TL;DW: Most Money - High value, low quality fruit - still not as good as a keg, but can get you money fast! Best Value - Overflow fruits you wouldn't process like blueberries or cranberries. I also like it for Bananas specifically. Always Solid - Mushrooms when you have artisan, with further notes below. Don't use for - Any Idirium fruit, regardless of whether you have Artisan. Edit: Preserves Jar is arguably better for Morel, Chanterelle, and especially Purple Mushroom and Magma Caps. I wasn't aware of Preserved Mushrooms when originally working this video out. Only Pumpkins, Red Cabbage, Starfruit, Ancient Fruit, and Pineapples make better use of the Preserves Jar than Purple Mushrooms in 1.6. Magma Caps should almost certainly be jarred.

I feel like where the dehydrator shines is fruit that you would have sold raw being turned into a profit in a single day. Normally in the summer I sell all my blueberries raw, with the dehydrator I can increase that profit by 25% plus an additional 40 % if I have artisan. I don't have the jars or kegs to process hundreds of fruit, especially early on. But the dehydrator allows you to process hundreds of fruit with only a few dehydrators in a week.

"They're a good way to burn through your 600 cranberries, you filthy hoarder" Lmao, I feel called out 🤣

Best ever format of answers for those with no time and then letting us nerds hang a bit to see more.

I think the game changer with the dehydrator for me is that I always choose the mushroom cave for the free renewable energy. I end up with so many mushrooms i just chomp a bunch in skull caverns. Dehydrating them makes the energy and health stats so good, and even with botanist, the mushrooms from the cave do not pick up that iridium quality (only ones you pick as forage do) so it's a great way to gain easy high end snacks for cave days

For me it's not just a math solution. Playing Stardew Valley effective always ends up with a quarry and a desert full of kegs. It's a huge impact on what you have on your screen. You will need 35 times less dehydrators than kegs, to munch through your weekly harvest. Times 7 because they need one day instead of nearly 7 days and times 5 because you process 5 fruits at once. If you go for it in a mathematical way again, it's best to have a few dehydrators around at the beginning, as long as you don't have enough kegs for your harvest. And you could also put some mushroom logs in your oak resin farm and go for dried mushrooms to get some added value out of it, too. ADDED: It's about your preferred playstyle. I'm much more likely to fill 20 dehydrators as a daily chore than filling 700 kegs once a week. And the map doesn't look like something out of factorio.

I've got the mushroom logs and the bat cave - so I'll probably use the dehydrator for that. Thanks for figuring this out

Some things to note, it multiplies the energy snd health regain of whatever you put in it by 3 and it can also turn certain inedible fruits edible, like rhubarbs for example which when dried end up healing 275 energy and 123 health, so it is good for making certain foods better early on

I have no idea if this is particularly profitable, but this is what I do: Kegs for star fruit and ancient fruit Preserves Jars for roe Dehydrators for tree fruits and other overflow fruits/mushrooms. Dried cherries and pomegranates tend to fetch a high price, as do dried morels, chanterelles, and purple mushrooms.

Spreadsheets and math - this is the 1.6 content I’ve been looking forward to!

I do believe the dehydrator is a way to burn large numbers of fruits to make quick cash , ofc on the long run, the preserve jar/keg is better but like you said, these large product numbers will never make it... Definitely gonna use on the countless fruits i have from fruit trees and grapes

It seems good for crops which mass produce such as cranberries and early game when you don't have much kegs and preserves jars it's just extra cash Another thing is it's cost it's way easier to get a bunch of dehydrators than a bunch of kegs and preserve jars

You can put the mushrooms in the jars now for pickled mushrooms. It sounds like just about the most disgusting thing in the world, but you can do it.

Pineapple is the best imo for dehydrators.. 1 dried pinapple sells for 3185g, and the trees are one time plant.. Ancient fruit also works if you all only have ancient fruits everywhere.. Also if you place mushroom logs in between the new mystic trees, almost always results in purple mushrooms..

