Once you touch down on Starsand Island, the world (or island) is your oyster in terms of how you want to go about building and expanding your homestead as its newest resident. Whether it’s raising flocks of adorable livestock, growing vast fields of crops, or specializing in crafts of every make and color, you’re free to do quite literally anything and everything.
However, you still need the means to do everything, which in this case is money (Coins). Thankfully, there are a few different clever ways to earn a tidy profit, and knowing those methods early on is the key to success. Here are the best ways to earn money early in Starsand Island.
Starsand Island: How to Unlock All Pets (Locations)
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Best Ways to Earn Coins in Starsand Island
While Starsand is primarily used for unlocking various perks for your different professions (e.g. – Crafter, Farmer, Angler), the currency that you want to focus on accruing is Coins. It’s what you need to make purchases from the game’s many shops, which in turn provide you with countless invaluable resources, many of which you can’t necessarily gather around the island or craft right off the bat (that’s where blueprints come in).
As such, it’s crucial to find lucrative and efficient methods to earn Coins, especially early on when you need the funds to progress your certifications in each profession and expand your farm. Below is a comprehensive list of the best universal methods for Coin farming. You may find your own niche strategies for this that suit your personal needs as well, so figure out which ones work best for you.
Complete Main Quests
The first and perhaps the most obvious method for farming Coins in Starsand Island is completing the game’s main quests. These quests don’t necessarily relate to a preset story like in other games. In this case, since your experience is entirely open-ended, your main quests relate primarily to rebuilding certain structures around the island, and the five main professions you can “level up” to gain higher tiers of certification.
As you complete each of these quests, you’ll receive various rewards for your efforts. These usually contain Affection boosts for the NPC involved in the quest, along with Coins and other randomized items. Some will give you a few hundred coins while others can offer up to 1,000, so make sure to stay on top of your main quests while exploring.
Fulfill Bulletin Board Requests
Early on in the game’s main questline, you’ll gain access to the town’s Bulletin Board at the Community Center (located on the east side of the town’s plaza area). Here you can view and pick up various personal requests (or Orders as the StarNote calls them) placed by local NPCs.
These requests usually involve gathering or crafting certain items they need. Once you complete the objective set in that request, you can turn it in by visiting the NPC who placed it. In return, you’ll receive Affection points for that NPC, Starsand, and Coins. These requests refresh daily, so there will always be new ones for you to do. Just remember that they also have set time limits for completing them, so take care not to leave them sitting in lieu of other errands for too long.
Get into the habit of completing at least a couple of these requests a day, and you’ll be building up Coins in no time from this alone.
Islandpedia Stamps
One particular method that you probably didn’t expect at first is your Islandpedia app. Open it and select the large ‘Stamp Collection’ tab at the bottom of the screen. This will pull up the entire Stamp Collection menu, which lists six categories. Each category pertains to a certain aspect of daily routine, whether it’s crafting, cooking, or discovering new species in the wild.
For example, in the ‘Gatherables’ section, as you find and gather new resources in the wild, you’ll have the opportunity to earn stamps for finding certain amounts of those new resources. You’ll get a stamp once you’ve gathered at least 17 different resources for the first time, followed by 28 different resources, and so on.
Each stamp rewards you with a hefty reward of Coins, usually in the thousands. Granted, this method only pertains to the Gatherables and Crafting sections of the Stamp Collection, as the other sections provide different rewards, such as Recipes and Blueprints. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t be overlooked as a straightforward way to earn tens of thousands of Coins.
Crafting and Growing to Sell
Perhaps the most quintessential way to make money in games like Starsand Island is crafting items, not just for yourself but for selling purposes. Aside from building what you need for your personal journey, funneling your resources into the most lucrative blueprints and recipes should be a priority within your first few days on the island.
Granted, it can be a bit overwhelming to figure out what the best ones are. It’s not simply about which final product has the highest sale price tag. Whether it’s raising crops or crafting specific items, the key is to find out which of those is your best return on investment. In other words, you don’t necessarily want to waste time building or growing things that require a long list of expensive and/or hard-to-get resources. If the difference in cost versus return in that scenario is only a hundred coins, you’re not necessarily making the best use of your time and effort.
Instead, look for those items that require fewer resources (less cost) and less time to make, as the difference in profit is then much higher in your favor. This is especially important early on, when you don’t necessarily have a lot of funds and resources to throw around. Some good examples of early-game items to sell include:
Crops
Crop Name | Required Certification | Sell Price | Grow Season(s) |
|---|---|---|---|
Beetroot | None | 21 Coins | Summer, Autumn |
Wheat | None | 16 Coins | All Seasons |
Cucumber | Apprentice Farmer | 66 Coins | All Seasons (Trellis required) |
Tomato | Junior Farmer | 103 Coins | Spring, Summer (Trellis required) |
Watermelon | Junior Farmer | 131 Coins | Summer (If planted in 3×3 pattern, can mutate into Gmax Watermelon) |
Crafted Items
Item Name | Sell Price | Materials Required |
|---|---|---|
Iron Ingot | 66 Coins | 4 x Iron 1 x Coal |
Iron Sheet | 69 Coins | 1 x Iron Ingot |
Hardwood Plank | 24 Coins | 4 x Hardwood (requires Impact Axe to gather) |
Glass Brick | 28 Coins | 4 x Quartz 1 x Charcoal |
Talk to Aurelis For Free Coins
This is one of the more unexpected methods, but definitely not one to ignore, as it’s quite literally the most free money you can get. After you become acquainted with Aurelis at his restaurant (Aureleaf Kitchen) in Starsand Town, he’ll become one of the many local NPCs that offer you daily gifts, no strings attached.
While others usually gift various items and snacks, Aurelis is the one who gives you 1,000 x Coins as a daily gift. That’s right, you can earn thousands upon thousands of coins just for saying hello to him each day, so make sure to have him as a mandatory pit stop during your daily adventures.
Catching Fish
As you unlock various ways to gather resources around the island, one that especially stands out for its money-making opportunities is fishing. It becomes accessible very early in the game, and you can start your journey as a professional angler right away, thanks to the river that runs through your homestead area.
All you need is a bit of bait along with your fishing pole, and you can round up several fish at once to hook and later sell to the nearest vendor. Even the fish types you’re likely to catch first with the starting pole can fetch some good prices. Make sure to upgrade your pole when possible with the respective blueprints, and check out every water source around the island, including the ocean, as there are over a hundred different species you can catch.
Catching Bugs
While catching fish is a method that’s often mentioned in terms of making money in Starsand Island, another gathering activity that’s definitely not without merit is bug catching. While the bugs in question are ironically used to make bait, you can still sell the bugs themselves for a tidy profit, and the numbers are nothing to scoff at (30-50 Coins each/avg).
All you need for this is a bug-catching net, no certification upgrades or additional tools. Keep your eyes peeled for any bugs as you travel around the island (and in Moonlit Forest). There are already quite a few critters right in your own backyard that you can swipe daily and sell to the nearest shop for a few hundred coins, if you’re consistent.
- Released
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February 11, 2026
- Developer(s)
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Seed Lab
- Publisher(s)
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Seed Lab
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op
