History YMMV / StardewValley

** 1.6 gave you the ability to ''drink Mayonnaise''.

* RonTheDeathEater: Of all people: ''Jas!'' Thanks to [[https://web.archive.org/web/20170809132247/http://www.nexusmods.com:80/stardewvalley/mods/609/ an infamous mod]] that makes her a {{Yandere}} [[ComedicLolicon love interest]] who will [[spoiler: [[EnfantTerrible murder anyone who gets]] [[MurderTheHypotenuse between her and the player character.]]]]

** Getting the "Craft Master" achievement, which requires you to craft at least one of every item available. Which would be fine... except there's currently no in-game way to keep track of exactly what you have or haven't made. Players have been pulling out their hair and wasting masses of resources trying to find that one object they still needed to trigger the star.
*** This was fixed in later updates with an AntiFrustrationFeature that shows how many objects of each type have been crafted.

** "Fector's Challenge" requires you to beat ''Journey of the Prairie King''...without dying. It's so notoriously hard that it's the sole reason the game's achievement/trophy list is a 9/10 in difficulty instead of a 1. Even [=ConcernedApe=] [[https://twitter.com/ConcernedApe/status/1504570305087303685 expressed regret at its difficulty]].
*** 1.5 reduced the difficulty substantially by allowing players to save their progress by exiting the game. If a good run is spoiled by a death, players can simply reset the day and give the level another try.

** The FeralChild, Leo, comes to live in Pelican Town if you raise his friendship with him enough, this could have opened a lot of interesting plotlines, like meeting Emily and the parrot she saved on her early heart event. Especially since the parrot is taken ''with'' Emily if the player marries her.

** The Worm Bin is seen as pretty useless large in part due to it giving out only a measly 5 bait at best despite having a pretty costly recipe (part of it requiring 25 hardwood and a gold bar)[[note]]To further highlight this cost. The ingredients needed for the Worm Bin all sell for 845g without professions. Since bait can be bought for 5g, you would effectively need to wait at ''least 40 days'' to pay off all the ingredients. If purchasing the materials in year one, then it'll take ''at least 260''.[[/note]] The fact you need level 8 fishing to get the recipe certainly doesn't help.
** Cookout Kits too are also seen as useless despite their "cook on-the-go" function. While its recipe is far more reasonable than the Worm Bin's, it's unlocked at ''level 9 foraging''. It's more than likely that a player would already have their house upgraded far before this point. It has been confirmed that this will be changed in the 1.6 update, such that the Cookout Kit will be unlocked earlier.

** THE SHANE TRAIN.[[labelnote:Explanation]]Before he was a romance option, Shane was an EnsembleDarkhorse for the fanbase. There was much rejoicing when he was added as a potential partner.[[/labelnote]]

* ComeForTheGameStayForTheMods: The game has a very large and dedicated [[GameMod modding]] community, since it's very easy for people without a lot of technical knowledge to create decent mods for it. The mods themselves range from simple graphical changes, adding new cutscene events, adding custom villagers or [=NPCs=], introducing new mechanics or quality-of-life improvements, to full-blown unofficial expansions (see the [[FanficRecs/StardewValley [=FanFic=] recommendations page]] for some individual examples). It is mentioned several times by the community that once you try ''Stardew Valley'' with mods you'll never play it without them again. In fact, [=ConcernedApe=] has gone on record saying that one of the objectives of the upcoming 1.6 patch is to make it even easier for mod creators to add new content.

*** Likewise, when the player collapses from exhaustion and Linus takes them back to their house, he leaves a note that ''someone'' was rifling through the pockets. Again, there's not many suspects so this means that any of the local townsfolk could have a ''far'' less morally upright side to them. Currently among the fandom, the suspects are Morris (again), The Dwarf, Linus, Marlon and Shane.

!! For the video game:

!! For the board game:

** In the board game, farm animals are borderline useless due to how incredibly cost-ineffective they are. For starters, you need to purchase a coop or barn from Robin before you can even begin purchasing animals. You do so from Marnie, who's off by herself in an out-of-the-way location that severely limits what other action you can take on your turn. Said animals are anything but cheap, with chickens, the least expensive, costing a whopping 6 gold. Quality wool, the most valuable animal product you can get, only sells for that same amount from an animal that costs more than ''twice'' that amount to purchase. Even once you've gotten animals, whether or not you can even harvest anything from them is entirely up to a dice roll, meaning it's quite possible and even ''likely'' that you'll dump tons of money into farm animals, only to get ''absolutely nothing'' out of the endeavor. In contrast, crops are significantly cheaper, ''much'' more profitable, and are far less susceptible to Lady Luck screwing you over, meaning there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to invest in farm animals unless you're unfortunate enough to be saddled with the "Raise Farm Animals" goal, which requires you to have them, or if the Pantry bundle or Bulletin Board bundle demands Animal Products.

