Stardew Valley

IT HAS BEGUN

2016-03-16

ponytown farm, coming soon

The Sun Sets Everywhere, Even In Stardew Valley

2016-03-26

I’ve reached the point in Stardew Valley where I’d like to streamline the experience. I don’t want to outright cheat but a few tweaks are in order. I had certain expectations about the types of mods a game like this would have. Cute hats, for instance. Rabbits of various colors. NPC portrait variations. I knew the game was mod-friendly, but I didn’t appreciate how accessible the pixel art style makes it, in terms of cosmetic changes.

What I’m saying is I was not prepared for how many nude mods this game has.

I definitely wasn’t prepared for the Hot Barn mod, which replaces all the livestock with, um, naked men, who can be milked and shaved and bred and so forth.

Now. I understand the current state of this journal might lead one to believe I actively sought this mod out. I assure you I did not. It is #57 on the top mod list. Now that PonyTown Farm, once ironically named, has become a frighteningly real possibility, I decided I was gonna dive straight down this rabbit hole to hell.

Why yes, there is more, I’m glad you asked.

Undare has also made a Hot Crafting Males mod. I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t want to click that link, but in the event you didn’t, this mod turns all the crafting stations into naked men in various stages of bondage. These hapless fellows create various in-game substances–jam, honey, beer, coal–through… well, it isn’t explicitly stated and I won’t conjecture.

Friends, I have seen some weird mods, but this tops it. I went onto the Nexus for a goddamn calendar mod (which isn’t hosted there, by the way) and now every time I fire up this stupid game I’m going to remember that someone somewhere has a barn full of dudes and they freaking milk them_._ I thought I had no innocence left to lose. Alas.

Came Down With a Bad Case of Stardew Valley Again

2017-02-08

I made the mistake of starting a new game in Stardew Valley.

It has something to do with the time of year. I got sucked into it around this time last year, too. It’s bad. For the past few days I’ve been fishing instead of doing my actual day job. When I get fired I’ll let you know if it was worth it.

Concerned Ape recently released version 1.2, which includes 5 new types of farmland (aaaah river farm), a couple of romances, and some other stuff. I really respect that he’s still working on the game. He could have just WELP IM DONE after the 1.0 bugfixes, especially since he spent the last five years working on it. But he has a vision. God bless him.

What I really wanted my last game was the greenhouse, but the amount of stuff you have to collect for the Pantry Collection is kinda ridiculous. Previously I was going about it by growing/raising all the stuff myself and after 4 seasons I was halfway there.

I’m not a fan of the livestock situation. It’s very expensive to get started and it would take a long time to break even on sale profits. If you have enough head/fowl it is impossible to harvest enough hay to overwinter, which means you lose a season of production.

Fortunately, the traveling cart provides a random chance to buy most of the items in the game. $600-1,000+ is a lot for an egg, but buying the three you need is less than buying a deluxe coop ($4k + $10k) and chickens ($800 x 2) and a duck ($4k) to lay em. The cart comes into town 8 times a season, so I guess the question is how many seasons it takes to collect all the stuff I need.

There is one farm building that is cost-effective. A silo costs 100 to build. The cheapest you can buy the 10 hay for the Fodder Bundle is 500. (Edit: I forgot it takes 5 copper bars to build a silo. It’s cheaper to buy the hay.) I swore I wasn’t going to mess with fowl again, but today I began to miss little Mulder and Scully, and their duck friend Skinner, so.... gotta get on that silo, I guess.

I am still not interested in socializing, making and keeping friends is about as much of a pain in the ass as it is in real life. (In the past, I’ve complained about NPCs and romances being too player-centric, now I have a game where NPCs have their own lives and you have to actually socialize with them and give them presents and I can’t be bothered.)

Also

2017-03-08

I’ve begun powergaming Stardew Valley for some godawful reason* please save me from myself.

*10 million gold achievement don’t look at me i’m not cryi ng

Stardew Valley Again

2018-08-03

The long-awaited Stardew Valley 1.3 multiplayer update just dropped. As it happens, I just rebought. I was feeling kind of sad, and I’m taking a break from Fortnite, so I finally picked it up on Switch and it’s great how conducive SV’s daily format is to portable gaming breaks. The game cheered me up quite a bit.

