Sprinklers in Stardew Valley

Watering crops by hand drains your energy and eats up your whole morning. Sprinklers fix that: place them once, and they water the tiles around automatically every morning, forever. We'll cover every sprinkler in Stardew Valley. From exact recipes, coverage, best layouts and the tips that will save you time.

Quick comparison

All sprinklers sell for 100g and only water tilled soil. You can't place them on sand, and you can't water Garden Pots or your pet's water bowl (they can water Slime Hutch troughs).

The three sprinkler types

Sprinkler (basic)

Your first sprinkler is unlucked at Farming Level 2. It waters the 4 tiles directly above, below, left, and right, forming a plus shape. Cheap and easy to mass-produce early, but the awkward coverage makes it not really adapted for large fields. Use it as a stopgap until you reach Quality.

Quality Sprinkler

You unlock it at Farming Level 6 and waters all 8 tiles around it (a 3x3 square minus the center it sits on). This is the workhorse for most of a playthrough because its square footprint tiles neatly across a field.

Iridium Sprinkler

Unlocked at Farming Level 9, it waters 24 tiles in a 5x5 square. One Iridium Sprinkler replaces three Quality Sprinklers, so it pays for itself fast in recovered labor. Tip: Krobus sells one Iridium Sprinkler every Friday for 10,000g in the Sewers. You would rather buy than grind iridium.

How to craft the materials

Most of the work is smelting bars in a furnace (each bar needs 1 Coal plus 5 ore):

• Copper Bar: 5 Copper Ore, 30 minutes
• Iron Bar: 5 Iron Ore, 2 hours
• Gold Bar: 5 Gold Ore, 5 hours
• Iridium Bar: 5 Iridium Ore, 8 hours
• Refined Quartz: 1 Quartz or Fire Quartz, 1.5 hours (or recycle Broken Glasses and Broken CDs in a Recycling Machine)
• Battery Pack: produced by Lightning Rods during storms, plus Solar Panels, Iridium Bats, and a Stingray Fish Pond

Sprinkler attachments (1.6)

Two upgrades slot onto a placed sprinkler. You can only use one at a time per sprinkler. Also, picking the sprinkler back up removes the attachment without destroying it. Both are bought in Qi's Walnut Room for 20 Qi Gems per set of 4. Also rarely dropped from monsters during certain Qi quests.

Pressure Nozzle

Adds one extra ring of tiles in every direction. The jump is significant:

Best value: putting a Pressure Nozzle on a Quality Sprinkler turns it into a budget Iridium Sprinkler, no Battery Pack needed.

Enricher

Load it with fertilizer (Basic, Quality, Deluxe, or any Speed-Gro) and it will auto apply that fertilizer when you plant seeds inside its range. It saves a huge amount of manual fertilizing on big farms.

Best sprinkler layouts

Basic Sprinkler: Because the coverage is a plus shape, arrange them in a checkerboard, offset diagonally with one untilled gap between each, so the watered tiles interlock with no overlap.

Quality Sprinkler: Stagger them in diagonal so each 3x3 footprint tiles cleanly against the next with no dry gaps. Twelve crops worth of space goes to sprinklers, leaving the rest plantable.

Iridium Sprinkler: Place one every 5 tiles, center to center, in both directions for gapless coverage on a square field. With Pressure Nozzles, space them every 7 tiles instead. Each sprinkler then owns a tidy 5x5 (or 7x7) block.

Greenhouse: Three Iridium Sprinklers placed across the plantable strip cover the entire interior. Add Pressure Nozzles and just two will water the whole plot.

Tips and tricks

• Plant and till the night before. Sprinklers water each morning, so set up your field in the evening and wake up to watered, ready-to-plant soil.
• Build paths to prevent misclicks. Narrow stone or gravel walkways between sprinkler blocks stop you from accidentally hoeing or smashing crops, and double as a visual grid.
• Tuck scarecrows into dead zones. Place scarecrows on tiles your sprinklers do not reach (gaps between grid sections or field edges) so you protect crops without wasting watered tiles. Roughly one every 12 to 16 tiles fits a Quality grid.
• Skip the basic tier when you can. Replace Sprinklers with Quality versions as soon as you hit Farming Level 6; the square coverage is far easier to plan around.
• Stack with growth boosts. Pair Iridium Sprinklers with Deluxe Speed-Gro (or an Enricher loaded with it) for the most hands-off, fastest-growing setup in the game.
• Add a torch for light. Dropping a Torch onto a placed sprinkler gives you a bit of free lighting at night.

Alternatives to sprinklers

If you are short on materials early, you have options. Upgrade your watering can so you cover more tiles per pass, or plant in retaining soil, which has a chance to stay watered overnight. Deluxe Retaining Soil keeps tiles watered every night, so you only ever need to water a crop once.

How to remove a sprinkler

Hit it with an axe or pickaxe to pick it back up. Any attached Pressure Nozzle or Enricher comes off intact and can be reused.

FAQ

What is the best sprinkler in Stardew Valley?
The Iridium Sprinkler covers the most ground at 24 tiles, or 48 with a Pressure Nozzle, making it the best for endgame and the greenhouse. Quality Sprinklers are the best all-rounder for most of the game.

Do sprinklers water unplanted tiles?
Only tilled soil gets watered. Untilled ground, paths, and sand are skipped, which is why you can safely run walkways through a sprinkler grid.

Can you put a Pressure Nozzle on an Iridium Sprinkler?
Yes. It expands coverage to a 7x7 area (48 tiles), the largest possible footprint in the game.

Where do I get sprinkler attachments?
Qi's Walnut Room sells the Pressure Nozzle and Enricher for 20 Qi Gems per four. They can also drop rarely from monsters during specific Qi challenge quests.