Most Powerful/Useful Enchants in Stardew Valley
Stardew Valley's 1.5 update introduced Ginger Island and brought a ton of great content for end game content. Among that was the Forge and the ability to enchant your melee weapons (swords, daggers, and hammers) and farming tools (axe, rod, hoe, pickaxe, and watering can). We'll cover more about the forge in other articles but wanted to give you an idea of the enchantments you'll want on your gear.
Weapons: Crusader
Crusader increases damage against Mummies, Ghosts, Skeletons, and Void Spirits by 50% but more importantly, it prevents Mummies from reviving. This makes Skull Cavern much more enjoyable since you no longer need to clear out Mummies with explosives. Dealing more damage to ghosts is a nice bonus since it effectively reduces the number of times they'll be knocked back while you fight them.
Runner Up: Haymaker
Haymaker was my first weapon enchantment and I missed it after I replaced it with Crusader. It is a bit situational but if you focus on animal farming on your farm, this might be favorite option -- it allows you to put your Scythe in storage (freeing up one extra equipment spot) but more importantly, it allows you to collect Hay by just playing the game. Hay automatically goes to your Silo so you never need to go back to the Farm to fill it and any extra shows up in your inventory. I cleared out the Mutant Bug Lair whenever I went through town and still pretty useful in the Dangerous Mines.
As for the others, Vampiric is fine and there's one rare situation in the game it will be useful but I'd rather bring along some food or eat what I find during combat... Bug Killer is nice for killing Armored Bugs, so it speeds up certain floors in the Skull Cavern -- it's probably useful to have if you spend a lot of time in that part of the game (I'd carry two weapons, one with Crusader and another with Bug Killer if I planned on going to the Skull Cavern often). Artful can be useful but only if you also have Acrobat; I wasn't able to constantly spam the hammer's special ability without it.
Farming Tools
For the most part, the enchantments that are exclusive to each tool are the best enchantment for the tool. The tools are ordered by importance but the only must-have enchant is the Pickaxe.
- Pickaxe: Powerful -- Metal nodes in Skull Cavern and the Dangerous Mines only take one hit now.
- Axe: Shaving -- Extra resources from trees, stumps, and giant crops... nothing special but the other enchantments don't do much.
- Fishing Rod: Master -- It's a free skill level and I typically don't use fishing lures (bait is practically free). If you use lures often, Preserving basically doubles the durability of your fishing equipment.
- Watering Can: Bottomless -- No need to ever worry about water again, it's a convenience thing. In the off chance you don't use sprinklers on your farm, you could go with Reaching.
- Hoe: Reaching -- Clear an Iridium Sprinkler's worth of dirt in each use.
Outside of what I consider the best options, Swift is a decent fallback option (especially for the charge up tools). Unfortunately, it's only available on the Axe, Hoe, and Pickaxe
Remember: You're not Limited to one Weapon and/or Fishing Pole
Even though you cannot obtain multiple farming tools, like pickaxes or axes, you can have carry multiple fishing poles and weapons.
- **Fishing Rod: Preserving - ** Get yourself a second fishing pole with Preserving (or better yet, while you're enchanting your fishing poles, save any Iridium Rod with Master or Preserving on it) and use it exclusively with Wild Bait or Magic Bait (even a Magnet). Even though I personally prefer the Master enchant, you're doing yourself a disservice if you fish a lot and don't use Wild Bait (it's so easy to craft that it's worth the upgrade and effort). Not to mention getting a reasonable chance for Iridium quality Legendary fish by using a Quality Bobber during Qi's Extended Family Challenge.