Prehistoric Farm Shovel Guide: Every Tier, Price and Unlock

Why the shovel is your first real upgrade

In Prehistoric Farm the shovel is the gate between geological periods. The official How To Play line — “Grab your shovel and hold down on a dig site” — undersells how load-bearing the tool is: each tier opens the next island’s dig areas, and without those areas you cannot complete the deeper fossil sets. Dig technique itself is covered in the digging guide; this page is about which shovel to buy and when.

Every shovel with a verified price

Two things this table honestly does not have: dig-speed stats (never published anywhere) and Robux prices (no verified gamepass shovel prices exist; treat any specific Robux figure you see on other sites as fabricated).

What order should you buy shovels in?

For a new account the math is simple and verified:

1. Starter shovel (free) — dig Cambrian sets. Redeem the active codes first; the current batch alone covers the Bronze.
2. Bronze (2,500) — before anything else. Not boats, not cosmetics. Devonian fossils mean Devonian sets mean better eggs (see the DNA guide).
3. Boat (4,000) — second purchase. Reach farther islands; the chain is mapped in the islands guide.
4. 12,000 tier — once Devonian runs feel routine and your coin income from sets and treasure is steady. The money guide covers getting there without grinding yourself bored.

Do better shovels dig faster?

Honest answer: nobody outside the dev team has published numbers. The verified benefit of each tier is access — new dig areas on new islands. Claims that higher tiers widen the green zone or reduce swings per dig appear on some fan sites but trace back to no footage or official text. If Update 1’s quest shovels (Pacific, Forgotten) carry stat differences, we will confirm and update this table — the update log tracks what actually ships in each patch.

While you save for the 12,000 tier, the highest-value habit is green-zone releasing on every dig — it is the one quality lever that works with any shovel. Pair it with a 2x Luck potion from the codes page before each digging session, and check the beginner guide if any part of the dig-to-egg loop is still fuzzy.