Stardew Valley Beginner Tips

If it's your first time through the game, you're probably going to need to have multiple guides open the whole time, or at least you would. We will cover customization, animals, cooking, and more in our Stardew Valley Beginner Tips guide.

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There's no real goal or timer in Stardew Valley. The season changes and certain events only come once per in-game year, but it's exceedingly rare to find something that players are completely locked out of. 

The vast majority of the game is tuned for you to move at your own pace. Even the light "end game" goal of two years can be redone for a material cost if you don't quite meet the goal you were aiming for.

Some people get a sense of joy out of being as efficient as possible. The important aspect to note is that the only thing you lose by doing stuff at your own pace is efficiency. You can eventually do anything you want, given enough time. If you're slow on the controls, you can earn just as much money as another player.

Don't stress yourself out and worry too much about not making something in time. If you don't quite make a deadline, you can always stuff your items in a chest and move on. Stardew Valley gives the player a lot of freedom to do things at their own pace, so always keep that in mind. 

Character and Farming Choice

When you start a new game, the first thing you'll see is the character creation screen. You pick your character's name, your farm name, their favorite thing, pet choice (dog or cat), gender, and one of five types of farm. You can also elect to skip the intro sequence of the game, and if you want to bypass the cutscenes anyway, you can still do that in the middle of them.

Each of the five farms offers different choices in what's on the land. Each has its own unique offerings:

• Standard Farm: Nothing unique as compared to the other farms, but it gives the most space for planting crops and building. All of the other farms ultimately have less space than this one due to cliffs and water.
• Riverland Farm: Much less space, but you can fish on your own farm rather than having to travel to other sections of the map.
• Forest Farm: Abundant trees, large renewable stumps, and unique weeds that drop Mixed Seeds (which give random crops when planted). The special weeds are a truly unique feature with an extremely rare occurrence elsewhere, but otherwise, the seeds themselves can be acquired.
• Hill-Top Farm: A mining area that scales with the player's Mining level. It saves you the time of traveling to the mines.
• Wilderness Farm: Monsters Spawn at night, including the unique Wilderness Golem. You can toggle off the ability to have monsters on your farm later in the game; this is the only farm where the feature is active by default.

Aside from mechanical and practical differences, each farm has a different aesthetic appearance as well. You can see the different maps at the Stardew Valley Wiki if you want to look at them carefully before choosing.

Once you've made all these choices, you go through the beginning cutscene, and you're released into the world to do as you please.

Time, Health, Energy, and Money

There are four core resources in the game: Time, Health, Energy, and Money.

If there's a particular event you want to attend or something you really want to get done, make sure you prioritize it, since you only have until 2:00 a.m. each day before the day rolls over.

Health only applies to combat. If you lose all of your Health, you'll be rescued, charged a fee, and potentially lose some of the stuff you're carrying. You can restore it with certain items if need be, but if you're running low, you should try to escape so as not to throw away progress needlessly. If you do ultimately fail, you'll still likely be able to recover.

Energy determines your ability to use tools. Every time you chop down a tree, mine ore, or cast a fishing pole, you're going to use some Energy. If your Energy runs out, your productivity is going to go in the gutter. You can recover Energy by visiting the Spa in-game or consuming items.

Money is relatively straightforward. Money can be exchanged for goods and/or services. You can sell stuff to certain shops in town such as Pierre's General Store or place items in the Shipping Bin on your Farm. If you are completely broke, you can still forage random items in the wilderness and sell those to pull yourself out of the proverbial gutter.

If you're going to make use of the land on your Farm, you're going to spend a good bit of time clearing out all the junk that's already there. Some pieces of the scenery can't be cleared until you upgrade your tools at the Blacksmith.

Levelling Up Skills

The game has five distinct classes of skills: Farming, Mining, Fishing, Foraging, and Combat. In short, Skills are leveled up by doing things associated with those skills. When you chop down a tree, you'll level up Foraging a little bit. When you water a crop, you'll level up Farming a little bit.

