Every tool, where to get it, and when upgrading is worth it

Where each tool comes from

The game hands you exactly one item on day one: Worn Sword. Everything else has to be collected, and three of them are easy to miss because nothing tells you they are for sale.

Tool	How you get the first one
Worn Sword	In your bag at the start
Worn Axe	Given during a cutscene on your farm, from Spring 2
Worn Pickaxe	Reward for a short quest — talk to Olric
Worn Net	Reward for a short quest — meet Luc at the inn
Worn Hoe	General Store, 150g
Worn Watering Can	General Store, 150g
Worn Shovel	General Store, 500g
Worn Fishing Rod	Tackle Shop, 500g

The shovel is the single most searched-for item here, and the answer is anticlimactic: it is on the shelf at the General Store from your very first day, with no quest and no unlock. It costs 500g, which is a lot early on and is why so many players assume it must come from somewhere else. No quest ever gives you one.

The six tiers, and what they actually change

Every tool exists in six grades: worn, copper, iron, silver, gold and mistril. The headline upgrade is identical for the axe, pickaxe, hoe, watering can, shovel and net — holding the button charges a swing, and the tier decides how large that swing can get.

Tier	Charged area	Tiles
Worn	one tile	1
Copper	1×3	3
Iron	3×3	9
Silver	3×6	18
Gold	6×6	36
Mistril	6×9	54

That is the whole reason to upgrade a hoe, a watering can, a shovel or a net — none of them gains any other statistic. A net catches exactly the same bugs at every tier.

Two costs come with it. A charged swing spends one stamina per tile, so a full mistril sweep is 54 stamina out of a base pool of 100. And a charged axe or pickaxe swing lands one grade weaker than the same tool used on a single tile, so a charged copper pickaxe behaves like a worn one. Mistril is the exception and never suffers the penalty.

The pickaxe is the tier that gates progress

Rocks have a hardness, and a pickaxe below it does nothing at all — not slow progress, no progress. The large rocks on your own farm and the boulders in the shallow mines need copper. Deeper biomes step up to iron, silver and gold in turn, so the pickaxe is the one tool whose tier decides whether you can descend, not just how fast.

Damage per hit also rises with the tier, from 1 to 6, and rocks have between 6 and 20 hit points, so a better pickaxe both unlocks harder rocks and clears them in fewer swings.

The axe is gentler: every tree can be felled with the worn one. Only the large stumps and the deep-woods stumps require copper.

Where to upgrade

Two routes, and the one that is open to you depends on how you have been playing.

Craft at a forge. Four ingots of the matching metal, plus 30 to 40 minutes, at blacksmithing level 4 for copper, 10 for iron, 16 for silver, 22 for gold and 28 for mistril. Each ingot is 10 ore, and the ingot recipes themselves need blacksmithing 1, 2, 4, 6 and 8. A placeable Forge costs 2,000g at Carpenter's Shop.

Buy at the Blacksmith's Shop. Copper is always in stock; iron, silver, gold and mistril appear once you have reached mine floor 21, 41, 61 and 81. Prices run 1,000g at copper up to 5,000g at mistril. This route ignores your blacksmithing level entirely, which makes it the practical one for anyone who does not smith.

Fishing rods are the exception: the Blacksmith's Shop does not stock them. Tackle Shop sells each grade instead, unlocked at fishing skill 8, 15, 20, 30 and 45.

What a better rod is actually for

A rod changes three things, and rarity is not one of them. Casting distance goes from 6 to 16, so the mistril rod reaches nearly three times as far — which matters most at the beach and in the mines, where the water you want is rarely at your feet. The time you have to react to a bite changes with the tier. And the fish silhouette you have to hit gets easier to catch at every step, so higher tiers are noticeably more forgiving.

What a rod does not do is change which fish are in the pool or how often the rare ones appear. That comes from the season, the water, the weather and the hour, all of which are on the fishing planner, and from fishing perks.

Swords are not tools

The sword sits outside this system. It is a weapon, it costs no stamina to swing, and its damage runs from 4 at worn to 24 at mistril. No shop above the General Store sells one: you either forge it — blacksmithing 8, 14, 20, 26 and 32, an hour each — or find one, because each mine biome drops a sword of its own that sits between the crafted grades.

It is also the tool that cuts grass, which is covered in how to get hay.

Fish bait, and why it is not in any shop

Bait exists in three grades and is sold nowhere. It comes from a Terrarium, which you get from a quest that arrives once your town renown reaches 30, and can craft afterwards at woodcrafting level 10.

Put four bugs in a terrarium, wait three days, and it returns bait or bug pheromones. Bait is thrown like a cast and forces the next fish into a rarity band — common, uncommon or rare — and it is the only way to catch the handful of fish that never appear in the ordinary pools at all. Those fish have their own museum set, so anyone completing the collection needs a terrarium eventually.

The stations you need to own

All four are on the shelf at Carpenter's Shop:

• Crafting Station, 1,000g — furniture, chests and decor
• Level 1 Kitchen, 1,000g — one- and two-star dishes; two better kitchens exist for higher cooking levels
• Forge, 2,000g — every tool, weapon and ingot
• Mini Mill, 5,000g — animal feed and milled goods, and it removes the waiting time from milling entirely. It appears only once the carpenter’s shop itself has been rebuilt.

Later on, Mistril Forge can be crafted at woodcrafting level 40 from 20 Refined Stone and 8 Mistril Ingot. Full recipes, ingredients and craft times for everything these stations make are in the cooking and crafting browser.