With the addition of Ginger Island in Stardew Valley's 1.5 update came a host of other activities and items. One of those items is fairy dust, a craftable item used to speed up the production of specialty items.
Unlocking Ginger Island
The crafting recipe for fairy dust is obtained via a quest that begins on Ginger Island, so knowing how to gain access to Ginger Island is a must. Ginger Island is an endgame location in Stardew Valley that will be available to players after they have completed the community center or the Joja warehouse.
Once one of those conditions is met, Willy will send the player an invitation in the mail telling them to come to his shop, upon which he will show them his boat that is need of repair. The boat can be repaired with 200 hardwood, 5 battery packs, and 5 iridium bars. Once those resources have been delivered, players may then pay 1,000 gold to get to Ginger Island.
Meeting Birdie
Once players arrive on Ginger Island, and collect enough golden walnuts around the starting areas of the island, they can make their way to the westmost point. There they will find a new NPC named Birdie. Talking to Birdie will give players a new quest called "The Pirate's Wife." This quest is what players will need to complete in order to obtain the crafting recipe for fairy dust.
Completing "The Pirate's Wife"
Birdie will give the player the war memento item at the start of the quest. From this point on, the quest is essentially one of those old video game staples where players have to keep trading items until they reach the end and get the final item needed.
Here is how the trading progression works:
- Give the war memento to Kent to get gourmet tomato salt.
- Give the gourmet tomato salt to Gus to get a Stardew Valley rose.
- Give the Stardew Valley rose to Sandy to get the advanced TV remote.
- Give the advanced TV remote to George to get an arctic shard.
- Give the arctic shard to the Wizard to get a wriggling worm.
- Give the wriggling worm to Willy to get the pirate's locket.
- Give the pirate's locket to Birdie to complete the quest.
When the locket is given Birdie, she will award the player with the crafting recipe for fairy dust as well as five golden walnuts.
Fairy Dust
To make fairy dust, players will need one diamond and one fairy rose. The former can be obtained from the mines on the 50th or deeper levels of the mines. Many players who have access to Ginger Island will likely also have access to the crystalarium however, which can be crafted at mining level 9, and duplicates gems. As such it can be used to duplicate diamonds to use for fairy dust. The second item needed to make fairy dust is a fairy rose, which is a flower that can be grown during Fall. Players may wish to grow some in their greenhouse or inside their house via pots in order to have a year-round supply of them.
Once players have crafted fairy dust, it can be used on any machine in Stardew Valley to make it produce its product instantly. So for example, if a player put an orange in a preserves jar and then used fairy dust on the jar, they would be able to immediately claim the orange jelly. The one item that works a little bit differently is the cask. The cask will slowly increase the quality of certain items. Using fairy dust will simply raise the current level of the item being improved by one level. So for example, if there was a silver quality wine in the cask and fairy dust was used on it, then the wine would instantly jump to gold quality.
Stardew Valley is available now on Mobile, PC, PS4, Switch, and Xbox One.
Source: Stardew Valley Wiki
