Ancient Seeds in Stardew Valley: Where They Grow & How to Use Them

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A player guide to Stardew's ancient seeds & making money from them

Co-authored by BlaDe and Glenn Carreau

Last Updated: April 17, 2025 Fact Checked

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What are ancient seeds?

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Getting Ancient Seeds

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What to Do With Ancient Seeds

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Planting Ancient Seeds

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Making Money

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Video

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Tips

Ancient seeds may not seem like much at first, but they can be incredibly useful (and valuable) in Stardew Valley—so how can you get your hands on them? To use ancient seeds, you’ll need to find an ancient seed artifact and donate it to the museum to get your first plantable ancient seeds. From there, you can grow ancient fruits and make artisan products for a hefty profit! Read on for a complete guide to finding, using, and planting ancient seeds in Stardew Valley.

Ancient Seeds in Stardew Valley: Overview

Ancient seeds are artifacts you can convert into fruit seeds and plant, either on your farm during spring, summer, or fall, or in the greenhouse. Donate an ancient seed artifact to the museum to get a seed packet and a recipe for converting artifacts to plantable ancient seeds.

Section 1 of 5:

Stardew Valley Ancient Seeds: What are they?

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Ancient seeds are artifacts that can be converted into fruit seeds. Technically, the game has two types of ancient seeds: artifacts and plantable fruit seeds. To get the fruit seeds, you must first find the artifact version of the seed. Once planted, ancient seeds will grow into plants that yield ancient fruits, which can be sold and made into other products.^{[1]
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- When found as an artifact, the description for an ancient seed will read: “It's a dry old seed from some ancient plant. By all appearances it's long since dead…”
- The selling price for an ancient seed artifact is 5 gold; the selling price for the plantable fruit seed is 30 gold.

Section 2 of 5:

How to Get Ancient Seeds

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Ancient seeds can be found in artifact spots and monster drops. There are several ways to find ancient seed artifacts. They can be obtained by digging up artifact spots in Cindersap Forest or the Mountain, looted in artifact troves, or dropped from several types of bug Monster. You can also find them when cutting foliage in the mines, Skull Cavern, or the Volcano Dungeon. The odds of getting a seed are:^{[2]
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- Cindersap Forest: 0.7% chance
- The Mountain: 0.7% chance
- Monster drops (Bug, Cave Fly, Grub, Mutant Fly, and Mutant Grub): 0.5% chance for all monsters
- Fishing treasure chests (after Fishing Level 2): 0.7 - 0.8% chance
- Artifact troves: 3.7% chance
- In the Skull Cavern, you’ll only find ancient seeds on the Prehistoric Floors. Additionally, the Mines must be in a “dangerous” state (which you can do by toggling the Shrine of Challenge) to find ancient seeds.
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Plantable ancient seeds can be obtained with a Seed Maker. There’s only one other way to get plantable seeds besides crafting them: using a Seed Maker. However, it’s not guaranteed. Rather, whenever you use the Seed Maker with a crop other than ancient fruit, there’s a 0.5% chance you’ll get a packet of ancient seeds instead of that crop’s seeds.^{[3]
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- It takes 20 in-game minutes to process seeds in a Seed Maker, and you’ll only be able to craft the machine after reaching Farming Level 9.
- If you get plantable ancient seeds before finding the artifact version, you can start growing them at your farm (since only the artifact can be donated to the museum).

Section 3 of 5:

What to Do With Ancient Seeds in Stardew Valley

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When you find an ancient seed artifact, bring it to the museum in Pelican Town and donate it; Gunther, the villager who accepts museum donations, will reward you with a packet of plantable ancient seeds. In addition, you’ll also get a crafting recipe that will let you make ancient seeds from the artifact version.^{[4]
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Craft plantable ancient seeds to grow ancient fruit. You can’t grow plants from artifacts, so after donating the first ancient seed, use the crafting recipe (called “Ancient Seeds”) to make seeds from which you can plant and grow fruits. The recipe requires 1 ancient seed artifact, and you’ll get 1 plantable ancient seed per craft.^{[5]
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- This will allow you to immediately craft plantable ancient seeds from any future ancient seed artifacts you find!
- If you have a Deconstructor, you can also craft an ancient seed artifact by adding plantable ancient seeds to the machine.

Section 4 of 5:

How to Plant Ancient Seeds

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Plant ancient seeds during spring, summer, or fall. Viable ancient fruit seeds will grow once planted—though they only grow during the spring, summer, and fall seasons and have a 28-day initial growth period. Thus, it’s a good idea to start growing them as soon as possible. If you can, plant them on the first day of spring or summer to ensure you get a harvest the next season.^{[6]
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- Ancient seeds have six growth stages, each with a different appearance to show the plant’s growth:
  - Stage 1 (2 days long)
  - Stage 2 (7 days long)
  - Stage 3 (7 days long)
  - Stage 4 (7 days long)
  - Stage 5 (5 days long)
  - Harvest
- After the first harvest, ancient fruit plants will regrow and yield additional harvests. Their regrowth period is 7 days long.
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Grow ancient seeds all year in the greenhouse. The best place to grow ancient seeds is your greenhouse (which you can repair and use by completing the Pantry Bundles for the Community Center or buying the Greenhouse upgrade for 35,000 gold). Plants in the greenhouse will grow all year, regardless of season, which means you won’t need to worry about winter disrupting your ancient seeds!^{[7]
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- However, you can’t plant ancient seeds in garden pots. If you try, you’ll get a message: “Her roots grow very deep...she wouldn't be happy in there."

Section 5 of 5:

Making Money from Ancient Seeds

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Craft valuable artisan products with ancient fruit. You can use ancient fruit to make either wine (using a Keg) or jelly (using a Preserves Jar). You’ll get the most money from selling ancient fruit wine, but even ancient fruit jelly is worth much more gold than the base fruit. So, to get the most profit from your ancient fruit, turn as many into artisan products as possible.^{[8]
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- Ancient fruit wine selling prices:
  - Base: 1,650 gold
  - Silver quality: 2,062 gold
  - Gold quality: 2,475 gold
  - Iridium quality: 3,300 gold
- Ancient fruit jelly selling price: 1,150 gold
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Sell the base ancient fruits for quick income. If you don’t want to wait to craft artisan products like wine or jelly, you can simply sell the ancient fruits right after harvesting them. The base selling price for a single ancient fruit is 550 gold, and that price increases for higher-quality fruits. For example:^{[9]
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- Silver quality: 687 gold
- Gold quality: 825 gold
- Iridium quality: 1,100 gold

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You can’t buy ancient seeds anywhere; they aren’t sold at the General Store, Jojamart, or the Traveling Cart (as of update 1.6.3).

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The only villagers who “like” getting ancient seed artifacts as gifts are Penny and the Dwarf. Everyone else dislikes it—and all villagers dislike getting plantable ancient seeds as gifts.

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Ancient seeds are also used to create brown suits. To make one, an ancient seed must be used in the spool of your sewing machine.

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