Each Skill confers bonuses as you level them up. The most straightforward action they give you is access to new crafting recipes. At Levels 5 and 10, each Skill tree will give you a unique bonus, such as more ore per vein for Mining or higher value on sold crops for Farming.

There's no need to rush or grind if you don't want to. If you plan on focusing on growing crops, your Farming skills will level up as a natural consequence of that. If you chop down trees like a woodcutter, your Foraging skill will go up. 

Upgrading Tools

You can upgrade your tools at the Blacksmith with enough money and the right resources. Certain obstacles on your Farm can't be cleared out until you have the proper tools, and certain resources will be unavailable. It's cheapest to mine the resources yourself, but you can also buy the stuff needed. The items needed for the later stages of the upgrades are difficult to buy but can still be purchased at a premium via the Traveling Cart.

Upgrading your tools isn't strictly necessary, but it's very helpful to you as a player. Some tools will gain new abilities such as an upgraded Axe being able to chop down bothersome Large Stumps on your farm. Some tools will become more efficient like upgraded Axes that chop down trees in fewer hits and save energy.

If you want to do it on the cheap, you can mine the ore yourself. You'll still have to pay the Blacksmith to do the upgrade and wait for a couple of days, but you can get it accomplished. If you want to focus on something else, you can buy everything you need to get the upgrade done. When you upgrade your tools, bear in mind that you'll have to do without them for a couple of in-game days, so make sure you don't set your Farm back.

Farm Capabilities

You can plant crops, harvest wood, raise animals (after getting buildings on the property), and more on your Farm.

Your Farm is shaped by your desires. If you want to raise a bunch of animals and eschew crops entirely or want to fill up every conceivable space with crops, you can go ahead. If you want to leave it alone completely and mine all day, you can do just that.

Whatever your gameplay style is, you can do something useful with the Farm. There are even some passive money-making options that require minimal interaction from the player such as Lightning Rods if you don't want to attend too much on the Farm.

Stardew Valley has more than just your Farm; there's an entire town nearby to visit as well as wilderness areas, caves, and more.

Crafting

Stardew Valley has a Crafting system. Most of the things you make in the game are useful in one fashion or another, and some of the Crafting Recipes are decorative items. Certain elements of the game's mechanics are gated behind Crafting. These are largely in the Farming Skill tree, though the other ones do give you some unique Workbenches.

The most standout example is Artisanal Goods. These are goods from your Farm that you process into higher-quality items. For example, you can turn Eggs from your Chickens into Mayonnaise with a Mayonnaise Machine. These goods can be sold for more money, used as gifts for certain people, or used as ingredients in cooking.

Other items you can make include Healing Potions, Warp Totems, and decorative items for your Farm such as floor tiles or lights. Crafting is a core part of the game as you progress, although a lot of it is centered on the Farm itself. If you're focusing on Mining or Fishing more than Farming, you won't necessarily need to use Crafting very much to get the most out of those professions.

Advancement Planning

Timing is very important in Stardew Valley. You want to have a general idea of when your money is going to come in and what you're subsequently going to spend it on. You want to have a sense of the goal you're going to complete on a particular day when you hop out of bed.

One of the most helpful aspects to internalize in Stardew Valley (or any game in the life simulation genre) is to make an effort to plan ahead. If you intend to chop down all the trees in Cindersap Forest, you should estimate roughly how long that will take and factor travel time, as well.

You can also buy a Calendar from the Carpenter's Shop. The exact days are important when you consider the schedules of Pelican Town's villagers, and that information is always available on the UI. What isn't available is the special events that only happen one day out of a year, namely birthdays and festivals.

Birthdays are great for building up relationships with villagers. At the start of the game, you can check a public Calendar that's a permanent fixture outside Pierre's General Store, but once you can buy your own, it is helpful to integrate it into your daily routine. For example, the first thing we do every day is check the Calendar to see what events are happening on any given day and which events are coming up so we can plan accordingly.

Don't just think about the smaller picture, either. Do you want to have a barn built so you can raise cows? What will it cost you? What resources will you need to build it? When do you think you could have them by? Certain items such as Fruit Trees and Sweet Gem Berries can take a month before they'll produce anything useful.