Bold of you to assume I only have 600 cranberries

Seems like dehydrators are a perfect time and place to use hoppers. That will easily manage all the different types of mushrooms. Plus you can dump all the suitable overflow crops into the hopper and get regular daily products to sell.

I immensely appreciate how you got to the conclusions, and then got into the small details. Instant subscribe.

i do use the automate mod, where you can put a chest with items in it, touching a line of kegs, and then an output chest, and it will just grab whatever in the input and poop it out in the end box when its done, (same for preserves jar, furnaces, etc). its quite nice to just dump all your crops in a box, then check the output in the mornings and whatever is done you can sell/use. problem i had was often i had far more fruit than my machines could keep up with, even with 0 downtime. Now i will have stacks up to 100 (or a full stack if its something like blueberries) in the line for kegs/preserve jars, and everything in excess of that plus mushrooms will go in a line for the dehydrators (plus some for the unique items like raisins). should be a welcome addition!

One aspect I think is over looked is the dehydrator does fill in a way to improve prices early game. I argue it's easier to make more of the dehydrator than a keg and less costly than the jar (Coal is gold early game) I'm mostly talking year one, where your trying to get money back faster to reinvest immediately. A day is no problem in most cases, 2-3 for the jar is fine... if you got enough jars and really how much better are you getting. Kegs I seldom find useful until fall harvest when I can better wait for my ROI and yet again getting the needed materials (Oak resin) is much more likely to have a good amount going. Later game it still serves a purpose with the raisins. By no means do I think it's a great item but I do think it has it's place besides raisins. I do think it should be buffed a little more. Only adding 5g per fruit (25g total) after the multiplier makes me ask the question why bother to even add it. I would not go crazy but maybe 15g/(75g total) this way it still leaves a place for the jar while offering better incentive for the dehydrator.

To put it simply, year 1, I am still constructing my massive keg far, so my 2000 cranberries don’t yet have a keg to call home, and in previous playthroughs I’d end up selling the rest of my cranberries that didn’t make it on winter 28, but this time, I was able to process all of them, and it didn’t cost me any metal bars or coal :)

I literally LOVE THIS DEHYDRATOR. My main money maker throughout my year 1 and 2. On my year 2, I could be able to befriend with the wizard and got junimo huts. I have a max crop field layout that is full of strawberry/blueberry/cranberries. but it’s not making good money as iridium starfruit wine still. But it’s the additional way to make money while waiting for starfruit wine to become iridium!

TLDR; For the same amount of tiles ancient fruits with kegs will do 550 (points / week /action) ancient fruits + pineapples + few dehydrators: 629 dehydrators+crystalariums: 899 Calculations: It makes sense to consider one more denominator: per action. I mean, speed-gro starfruit wine may give more gold a day per tile, but who cares if you have an ancient fruit plant? The same might work for kegs vs dehydrators. It's approx 5 times less clicks for half of the profit. And you require 35 times less space: to process 35 ancient fruits you need 35 kegs a week, or 1 dehydrator. let x be fruit_base_price and ignore +25g. then for dehydrator: x*1.5 per 1 + .2 + .2 actions ~= 1.07x for keg : x*3 per 1 + 1 + 1 actions = x It's even a hair-bit better. Additionally, In early-mid-game. It takes ~35 less resources to craft. In late-game: every of 34 tiles can be replaced with a crystalarium or a pineapple pot. To simplify calculations, let's normalize actions to week. then, 35 ancient fruits with dehydrators ( actions: 35 + 7 + 7, tiles: 36 ) = 35 * 550 * 1.5 *1.4 = 40425 34 crystalariums (actions: 47.6, tiles: 34 ) = 34*975*7/5 = 46410 33 pineapples with dehydrators ( actions 34 + 7 + 7, tiles: ~34.97 per 34, so let's do 35 ) = 21420 35 ancient fruits with kegs (actions: 35+35+35 ) = 35* 550*3 = 57750 kegs will do 57750g per 105 actions per week ( per 70 tiles total ). dehydrators+crystalariums will do 86835 per 96.6 actions ( per 70 tiles ). with pineapples: 61845 per 97 actions ( per 71 tile ). Moreover, if we have unlimited ginger island farm tiles: dehydrators will do 78604 per 95.27 actions ( per 70 tiles ), which breaks down to 825 / week / action. Screw the kegs, dehydrators are the best. Crystalariums ftw.

