#i REFUSE to play without automate and chests anywhere and npc map locations

[briar--rising]

I finally achieved Perfection in SDV for the first time!!! I'm extremely happy and proud of this, it was so fun and I did everything myself, I didn't even pay for any golden walnuts to be found. Next I think I'm going to download Stardew Valley Expanded and get perfection there but using the Joja route, because I've never done a Joja run before and I think it would be fun and interesting to try

[acepalindrome]

I’ve spent much of 2021 thus far playing Stardew Valley in the hopes of distracting myself from the horrors of reality, and I keep meaning to make a list of mods I recommend! Because I am running a truly embarrassing number of mods and there are some really great ones that really improve the gameplay or add fun content or just make everything look really pretty! So without further ado, here are some of my favorite mods:

- Lookup Anything: This is probably my favorite mod. It basically eliminates the need to have to keep consulting the Stardew Valley wiki while you play. The title says it all: this mod lets you look up anything. Need to know what’s a good present for Shane? You can pull up a list of all his loved and liked gifts, with items you have on hand highlighted for ease, plus his birthday, how many hearts he has with you and how many points you need to get to the next heart. Need to know if you should hoard that pine sap or sell it? You can pull up all the uses for it, items that can be crafted with it, anyone who might like it, community center bundles it’s used for, and how much you make by selling. How many days until your melons are ready to harvest? What items can drop from that stone in the mines? What are all the items you can make with the furnace? It’s such a fantastically handy mod and I refuse to play without it!

- NPC Map Locations: One of the most frustrating things in the game is trying to remember everyone’s schedule and then not being able to find someone to give them a birthday present or turn in a quest item. This mod shows exactly where everyone is on your map and solves that problem for good!

- Automate: This mod automatically pulls items from nearby chests into machines, so you don’t have to keep running back and forth to your furnace to pick up the finished metal bars and toss more ore in there...it just spits the finished item back into the nearby chest, pulls in whatever available items you’ve got in the chest and starts running again without you having to do a thing! Just be careful of where you place your chests and machines or you might end up processing items you didn’t want to. Luckily, you can set individual chests to not have items pulled from them.

- Fishing Made Easy Suite: I suck at fishing. I almost never bother with fishing if I don’t have a mod to make it bearable. I like this one because it has different levels of easy-ness, so you can make fishing just 25% easier, or 50%, or 75%, or 99%! And there are some other fun perks too. You want to catch all fish regardless of weather or season? Want to catch legendary fish multiple times? Want to catch prismatic shards? Go nuts.

- Stardew Valley Expanded: This mod is absurdly huge and adds SO MUCH CONTENT. New areas! New characters! New events! I was a little hesitant to start it just because I knew there was so much to the mod and was a little concerned of how well it would mesh with the rest of the game, but the characters and story and style fit in perfectly with the vanilla content. I could almost forget Andy and Sophia weren’t there all along! The purpose of the mod was to make the game feel fresh and new for people who had already played the game and that’s exactly what it does. I love it.

- Artisan Valley/Project Populate JsonAssets/Starbrew Valley: I’m lumping these together but this is a collection of mods that add a TON of new items, crops, trees, flowers, machines and recipes to the game. You don’t have to download them all! You can pick and choose the ones you want, or download the PPJA content pack to get the bulk of these mods all in one go! I personally really love Artisan Valley because it lets me make floral candles and soaps. And an espresso machine so I can make fancy coffee. And Starbrew Valley so there’s actually a fun variety of alcohol in the game.

I’m putting the rest under a cut because this is getting too long.

- Chests Anywhere: Lets you access all of your chests from the menu! You can add some limitations, like only being able to access chests in the same location you’re in, but I’m dumb and constantly forget that I was supposed to bring a present for a villager with me today, or that I wanted to upgrade one of my tools but left all my metal bars at home. So instead of having to run all the way back to my farm, I can just open my menu and switch through the chests until I find the item I need! Labeling the chests also makes this a lot easier for organization.

- Seasonal Villager Outfits: Finally, the villagers have more than one set of clothes! This mod gives them different outfits in different seasons, different weather and special outfits for holidays! It’s cute and really improves the immersion to see the villagers wearing tshirts in the summer and bundling up in the winter, and dressing up for special events! Some characters will change their hairstyle too, which I love.

- Canon-Friendly Dialogue Expansion: Gives all characters more stuff to say so they won’t just repeat the same lines over and over! Also gives them varied dialogue for festivals starting in year 2, so they don’t say the same thing every year at the Egg Festival or Spirit’s Eve.

- Immersive Elliott: Add more dialogue! Lots more dialogue! I downloaded the Elliott version of this mod because that’s who I plan to marry but I recommend looking up dialogue mods for whoever your favorite characters are (I think there’s one for almost all the marriageable candidates.) You’ll probably be chatting a lot with whoever you’re trying to woo and it’s nice to get lots of new lines!

- Stardew Foliage Redone: There are tons of mods that change the colors and style of trees and buildings and stuff but this one is my favorite. It’s very soft and earthy and pretty without being overkill.

- The Love of Cooking: Actually makes cooking fun in Stardew Valley! It adds a cooking skill, an upgradable cooking tool that lets you cook with more ingredients (at the start you can only make one ingredient dishes), a cooking community center bundle, star levels to cooked items, an animation when you cook...cooking was very bland in the base game, and this mod really spruces the whole system up.

- Medieval Buildings/Medieval craftables: Again, there are so many mods that change up the look of your farm buildings and stuff but these are really pretty and cool and absolutely my style. There’s a mod to make all the town buildings have this style too, but I kind of like keeping the town normal and just living on my mysterious and beautiful farm apart from the rest of the world. My sprinklers are magic moss covered rocks now!

- Elle’s Dog/Cat/Horse/Barn/Coop/etc animals: Super cute animal skins. They look so huggable and soft. Also one of the dog options looks like my real life dog and that’s very important to me.

- Adopt ‘n’ Skin: Pairs well with the mods above, this mod lets you have multiple dogs/cats/horses and lets you use as many different skins as you like. I’ve got four cows and they’ve all got different patterns and colors. I love it. Also Marnie starts taking in stray animals and you can adopt them from her, which is a really cute way of letting you have more pets.

- Seasonal Garden Farmhouse: Its a pinch overkill especially in the early game, but I really like this farmhouse layout. It gives you a small kitchen from the start, a bathroom you can use to restore stamina, big open windows that change with the seasons and time of day...it’s a luxury house and it’s very nice to live in!

- Industrial Kitchen and Interior/Industrial Furniture/Rustic Country Town Interiors: These mods give the interiors and furniture a more rustic style, and the last one changes the town interiors to match. There are many furniture/interior mods, so if this style doesn’t do it for you, check out some of the others! There are lots of very pretty mods!

And I’m going to stop there but that’s only the tip of the iceberg and I highly recommend looking around NexusMods or ModDrop and seeing what kind of stuff is available!