Stardew Valley Traveling Cart Guide

The Traveling Cart is a special vendor that appears twice a week in Stardew Valley. What makes the Traveling Cart special is that it sells a collection of 11 random items, including rare items that might be hard to obtain otherwise. It can also sell out-of-season items, which can be useful for completing the Community Center bundles earlier than might be possible otherwise. Here’s everything you need to know.

Traveling Cart in Stardew Valley

The Traveling Cart appears in the Cindersap forest every Friday and Sunday. It is open from 6 AM to 8 PM and can be found south of your farm and west of Marnie’s Ranch. Whenever the Traveling Cart appears, it offers 10 random items and one random piece of furniture. These items typically appear far overpriced compared to their value, but the benefit is that you can get items that are hard to find otherwise. Every item sold by the Traveling Merchant is of normal quality; Silver-tier or better items cannot appear. The Traveling Cart will either sell one or five of each of its items.

This makes the Traveling Cart great for completing Community Center bundles, since some of the rarer items, like a Rabbit’s Foot or certain fish, can appear for sale. It’s also one of the few ways to obtain Starfruit seeds and Rare seeds, which are some of the rarest crops in the game and some of the most valuable. It’s worth checking the Traveling Cart’s inventory whenever possible. If you select the option when starting a new game to guarantee the ability to complete the Community Bundles in the first year, the Red Cabbage seeds will be guaranteed to appear once starting on Spring 7, but the exact date is random.

The Traveling Cart also appears during two festivals: the Night Market and the Desert Festival. The Night Market runs from Winter 15 to 17, with the Traveling Cart offering a different selection each day of the event. The Desert Festival runs from Spring 15 to 17, if you have repaired the bus, with the Traveling Cart offering different items each day of the event.

The Traveling Cart will also sometimes offer items considered to be special stock, which have different odds of appearing compared to other items, sometimes based on which season it is.

Every Traveling Cart special stock:

• Rare Seed – 100% in Spring / 90% for 1 and 10% for a stack of five in Summer
• Rarecrow #4 – 40% chance in Fall and Winter
• Coffee Bean – 25% in Fall and Winter
• Red Fez – 10% chance in all seasons
• Joja Furniture Catalogue – 10% chance in all seasons after completing the Community Center Bundles
• Junimo Catalogue -10% chance in all seasons after completing either the Community Center or Joja Mart
• Retro Catalogue – 10% in all seasons
• Tea Set – 5% in all seasons starting in Year 25
• All five skill books – 5% in all seasons for one to appear
• Wedding Ring (multiplayer only) – 100% chance to appear until purchased