Really appreciate the summary right at the start! I’m watching the whole video but I’ve never seen your videos before and I *was* just looking for a quick answer until I realized how interesting the math is

Always love your analysis videos, Leap. Your spreadsheets are always great. However, as usual, I'm going to give my unwarranted thoughts: Dehydrators seem to fill the same niche as agriculturist - namely, a way to increase your raw harvest production/a way to actually process said production. A massive farm with 1000+ blueberry or cranberry plants will LOVE the dehydrator, as there is no reasonable way to process that much produce in jars and kegs. And being able to earn a bit more from all of those plants rather than just selling them as is will be awesome. Honestly, I want to try it just because it sounds funny. Problem is, much like agriculturist, the dehydrator's weakness is the fact that artisan is just too strong. Focusing on small scale wine making will still out complete doing something silly like the afore mentioned massive cranberry farm. And it'll be much less work. Combined with the fact that blueberries will be competing with star fruit wine making in summer and cranberries with sweet gem berries in autumn, and the fact that your operations don't have a suitable crop for spring means that kegs will remain the dominant strategy year round. Plus, you can still cover the valley (the quarry) with kegs, which means you will rarely produce fruit to the point that your kegs begin to fall behind. Still a fun item with a funny niche use.

Blueberry & cranberry best for this! I mainly use common mushroom for fall wild speeds.

Finally I can live out my fantasy of possessing an infinite supply of dried mangos. More seriously, thanks for the informative video! 😊

The dehydrator was definitely added with mushrooms in mind. They didn't really serve much of a purpose beyond crafting, and there wasn't much of a way to get them reliably. Now you're able to reliably obtain them, and profit off of them in a way that makes foraging a lot more viable. This update really helped bring foraging and fishing a little more in line with farming in terms of reliable profit.

I was looking for a video just like this yesterday and couldn't find one, spent hours googling "is the dehydrator worth it in stardew valley" haha Then this popped up in my feed today! Thanks for all the work you put into this 😊

I mean, with that high of productivity (processing time is quick and you process 5 at once), it makes sense to keep the gold value gain lower. It's the same with preserves jars, kegs, and casks. The longer the processing time, the more value added. Optimal way to do it will depend on how much you've grown and gathered to process. I think doing a mix of things is usually best. Dehydrator has the special benefit of being the only way to increase mushroom value. Also, the value increase to health and energy could be useful for mine food. I don't think you'd necessarily want a full shed full of them, but they definitely have their uses, and I like that we have a processing method that's very quick now.

This thing is mainly for the shrooms. Haven't tested out yet but I'm thinking mass mushroom logs on Ginger island, then we raise pigs on our main farm and make it rain every day on the island, cutting the time essentially to 2 days for theoretically 5 purple mushrooms (as long as we can mass mystic tree seeds--I don't think the trees need to be fully mature to count for the logs). Dehydrated purple mushrooms should come at 2660 G, so we are looking at ~1300 G/day per log. That's around the same as a gold chicken (made into mayo) in terms of G/day--not bad for a single log! Also. finally a reasonable profitable use for fairy dust (I tested, you can use dust on the log--and the mushrooms pop out immediately, but only once per day) if my math works out.

Dehydrators are going to be clutch for avoiding the inevitable Cindersnap forest full of kegs, since it's processing five at a time

Love the fact that you do TL;DR / TL;DW, I felt the respect for my time, which is extremelly rare (and appreciated) these days. Liked, commented, suscribed. H̶o̶p̶e̶f̶u̶l̶l̶y̶ t̶h̶a̶t̶ m̶a̶k̶e̶s̶ u̶p̶ t̶h̶e̶ 4̶ m̶i̶n̶u̶t̶e̶s̶ I̶ d̶i̶d̶n̶'t̶ w̶a̶t̶c̶h̶ NVM, super interesting video, ended up watching all of it. Thank you for not stretching your content for the algorithms.

this video made me realize i wasnt missing a new fish under collections. I was missing a smoked fish! THANK YOU!!! Thanks for also telling me how to make raisins was also puzzled by that. 😍😍👍👍

Thank you so much for tldr. Its not that i dont watch the whole video i just still struggle with object permanence math style.

