I've been getting back into gaming recently and started playing Stardew Valley!
I thought I'd document my adventures here a bit, if that's okay! There'll be spoilers for the game so if you haven't played it and plan to, be aware of that. I try to not give away too much about how things are done, just what happens and what I encounter while becoming a virtual farmer.
I've played through the Spring season and am now on Day 1 of Summer in Year 1. Which obviously means that my precious spring crops all died overnight?!? Noooo :'(
the crops are dead.jpg
The crops... are dead.
I spent so much money on the seeds!! That's a bummer. My beautiful beans and strawberries are gone. (And yes, that's a scarecrow.)
I'm kinda addicted to this game already, lol. I love foraging, collecting things like wood, stones, plants and other stuff. Currently I'm exploring a mine north of town, there's even monsters so I got a sword to defend myself while looking for geodes, gems and more interesting things...
Here's the inside of my house. The strawberry you see on the table is the first strawberry I ever harvested, and it now sits there, fortunately somehow magically preserved, for me to look at and be proud of. I'm saving money and collecting raw materials now to get a kitchen made by the local carpenter, that stuff is expensive...
home.jpg
Home sweet home! There's spaghetti in my inventory.
It's been very fun so far, and I've even seen a bunny! It ran from one bush to another, but hey, a bun's a bun.
Quote from: The Seamstress on August 09, 2025, 02:18:55 PMI've played through the Spring season and am now on Day 1 of Summer in Year 1. Which obviously means that my precious spring crops all died overnight?!? Noooo :'(
So it's like my real attempts st growing plants then:)
Looking forward to hearing more! SV has a whole like town & NPCs element to it too right? I've never played it myself.
Quote from: Jubal on August 09, 2025, 10:25:27 PMSo it's like my real attempts st growing plants then:)
The game is very realistic, also considering the fact that everything's expensive and I'm currently chopping up trees all day to sell the wood and be able to afford house upgrades...!
QuoteLooking forward to hearing more! SV has a whole like town & NPCs element to it too right? I've never played it myself.
Thanks! :)
Yes, you start out with a one-room farmhouse and a plot of land but there's a town nearby full of people with different personalities who you can befriend (and apparently you can even get married, since that's one of the achievements on steam). You can talk to them and give them gifts, and they give you little quests such as "I want a cauliflower for a new recipe" or the more recent "I lost my favourite purple shorts" lol. (The latter came from the mayor and I haven't been able to find the shorts yet... There's no clue as to where he lost them! Pff.) It's quite funny. There are shops where you can buy seeds and sell crops, they have a saloon that sells food and drinks, and there are events/festivals or days when a bookseller is in town... things like that.
Apart from the town you get to explore the surroundings, there's another farmhouse with cattle, a wizard who lives in a tower (who somehow gave me a magic ability by making me hallucinate trees...), some abandoned houses, a beach, a mine, the forest etc. At the beginning of the game you can choose a landscape and I chose the forested area, so I guess there's more. And there are also wild animals, which is nice. So far I've seen rabbits and different birds!
Finally saved up enough to get a barn constructed. I want animals!
barn-in-progress.jpg
Barn in progress.
It was expensive... so I'm still chopping up trees (and planting new ones) and selling everything I harvest and forage so I save enough money for upgrades.
My summer crops are doing well. I saw a squirrel!
And a guy promised to put fruit bats into a cave near my house?? (I could choose to get either mushrooms or bats in there, so of course I chose the bats.)
Behold! My brand new barn and brand new dairy cows, Queen Moo and Lady Bovine I.
I'm very proud.
cows.jpg
Moo!
I wanted sheep but apparently you have to construct a deluxe barn for those. Well then...
Quote from: The Seamstress on August 10, 2025, 12:53:30 PMThe game is very realistic, also considering the fact that everything's expensive and I'm currently chopping up trees all day to sell the wood and be able to afford house upgrades...!
Hm, yes, though not many people make a living cutting wood by hand (I did recently have some social media recommend me a lot of videos of someone cutting wood with an axe, but I suspect that the money in that person's business is coming from that being their thing on social media not from them selling the wood!)
I have also been tree-cutting, but in Return to Moria. A game which also has bats, but sadly not friendly bats. I hope your bat colony is fun! (My parents have a real life bat colony this year, I think they counted 136 soprano pipistrelles that are living in their roof).
