Starting out in Stardew Valley, despite its reputation for coziness and comfort, can be an overwhelming experience. While there are plenty of other resources online, particularly the Stardew Valley Wiki, even those can be an information overload for someone booting up the game for the very first time.
To make the very first days of Stardew Valley easier, here are some non-spoiler tips to get started with a bang in Spring 1, from which skills you shouldn’t ignore to how you should spend your limited fund of starter gold.
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Buy Seeds (but save for the Egg Festival)
While it might sound obvious, buying seeds as soon as possible is a key step to success in Stardew Valley. Your very first day on the farm should be spent clearing a modest space for crops, which will entail chopping down trees, removing rocks, and tilling the ground. Don’t feel the need to clear a lot of land right away, the priority should be to getting crops growing!
Head over to Pierre’s shop in Pelican Town and buy as many seeds as you can afford – gold won’t do you much good at this point in the game and is best invested in growing crops.
Strawberries are the most profitable Spring crop, but its seeds are only available on Spring 13 at the Egg Festival in Year 1.
If you’re looking forward to next year already, then be sure to buy strawberry plants at the Egg Festival. While you could plant them that day for a tidy profit (but it would have to be the night of the festival, or else they won’t ripen in time), it’s a nice investment in the future to have strawberries ready to plant on Spring 1 of Year 2.
Foraged Food
Energy is the most important resource in the early days of a new farm in Stardew Valley. Plowing fields and watering plants can easily mow through the majority of your energy, so it’s important to maximize your effectiveness by having some snacks available to keep energy levels up. The best way to do that is to forage for food around Pelican Town and the woods near the farm, or craft field snacks from the seeds found from chopping down trees.
Be sure to collect at least one wild horseradish, daffodil, leek, and dandelion for a quest later on!
Having a few meals throughout the day is a great way to get the most out of every day, though be sure not to eat all of every food type you find, as some might be important to quests down the road.
Watch TV every day
Stardew Valley is all about connecting with nature and the people around you, but that doesn’t mean the farmer doesn’t need their TV fix. Jokes aside, the TV located inside the farm house is not there just for decor, it also drops important information that players need to plan their days. Programs include the weather report, a fortune teller, Livin’ Off The Land, and The Queen of Sauce, each of which provides their own important nuggets of wisdom.
On top of the TV, it’s worth it to buy a calendar for your house from Pierre’s and check every day for upcoming birthdays and festivals!
The weather report will let players know what they can expect for tomorrow’s forecast, which can inform what task they want to focus on that day – rain can mean a day off from watering plants. The fortune teller gives players an insight into their luck for the day, which can be especially important when planning a day into the Mines, as drop rates are greatly impacted by good and bad luck.
For new players, Livin’ Off The Land provides great (and often timely) tips into farming and foraging, like when berries are in season around the valley or what types of fish are available this season. Finally, Queen of Sauce gives free recipes weekly, which opens up new food items for players to cook for either gifting, selling, or eating themselves.
Don’t Overlook Fishing
The fishing minigame is a divisive activity in Stardew Valley – some players can’t get enough, while others struggle to grasp how exactly the mechanics work, especially on console. The advice regarding fishing is simply: don’t give up. Fishing is a low energy cost activity that can (literally) pull in solid profits, which makes it a worthwhile skill to master.
Unfortunately with fishing, the only real advice is to just practice until you get the hang of keeping the fish inside the green bar. Depending on the fish, this can be incredibly difficult, so don’t be discouraged if a few slippery fish escape easily.
Craft Sprinklers ASAP
There’s an endless list of fun things to do in Stardew Valley, and watering plants is not exactly at the top. Not only does it take up a lot of time in the morning, it eats up valuable energy that could be used towards clearing more land on the farm, fishing, or venturing into the Mines. To alleviate this task, try to build some sprinklers as soon as you unlock the recipe.
The basic sprinkler recipe unlocks with level two of farming, which means it’s very easy to get and is relatively cheap at one copper bar and one iron bar per sprinkler. While these early sprinklers don’t exactly cover a huge swath of land, they do take a good portion of work off the farmer’s hands every morning and there are some clever ways to lay them out on the farm.
Wait for your first rainy day and take a trip into the Mines, gather up some copper and iron ore, and get those smelted to build a few sprinklers. Since the early farm is often modest in size, having just a handful can go a long way in making farming less time-consuming as you explore the map and meet all of its colorful characters.
With all of these tips in mind, you’re ready to take on Stardew Valley! Online wikis and fan forums are also great resources for specific questions, but be wary that spoilers are common and easy to find accidentially, especially regarding character story moments.
