The solar essence is a loot item in Stardew Valley that gets dropped by a very small number of monsters. While it feels like it should be paired up with the void essence, the truth is that the solar essence actually tends to be harder to get in large numbers. This is because there are very few enemies in the entire early game that drop them, the best of which is not available to the player until the bus is repaired so the desert is unlocked.
The best way to get solar essence in Stardew Valley is to kill ghosts on ice levels of the mines and metalheads in the fire levels of the mines. Once the desert is unlocked mass killing mummies in skull fire cavern if by far and away the best way to farm solar essence. These can also be bought from Krobus daily once the sewers are unlocked.
There are multiple enemies that drop solar essence in the very late game (after Ginger Island is unlocked and mostly completed). We’ll touch on those at the end but most of this guide is going to focus on how you can farm solar essence in Stardew Valley in the early and mid game when you will need it most.
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Best Ways to Farm Solar Essence in Stardew Valley
In the early game it’s all about getting far enough down in the mines. While fishing for sunfish can occasionally lead to a solar essence when that fish gets a treasure chest to appear and you manage to bring them both in, that is wildly inconsistent and impossible to consistently farm. The time is just better spent heading down into the mines.
The best solar essence farming when it comes to consistency are the following:
- Killing mummies in the Skull Caverns (mummies have a 99% drop rate of solar essence)
- Killing metalheads & squid kids on the fire levels in the Mines
- Killing ghosts on the ice levels in the Mines
- Buying them from Krobus daily if money isn’t an issue
There are various other enemies who can occasionally drop a solar essence as monster loot, however these are the most consistent ways to stock up.
If you are looking at it by progress in the game – getting to the fire levels in the original mine is the best first step. While ghosts appear in the ice levels of the mine, it is RNG and if you don’t have a decent weapon they can take an unacceptable amount of time to kill.
Getting to the fire levels opens up Squid Kids who can do damage but are very easy to kill, and appear just slightly less often than ghosts, and Metalheads which appear all the time down in those levels.
Once you have opened up the desert by completing the vault room of the Community Center, then getting into skull cavern and killing mummies is the best move for farming solar essence…assuming you have at least the Obsidian Edge at that point. The caverns are deadly enough that you don’t really want to chance it with less than that.
Farm Solar Essence by Fighting the Right Enemies
Enemies That Drop Solar Essence
- Ghosts (Mines – Ice Levels 51-79)
- Metal Heads (Mines – Lava Levels)
- Squid Kids (Mines – Lava Levels)
- Mummies (Skull Cavern)
- Iridium Bats (Skull Cavern)
- Haunted Skulls (Haunted Cave by the Quarry)
- Blue Squid (appears with “Danger in the Deep quest”)
- Hot Head (appears with “Danger in the Deep quest”)
- Dangerous Version Metal Head (appears with “Danger in the Deep quest”)
- Dangerous Version Squid Kids (appears with “Danger in the Deep quest”)
Since solar essence is monster loot, killing enemies that drop this at a high rate is the only consistent way without spending money to build up this loot for your bomb making activities, or whatever else you need them for.
Get Solar Essence In the Mines
You will find solar essence in the mines early on. In fact, you almost have to unlock the desert before you get enough artifacts to unlock the sewer key, so early on hitting the mines is the only way to store up this monster loot.
Levels 51-79
These levels of the mine are your first opportunity to find solar essence in Stardew Valley because this is where ghosts start appearing. The percentage drop of essence is actually quite low. So you may end up killing quite a few ghosts before getting any solar essence.
Only the ghosts here drop solar essence. The ghosts that are found in Skull Cavern are different enemies and only drop Omni Geodes.
Levels 81-119
Once you move from the frozen/ice levels of the mines to the fire/lava levels there will be far more enemies who consistently drop solar essence. While Squid Kids are a bit uncommon, they have a high drop percentage. Metalheads are actually relatively common and have a very high drop rate, as well.