** As far as the board game goes:
*** The "Explore the Mines" goal is notoriously difficult as the player count drops. The problem here is that, unlike every other goal in the game, this one doesn't scale with the number of players; you have to reach level 12, no matter what. Given how fewer players means fewer actions to work with and how the mines are [[LuckBasedMission entirely determined by dice rolls]], getting this goal [[CharacterSelectForcing basically forces somebody to take the Miner profession and the pickaxe]] in order to swing the odds in your favor as much as possible. It's [[PopularGameVariant not uncommon for games with fewer players to implement a house rule]] changing this card to require that three levels be completed per player, making it more in line with the other Grandpa's Goals in the game. The only saving grace at low levels of players is that the resource requirements for building staircases scales with the number of players, allowing smaller numbers of players to easily get to the bottom without truly exploring it, but since that very stone will likely have to compete with building construction, it's a small blessing.
*** "Catch Legendary Fish" is, inversely, a nightmare with ''higher'' player counts. The difficulty isn't in catching them; it's in simply ''finding'' the damn things to begin with. There are at most only five fish available to catch at any given time, and with only four Legendary Fish in a pool with ''dozens'' of fish tiles that can possibly be drawn, it's not uncommon for an entire game to go by without even ''one'' Legendary Fish appearing on the track. Playing with a full complement of four players? Have fun praying to Yoba that you can not only get ''all four'' to appear in the same game, but can also catch them all before an errant season card yeets one of them off the fish track, at which point you might as well just give up since you then have to be lucky enough to draw it ''again''. Unlike most of the other goals, which can be reasonably accomplished with good planning and resource management, this goal revolves around nothing but [[LuckBasedMission sheer dumb luck]].
*** The Vault just plain sucks. Unlike other Community Center rooms, whose bundles differ in what kind of resource you need, the Vault cards only differ in how much you have to pay, which means the only thing being determined is how hard the game's deciding to put the screws to you. Its sole purpose seems to be to force you to burn through heart tokens in order to re-roll the room until you get the lowest-priced bundle.

* ''VideoGame/StardewValley'':

** It was possible to plant fruit trees everywhere in the game, including in some interesting places, such as the bathhouse. This got fixed with the 1.1 update, so that trees can now only grow in spaces that could support them. However, patch 1.5 reverted the previous fix for planting fruit trees inside the greenhouse outside the dedicated soil area, making it an example of an AscendedGlitch.

* DiagnosedByTheAudience: Fans widely headcanon [[BlackAndNerdy Demetrius]] as autistic thanks to his LiteralMinded and highly logical approach to things in addition to his social awkwardness. At one point, he states that he doesn't always understand the assumptions in what other people say, but will try his best to do so, which autistic fans particularly cite as paralleling their own experiences.

** Despite Seb and Sam having their own respective love interests, a lot of fans like to pair the two friends together instead due to their close friendship and the appeal of OppositesAttract. They are by far the most popular pairing on Website/ArchiveOfOurOwn that does not involve the PlayerCharacter.

** It was possible to plant fruit trees everywhere in the game, including in some interesting places, such as the bathhouse. This got fixed with the 1.1 update, but the same update reverted the previous fix for planting fruit trees inside the greenhouse and outside the dedicated soil area, making it an example of an AscendedGlitch. However, patch 1.5 removed this, and trees can now only grow in spaces that could support them.

** A certain wallpaper has the same numerical value as a Prismatic Shard, meaning you can get the legendarily powerful Galaxy Sword... ''from a wallpaper''. Similarly, another wallpaper has the same numerical value as a Dinosaur egg. Meaning that you can put one in a stage 2 coop, and after enough time, it'll hatch into a dinosaur. This has been fixed, though you can still use the wallpaper in place of the prismatic shard for the Lost Bundle.
*** A related glitch: you can put a yellow couch into a loom and it'll make cloth. Craft a bunch of looms, buy the Catalog from Robin to get as many free couches as you want, and you basically have a money printing press ready to go.
** Facing a loading zone and constantly slashing your sword or scythe can allow you to bypass the loading zone and go out-of-bounds. This is usually humorous, but can be extremely useful in the cellar and beach, as you get more room to place casks/crab pots.