Quote from: Jubal on August 10, 2025, 08:54:32 PMI have also been tree-cutting, but in Return to Moria. A game which also has bats, but sadly not friendly bats. I hope your bat colony is fun! (My parents have a real life bat colony this year, I think they counted 136 soprano pipistrelles that are living in their roof).
I googled pictures of soprano pipistrelles (what a name!), cute! :)
Collective tree-cutting and bat watching... Do you collect materials for buildings in Return to Moria too?
Here are my bats. Or rather, the fruit they kindly left for me. Look closely and you can see a pair of red eyes glinting in the darkness... Sometimes one of them flies across the cave, also they make little squeaky noises.
bats.jpg
I enjoy the idea of fruit bats that provide fruit, which I think is somewhat the opposite of how fruit bats typically work :)
Quote from: The Seamstress on August 10, 2025, 09:04:27 PMCollective tree-cutting and bat watching... Do you collect materials for buildings in Return to Moria too?
Yes, absolutely - different sorts of wood, stone, etc. You don't build buildings in the sense of having eg "a barn" as an option, it's more modular than that: you have individual segments of wall, floor, roof, etc that you can use to put buildings together, then various particular furnishings and amenities that can go inside (forges, ovens, meal tables, beds)
Quote from: Jubal on August 10, 2025, 09:58:04 PMYes, absolutely - different sorts of wood, stone, etc. You don't build buildings in the sense of having eg "a barn" as an option, it's more modular than that: you have individual segments of wall, floor, roof, etc that you can use to put buildings together, then various particular furnishings and amenities that can go inside (forges, ovens, meal tables, beds)
Sounds really cool. I like collecting and building stuff. :) (I have RTM on my wishlist too but I'm pretty sure my laptop won't cooperate on that, I guess I'll have to wait until I get better gaming equipment!)
Having only just spotted this thread, it's possible my advice about similar games that are also excellent maybe should have gone in here, but ah well!
Glad you're enjoying SV. As I said, it's one of my absolute favourite games. And let me know if you want a hint about the purple shorts...they've ended up in a very amusing location XD
Quote from: Spritelady on August 11, 2025, 11:19:51 AMHaving only just spotted this thread, it's possible my advice about similar games that are also excellent maybe should have gone in here, but ah well!
Glad you're enjoying SV. As I said, it's one of my absolute favourite games. And let me know if you want a hint about the purple shorts...they've ended up in a very amusing location XD
Thank you for the advice! Will look into it :)
Yes, it's quite fun! The kind of "turn off your brain and relax" game I need sometimes. I like that you can silence the music completely btw and just have the other sounds (rain and such) because that's actually a more calming experience for me. I also really enjoy the foraging/collecting aspect of it, as I already said. (Whenever I played RPGs in the past I loved to just walk around cutting grass and finding things. Fighting monsters can wait, lol.)
I've not given up my search of the shorts yet, but thanks for the offer! Maybe I'll need the hint at some point...
It's autumn! I'm collecting mushrooms :)
autumn.jpg
Uhm...
giantshroom.jpg
Quote from: Jubal on August 11, 2025, 07:28:26 PMCOLLECT IT
OF COURSE
(Well, I chopped it up like a tree and it exploded into several smaller mushrooms I then could collect, lol.)
Quote from: Son of the King on August 11, 2025, 09:23:18 PMIs this as big as they can get?
That's the biggest mushroom in the game I've seen so far. It was the only one of its kind apparently so I'm probably responsible for its extinction...
Don't worry, you'll find more!
Which kind of farm layout did you select at the start?
Quote from: Spritelady on August 12, 2025, 11:43:38 AMDon't worry, you'll find more!
Which kind of farm layout did you select at the start?
That's good! More shrooms!
I'm not sure what you mean by farm layout, I'm in the forested area, is that it?
Time for an update (and I hope uploading the pictures works). I finally got my house upgrade! Yay! It cost 10.000 coins and required 450 pieces of wood. Phew. Worth it though.
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I have a kitchen now where I can actually cook meals and store food in the fridge, very nice. Also I have more space for decorations and furniture.
There was some sort of fair in town where I displayed some of my foraged and harvested things, also my precious cows' milk, the mayor was quite impressed. I now own three cows and named the new one Moonique. Queen Moo is still my favourite though.
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Speaking of the mayor... I found the purple shorts...
Spoiler
...in Marnie the cattle farmer's bedroom. Uh... why exactly did that guy ask me to find them then?? Creep.
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Lies!
Harvey the town doctor likes me... ??? :-[
flirting harvey.jpg
He actually seems nice though, lol.