If you really want to be serious about planning your Farm out to the tiniest detail, there is a very helpful Farm planner at stardew.info. It's a great tool for figuring out how you would like to get everything set up.

Little Bit of Everything

Early on in the game, you're going to have two concerns: you only have so much space in your inventory and you probably want to earn as much gold as possible.

Initially, it's a really good idea to build a couple of Chests as soon as possible. They only cost 50 Wood, you can craft them by default, and your Farm is filled with trees and branches to provide. This way you don't have to worry about carrying everything on you all of the time.

You can increase your relationship with Villagers by giving them specific gifts. You will also have quests made available to you either via your mailbox or by the bulletin board next to Pierre's General Store. Most of these quests are randomly generated, so there's no surefire way to know what to keep on hand. Therefore, it's not a terrible idea to hold onto a few of everything just in case you need it to complete tasks.

Another benefit of holding onto a few of each item is if you need funds quickly. Suppose that your animals badly needed Hay and you are flat broke. Sure, you could sell stuff directly to stores like the Blacksmith and Pierre's, but you should have something to sell on hand.

You don't have to necessarily liquidate your storage. It's helpful to hold onto certain items explicitly for the purpose of selling them later. For instance, we kept a few hundred Blueberries in the first summer. By the time the end of the season rolled around, we realized that we wouldn't have enough money to buy all the seeds we had wanted. By throwing the Blueberries in the Shipping Box, we awoke to more than enough money to cover expenses for Fall.

Once you get more established as a player, we recommend holding onto a specific high-value item that you can acquire regularly. Truffle Oil and Keg products are excellent choices because you can produce them somewhat regularly.

Friendship and Marriage

Part of the Social System in Stardew Valley is the Heart Meter. Most villagers have a maximum of ten hearts. Bachelors and Bachelorettes have a max of eight hearts (upgradable to 10 if you romantically pursue them and later 12 if you marry them).

Events unique to each villager will take place once you reach certain thresholds of friendship. Getting the Heart Meter up will also net you some other benefits. Clint the Blacksmith, for example, will occasionally send you spare metal bars in the mail for free.

There are dozens of people throughout Stardew Valley. You can interact with them, tackle quests, and befriend NPCs. A certain subset of characters can be dated and eventually married.

Friends will confer certain benefits. They'll give you a recipe or two in the mail, send you gifts, and potentially unlock unique mechanics or features. This is completely optional; you can be a hermit and basically ignore everyone in the village if you would like.

If you get married, your spouse will move in with you and occasionally help out on the Farm. They'll help out in little ways, and you can eventually have a child with them or adopt one. You can marry any of the game's eligible candidates regardless of gender.

The cheapest way to build a relationship with a villager is to talk to them. You can get a much larger boost by giving them a gift up to two times per week. (The counter resets on Sunday.) You can get an even greater boost by giving them a gift on their birthday (which the aforementioned Calendar will help with immensely.)

As for who to befriend, consider that you will be seeing different people multiple times a week. You might drop by Marnie's Ranch every Sunday to buy some Hay for your Animals. Maybe you then swing over to the Carpenter's Shop to start construction on a new building. Aside from the proprietors of the shops themselves, you will frequently find that they have family living there with them. Take the time to exhaust all conversation options with them and give them the best possible quality gift you can possibly afford.

Lastly, don't fret if it sounds like the constant maintenance of these friendships would be a burden that would take you away from your farm. Once you get someone to the maximum Heart Meter, it won't decay anymore and you don't have to worry about seeing them on the regular.

Protecting Crops

Crops will occasionally be eaten by crows unless you have a Scarecrow to protect them. They have quite a large range. You probably won't need your second one until well into your first Spring, or perhaps even your first Summer depending on how seriously you're farming.

A greater threat is lightning. When the weather is bad, lightning strikes happen, and when it's thousands of volts versus a tiny little Parsnip in the ground, the Parsnip loses. Lightning Rods will not only absorb the lightning strike, but they'll also produce a Battery Pack after 24 hours. Battery Packs are used in higher-tier crafting and if you're working on befriending Maru, they're one of her favorite gifts.