As far as Switch vs PC goes, outside some understandable keymapping wonkiness (putting decorations on walls) and the lack of cheevs, I’ve enjoyed it over the PC version. I wish there were more Switch cheevs, but I don’t want unfun additional achievements like “Fector’s Challenge,” so I can accept this. I do miss a few quality of life mods, chiefly the villager map, but mods are truly supplemental in this game so it’s not a huge loss.

The 1.3 update has been prioritized for Switch but has no release date. I’m pretty excited about the new content but I’m into my current farm on Switch and don’t want to play the PC version to access it. I don’t know that I’ll ever take advantage of the multiplayer, which requires the “host” farmer always be present in the instance. I’m more interested in the added content and wonder how pots will change the game for me, as I am always quite obsessed with establishing the greenhouse.

This is supposed to be a chill game, but I still want to try powergaming the farm since I’ve never really done that before. Last game I used the River Farm and loved the convenience for fishing and crab pots but ultimately regretted the lack of farmable space, so this time it’s the standard farm for all the hot farming action I can handle. It would be nice if you could terraform your farm after the fact to increase space (for a hefty fee, of course).

I love the fishing minigame and easily max out my fishing stats and gear early on, so I wanted to see if I could use fishing as a substitute for mining and get enough ores to set up a good-sized quality sprinker system. I routinely go out on lucky days with an iridium rod, bait, and treasure bobber, and (at this point) usually have a trout soup, which is +1 fishing, and I have the pirate perk. Additionally, I found what appears to be the best treasure fishing spot, which is next to the bush outside Jodi’s house on the river.

So far, fishing is a good way to get artifacts, but an unreliable way to get ore. I sometimes get gold and even iridium ore, but until yesterday I never fished iron ore. In fact, that ore was from geodes, which add an extra layer of RNG since geode contents are determined when they are opened, not when/how they are obtained. There may be some bugs for geodes on Switch (more than once I had a series of magma geodes only contain Neptunite).

If you want to do a no-mining or low-mining run you should expect to buy iron and gold ore. Buying iron ore is not a huge deal. Gold costs about $2,000 a bar, which is not great, but if you’re focusing on farming it’s manageable.

The way Stardew Valley is structured if you know what you’re doing you should be poised to blow it out of the water by year 2 without working terribly hard. By then you should have the recipe for lighting rods and have probably picked up a few iridium bricks for iridium sprinklers, but even if you haven’t, you will probably have amassed a number of quality sprinklers, which are key to being able to manage large harvests.

I think livestock is generally a crapshoot outside pigs, which produce truffles, so I’m not too interested in that aspect yet, but I’ve been dutifully amassing hay anyway and began building structures so I can upgrade to auto-feeders. I have a long-standing tradition of having at least 2 chickens named Mulder and Scully and a duck named Skinner so I need to at least do that much. Somehow I managed to score 2 dinosaur eggs in the first 2 seasons (clearly my dark master Satan smiled upon me), so I will try hatching dinos this game, which is something I’ve never tried before.Collapse

Stardew Valley and the Mandatory Nursery

2018-08-06

The thing that bugs me the most in Stardew Valley is probably the crib thing.

The Farmhouse can be upgraded three times. The first upgrade adds a kitchen and master bedroom. The second upgrade adds an additional room and a nursery with a crib and two kid beds. The third adds a cellar, a huge storage space which is the only area you can set up casks to age wine.

There is no way to get rid of the nursery or move the furniture. And this is incredibly annoying. I understand why, development wise, the furniture should be immobile, but the nursery needs to be a separate upgrade. If I don’t want a nursery on Switch I have to forgo having a cellar, there’s no way to get rid of it.

I get why it was set up this way, but after three major updates I do not understand WHY this design choice persists. There are multiple mods that address this issue, which only compounds my annoyance.

I had two kids with Leah my last game. I don’t want to be the guy who moves from farm to farm having spouses and kids all over the place, you know? I have all this stupid furniture from the museum and whatnot and I need somewhere to put it. Throw me a bone here.

