Stardew Valley Journal

[The Seamstress]

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 

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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...

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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.

[Jubal]

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 

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.

[The Seamstress]

So 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...!

Looking 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!

[The Seamstress]

Finally saved up enough to get a barn constructed. I want animals!

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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.)

[The Seamstress]

Behold! My brand new barn and brand new dairy cows, Queen Moo and Lady Bovine I.

I'm very proud.

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Moo!

I wanted sheep but apparently you have to construct a deluxe barn for those. Well then...

[Jubal]

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...!

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).

[The Seamstress]

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).

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.

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[Jubal]

I enjoy the idea of fruit bats that provide fruit, which I think is somewhat the opposite of how fruit bats typically work

Collective 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)

[The Seamstress]

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)

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!)

[Spritelady]

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

[The Seamstress]

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

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...

[The Seamstress]

It's autumn! I'm collecting mushrooms

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[The Seamstress]

Uhm...

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[Jubal]

Uhm...

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COLLECT IT

[The Seamstress]

COLLECT IT

OF COURSE

(Well, I chopped it up like a tree and it exploded into several smaller mushrooms I then could collect, lol.)