Skull Cavern: The Best Place for Farming Solar Essence from Enemies
Skull Cavern offers the single most reliable way to farm solar essence in all of Stardew Valley: killing mummies. Mummies have a 99% chance of dropping a solar essence making them by far and away the most consistent source of solar essence in the entire game.
Once this area is unlocked, it’s where you want to do most of your farming for solar essence. Which is interesting since this is also where you want to be completely loaded up with bombs, including mega bombs which require one of these as an ingredient to create.
Buy Solar Essence from Krobus
One of the easiest ways to get solar essence in Stardew Valley is to buy it from Krobus. Most days you can buy 10 at a time from the shop. This means you need to have donated enough artifacts and minerals to the museum in order to have Gunther give you the old rusted key. That opens the sewer which then gives you access to Krobus and his shop.
This is an expensive way to farm Krobus, but if you have enough big harvests, then at that point gold shouldn’t really be an issue. It is one of only two non-combat ways to get solar essence (the other being from a sunfish pond at 10+ sunfish but that is random and RNG based) and it’s the only one that is reliable and consistent.
If you have no idea who Krobus is…start working on the Museum collection and after a special morning visit from Gunther go visit the sewers. You can figure out the rest from there.
What Are Solar Essence Used for in Stardew Valley?
While they are not a common crafting ingredient per se, they do have some important uses.
Constructing Mega Bombs
I mean if you’re going to be doing a lot of work in the mines, especially in Skull Cavern, you want the mega bombs. And that means gold ore, void essence, and you guessed it, solar essence. Considering how useful these are in Skull Caverns, where having a ton of them can create game-breaking haul ins of gems, gold, iridium and loot from monsters, it’s worth storing them for this purpose alone.
Crafting Rings
Solar essence are an ingredient used both for the Glowstone Ring as well as the Iridium Band – both very useful rings going into the late game.
Miscellaneous Crafting
Solar essence are also used for crafting the mini-obelisk, quality bobber, barrel brazier, and the hyper speed grow. Most of these are going to be late game items.
Gift to the Wizard
The wizard is a huge fan of the solar essence, and he absolutely loves this as a gift. If you want to build up the friendship fast, two of these a week will really help to do the trick.
Give the Sun Dragon It’s Last Meal
One of the major quests from the Mysterious Qi is to give the Sun Dragon its last meal and that means taking a solar essence to the big skeleton in the desert, and placing it in the skull. Obviously the desert needs to be unlocked for this, and only the solar essence will do! The reward? The Club Card that lets you in past the bouncer in the back of Sandy’s Store so you can go into the casino.
Stardew Valley Solar Essence FAQ
Q: What is the best way to get solar essence in Stardew Valley?
Buying from Krobus once his store is unlocked or killing mummies in Skull Cavern. If you’re at the point in the game where these aren’t viable options then it’s time to hit the mines and spend the majority of your time down past level 81 killing Squid Kids and MetalHeads in order to farm the solar essence.
Q: What’s the best place for getting solar essence in Stardew Valley?
Mines past level 81, Skull Caverns on mummy levels (RNG generated), or Krobus’s shop.
Q: Which enemies in Stardew Valley drop solar essence the most?
Mummies drop the solar essence more than any other enemy with a 99% drop rate. Squid Kids come in next at 75%, Metal Heads at 65%, Iridium Bats at 50%, and Ghosts at around 20%. These numbers change after the “danger” mode comes on late game if you accept a certain quest and make solar essence a far more common drop item, but that’s late game.
In Conclusion
The solar essence definitely tends to be a little bit harder to acquire than the void essence, but if you know where they fall and where to look for them, and you tend to hold onto them instead of selling them, you will be much happier in the long run. Killing mummies in the Skull Cavern is the best way to consistently farm for solar essences but if money doesn’t matter, give Krobus a daily visit.
Beyond those 10 per day, you need to farm the rest you need from monsters. Chasing mummies in skull caverns is the most consistent way to get high numbers of solar essence although using the fire levels of the mines is safer.
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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.