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I also now have a silo to store hay in, but not enough hay, so I desperately am scraping it together before winter comes. My cows have a heater in the barn to keep them warm and happy, but they need to eat! That's my next mission.
Yes, starving your cows does not sound like a good plan!
Reporting live from the Haunted Maze, wearing my fancy new red shirt. That's Harvey right there who told me he's scared and therefore hiding. Aw. Well, I think I'll go explore the maze now.
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I acquired around 200 bales of hay (240 fit into the silo) and I hope it's enough. Hopefully I can buy some more if not... My cows eat a lot, but it pays off. I can sell the milk for a good price! Invest in dairy cows, friends!
Winter!! Why don't I have winter clothes?
winter.jpg
QuoteReporting live from the Haunted Maze, wearing my fancy new red shirt.
Has your character never seen or heard of Star Trek, or are they just keen not to survive the maze? :o
Quote from: Jubal on August 12, 2025, 08:39:33 PMHas your character never seen or heard of Star Trek, or are they just keen not to survive the maze? :o
I just pretend I'm Scotty, "the only guy in a red shirt that doesn't die", lol. I survived the maze btw, no problem. The scary things were all harmless props and I even found a golden pumpkin in a hidden chest! I fear no maze!
I just got a fourth cow, named Cowmilla, the barn is now apparently at maximum capacity. Next goal: saving for a big barn so I can get sheep (?). That thing is even more expensive than the house upgrade and I'm low on money because I can't grow crops in winter. Selling wood, stones, and homemade jam from the fruit storage... and milk! But it's gonna be tough.
I now have a big barn! Which unlocked goats (I can't afford one yet). Still no sheep though. Apparently "deluxe barn" is not the same as "big barn" like I've previously assumed. And after consulting the carpenter, I now know that a "deluxe barn" costs 25.000 coins, 550 pieces of wood, and 300 pieces of stone. Are you kidding me?? I worked so hard for the 12.000 coins + materials the big barn cost... Argh. Sheep are a luxury item in this game it seems.
I might get another cow in the meantime though. Once they're grown up and happy and give you larger amounts of milk, that's a sure way of making a good sum of money every day. (Like I said, invest in dairy cows, friends!)
I discovered that the wild bunnies in winter are white! So cute!
The shop keeper sent me a letter informing me that if I had any romantic interests in town I could now buy a bouquet of flowers at his shop to give to my chosen person. Interesting.
Also upgraded two of my tools (axe and pickaxe), got two fermentation thingies to make jam/jelly, and have divided my possessions into three separate chests in my house, one for seeds and fertilizer, one for decorative stuff and clothes, and one for everything else. Very practical. The fridge is full of food, too.
I love digging for treasures in the mine, but the monsters are so utterly annoying. There's one type of monster that's THE WORST, some buzzing insect type thing that attacks you from all sides and does quite some damage when it hits you. Leave me alone! I just want to break stones with my pickaxe and find gemstones and geodes!
Quote from: The Seamstress on August 13, 2025, 09:04:32 PMOnce they're grown up and happy and give you larger amounts of milk, that's a sure way of making a good sum of money every day.
Have you ever seen the Mitchell & Webb farming sketch? If not, remind me to dig a YouTube link out for you :)
Quote from: Jubal on August 13, 2025, 11:26:51 PMHave you ever seen the Mitchell & Webb farming sketch? If not, remind me to dig a YouTube link out for you :)
I haven't! I'll remind you :)
More News from Stardew Valley:
Got another cow, named Bovinia. That's the fifth cow I own and I'm quite happy with them. Still saving for the deluxe barn, almost halfway there!
In the meantime I completed a few little quests for the townsfolk (gifting an amethyst, delivering hardwood to the carpenter, giving a cave carrot to Marnie, who wanted it for her goats...). Harvey is now my bf <3 lol. I got another item chest in my house to store my growing stock of jam/jelly, the fruit bats deliver fruit even in winter which is very nice (though there's not as much as in summer).
I'm collecting copper ore and coal to smelt copper bars, which then can be turned into iron bars, needed for all kinds of crafts and upgrades. I really hope I can get sheep soon... Another goal: getting a chicken coop. This is not as expensive as the barns but still...
Some Harvey lore:
Spoiler
I walked in on him participating in a dance aerobic class at the shopkeeper's house, lol. I had to promise to not tell anyone. Which makes zero sense because a lot of other townspeople were there, too?? Oh well.
harv.jpg
There was a cutscene so technically I had no choice...