Stardew Valley 1-3 Update & Other Dewey News

2018-12-17

First, a blog gripe. A few months ago I decided to make a concerted effort to post screenshots with my game reviews. This is a noble thing, however, it is just enough extra effort to make gameblogging actual work. If I played exclusively on PC the process would be shorter, but with Switch I have to a) remember to take screenshot during Actual Gameplay which I never do so I usually have to go back to a game after the fact just to get a damn screenshot, b) post to birdsite account, c) copy monitor screenshot to image editing software so I can save a local copy since Twitter doesn’t let me just dl for some stupid reason, d) upload to Dreamwidth, e) locate correct thumbnail size in Dreamwidth image manager, f) copypasta url to post, g) preview post several times to ensure placement doesn’t break the post. Actually posting my review backlog before the end of the year is more important so I GUESS THATs THAt.

Now, bizns. The Stardew Valley multiplayer update released on Switch last week and naturally I was all over that. It renewed interest in my megafarm, which I’d gotten lukewarm about. There are a few quality of life updates worth mentioning and some new community events.

The big feature, multiplayer, is only available locally or to players who subscribe to Nintendo Online. I actually don’t subscribe yet, so I’ll have to do that. I honestly don’t know that I’ll ever get around to it, the hosting player controls the instance and I’m very bad about scheduling my game time to accommodate other players. The player cottages are cute and cheap to build and you can decorate them, so I put a few on my property for the hell of it.

The two big QOL is the auto-grabber and pots. SO, prior to this having sheep, cows, and goats was a bit of an asswhip because each one had to be individually milked and shorn. My playstyle is I don’t do anything I find tedious (I don’t even purchase animals until I upgrade to barns and coops with auto-feeders), so I just didn’t raise those animals. This update introduces a $25,000 auto-grabber which automatically harvests from the animals daily. It must be placed inside the barn but it has 36 item slots. Suddenly, these animals now work with my playstyle, and I have modified my farm plan to accommodate them.

Pots are a early-stage QOL. They allow a plant to be grown anywhere, including indoors during any season. The pots cannot be watered by sprinkler, which I tested immediately to see if they could be used to expand an automated greenhouse. So pots are really only useful for players who don’t have a greenhouse yet but want to grow things indoors and are willing to manually water them, notably gemfruits, ancient seeds, and probably some of the berries. At least one player figured out you can start a second greenhouse inside the bus tunnel using pots. I will never be that dedicated.

There are a lot of decorative updates, notably seasonal ornamentals and paintings, and plants and art are the two main things I collect so yay for me.

I have uncovered two new community events. The first is the Night Market, which is an 3-day night festival where you can buy special items and catch new fish and the vibe compliments Stardew Valley’s arcane brand of weirdness. I did not expect some of the offerings, but I’m not complaining. [A screenshot should go here, OH WELL] The second I won’t mention here, and Concerned Ape is similarly mum in his notes, but I’m pretty jazzed about being able to upgrade the community in this fashion and look forward to collecting the rather substantial amount required. It’s nice to have a big money-sink item that’s not a “for the farmer who has everything” type of item.

In Dewey news, Concerned Ape reports he is working on a second game in the same universe, no deets yet, and he also confirmed they will continue to roll out content updates for SDV. I look forward to watching this game continue to grow.

Stardew Valley 1-4 Update on PC

2019-11-27

For some reason, my only takeaway previously was this update would give us fish ponds. Well, as usual, it gives us so much more. Check out the spoiler-free announcement here. New content and QOL updates that look like they will eliminate the need for some of my mods. No ETA on the Switch update yet.

After I logged my millionth hour for my most recent SDV farm on Switch I started looking into other games like Stardew Valley to fill that niche but give me a little something different to look at. I didn’t find anything (though I’ve had a general eye on Fantasy Farming: Orange Season for some time). My next plan was to set up an epic Stardew Valley Expanded game and play on SteamLink. I never got around to it and now I’m content to wait for the Switch update because playing SDV handheld while curled up on the couch is one of my very favorite things.

If you love ConcernedApe as much as I do, consider voting for Stardew Valley for the Labor of Love Steam Award.

Stardew Valley 1-5 Update

2021-02-17

The new update is now available for Nintendo Switch. ConcernedApe’s timing on this was just right, I sorely needed some SV in my life. I read through the changelog but there is just SO MUCH stuff there, plus I never got around to properly exploring 1.4.

