s often recommended as the first building you should construct, even before a barn or coop. Additionally, you’ll probably end up building multiple, so the clay definitely comes in handy here.
Other Info
Like almost every other item in Stardew Valley, there are a few other things to know about clay besides its basic use and where to find it. If you bring some clay with a bit of cloth to Emily’s sewing machine, you can create a very basic but cute orange shirt. It’s one of the tops that can be chosen upon character creation, but this can be an easy way to make one if you chose something else or just like the appearance of it.
There are a few different fish that may request some clay (two, three, or five) when placed into a fish pond. Additionally, you should avoid gifting it to villagers, as it’s disliked or hated by every resident.
