Ancient Seeds are, by far, the rarest seeds in Stardew Valley. Perhaps even more so than the Rare Seed, despite what the name of it will have you believe. There are a few ways to get it, but none of them are guaranteed.
Ancient Seeds grow into, as you can probably predict, Ancient Fruits. These Ancient Fruits can net you a tidy profit on their own, but you’re much better off turning the Fruit into Wine using a Keg and then aging it by putting it in a Cask.
Before you can get an Ancient Seed that will actually grow into anything, you’ll need to get your hands on an Ancient Seed Artifact. I know this sounds like a lot, but don’t worry, I can walk you through everything.
How to get an Ancient Seed Artifact
There are a few different ways to get Ancient Seed Artifacts, but the most common drops come from Bugs within the Mines. None of these Bugs offer a particularly high chance of dropping the Artifact you need, in fact the chances are incredibly slim, but you’ll be battling a large number of them while you’re down there so you’re highly likely to be rewarded with an Ancient Seed Artifact pretty quickly.
Bugs are found between levels 6 and 29 of the Mines, After that you’ll begin to encounter Bats. Each type of Bug has a 0.5% chance of dropping an Ancient Seed Artifact.
You can also get an Ancient Seed Artifact by digging up Artifact Spots (the spots with worms) in Cindersap Forest and The Mountain. These Artifact Spots have a 0.7% chance of producing an Ancient Seed Artifact.
There are two other ways to get an Ancient Seed Artifact:
- Fishing Treasure Chest (0.7% chance to drop)
- Artifact Trove (3.7% chance to drop)
If you want to skip the Artifact hunting stage and go straight to purchasing an Ancient Seed, they can rarely be found at the Traveling Cart selling for between 100 and 1,000 Gold, but there is only a 1.26% chance of this occurring.
How to turn an Ancient Seed Artifact into an Ancient Seed
Once you’ve found an Ancient Seed Artifact, run (and I do mean that literally if it’s edging close to 5pm) to see Gunther at the Museum. He will gladly accept the Ancient Seed Artifact and reward you for your efforts by providing you not only with an Ancient Seed, but also the recipe to make further Ancient Seeds.
Once you’ve donated one Ancient Seed Artifact to Gunther, you can turn any future ones into Ancient Seeds which will grow using the recipe he provided you with.
If you happen to have somehow come across a growable Ancient Seed, but you haven’t donated an Artifact version to the Museum, you can place an Ancient Seed into a Deconstructor in order to reverse the process and create an Ancient Seed Artifact that’s fit to be donated. You can also put an Ancient Seed into the spool of a Sewing Machine in order to create a Brown Suit.
How to turn Ancient Seeds into Ancient Fruits
Once you’ve got an Ancient Seed, you’ll need to plant it and tend to it for it to bear fruit. My first piece of advice here is to wait to grow Ancient Fruit until you’ve unlocked the Greenhouse and can grow anything, regardless of what season it’s suited for. However, an Ancient Seed will grow throughout Spring, Summer, and Fall outside.
Ancient Seeds take 28 days to grow, so I’d recommend planting them on the first day of a season. As long as you keep the growing plant watered, you’ll be able to harvest Ancient Fruit on the first day of the following season and then every week following the first harvest.
To get more Ancient Seeds, you can place Ancient Fruit into a Seed Maker. Each Fruit placed into a Seed Maker will result in between one and three further Ancient Seeds which can then be replanted.
What to do with Ancient Fruit
Profits
Ancient Fruit does sell for a fair profit just on its own, depending on its quality and if you selected Tiller as your Farming Profession when you hit Farming level 5, it will be worth 10% more.
| Quality | Base price | Tiller price (+10%) |
| Regular | 550 Gold | 605 Gold |
| Silver | 687 Gold | 755 Gold |
| Gold | 825 Gold | 907 Gold |
| Iridium | 1,100 Gold | 1,210 Gold |
However, if you want to make some real profit, you can turn your Fruits into either Wine or Jelly. To turn your Ancient Fruit into Wine, you’ll need both a Keg and a Cask, or to turn it into Ancient Fruit Jelly, you’ll need a Preserves Jar. If you select the Artisan route once you hit Farming level 10, you’ll make an extra 40% on each product sold.
Ancient Fruit Jelly sells for 1,150 Gold, increasing to 1,610 Gold with the 40% Artisan bonus, so you’re much better off, in terms of profits, by making Wine rather than Pickling because wine can be aged by placing it into a Cask, which increases its value.
Ancient Fruit Wine sells for the following prices:
| Quality | Time aged | Base price | Artisan price (+40%) |
| Regular | 0 days | 1,650 Gold | 2,310 Gold |
| Silver | 14 days | 2,062 Gold | 2,886 Gold |
| Gold | 28 days | 2,475 Gold | 3,465 Gold |
| Iridium | 56 days | 3,300 Gold | 4,620 Gold |
Bundles
Ancient Fruit is an option in the following bundles:
- The Missing Bundle in the abandoned JojaMart (5x gold quality)
- Rare Crops Bundle in The Pantry (Remixed) (1x any quality)
Tailoring
Ancient Fruit can be used in the spool of a Sewing Machine in order to create some rather fetching dyeable Genie Pants, and also can be turned into blue dye at the dye pots in Emily and Haley’s house.
