So maybe you weren’t quite as prepared for Skull Cavern as you thought your were. Or maybe you went a bit too bomb happy and ended up biting it. Whatever the reason, if you pass out due to damage you will end up losing a lot of of your stuff. We’ve all seen that message the next in-game day of: “You lost 120 wood, 10 hardwood, some food, those valuable gems, etc.”
Fair game. But what about when you lose a tool or lose a weapon?
How are you supposed to play Stardew Valley without an axe? Can you get a second Galaxy Sword or are you just stuck with a weak weapon bought from the Adventurer’s Guild?
There is an in-game mechanic to allow you to reclaim lost items in Stardew Valley whether you lost them due to overconfidence, bad luck, or even just a glitch.
So where do you go to get lost items back? The Adventurer’s Guild!
What Do You Do If You Lose a Tool in Stardew Valley?
The next day you want to go to The Adventurer’s Guild and talk to Marlon. You’ll see the option for Marlon’s Item Recovery Service. You’ll see a list of everything that was lost due to hit point damage. If the upgraded tool was something you lost, have him recover that.
IMPORTANT NOTE: You only get to use Marlon’s Item Recover Service once. So if there is an item more important to you than an upgraded tool (like a prismatic shard, dino egg, or special weapon) then make sure to have him recover that as a basic tool will be sent to you via mail that day or the next day.
So what can you do if you lose an axe? You can wait for a basic one to appear in the mail (which should happen that day or the next one) or if you have an upgraded one you can have Marlon go after that using his Item Recovery Service, which will be free since an axe can’t be sold via the item bin on the farm.
The other option is to use the service for something else and get the tool in the mail.
If you lose a tool in Stardew Valley you can just wait for a new one to appear in the mail. Stardew Valley has built-in programming so if you lose a crucial tool you can’t play without, a basic version appears in the mail to replace it.
This is to make sure a file isn’t rendered unplayable because you don’t have a required tool to play the game.
This applies to all crucial tools in the game, so these two methods work to get your watering can back, your mining pickaxe back, your axe back, or your hoe back in Stardew Valley, but the mailed version is the basic non-upgraded version so you will need to gather the gold and resources to upgrade those once again.
What Do You Do If You Lose a Weapon in Stardew Valley?
There are less options if you lose a weapon. Although in the very early game it’s important to have something, even then a weapon isn’t an absolute necessary tool. Once the Adventurer’s Guild is open, weapons are easy to come by even if they aren’t the high-quality weapons that can be found in the mines or from killing certain enemies.
Weapons can also be found on some mine levels which you can bomb your way to or even treasure chests from fishing. Because of these alternatives, a weapon is never treated as a necessary tool – not even the Rusty Sword.
The ONLY option is to use Marlon’s Item Recovery Service. So if you had a bad run where you lost the Galaxy Sword and a gold axe…well have him fetch the sword and resign yourself to having to upgrade the axe once again.
Only one item or one stack of items can be recovered. Once it’s been used, that’s it, so think very carefully before not recovering the weapon you’ve been using especially if it’s the Galaxy Sword or Galaxy Hammer because without a cheat like an item spawning mod, there’s no way to get another one.
Can you lose your sword in Stardew Valley?
Yes, but Marlon is happy to help you get it back…for a nominal fee (maybe).
What Happens If You Lose Two Critical to Play Items in Stardew Valley?
Despite my many major mistakes in Stardew Valley, including bombing myself to death by accident to shoot an opening to an Unqualified Experts sketch (HERE) for YouTube, I’ve had multiple files where I needed to use Marlon’s service and I’ve never seen a situation where two tools were lost, and only once where I lost my weapon along with a tool.
Which was unfortunate since it was a gold axe and I was back to a normal axe the next day.
But I did get my Galaxy Sword back and at that point that was far more important.
However, should that happen you should receive multiple letters, or letters on multiple days, until you end up with at least a basic version of all your necessary missing tools.
Why Did I Lose My Tools or Weapons In Stardew Valley?
While in earlier versions the game there were occasional glitches that could cause problems, generally in unmodded Stardew Valley games that no longer takes place and the only way you lose your tools is from passing out due to damage (usually in one of the mines).
IMPORTANT: Passing out from exhaustion and passing out from damage result in two different situations! If you pass out from exhaustion, you don’t lose anything except gold. If you pass out from damage, you lose items.
To lose tools or weapons in Stardew Valley it’s almost certain that you were damaged to the point of passing out. If this didn’t happen, look through all the chests you have throughout the map.
How to Prevent Yourself from Losing Your Tools in Stardew Valley
You can create chests in the first floor of the mine to hold your stuff (in addition to being a good place to have furnaces for crafting). This doesn’t just make it convenient for crafting but it also gives you a place to put tools and items you don’t want to lose in the mines.
You can completely deck out the area around the first mine, and even the small entry to Skull Cavern has room for a chest to dump a hoe, some hardwood, an axe, any tools you brought along for a bit but don’t want to risk losing if things go sideways – which they can very quickly when you drop into a new floor and get hit by five flying serpents all at once.
Having those chests outside the mine allows you to just pick up what you need on the way out if everything goes smoothly. On the other hand if things really go disastrously then your tools are waiting for you safely in a chest once you recover you can go fetch them.
As long as you go into the mines with only your mining pick axe, even a worst case scenario has you picking whether to recover a good weapon and accept a basic mining pickaxe in the mail, or the upgraded mining pickaxe and then just go and buy another weapon.
Do You Lose Your Items at the Stardew Valley Fair?
The Stardew Valley Fair is a special event that takes place every Fall. In this case if you lose the items you put on display, it’s your fault. The items you put up for judgement get judged by Mayor Lewis for best grange display and after judgement and awarding of star tokens you need to go and pick your items back up.
If you do, you won’t lose any of your items.
If you forget to pick those items up then you will lose them, but that’s on you for not clearing out the display: the items are right there to take back and you even get a reminder to clean out the display by Mayor Lewis himself!
Lost Item Recovery: In Summary
In summary, don’t worry if you lose a tool. You can get new tools, or you can get the old upgraded one back. While this can be a setback, you will never permanently lose a tool in Stardew Valley. These safe guards make sure that even if things go catastrophically wrong during a mining expedition, you still will have the ability to keep playing the game and to build your tools back up.
So you may have some tough decisions to make when talking to Marlon – but you always have a way to recover the most important lost items!
Other Stardew Valley Articles You May Enjoy
- What Tool Should I Upgrade First in Stardew Valley?
- Why Are My Crops Dying in Stardew Valley?
- Stardew Valley Chickens
- Stardew Valley Fences
- Stardew Valley Watering Questions Answered
Proud to embrace the locally created moniker of “Corrupt Overlord” from one of the all time great Lords of Waterdeep runs, Shane is one member of the Assorted Meeples crew and will be hard at work creating awesome content for the website. He is a long-time player of board games, one time semi-professional poker player, and tends to run to the quirky or RPG side of things when it comes to playing video games. He loves tabletop roleplaying systems like Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Werewolf, Fate, and others, and not only has been a player but has run games as DM for years. You can find his other work in publications like Level Skip or Hobby Lark.