Stardew Valley Mods I use

Stardew Valley is a lovely farming and adventure game created by ConcernedApe. It originally came out in February of 2016 and has gotten a few quite big updates ever since with the most recent, 1.5 update adding a whole new end game story content that added almost another full game worth of new things to do.

However, I have spent almost 700 hours with the game so playing through the base game doesn’t cut it anymore. So little by little, I’ve started adding mods and right now I have a really nice playthrough going on with a bunch of mods. I had to move the save file and mods from my Macbook to Steam Deck because my Mac just can’t run it anymore with this amount of mods loaded.

I recommend playing the base game without mods until you start to grow a bit bored with the game or annoyed with some repetitive stuff and then look into mods one by one.

Visual or quality of life mods

UI Info Suite 2

The first mod is a quality of life mod that doesn’t change anything in the gameplay itself, just makes certain things more conveniently presented in the UI. Things like daily luck, tomorrow’s weather, current birthdays and which animals need petting are all presented in view, saving a lot of monotonous activity that doesn’t really contribute to the game at this stage anymore.

UI Info Suite 2 has a nice amount of customizability to make it fit your needs. For me, the biggest improvement it brings in the early game is the experience meters for different skills. The first 40-50 days of any playthrough are crucial with the skills (especially hitting lvl 5 fishing and lvl 6 farming and gaining a level to avoid exhaust penalties) and with this mod, I don’t have to guess where I am with my progression.

Automate

One of the thing I grew bored of in the game was having huge amount of machines like kegs, cheese presses and so on and having to walk past all of them constantly and picking products and inserting new ones.

So I use Automate mod that automates all of that: you place a chest next to machines and they will automatically process goods from the chest and put the finished product back and repeat this as long as there’s goods to use. I like this when mining in the Mines as I can leave a bunch of furnaces near a chest and dump my ore and coal to the chest every 5 levels and keep churning good amount of bars.

There’s already a few things in the game you can “automate” like sprinklers to avoid watering and Junimo huts to avoid gathering crops and this mod adds a whole new level to it, making the game more enjoyable to me at this point.

Activated Sprinklers

Watering crops is the #1 thing I’m annoyed by in this game. I basically always focus on getting to basic and then quality sprinklers as quick as I can to avoid watering. However, you still need to often water the first day of new season or new patch of land if there’s untilled soil that existing sprinklers haven’t watered.

With Activated Sprinklers, I can just click on a sprinkler to activate it, saving a ton of time and boring watering, making growing crops actually quite nice.

Minecart Patcher

In my most recent playthrough, I started using Minecart Patcher since with all the story mods (see below), the map started to grow quite big and this game isn’t really built for quick traveling.

The regular minecarts take you between bus stop, east edge of the town, mines and quarry. With Minecart Patcher, I can also travel to a few extra locations like Secret Woods, Cindersap Forest, Beach, Desert, East Scarp (mod), Ridgeside Village (mod) and a few other nice locations.

Story/content mods

Stardew Valley Expanded

Expanded basically adds a whole new game to the mix. It’s such a well-made mod that adds new characters, new locations, new stories and new gameplay mechanics. Combined with a few new farm maps that provide a much more lively farm, I would never play again without Expanded mod.

Through all of its new content, it breathes a whole new life to the game. You can add it to an existing save (although you can’t switch the farm to a newer one as that breaks stuff) or start a new one from scratch.

Ridgeside Village

If Expanded feels a bit too much or not enough, Ridgeside Village is another story addition that adds a whole new village, accessible from the bus stop, with new characters, stories and adventures. The characters fit the lore and the world of Stardew so well.

It’s compatible with existing saves. It uses a “X days since start or install” mechanic for story progression so if you add it on your 2nd year for example, it won’t immediately trigger everything in the story progression but adapts to the situation so smoothly.

It’s also compatible with the Expanded mod and everything works really well.

East Scarp

To the east of Stardew Valley, beyond the Museum and the river, there’s East Scarp with its oceanside town and cave and a whole new adventure. I’m still exploring East Scarp on my first playthrough so even I don’t yet know all the things that await me there.

Lunna - Astray in Stardew Valley

Lunna is a mod that adds a new storyline focused on a girl with a secret past and claims to not come originally from our land but instead from a place called Umuwi.

I’ve only recently met Lunna and started to learn her story but I’m so eager to visit Umuwi and become friends with the new member in the community.