Stardew Valley 1.6: Experience of Obtaining Living Hat

Game time was one and a half years, real time was over two months, more than sixty hours, and I finally brushed out the Living Hat.

Why did I want to brush the Living Hat? In the previous game, I got the Guardian Helmet very early on from that iron egg monster in the mine that doesn’t knock back. I’ve been wearing it all along, so I decided to get the Living Hat in this game too. It took quite a while to brush it out, and since I had already brushed a lot of fibers, I thought I might as well make the Living Hat too. I didn’t look for seeds, and the Living Hat sequence was quite late in this game, so I brushed for so long. In the end, I brushed so many helmets.

Preparation before brushing:
At least around twenty Gem Replicators, an Iridium Ring (Magnet Ring), and a Slime Crown Ring. The Gem Replicators are used to replicate rubies and diamonds, which take two days and four and a half days to replicate, respectively. You can exchange them with the Desert Camel Merchant for Spicy Eels and Triple Espresso, both of which provide acceleration; the eel also provides an extra luck point. After starting to brush the hat, resource acquisition basically stagnated, so you have to rely on the gem machines to ensure the buff is obtained. One day with two Spicy Eels + three Triple Espressos + one Espresso can cover the entire day’s acceleration and luck effects. Walking speed greatly affects the efficiency of brushing the hat; for me, walking slowly would make me very unpleasant. The magnetic force provided by the Iridium Ring is very useful as it allows you to pick up dropped items without having to walk very close, saving time.

Consideration of brushing location:
Since the drop probability of the Living Hat has been determined at the beginning, similar to the order of items dropping from the Magic Crystal Ball, it should be useless to keep brushing on the same day (I tried it myself for over ten days). So it should be useless to grow weeds on Ginger Island and then cut them down on a lucky day together; interested friends can try it themselves, but I haven’t tried it. Then the places where you can get a large amount of fiber are limited to the farm, sewer, and mine. The farm has a limited amount of weeds, the sewer map is larger, the fiber distribution is scattered, and the distance is slightly far, so I recommend brushing in the mine.

If you brush in the mine, I suggest going to level 80. There are several advantages: the map on level 80 is relatively small, with the maximum field of view, allowing you to clearly understand the distribution and quantity of fibers. At the same time, level 80 also has distribution of copper, gold mines, and diamonds, with not low probabilities, so if you lack any, you can brush them together. The monster drops are also good; recently, I have brushed five Rainbow Shards five times, probably even more in the past few months.

Level 80 is the highest, and the most frequent monster you encounter should be slimes. This thing has high damage and can slow you down, which is really annoying when brushing the hat, so I recommend bringing a Slime Crown Ring.

In conclusion:
Brush in the mine at level 80, bring Spicy Eels, Triple Espresso, and regular coffee, wear a Magnet Ring and a Slime Crown Ring. Lucky days shouldn’t matter much, it’s best to pull the view to the highest for the fastest efficiency. However, it does look uncomfortable indeed.