* HarsherInHindsight: [[spoiler: [=JojaMart=] being driven out of town after completing the Community Center]] is portrayed as a positive outcome for the future of Pelican Town. [[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/09/what-happened-when-walmart-left More recent investigations]] have shown that [[spoiler:when its real life counterpart [=WalMart=] ends up pulling its business out of small towns]], the result is absolutely ''devastating'' to the local economy[[note]]This however ignores the fact that [=WalMart=] entering any town will first kill any small business operating in it by sheer scale and competition it can afford. The reason the whole local economy crashes once the shop leaves is nothing but an aftermath of it first killing every other commercial and most service-related businesses in a given town, turning into the sole employer. Once gone, there is nobody left to hire and nobody with capital to do anything about the situation. Since the player drives out Joja before the town reaches this point, the result ''should'' be more positive.[[/note]]. The game itself acknowledges this - Shane is extremely distraught over losing his job and no longer being able to help Marnie financially support him and Jas.

** Cookout Kits too are also seen as useless despite their "cook on-the-go" function. While its recipe is far more reasonable than the Worm Bin's, it's unlocked at ''level 9 foraging''. It's more than likely that a player would already have their house upgraded far before this point.

* MemeticLoser: Thanks to being fat, dumpy, and at one point describing himself as a "nice guy" when complaining about being unlucky in love, Clint is the fanbase's favorite punching bag and often subjected to jokes comparing him to incels. And because his obsessive crush on Emily is doomed to never go anywhere thanks to her being a romance option, particularly spiteful players have been known to make sure their and Emily's wedding and subsequent anniversaries are on the same day as Clint's birthday just to rub salt in the wound. [[ArsonMurderAndJaywalking He's also the last character in a year to have a birthday, the day after the Feast of the Winter Star]], but he often gives a few scripted missions that already improve his relations with the player, which often means his birthday is skipped because the bonus isn't really needed at that point; On top of that, once you max upgrade your tools there's little reason to continue interacting with him other than to occassionally have him crack open artifact troves or golden coconuts (which can't be opened otherwise).

** "Your Copper/Gold/Iridium Hoe is ready". [[labelnote:Explanation]] Since a marriage and a tool upgrade take the same amount of time and the ceremony and the aforementioned pop-up message can happen together, some players deliberatelly propose to Leah (or Penny), Haley or Abigail at the same time they upgrade the hoe to copper, gold or iridium, respectively, only for the amusing unintentional double entendre.[[/labelnote]]
* MisaimedRealism: You will gradually become exhausted by using tools in the farm or the mines, and you'll collapse if you push yourself too far. Okay, but combat does not make you exhausted, no matter how much hard labor you did before hand. This leads to the ridiculous situation where you can spend all morning clearing your farm, becoming completely exhausted, and then you spend all afternoon fighting monsters in the mine, and finally collapse after chopping up a single fallen tree branch when you return home in the evening. You also can't sprint if you're exhausted. Though, oddly enough, you can work yourself to the edge of exhaustion and still be able to sprint at top speed all day.

** Pierre is not much liked amongst players, especially because he is the most obnoxious competitor in the Grange (he's the winner if you don't meet the points quota), and he has a tendency to [[StealingTheCredit steal the credit]] for your high-quality produce if you sell it to him.[[note]] As of v.1.4 at the very least if you talk to people around town, you'll hear them talk about Pierre taking credit for finding/growing produce they really enjoyed, but that specifically matches an item you recently sold to him. If it's regular quality, which is perceived as "bad," he has no problem letting them know it was yours.[[/note]] It gets worse with the special orders, as one of his quests ends in him not only underpaying you for your produce but turning around and trying to sell it at a ridiculous markup. Fans of Abigail have an additional disdain for him because of the StayInTheKitchen attitude he has towards his wife and daughter. There's even a [[{{Website/Reddit}} subreddit]] called [[https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckPierre/ r/FuckPierre]] with more than 37,000 members!

** Jas's room is mostly normal, except for the fact that the grandfather doll in her dollhouse has been separated from the rest and jammed under the bed. The game never offers an explanation as to why. Some have taken it to mean that Jas was abused by her grandfather, thus explaining why she lives with Marnie instead of her own relatives, while others believe Jas must have seen Lewis hiding under Marnie's bed at some point.

** If the player marries Shane, they don't get the option to adopt Jas.

** The FeralChild, Leo, comes to live in Pelican Town if you raise his friendship with him enough, this could have opened a lot of interesting plotlines, like meeting Emily and the parrot she saved on her early heart event.

** While the player never finds out just who has been harassing Linus and destroying his tent, the limited pool of suspects means that just about any of the local villagers could have a far nastier side to them not displayed in-game; it could be entirely possible, however, that the culprit is known JerkAss Morris or someone visiting from outside town. Other suspects include Sebastian throwing rocks into the darkness and hitting the tent without realizing it or rocks simply being shaken loose as the trains pass by and Linus jumping to conclusions.

