The world of Stardew Valley is full of hidden items and resources that you might want to find and collect to unlock all sorts of weapons and tools.
There is nothing more satisfying than getting an incredibly rare resource, such as Prismatic Shards, and using them to get legendary equipment.
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Though Stardew Valley is a farming/life simulator, players will occasionally stumble into RPG mechanics here and there when they go exploring for all sorts of materials for their farm.
To get the legendary Galaxy Sword early on in the game and defeat any enemy, even in the Skull Cavern, you will need to first get a Prismatic Shard.
The best and most common way to find and get a Prismatic Shard in Stardew Valley is to break Iridium Nodes or open chests in the Skull Cavern’s treasure rooms.
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How to Get Prismatic Shard in Stardew Valley
Since the Prismatic Shard is supposed to be one of the rarest items in Stardew Valley, it doesn’t have some specific node you can break and 100% get it.
Even though some of these are very hard to do or only possible after the endgame, here are all the ways you can get a Prismatic Shard in Stardew Valley:
- Break Mystic Stone Nodes (25% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- Break Iridium Nodes (4% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- Open Chests in Skull Cavern’s Treasure Rooms (4% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- Open Omni Geode (0.4% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- Defeat Serpents and Mummies (0.1% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- Raise a Rainbow Trout Fish Pond with a population over 9 (0.09% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- Defeat Shadow Brutes and Shadow Shamans (0.05% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- Defeat any monster after reaching the button of the Mines (0.05% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- Fish Treasure Chests after reaching Fishing Level 6 (0.01% chance to yield Prismatic Shard)
- In the Forge of the Volcano Dungeon on Ginger Island (100%, only 1)
- From Statue of True Perfection (100%, 1 every day)
Mining Nodes
The method with the best chances, in theory at least, to get Prismatic Shards in Stardew Valley is mining. Breaking down Mystic Stone and Iridium Nodes has a slight chance of getting you a Prismatic Shard.
Unfortunately, Mystic Stone Nodes, which have the highest chance of yielding a Prismatic Shard, have an extremely low spawn rate, and they are very hard to find.
Even when you find them, you only have a 25% chance to get what you want.
This means that you shouldn’t try to specifically look for them, since it would just be a waste of time. However, looking for Iridium Nodes isn’t such an insane task.
If you’ve managed to complete the Mines and have reached the Skull Cavern, finding Iridium Nodes should be a relatively easy task if you have a lot of Staircases.
In the Skull Cavern, the further you go in, the better the chance to find Iridium Nodes.
So, craft a lot of Staircases and sprint through the Skull Cavern to reach some of the deeper levels.
If you manage to quickly reach level 100, you can then start looking around for Iridium Nodes, and you will have a decent chance to get the Prismatic Shard.
Staircases are available as a recipe once you reach level 2 in Mining and will require you to use Stone x99 to craft.
You can use these to place stairs in dungeons to advance through the floors without actually destroying any rock nodes.
Skull Cavern Treasure Room
If you really want to use a method that will likely yield you 100% a Prismatic Shard in Stardew Valley, then looking through the Skull Cavern for Treasure Rooms is the best way on this list.
In the Skull Cavern in Calico Desert, there is a base 1% chance every time you go down a floor that you will find a Treasure Room instead of a normal level.
These Treasure Rooms are relatively small floors with just a chest in the middle of them.
The exact chance that you will find a Treasure Room on each floor is 1% + (Daily Luck / 10) + (Luck / 100).
This means that on a day with maximum Daily Luck, with the Special Charm in your inventory, and by eating a Magic Rock Candy, you can increase your chance of finding a Treasure Room to around 7.25%.
You are also going to 100% find a Treasure Room on floor 100 every time you go into the Skull Cavern.
So, your main goal would be to reach floor 100 every time you explore the dungeon, and hope that you also get some extra rooms along the way.
Check with the TV every morning to see your Daily Luck, and make sure to eat at least one Luck buff item.
Combining this method with the one where you mine Iridium and Mystic Stone Nodes is very efficient since, in both of them, your main goal will be reaching floor 100.