I have no idea what you’ve just said, but like I enjoy that you made this. Can anyone give me a quick summary?

There's one other thing to spend your mushrooms on, put the brown mushrooms into the seed maker for fall seeds. Turn those mushrooms into plums and grapes!

I think another optimization with dehydrator that isn't covered is how insanely *fast* you can reach capacity with them. They are *thirty five* times faster than kegs. For example, say you've get 280 pineapples per week. This could be covered by 100 preserves jars, selling for about 254k, at 910 gold each. Or, you could use 8 dehydrators as a stopgap measure, until you can use 140 kegs and 4 dehydrators selling for a total of 266k, or an average 949 gold each. And this is for less wood, less gold of materials, and less hassle (168 checks per week at the same time every day, instead of 280 checks at awkward times). And of course, once you hit all kegs, you make more money. If you're on any goal besides perfection, getting 5-10 dehydrators may be easier to manage than 100 preserves jars. If you're on the road to perfection, you'll want all kegs eventually, but you can use dehydrators to fill the production gap while you wait.

Very educational! I'm very much interested in Fish Smoker too, and perhaps the new bait-makers as well!

Lovely presentation. I'm waiting for mobile but learning this before the update gave me a heads up. I don't have to regret choosing only one food processor at this point. I will make all 3 just for food and profit though especially the berries type since those produce more then the rest unless I sell for cash.

Just wanted to comment thanks for making the video so accessible and efficient. Very nice to just put the main findings at the start of the video.

Instantly subscribed by the way. Perfectly concise tldw at the beginning, and really clear explanation of the maths for us nerds that want to hear it anyways. And even your pinned comment is a perfect summary of what to do and not do with the dehydrator. Seriously incredible stuff.

You gave us the essential information we needed and allowed us to determine if the rest of the video was worth our time. Thank you for that. Subscribed.

Very useful video, appreciate the quick explanation at the beginning

Thank you! This was very helpful. I watched the whole video, but the quick summary before the explanation was nice to simplify everything. Thank you for mentioning the exception with Botonist and no Artisan. I will be using Coopmaster for some time.

But I need my cranberries and blueberries for the Late game color quest, that's why I hoard them D: Good video!

Dude thanks so much for the video. I like how you give TL;DW at the start, go into math at points, and reiterate the final points at the end. Great job!

Thanks for giving the tldr in the beginning. Appreciated!

I was mainly here for the TLDR, but because it was so easy to get to, and this video actualy sounds quite interesting, I'll be saving this to watch later. You've earned a sub from like 5 mins of me watching, that's impressive :0

Another important thing to note is space efficiency. 1 Dehydrator consumes the same amount of materials as 5 kegs/jars for a roughly similar end G. Basically you are trading overall profit for QoL, speed, and needing to craft 80% less machines to process the same amount of items.

Liked the video and I am leaving it running just because of your TLDR. Appreciate it.

This is kinda what I was thinking it would be. I figured the dehydrater would be best for a fast infusion of cash vs longer timed machines. So something to use early on then as a backup/specific use machine. Like how once you have a bunch of kegs you slow down the use of your preserves jars.

ive seen a few other people mention it but its nice for early game. i personally enjoy using it bc my partner and i do have a shed with preserves jars and we'll save our low quality blueberries and cranberries and it just takes sooo long and im not really a fan of how long it takes. i was mostly avoiding spoilers n so i also avoided yknow videos like yours for the first little while so i can play but even i noticed that dehydrators werent...really that much better. however, i still enjoy using them and plan to have a lil part of my farm to use them especially bc i accidentally ended up with 4 fruit trees AFTER picking fruit bat cave (i almost always pick mushroom but my partner converted me and now look where we are). im not always a money focused and hyper efficient player so im just making a point to use the new items! overflow for crops like blueberries is where i ended up using the dehydrators most for sure

Really fantastic breakdown. Thank you!!!

thanks for making a tldr! i think its even the first time i saw someone do that and i love it.

