How to Access the Desert in Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley features a lot of different activities you can tackle at your leisure. Fishing, farming, spelunking, raising animals, raising slimes, falling in love- the list goes on. It doesn’t make it all available to you right away, however. There’s a process to unlocking new areas and additional features, and they all have their specific requirements you need to meet. One of those areas is the Calico Desert, a secondary location where players can buy new seeds, journey into a new series of caverns, and uncover hidden secrets. You might want to learn the fastest way to unlock it, or maybe you’re stuck on what to do next. In either case, here’s how to access the desert in Stardew Valley.

How to Access the Desert in Stardew Valley

To get to the desert, you’ll need to repair the bus. To repair the bus, you’ll need to make sure you’ve unlocked the community center. After the 5th of Spring, on a day when it isn’t raining, walk into town from the bus stop area. A cutscene should trigger with Lewis about the community center. Follow the quest chain you receive after this cutscene, and you’ll eventually gain access to the center’s bundles! Bundles are scavenger hunts you can complete to repair the rooms of the community center and gain multiple rewards. Each room has a separate set of bundles to complete, and don’t become available until you’ve completed a certain number of bundles overall.

The room you want to unlock is the vault. To activate the vault, you’ll need to complete any four bundles in the community center. This will unlock the vault bundles, which all require a flat gold amount to turn in. In total, you need 42,500 gold to complete all the bundles. Alternatively, you can also pay Joja 40,000 gold to repair the bus themselves. This is faster than completing bundles, but purchasing a Joja membership will lock you out of the community center bundles entirely. Once you manage to do either of these, the bus will be repaired overnight for you!

 With access to the bus, the only thing you’ll need is 500 gold every time you want to travel to the desert. Once Pam, the bus driver, reaches her post, you simply need to interact with the ticket machine to the left of her. After you purchase your ticket, you’ll automatically get on the bus and be taken straight to the desert! Pam will operate the bus from 10:10 AM to 5:00 PM every day, but don’t worry; on days she isn’t driving the bus, she’ll let you drive the bus yourself!

And that’s how to access the desert in Stardew Valley! The desert is home to extensive content and a lot of secrets, so take your time exploring it! If you’re struggling to make the money you need to buy those bundles, why not find out what the best summer crops in Stardew Valley are? In between filling out those bundles, you’ll most likely run into a mystery box. You can learn more about them here.

Stardew Valley is available on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Windows, MacOS, Linux, and mobile devices.