One of the big things that makes Stardew Valley such a magical gaming experience is discovering everything for yourself, but that doesn’t mean that aren’t some spoiler-free tips and tricks to help you get started.
For the unfamiliar, Stardew Valley is an incredibly popular indie role playing game in which you inherit your grandfather’s farm (and all the subsequent adventures that arise from that).
The game serves as a spiritual successor to the Harvest Moon RPG farming game franchise (and, even better, remedies many of the frustrating aspects of the Harvest Moon game in the process). Playing Stardew Valley blind is a truly enjoyable experience, but there are a few new-player pitfalls that you can either stumble your way through or get a little help with a tip list like this one.The following tips and tricks have been carefully selected to accomplish three things:
- First, we love the game and want to help ease new players into it by covering some of the basics.
- Second, we want to do so in the most spoiler-free way possible, as the game has a wonderful story.
- And, finally, by answering some of the pressing questions a new player might have about the game, we’re keeping new players away from the comprehensive (and spoiler filled) Stardew Valley wiki. Speaking with the voice of experience, we assure you that it is all too easy to hit up the wiki searching for a simple answer about an in-game concept and, in the process of doing so, see significant spoilers about game mechanics, characters, undiscovered areas of the game, and more.
With that in mind, we’ve not only striven to keep our suggestions spoiler free, we’ve gone out of our way to arrange the list so that the least revealing suggestions are at the top of the article.
You can stop reading any time you feel at risk of losing a little bit of the self-discovery magic.Don’t Rush: It’s Soothing Single Player, We Promise
Or first tip is less a single tip and more like meta-advice for playing the entire game. If you’re used to playing games with multiplayer elements you might need to take a long, deep breath and get yourself into a proper chill state of mind to play Stardew Valley.
Stardew Valley is a well-balanced, single player experience. Unlike grinding in, say, a popular FPS or MMORPG game to get the best loot drops before they’re gone, there’s nothing in Stardew Valley you can truly miss out on because you screwed up or didn’t play the game in some sort of correct or optimized way.
Within the context of the game, you can be the most industrious farmer Stardew Valley has ever seen, or you can get by doing just enough to keep your farm running so you can explore the game.
No matter how you play, the only person setting the pace of the game is you, and if it seems overwhelming or you start to get stressed about it, just take a deep breath and relax. There’s no setback in the game you can’t recover from.
Friendship is Magic: Be Kind to Creatures Big and Small
To advance in the game, be kind to everyone (and every thing) you come in contact with—except the things that want to eat you, go ahead and punch them in the face a few times. Friendship and kindness are fundamental underpinnings of the Stardew Valley universe, and if you are kind to creatures big and small, you will be rewarded.
Talk to your neighbors. Bring them treats from your farm. Take notes on what they like (and what they dislike). As you befriend people they’ll open up to you, sharing their lives (and often tips and goodies in the process). Even animals respond to your kindness. A cow you stop to pet every day produces better milk; a chicken you dote on produces bigger and higher quality eggs.
This is the shortest section in our tips guide (because we’re strongly trying to avoid spoilers) but it’s also the most important. We think you’ll find the game far more enjoyable if you work on befriending even the gruffest and most eccentric townsfolk.
Hoeing with Precision: Turn Hit Locations On Immediately
One thing that new players are almost always thrown off by is the “hit location” mechanics of the game. The game is 2D and everything (planting crops, placing objects, etc.) happens on an invisible coordinate plane of boxes. Because of how the orientation of your on-screen avatar, the tool you’re using, and the grid interact, the effect of using your tools can seem a bit wonky sometimes. You can sometimes swing your tool while facing forward and have it hit an object behind you.
Some tools have a reach of 1-3 squares that you can use strategically to your advantage. You have to move less and you expend less energy, so it pays to really get good at targeting your tool “hits.” In addition, taking these actions costs you a little bit of energy. Hitting the right square means not wasting that energy.
To help you get good at putting your tool right where you want, hit the ESC key to open up the game menu, and then select the tab with the little controller icon, as seen below. Check the “Always Show Tool Hit Location” option.
This places a red box directly on the square that a given tool will interact with (as shown in the image at the top of the section).
There’s also a keyboard shortcut to turn hit location on temporarily. Hold the SHIFT key while using a tool to show the hit box, even when the option’s turned off. That’s a handy little tip to remember for those times tool placement is frustrating you.
Food Is Life: Eat! Now Eat Some More!
Second only to frustration at misplaced pickax strikes is new player bafflement at how tired their character is. Unlike many RPGs, where you can swing your tools and weapons without ever getting tired, Stardew Valley has an exhaustion meter. Physically demanding activities, like swinging tools and weapons tire you out. Thankfully, walking and running do not.
In the beginning of the game, it can feel like you’re tired all the time. You can deal with the exhaustion one of two ways: eating or sleeping.
Eating food boosts your energy levels. Raw food gives you decent energy; cooked food gives you more. In the early game, there’s a delicate balance between selling your food for profit versus eating it for energy. If you find yourself out of energy early in the day and don’t want to waste food, take the time to attend to tasks that don’t consume energy. Sort your chests. Plan your farm. Explore the map. Head into town to chat with the townsfolk and build friendships.
Or eat all your food and cut down a whole forest like a mad man. Far be it from us to stand in the way of your lumberjack desires.
Lights Out at Dusk: Sleep Is Not Optional
Food might give you energy to tackle task after task during the day, but there’s one thing you can’t eat your way through in Stardew Valley: the clock. You have to sleep every night.
You wake up at 6:00 AM in your farmhouse every morning. If you haven’t already returned to bed by 2:00 AM, you pass out from exhaustion. Each of those 18 in-game hours is equal to 45 seconds of real-world time, thus a jam-packed day in your new farming life is equal to 13.5 minutes of real world time. You’ll be amazed at how much there is to do in the game and how fast those days whiz by.
It’s best to get to sleep before midnight, because your energy bar will be…
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