A Lightning Rod is only good for absorbing one strike, and then it's stuck for 24 hours to process it into a Battery Pack. It's a good idea to have multiple Lightning Rods placed around your Farm. We've had as many as a dozen and still had a paved tile upended by a lightning strike. Around 15 seems to be the ideal number, but you probably won't be able to get many very early in the game. Place as many of them as often as you can, so you don't lose crops unnecessarily.

Villager Schedules

Marnie sells animals, animal supplies, and Hay from her ranch. There's a running joke in the Stardew Valley community that she's never at the counter in her store. That's because Marnie has a slightly offset schedule—she takes Mondays and Tuesdays off as opposed to Saturdays and Sundays as you'd expect.

If you have no grass on your field, you're running low on Hay, and it's Sunday, drop everything and get to Marnie's Ranch before she closes for the day. Your animals can't die if they don't eat, but they won't produce anything for you, either.

In a similar vein, if you're looking to give gifts to certain villagers, you might end up running all over the place looking for them. Do not hesitate to use resources online like the Official Stardew Valley Wiki, since the game becomes quite layered very quickly.

The best time to catch people is usually at the start of their day, typically 9:00 a.m. It's better to get there early and wait an in-game hour as opposed to spending three hours running around trying to track them down.

Clocked

When the clock strikes midnight, it turns red and you're prompted with a warning that you're starting to get tired. You get a second warning at 1:00 a.m., and then at 2:00 a.m., you pass out where you're standing.

2:00 a.m. is the absolute end of the day. At that point, everything stops, you pass out, and the next day begins. If you're trying to stay up late to get some last-minute chores done, be conscious of how much time you have left.

You'll be charged up to 1,000G for the "service" of being taken back to your home by a Joja Corp team member after passing out. 1,000G can be absolutely devastating to a player who is just starting out.

It's better to leave something until tomorrow in the early game rather than risk passing out and losing 1,000G. If you have a pressing need to absolutely push the time limit, know that you don't have to actually make it to your bed. Passing out at 2:00 a.m. in your home doesn't charge you a fee at all. As long as you make it through your front door before the clock strikes 2:00 a.m., you're all good.

Pierre's General Store

We've restarted an entire day because of selling an item that was really needed on the same day. You can recover the most recently placed item in the Shipping Box.

However, if you sell items to Pierre's General Store, there's a good chance that he'll have them available for sale again. You need to sell items in large quantities for them to be made available, but it's nice being able to spend a bit of gold picking up cheese because you really needed cheese.

Certain items can only be acquired via the Farm. You might find that you sold the perfect Birthday Gift for someone whose birthday is in Winter, and the item itself can only be produced in Fall. It's too late to grow a new one, so your only hope is if you've sold a bunch of stuff to Pierre. Maybe, just maybe he'll have it in stock. Do note that this particular mechanic only applies to Pierre's General Store and not the other shops in Stardew Valley.

Finally, one additional side benefit is that Pierre (and other stores) pay you for your goods immediately. You don't have to wait for the day to roll over to cash in.

Building Silos

In our experience, most players do a little bit of everything. One of the core elements of Stardew Valley is raising Animals. Animals need to be fed, and if you don't provide them Hay, they won't produce any goods.

In an emergency (or when it's economically feasible), you can purchase it for 50g a piece from Marnie's Ranch. However, if you have Robin the Carpenter build a Silo on your Farm, any grass that you cut with the Scythe will automatically be turned into Hay and stored there. The Hay in your silos will also be accessible in your coops and barns so you won't have to worry about lugging it around.

Silos are fairly cheap and efficient to make in the early game, and there's an awful lot of Hay to be had. We racked up over 200 Hay when making a serious effort to clear our Farm. That's 10,000G worth of Hay, and it was just sitting there.

If you don't have a Silo and you cut your grass down, you'll get nothing for it. So if you have even the tiniest intention of integrating animals into your Farm, build a Silo first.

Fencing Animals

Fences aren't just used for decoration, they act as physical barriers that will block you and your animals from moving.