* ComeForTheGameStayForTheMods: The game has a very large and dedicated [[GameMod modding]] community, since it's very easy for people without a lot of technical knowledge to create decent mods for it. The mods themselves range from simple graphical changes, adding new cutscene events, adding custom villagers or [=NPCs=], introducing new mechanics or quality-of-life improvements, to full-blown unofficial expansions (see the [[FanficRecs/StardewValley [=FanFic=] recommendations page]] for some individual examples). It is mentioned several times by the community that once you try ''Stardew Valley'' with mods you'll never play it without them again.

* ComeForTheGameStayForTheMods: The game has a very large and dedicated [[GameMod modding]] community, since it's very easy for people without a lot of technical knowledge to create decent mods for it. The mods themselves range from simple graphical changes, adding new cutscene events, adding custom villagers or [=NPCs=], introducing new mechanics or quality-of-life improvements, to full-blown unofficial expansions (see the [[FanficRecs/StardewValley [=FanFic=] recommendations page]] for some individual examples). It is mentioned several times by the community that once you try ''Stardew Valley'' with mods you'll never play it without them again.

** 1.5 not only made these items much less rare, hut even added a small Easter Egg for after the Strange Capsule breaks.

** The Worm Bin is seen as pretty useless large in part due to it giving out only a measly 5 bait at best despite having a pretty costly recipe (part of it requiring 25 hardwood and a gold bar)[[note]]To further highlight this cost. The ingredients needed for the Worm Bin all sell for 845g without professions. Since bait can be bought for 5g, you would effectively need to wait at ''least 40 days'' to pay off all the ingredients. If purchasing the materials in year one, then it'll take ''at least 260''.[[/note]] The fact you need level 8 fishing in order to get the recipe certainly doesn't help.

** You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who likes Pam either. She has very little personality beyond her alcoholism, and she's also rude to her daughter Penny, leaving her to do all the housework and then chewing her out for accepting help from the farmer.

** It can be hard not to [[HehHehYouSaidX giggle]] when one of the female townsfolk posts a request for a phallic-looking sea/super cucumber, or an eggplant, and refuse to explain why they need it. Or even worse, an [[NaughtyTentacles octopus]].

** Crab pots and their mechanic aren't enjoyable for many. You need a lot of them in order to make them worthwhile and each one requires either 1,500g or 3 iron bars and 40 wood without the Trapper profession. You're unlikely to have a substantial amount of any at level 3 fishing. Even then, each pot only gives a measly 5 exp each and you can only catch normal-quality creatures, with the most profitable one, the lobster, only having a 4% catch chance without the Mariner profession and only paying off one iron bar. On top of all this, you ''have'' to remember to harvest and refill the pots ''every single day'', otherwise you'll lose what little profit you might have gotten. Even if you take the professions that specifically make crab pots slightly less of a hassle, you are still gonna have to manage them daily.

*** Finally, there's the Monster Farm, which looks no different from the traditional Farm, but has monsters that constantly impede your progress.

** A lot of fans find the concept of having children to be pointless because they don't grow up past toddler-age and there is very little you can do with them. They're essentially animals that walk around your house.

** Flowers seeds can produce different colour variations of the same flower, looks nice, but the problem is that different coloured flowers don't stack with each other in your inventory, combine this with the different qualities of crops and a single flower harvest can easily bloat up your inventory and chest storages.

** The slingshots. The aiming controls are reversed (until an update added the option to reverse this back into being straight), for one, which makes it hard for those that don't use inverted view to get used to how it works. That aside, it's also hard to tell what you're aiming at and whether you'll hit it, and it doesn't even do that much damage if you manage to hit your target. Annoyingly, they're also the only ranged weapons in the game, so if you don't like how they work, you're forced to use melee. On the bright side, it's ''very'' effective at destroying rocks or killing mummies when armed with explosive shots, and you can have fun harassing the [=NPCs=] with it.

** It's entirely possible to rebuild the Community Center within your first year, a feat that requires meticulous planning, MinMaxing to buy the Vault Bundles, and generous purchases from the Travelling Cart, which is the only way to get red cabbage in year 1 (you can't buy seeds for it until year 2).

** The Worm Bin is seen as pretty useless large in part due to it giving out only a measly 5 bait at best despite having a pretty costly recipe (part of it requiring 25 hardwood and a gold bar)[[note]]To further highlight this cost. The ingredients needed for the Worm Bin all sell for 845g without professions. Since bait can be bought for 5g, you would effectively need to wait at ''least 40 days'' to pay off all the ingredients. If this is year one, then it'll take ''at least 260''[[/note]] The fact you need level 8 fishing in order to get the recipe certainly doesn't help.