In theory, if you manage to reach floor 100 at least 25 times, you have a decent chance of getting a Prismatic Shard without even finding other Treasure Rooms along the way or breaking any nodes.
Breaking Open Omni Geodes
Not all Stardew Valley players love mining and fighting in one of the most dangerous locations in the game.
If you are one of those players, we are happy to tell you that farmers also have a way to get a Prismatic Shard, though it is very inefficient.
Omni Geodes are a mineral deposit that you can find by breaking rocks. You can do this either in dungeons or in the Quarry. However, you can also get Omni Geodes using money.
On Tuesdays, you can purchase one from Krobus for 300 g, and on Wednesdays, you can buy 3 Omni Geodes for 1,000 g each from the Oasis in the Calico Desert.
If getting a Prismatic Shard is not something you want to do overnight, then buying Omni Geodes from Krobus and Sandy weekly can be a decent way to one day get what you want.
Unfortunately, you will have a chance below 1% to get a Prismatic Shard this way, but at least you won’t have to spend hours in the dungeons.
Defeating Enemies
If fighting is something you love doing in Stardew Valley, then you can head into the Skull Cavern after completing the Mines and spend all your time defeating enemies to get a Prismatic Shard.
You have an extremely low chance of getting one by defeating any enemies and a slightly higher chance if you beat Mummies and Serpents, the main monsters in the Skull Cavern.
Still, the chance is so low that we shouldn’t even consider this as a potential farming method since there is almost no way you will get one this way. If you do, it is random, and it won’t happen again in the near future.
So, don’t defeat enemies to get a Prismatic Shard. These monsters also yield other good loot, so if you are doing it, don’t think about the shards so much and think about the other potential loot.
Rainbow Trout Fish Pond
This is actually the chosen method for many people to farm Prismatic Shards in Stardew Valley since it is a relatively passive method with not a lot of effort once you manage to reach the required population for the pond.
The Rainbow Trout is a relatively common fish that you can catch during the Summer in the river and the Mountain Lake, between 6 AM and 7 PM.
Once you catch your first few Rainbow Trouts, you can start your Fish Pond on the farm to make them produce some Prismatic Shards.
How this works is that you first talk to Robin at the Carpenter’s Shop to build the Fish Pond on your farm for 5k g, Stone x200, Seaweed x5, and Green Algae x5, and wait 2 days for her to finish the construction.
Then, you can place 1 Rainbow Trout in the Fish Pond and wait 2 days for it to reproduce and increase the population.
Once it reaches a population of 3 fish, you will have to complete a quest for them to increase the population cap.
You also don’t have to wait for them to reproduce, and you can just place enough fish to reach the cap faster and get the expansion quest.
Here are the potential items you might have to get to increase the population cap on the Rainbow Trout Fish Pond in Stardew Valley:
- Increase Population Cap above 3 – Coral x3, Honey x1, Oyster x1, or Refined Quartz x3
- Increase Population Cap above 5 – Dried Starfish x1, Emerald x2, Omni Geode x3, or Purple Mushroom x3
- Increase Population Cap above 7 – Diamond x1, Gold Bar x3, Iridium Ore x1, Jelly x1, or Pickle x1
Once you reach a population of 9 Rainbow Trout, you will have a 0.1% chance every day to get a Prismatic Shard.
This is a must-have for most players that want to get this item since you just need to check in on the pond every day and you have a chance of getting what you desire.
All the Other Methods
Fishing for treasure chests is not a good method to reliably get a Prismatic Shard in Stardew Valley. It is more of a nice surprise rather than a method to get it. So, never fish to try to get Prismatic Shards.
You can also get a Prismatic Shard for free by reaching level 10 of the Volcano Dungeon on Ginger Island, but this is so far in the game that it won’t really affect your playthrough that much.
The Statue of True Perfection is an item that you get for completing everything Stardew Valley has to offer. By that point in the game, you are more likely to restart the game than to use the Statue to get Prismatic Shards every day.
That’s everything you need to know about how to get a Prismatic Shard in Stardew Valley!
Have any input or suggestions for this guide? Let us know in the comment section below.
