Kind of wondering around aimlessly giving gifts to townsfolk for now.
Step 1. Open 5000 browser tabs of the stardew valley wiki
Step 2. Your computer crashes because that was too many tabs
Step 3. Realize you were so busy looking at the wiki you weren't really enjoying this nice peaceful little game
Step 4. Reboot game, playing blind and just getting loose with it.
Step 5. Oops, need to check something on the wiki real quick, just a quick peek.
Step 6. Open 5000 browser tabs...
You're going to need at LEAST a dual monitor setup, so you can see the game and the wiki at the same time.
I recommend not using the wiki unless you get stuck, knowing the exact mechanics is bad for the magic
There's not really a way to lose or even do badly. Feel free to explore and experience the game. Here are some tips that I wish I had learned early on.
- Watch TV once a day or so to get recipes.
- Fruit trees won't make their money back in the first year. You also have to plant them very early in the season before the season they start bearing fruit.
- Animals also take a while to pay back. You can wait until year 2 if money is tight.
- Fishing is a good way to get money early game but don't bother if you don't like the mini-game.
- Don't plant things that can't be harvested this season (few exceptions). A season has 28 days, not 30.
- Buying prices for wood and stone will massively increase in year 2. This is total bullshit, there's a mod that fixes this.
- Rainy days auto-water your plants, it's a great day to go to the mine.
Focus on the parts of the game you enjoy most, but make sure to try all of them occasionally, in case you suddenly started enjoying fishing or whatever.
The game isn't really about money, but being broke is a drag, so save some money for the start of each season, so you can buy new plants. Don't buy that backpack upgrade with all your money on the last day of Spring. (Do buy backpack upgrades though, they're so nice.)
The most profitable early game plants are:
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Low effort, plant at start of season, multiple harvests: green beans (spring), hot peppers (summer), eggplants (fall).
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Harvest once, use all profits to buy and plant more: parsnips (spring), radishes (summer), bok choy (fall). Make sure not to overshoot the end of the season. After a few cycles of this, you'll end up with so many plants that you run into trouble having enough time/energy to actually do them. So only do this if you accidentally go broke, and maybe for early game parsnips.
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Plant a small plot right in front of your house to begin with, nothing more than you can water in an hour or two on the game clock. It's easy to overextend yourself and miss events and exploration because of farming taking all day.
Fertilizer is a good investment because you get multiple uses out of it, it stays in the ground after the crop gets harvested. Just don't leave the tilled/fertilized soil barren or it might revert to a regular soil square.
If you find fishing hard, just leave it for later. It does get much easier with later equipment.
Artisan goods are how you really make money. You get a machine like a keg or a preserves jar and you put one of your crops in it and a while later it pops out an artisan good with a value some multiple of the crop you put in. Turning fruits into wine in a keg has the best returns but takes the longest. you should try to make some preserves jars early on and fill them with the expensive long grow time crops. Also the greenhouse is very valuable and you should focus on it first out of the community center tasks. If you've cleared more farm area than you can use for crops and animals plant acorns and grow more trees. You'll need the wood and oak resin later.
Yeah, you can’t really lose the game. Even if you fuck up and lose all your money buying grass starter or something? You can forage and sell until you can plant again.
To upgrade your watering can without missing a day of watering: on the day you see the weather forecast (on the tv) say it will rain tomorrow, take your can to the smith that same day. He'll have it ready the day after.
And if your having trouble with the fishing mini game, using a controller helps. There's also mods on PC for the game to make it easier.
Villagers birthdays are a great way to boost your friendship with them, even if you give them an item they sorta like, it's a nice jump in hearts
Be evil. I turn my animal Crossing towns into Dole Plantations but also refused to finish MGS5 cause diamond dogs just suck and the game is boring and blatantly awful about the Soviets in Afghanistan but when I play metal gear I try not to even make a guard's day worse than normal. Peaceful open ended games bring out my dark side where dark games make me wanna be the nicest character possible. I'm a contrarian.