* LowTierLetdown: In the board game, farm animals are borderline useless due to how incredibly cost-ineffective they are. For starters, you need to purchase a coop or barn from Robin before you can even begin purchasing animals. You do so from Marnie, who's off by herself in an out-of-the-way location that severely limits what other action you can take on your turn. Said animals are anything but cheap, with chickens, the least expensive, costing a whopping 6 gold. Quality wool, the most valuable animal product you can get, only sells for that same amount from an animal that costs more than ''twice'' that amount to purchase. Even once you've gotten animals, whether or not you can even harvest anything from them is entirely up to a dice roll, meaning it's quite possible and even ''likely'' that you'll dump tons of money into farm animals, only to get ''absolutely nothing'' out of the endeavor. In contrast, crops are significantly cheaper, ''much'' more profitable, and are far less susceptible to Lady Luck screwing you over, meaning there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to invest in farm animals unless you're unfortunate enough to be saddled with the "Raise Farm Animals" goal, which requires you to have them, of if the Pantry bundle or Bulletin Board bundle demands Animal Products.

* MinmaxersDelight:
** Sprinklers, especially those of Iridium quality. Once you can acquire them readily, you'll no longer have to water your crops manually, saving you a ton of time and energy. Patch 1.5 made them even more valuable with upgrades that either automatically add time-saving fertilizer to their watering or increase their range, making sprinklers even more useful.
** Auto-Grabbers and fully upgraded Coops and Barns make gathering resources from animals a cinch.
** Tea Saplings. You obtain the recipe to craft them after having only 2 hearts with Caroline and, while you can plant them to have a constant supply of tea leaves in all seasons except Winter, they also can be sold for 500g each, take relatively few common resources to craft and you can sell them to Pierre for instant cash, making them an excellent source of money in the early game.

* LowTierLetdown: In the board game, farm animals are borderline useless due to how incredibly cost-ineffective they are. For starters, you need to purchase a coop or barn from Robin before you can even begin purchasing animals. You do so from Marnie, who's off by herself in an out-of-the-way location that severely limits what other action you can take on your turn. Said animals are anything but cheap, with chickens, the least expensive, costing a whopping 6 gold. Quality wool, the most valuable animal product you can get, only sells for that same amount from an animal that costs more than ''twice'' that amount to purchase. Even once you've gotten animals, whether or not you can even harvest anything from them is entirely up to a dice roll, meaning it's quite possible and even ''likely'' that you'll dump tons of money into farm animals, only to get ''absolutely nothing'' out of the endeavor. In contrast, crops are significantly cheaper, ''much'' more profitable, and are far less susceptible to Lady Luck screwing you over, meaning there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to invest in farm animals unless you're unfortunate enough to be saddled with the "Raise Farm Animals" goal, which requires you to have them.

*** The "Explore the Mines" goal is notoriously difficult as the player count drops. The problem here is that, unlike every other goal in the game, this one doesn't scale with the number of players; you have to reach level 12, no matter what. Given how fewer players means fewer actions to work with and how the mines are [[LuckBasedMission entirely determined by dice rolls]], getting this goal [[CharacterSelectForcing basically forces somebody to take the Miner profession and the pickaxe]] in order to swing the odds in your favor as much as possible. It's [[PopularGameVariant not uncommon for games with fewer players to implement a house rule]] changing this card to require that three levels be completed per player, making it more in line with the other Grandpa's Goals in the game. The only saving grace at low levels of players is that the resource requirements for building staircases scales with the number of players, allowing smaller numbers of players to easily get to the bottom without truly exploring it.

*** The "Explore the Mines" goal is notoriously difficult as the player count drops. The problem here is that, unlike every other goal in the game, this one doesn't scale with the number of players; you have to reach level 12, no matter what. Given how fewer players means fewer actions to work with and how the mines are [[LuckBasedMission entirely determined by dice rolls]], getting this goal [[CharacterSelectForcing basically forces somebody to take the Miner profession and the pickaxe]] in order to swing the odds in your favor as much as possible. It's [[PopularGameVariant not uncommon for games with fewer players to implement a house rule]] changing this card to require that three levels be completed per player, making it more in line with the other Grandpa's Goals in the game.

** It can be hard not to [[HehHehYouSaidX giggle]] when one of the female townsfolk posts a request for a phallic-looking sea/super cucumber, or an eggplant, and refuse to explain why they need it. Or even worse, an octopus.