I'm not filthy! I bathe at least once a year! :P Great video. I always love when you pop out a good spreadsheet and explain this stuff. It does actually help some of us.

That is everything I expect from Leap. Top quality, factual and very much needed information!

"I would be really surprised if anyone is building their entire farm around the banana crop in particular." @ArgonMatrix has entered the chat. Oh, hi Argon 😅

I hugely appreciate the TLDR at the top, you saved me fr, subscribing for sure

There are a few ways to get regular quality mushrooms with botanist professions such as mushroom caves or drops like the mushroom enemies in volcano

The fact that you put not only a tldw comment but had the tldr in the video within the first minute is amazing! Thank you so much for being so concise.

Fire quartz can be thrown in a crystalarium, and clay is available from the dig site, but of course both of those take longer to get. For mushrooms, the competing strat is tea bushes, especially once you get some seed makers to throw your commons into. 5 common mushrooms -> about 10 seeds -> about 5 bushes (250g each after the 1.6 price nerf) -> about 2500g, vs 5 common mushrooms (40g each) -> 1 dried mushroom (40 * 7.5 + 25 = 325g) -> 455g (with artisan)? Am I getting all the arithmetic right here? Crafting tea bushes also eats into your wood and fiber a bit, but considering the new summer weather...

Fantastic video!

Said all the info up front instead of dragging me through 10 minutes for an answer. subbed and watched the rest.

Don’t you call me a filthy hoarder, it might be true, but don’t call me a filthy hoarder

Excellent video man

Thanks for answering that questions :)

I would love a video on everything new? And how it’s used, like this video. I learn best with video content and I find them very helpful.

Automate with this in the mushroom cave is nice too

I got to the stopping by part, liked and left. Great tutorial, keep it up

Solid, love the tldr and the maf👍

Thank you for this!

I don’t understand any of the math! But I’m watching anyway for that sweet watch time bonus for you :) Also because heck why not! I like your voice, and even though I don’t understand I’m still entertained haha! Going forward I will be dehydrating my mushrooms and no fruits! (E…exept maybe my 600 cranberries 😂😂. God it’s so crazy you guessed the exact number I have)

i think it would be cool to make an anticapitalism route using dehydrator with a mushroom log-three farm and a fish smoker if you choose the riverland farm

I LOVE LOVE the dehydrator because waiting on crops to process and filling 100 kegs is boring. Honeslty having the smaller boost, but tomorrow and 5 at once, is just so good for me. I can see myself processing most things in the dehydrator that i was previously selling raw out of laziness for quick profit

I have come back to Stardew after a while so all the new updates are hard to understand. Thank you for making this video because now I feel like I can tackle the dehydrator :)

I wonder if this changes the math on cranberries vs pumpkin s or starfruit vs blue berry? The cost of the machine starts to matter there and being able to get the value quickly might make high volume crops better for runs trying to minimize in game days

"It's a good way to burn through your 600 cranberries you filthy hoarder" I am in this picture and do not like it. 🤣

you can put mushrooms in a preserves jar tho? also the new mushroom log can give iridium mushrooms. idk if that's new, I don't remember it being a thing but it is.

To be fair it makes sense that there isn't a 100% obvious best choice, like if 1 of the 3 was objectively the best option all the time then that would be dumb for a game such as Stardew Valley, the various money making options are meant to be roughly balanced in terms of profit so you can freely experiment. With preserves jars, kegs and now dehydrators it's not a question of "should you use them?" but rather "when should you use them?"

i never got the blueprints for this. so im here watching to find out why or how to get :)

I'll be honest, food that requires fewer clicks to eat is always solid. You can stock up on food without going to Ginger Island.

thank you!

By the way. You can now put common mushrooms in the kegs. Figured that out by accident. Not sure if it works for anything else.

