Stardew Valley – Tips and Tricks for Getting Started

Before you play the Stardew Valley game, you will definitely want to know these simple but useful tips and tricks. If you have any tips feel free to share with us!

Things to Know Before Playing

• There is no time deadline; you don’t have to min-max!
• The alternative to the community center just involves buying the upgrades with cash.
• You might want to look up NPC schedules and what gifts they like/dislike, since finding people can be kind of a pain.
• Once you get access to the Community Center, look up the available bundles and start storing items that will satisfy them.
• Don’t forget that you can sell by throwing items in the storage container by the house. Not all items can be dumped there though, some need other vendors. There doesn’t seem to be a price difference for where you sell items.
• Quests get posted outside of Pierre’s periodically. Don’t go out of your way unless the reward is really good, but some of them are very easy to satisfy.
• Once you advance your skills enough (to levels 5 and 10) you choose specialties for them. I’d recommend looking up the effects, since the level 10 skill choices depend on what you chose at level 5. You can change your skills/professions by paying money, though.
• Upgraded hoes/watercans can affect a wider area, just hold the button (I managed to miss that one somehow)
• Make sure you don’t miss people’s birthdays, they get huge heart boosts from gifts then. If you don’t know/want to look up the person’s favorite gifts, artisanal goods are usually a good Backup.
• Do the bundles. You really want the rewards for clearing whole rooms.
• Speaking of bundles, the traveling merchant can randomly sell rare items that take a long time to get otherwise.
• If one skill specialization looks clearly better than the other, it probably is.
• Watch TV, especially on Sundays when you can get free cooking recipes. If you miss one, they re-run next Wednesday. If you miss that too, you’ll wait a looong time for the next chance.
• Plan your farming. You don’t want to plant a cauliflower field on Spring 17 only to realize too late that they’d mature on Summer 1 and go to waste. Also, you probably don’t want to replant multiple crops on festival days.
• In each season there are crops that will yield multiple harvests. The time between harvests is shorter than it takes to grow up in the first place, so plan accordingly.
• Fruit trees have to be planted a season in advance – if you have a summer tree it means it only produces fruit in the summer but the sapling will grow in any season except winter, so plan to have it grown up by the time
• It’s ok to use energy-restoring items, especially early on when you have to till/water everything by hand and have much more time than energy.
• You do not want to die in mines. When in doubt, take the ladder and come Back with full health. Also, always have a healing potion on hand.
• If you do mess up and die/spend all your money on wrong stuff, remember that the game saves every morning so you can always just quit and roll Back the last day.
• The types of fish available depend on: season, time of day, place, rain, and whether you use a crab pot or normal fishing rod.
• Silver/gold star items are good for sales and festival contests. Cooking and artisanal goods crafting do not care about star quality artisanals do care if it’s normal milk/egg or large one though, so you can dump all your shitty stuff to be processed and sell the better ones.
• You can talk to Robin the carpenter to move buildings once they’ve been built on your farm.