Letting your animals outside is at least a necessity for Pigs since that is how they gather Truffles. You don't want to have to deal with your little hogs walking all over your Farm, though.

Whether you're using them for decoration or for function, fences are a great way to zone off sections of your farm. A Gate will let you pass through with an interaction.

Fences don't last forever. You can make relatively cheap ones with Wood to start, and the best fences are made of the much rarer Hardwood. When a fence does decay, you can replace it without having to dig it up. If you're married, your loving spouse will occasionally "do some maintenance," which amounts to restoring the condition of existing fences. They won't repair any broken fences, so if you build any make sure you have some replacements on hand for the future.

Cooking Food

Once you've upgraded your home for the first time, you'll have access to a kitchen. The kitchen permits you to cook, and cooked food is arguably the best food in the game. The better recipes can restore absurd amounts of health, and energy, while certain cooked meals will give you special buffs.

Unfortunately, the buffs don't stack. We had made a few dozen Farmer's Lunches because they're cheap and relatively easy to make. Once you know all of the recipes in the chain, it ultimately costs one egg, one milk, and one parsnip each. A Farmer's Lunch gives you the Farming buff, which increases your Farming skill by 3 temporarily. We mainly use them to restore a lot of health and energy in the mines so that buff wasn't all that useful to us specifically.

We also acquired a bunch of Spicy Eels in adventures since they dropped from a particular enemy. We would eat a Farmer's Lunch, follow it up with a Spicy Eel, and find that my Farming buff had disappeared only to be replaced with a Luck and Speed buff.

Buffs don't stack with food, so if you're eating to restore health, make sure not to override the buffs you'd actually like to keep. Thankfully, eating food that doesn't provide any buffs won't cancel out your existing ones.

Try to hold onto a couple dozen Parsnips from your very first Spring. You'll probably get Chickens and Cows later in the Summer or Fall, and you won't exactly be able to go back in time and grow new Parsnips. 

Falling Trees

When you're chopping down trees they'll eventually fall over. Trees fall in a certain direction depending on where you're standing when you make the final cut.

If you're standing to the right of a tree, it will fall to the left, and if you're standing to the left of a tree, it will fall to the right. There are some reports about specific directions based on whether you're standing in front of or behind the tree, but our experience has been that this is a bit random.

The majority of trees are safely surrounded by ground and you don't risk losing anything when you chop them down. Some trees are near cliffs and the loot they drop might be wholly unreachable as it will land on the top of the cliff. Some trees are also by water and the loot will splash into a river or lake. In either case, they're unrecoverable and you wouldn't want to waste your time chopping down a tree only to get shafted for the loot.

There are also a handful of tree spawn points where you will always lose some loot no matter what you do. This is most commonly seen on the trees on little islands. Felling them in either direction will result in you losing something, though you may be able to get more logs by felling them in a particular direction.

Horsing Around

You can acquire a Stable from Robin the Carpenter. The price is 10,000g and costs 100 Hardwood, which will be difficult to obtain without upgrading your axe. If you have at least a Steel Axe, you can access the Secret Woods and get 12 Hardwood every day.

The horse is super useful. You can take it all over the town with you, and should you forget to bring your horse home, it will always return to its Stable. Ideally, building the Stable relatively close to your home allows you to get to it quickly.

Unfortunately, the horse has rather strange movement requirements. It only requires one tile of open space to move horizontally, but it requires two tiles of space to move vertically. If you're intent on making a one-wide path for your entire Farm, bear in mind that you won't be able to squeeze your horse through them. It's for that reason that we can get to most places on my Farm via a path that's two tiles wide.

This is also a consideration you'll have to make while running around Pelican Town or the wilds. Certain places like bridges or other paths can't fit your horse. Don't worry about leaving your horse behind if they're stuck somewhere inconvenient—they'll always return home the next day.

We hope you've found these tips helpful. 

Check out our exclusive chat with developer Eric "Concerned Ape" Barone. If you're more of an intermediate player, be sure to click on our Advanced Stardew Valley Tips guide. 

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