The lightning rod crafting recipe is a reward for reaching Foraging 6 in Stardew Valley. During a thunderstorm, a lightning bolt will strike an available lightning rod instead of the farm, and by the next day, the rod will convert that energy into a battery pack.
However, thunderstorms are unpredictable in Stardew Valley, and they don't happen at all during winter. Fortunately, there's a more reliable way to get battery packs: solar panels. The downside is that getting this recipe is a lot more involved compared to gaining a few levels of Foraging.
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Where to Get the Solar Panel Recipe
Access to solar panels is the reward of a special order called "Island Ingredients." As the name implies, this special order will only appear after you've fixed Willy's boat and visited Ginger Island at least once. For this order, Caroline asks you to flood the market by shipping (through a shipping crate) 100 of an island crop. This crop can be taro roots, pineapple, or ginger. You get up to 28 days to fill this order, but you have to both harvest and ship 100 of the chosen crop in this time frame.
Ginger is the trickiest crop to get for this request because you can't grow it (not even on the island farm). Instead, you have to run around the island looking for wild ginger and harvest all of it using the hoe. Players should avoid accepting the ginger variant of "Island Ingredients" until after they've unlocked both the fast-travel system and the dig site. On the bright side, ginger dropped by tiger slimes counts towards the quest's total.
Once you've harvested and shipped all 100 crops (anything sold to Pierre doesn't count), Caroline will reward you with half of the crop's base gold value (this is on top of the money you got from selling the crops), and the next day she'll send you the solar panel recipe through the mail.
Solar PanelHow to Build and Use Solar Panels
Solar panels are costly, even considering how deep into the game you have to be to unlock them. Each one costs five iron bars, five gold bars, and a full ten bars of refined quartz.
A solar panel takes up the same amount of space as any other machine, which means you can walk behind it. After sitting outside for seven sunny days, the solar panel will produce one battery pack that you can collect the next morning. This means a solar panel needs more good weather days than the lightning rod, but sunny days are much easier to come by than thunderstorms. Solar panels can also charge up during winter, unlike lightning rods.
Stardew Valley
- Released
- February 26, 2016
