Stardew Valley

Forester or gatherer - Stardew Valley

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A profession choice needs to be made when you reach level 5 on your foraging skill.

Should you pick forester or gatherer?

Forester vs gatherer

The forester path :

  • Forester (level 5) - wood is worth 50% more
  • Lumberjack (level 10) - trees have a chance to drop hardwood
  • Tapper (level 10) - syrups are worth 25% more

The gatherer path :

  • Gatherer (level 5) - 20% chance for a double harvest of foraged items
  • Botanist (level 10) - foraged items are always of the highest quality
  • Tracker (level 10) - the location of forageable items is revealed

Which is better?

The gatherer profession grants a 20% chance of a double harvest of foraged items.

It not only works for the typical items you can find around town like leek or dandelion, but also for mushrooms found in the cave, sea items found on the beach and so on.

This is the safe choice and it's the better choice for most players, as everyone does at least a little bit of foraging.

Gatherer also has great synergy with botanist, a level 10 botanist skill choice. With it, foraged items are always iridium quality. So you're getting foraged items that are worth much more, with a 20% chance of getting two of them.

Forester is much harder to like as you really need to cut a lot of trees to make it worthwhile. Playing on the forest map definitely helps with the 8 renewable large stumps that give hardwood.

I would say, only select forester if you want to produce a ton of syrup (level 10 tapper profession) or if you really like to cut trees and want to play a lumberjack.

Better choice: gatherer.

Level 5 choices

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