I’m using a reasonably late-game PT to explore the new content. I got all the iridium tools and mostly maxed my skill levels but I haven’t bought any of the big construction projects that are mostly money sinks. This post covers a mixture of 1.4 and 1.5 content. The 1.5 update is so thorough I can’t help but wonder if it will be the last of its kind. If so, ConcernedApe has added more DLC-grade new content to this game that any other game I can think of.

Before I get into that, let me just say I get very sad during the winter, and Stardew Valley is a game I have historically escaped into while I await my beloved spring planting season. I have played SV a lot though, so the last update, in spite of having tons of STUFF, was not enough to renew my interest in the game. This update adds a tropical island to explore and I LOVE IT, even though the map is currently bugged on Switch and it has absolutely breathed new life into this game for me. I hate the desert dungeon, so having a new place to explore and get cool loot is A+ top notch.

MORE GOOD NEWS! You can finally move the crib and toddler furniture. This was a gripe on one of my posts. Remaining deets under the cut.

I helped Joja in this game because a) I’d never done it and b) I wanted to be able to fix the town quickly rather than spend time building the bundles. I regret that, because having a Joja warehouse in the Community Center sucks. Well, as of 1.4 you can talk to Morris to make a rather expensive movie theater. I did that and took Haley to a movie. It’s not as rewarding as the other community upgrade, but I appreciate I don’t have to look at that warehouse anymore.

I have never liked the errand board, as it amounts to boring fetch quests. I like the new special orders board a lot better, not only because the large orders with longer time periods are more interesting, but because they provide new items/recipes.

1.5 adds home aquariums. This was done just for me, obviously, and since I have a furniture catalogue I now have like three of them.

I put in a few ponds last update and forgot about them, so imagine my surprise when my salmon politely asked for 3 pinecones. Why the hell not, I thought, and tossed them in to find that this simple gesture expanded the quantity of the pond from 3 to 5. I also found some aged roe I’d apparently set up the last time I played. It sells for a meager amount, less than 200, but continues the fine Stardew tradition of being able to pickle basically everything. Anyway, I did some research on this and apparently Sturgeon produce caviar. Eels are a no-brainer, and I’ll have to start a cucumber pond uh… whenever I catch one. I thought I had kept back 1 of each fish but apparently not.

Willie introduced me to a broken ferry that can take me to Ginger Island. The cost of entry, which includes 5 iridium bars, ensures the player will not be able to fix the boat until around the time they’d start upgrading their tools for the final tier. I had everything but about half the hardwood, so I took a few sessions to grind that out (and figured out we now get mahogany seeds to plant hardwood trees, which is good because hardwood is the most annoying resource grind IMO).

I. Love. Ginger. Island! As I said. Before this point I’d ignored the obelisks because they are very expensive for what they are and they take up space, but I’ve already cleared a section out to build a Ginger Island obelisk as soon as I get the needed dragon teeth. Both the totem and the obelisk require dragon teeth and the drop rate seems infrequent enough it would probably be best to build the obelisk. That’s a contrast to the other totems, which require fairly common ingredients. The dungeon itself is a little samey, but golden walnuts – which are the way you unlock various aspects of the island – drop frequently enough to keep me visting and renewed my interest in lucky foods.

Anyway, I’ve hardly put a dent in the island content but it has renewed my interest in the game, and in organizing the farm and so on. If you’ve got the game but haven’t played in a while I recommend checking it out, especially if you’ve reached the point where you have access to iridium.

Stardew Valley 1-6 Update

2024-04-09

Over the past few years I’ve played Stardew Valley on Switch, but I barely put a dent in the 1.5 update so I decided to return to PC this time for modding and other features. My main PC game was at Year 4 and had 93 hours, so we’ll see how this round turns out.

The timing on this release was particularly good, because I’ve got a lot on my plate and need cozy gaming to decompress. I’ve powergamed this one in the past, but this time I decided to take it easy. I snagged a Beach Farm, which is a no-brainer seeing how much I like to fish, and have been gradually stumbling across new content.

I didn’t think Concerned Ape could surprise me at this point, but uh.... did not see the green rain coming. Truly appreciated that WTF moment.

Since I’m just kinda paling around, and wasn’t farming much because watering feels too much like a chore, money has been tight. I discovered this game is a lot more fun for me with auto-watering mods so now I’m gardening again and that ought to take care of the money problem.

QOL

Cheats

Visual

Extras