Like and a comment for yhe algorithm. Thanks for opening with a summary! You're a champ

You should emphasize, that it is a good processing item for the early game, since you get your money more quickly (-> can reinvest in new seeds quicker) and the building cost is SIGNIFICANTLY lower than a keg. In the late game its still kegs though.

im in late game so a lot of my overflow crops are high quality ancient fruit, but i think dehydrators will be a good way to process my crops like pineapples and misc tree fruits that i have around mostly for decoration

love the TL;DR at the top, Ik YT punishes you for it but I appreciate you sticking to it

Thank you!

Personally I used it for random fruits and mushrooms from the mushroom logs, coconuts from the desert or ginger island plus I ended up with a bunch of mango and banana saplings from golden coconuts so those usually ended up in the dehydrator. Definitely not something to focus on but a nice little bonus for fruit and mushrooms you don't know what to do with I do wish you could put truffles in it though, I understand why you can't but I still want it to work

This video could benefit so much from plotting some of the numbers on a graph.

I would like to know more about the smoker. Thank you

a full greenhouse of blueberries with 24 dehydrators can easily carry you very early on, making 300-350 fruits every 4 days, taking 4 days to fully use the dehydrators making it a self efficient building with around 12,000 gold per day, more or less, every cheap to mount since it only cost 24 fire quartz and 48 clay + wood. this crops are the most valuable one with dehydrators, the second is cranberries. you can use this until you have a good amount of kegs to change your greenhouse to one more profitable, but since it's faster to harvest now with mastery, i wonder if it's worth it

Hmm this makes me think going fruit bat cave is actually the better option now. You do the fruit bat cave to get access to fruit early on. Then as you need fruit less, you start filling the cave with mushroom logs to get mushrooms. Then you eventually have mostly a mushroom cave that you dehydrate. Best of both worlds.

I wish thes analyses took into account the cost if a keg, jar or dehydrator respectively. Wood isnt free, robin do be making money off you shed full of kegs. Like the size footprint of dehydrators makes na interesting use case even if the product is less valuble becuase each machine eats 5 at a time. No shed costs. No deforestation to build kegs. No half kf farm dedicated to tapping oak trees

Update on mystic trees calculations: TLDR; Logs can be better than crystalariums! Heavy tapper mystic tree + mushroom log gives about 227/day per 1 tile with my layout, or 247/day per tile with tapper skill. Or 1114 per action, 262 per tile per action. ( Crystalarium has 195 for both /tile/day and /tile/action ). The only issue is to find 1k+ Mahogany Seeds. Formulas: ( price_per_shroom * avg_harvest * dried_coeff * artisan ) / tiles_per_1log_cluster / days tiles_per_1log_cluster in my layout contains exactly 1 mystic tree and 1 log, takes 3.5 tiles, but due to required trees on layout edges it's not 3.5, but 4.25. With 213 logs in 3 double-lines it's 4.25. purple = (255*4.2616 * 1.5 * 1.4) / 4.25 / 4 = 134 common = (45*2.7 * 1.5 * 1.4) / 4.25 / 4 = 15 tapper = 1250 / 4.25 / 3 = 98 total = 134 + 15 + 98 = 227 Now for (per action) (purple_gain + common_gain + mystic tree gain) / (actions_collect_7_shrooms + actions_to_dehydrate + actions_to_collect_syrop) ((255*4.2616 * 1.5 * 1.4) + (45*2.7 * 1.5 * 1.4) + 1250) / ( 1 + 2*7/5 + 1) ~= 789 789/4.25 = 186 per action per tile. On par with 195 of crystalarium.

You should make the first part a 60 second short for a nice TLDR

Honestly I really like using the dehydrator to make raisins mostly because I like the sprite texture lol

don't overthink the 7 days vs the 6.25 day part. unless a player is hyper efficient and calculate going to it as soon as it finishes, most likely they'll round it to 7 too

I kind of just naturally saw the dehydrator as a good way to get a bit of extra money from high quantity crops like blueberries and cranberries, obviously you'd still keg the big crops

The way I see it is it might be best if you go the JOJA route for early game money if you don't have any kegs crafted so go for a free dehydrator until you make a keg army then like you said only use it for extra crops of low value.