Linus' 4-heart event involves him inviting the player inside his tent because he wants to "show you something". Both walk into the tent but the camera doesn't show us what's happening. All we hear are some very nasty squishing noises. It turns out he was just showing you how to make a special fishing bait out of bug meat but it didn't take long for the fandom to start making jokes about how it sounded like he was doing something naughty to the player.
It can be hard not to giggle when one of the female townsfolk posts a request for a phallic-looking sea/super cucumber, or an eggplant, and refuses to explain why they need it. Or even worse, an octopus.
Maru's casual dialog to the farmer telling them to come up to her room and "play with her gadgets".
In Abigail's 2 Heart event, doing well at the game has her playfully comment you really know how to "handle a joystick".
The spouse weapons obtainable in the Desert Festival. Haley's is supposed to be a hair curling iron, but if you're not reading the description it's very easy to mistake it for a vibrator. She's also the usual suspect for the purpose-unspecified item requests mentioned above.
Robin's special order for hardwood so she can design a lavish 4-post bed results in Demetrius, Robin's husband, confusedly asking what the four posts are for. Cue a lot of fans making suggestions.
Alternative Character Interpretation: These are encouraged by ConcernedApe, who generally (though not always) declines to answer fan questions about the characters and their storylines.
Demetrius: Malicious or just oblivious? Sebastian considers him an evil stepfather, but his actual behavior is mostly just awkward, such as his laughably bad Twerp Sweating moment in Maru's 2-heart event. He has a guide to being a step-parent in his and Robin's room, implying he at least tried to interact with Sebastian.
There is an implication that Demetrius is on the Spectrum, such as him bringing tomatoes when Robin asked him to bring fruit (technically correct, but not what Robin meant) and following up if you agree with him by saying it's sometimes hard for him to just "know" what Robin actually means when she asks him this. While somewhat stereotypical, science-related careers are also believed to be popular choices for those in the autistic community. Either way, this implies that his behaviour around Sebastian is not intended as malicious.
Sebastian claims to dislike the Flower Dance and will gripe about having to attend in the lead-up, as well as on the day itself. However, if the player asks him to dance and does not meet the heart requirements, he says no because he wanted to ask Abigail (who also says that she dislikes the Flower Dance). If the player does meet the requirements, he smiles happily and expresses excitement. This could suggest that he secretly enjoys the Flower Dance and only complains to uphold his image.
A few players have given the romanceable characters a more sinister motivation to wanting to marry the player - because they have one of the few farms around town, which produces food and earns money... of course regardless of any ill intent, they genuinely love you by the time you hit 8-10 hearts with them.
Pierre: a struggling salesman just trying to keep his business afloat, or a greedy liar who neglects his family, and passes off your products as his own? We do know that he resells your produce, which he admits to, but it's also stated by some villagers that Pierre claims he's grown the highest-quality items himself - blatant theft of credit. This is even more off putting if you consider that he might be doing the same thing during the Stardew Valley Fair.
Caroline also mentions Pierre gets "jealous" whenever the Wizard is brought up and by Caroline spending time around his tower. However, given ambiguities in game suggesting that Abigail might not be Pierre's daughter, this may very well be her just trying to cover up her own misdeeds.
Is Mayor Lewis a Reasonable Authority Figure who wants to fix Pelican Town, or a shifty and egocentric Corrupt Politician? While he's polite and helpful to the player, he wants to keep his and Marnie's relationship a secret from the town so as not to endanger his position as mayor (which he's been in for over 20 years), emotionally exhausting her in the process. Then there's the matter of him potentially blowing funds on constructing a golden statue of himself in secret as opposed to using them for something more benevolent, like fixing the community center or improving all the broken infrastructure around the town. The Community Center and bus issues around town paint Lewis as not being very good at his job anyways. The bus breaking down resulted in Pam losing her job (and hurt the nearby Calico Desert according to Sandy, who hadn't had any customers in a long time until the Bus is repaired by the player). He also blames the Community Center's dilapidated state on people "wanting to stay home and watch TV" instead of spending time with their friends and neighbors, something easily disproved by the fact that virtually the entire populace of Stardew Valley spends their Friday nights at the Saloon together and use the community center once it's repaired. During the Luau, Pierre mentions that Lewis is hogging the visiting Governor's attention even though he would like to have a word with him too. Considering the issues the town is facing and the fact the Governor is fond of Pelican Town, it's not hard to view Lewis as wanting to get praise instead of using the opportunity to help the town out when it really needs it.
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. Likewise, when the player collapses from exhaustion and Linus takes them back to their house, he leaves a note that someone was rifling through their 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.
A lot of the bachelor(ette)'s romances can seem very lacking due to limited dialogue and little to no changes in their interactions with you once married, so a lot of the fans seem to try to find different interpretations to how each of the love interest will differ in their married life with the Farmer.
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 any other relatives, while others believe Jas must have seen Lewis hiding under Marnie's bed at some point. It's also assumed that Marnie and Shane also share Guardianship status with Jas - since the player doesn't have the option to adopt Jas when marrying Shane.
The fact that Kent will, once you have a good enough relationship with him, mail you bombs that have been "gathering dust" implies he's either working in the monster-infested mines, or possibly an aspiring Unabomber. Or a reformed militia fanatic after facing life in a prison camp. Or he was involved in demolitions in the military and because of his PTSD, wants to get rid of them and trusts you to do it.
The Green Rain event has everyone afraid... except for Linus, who is sitting outside in the Green Rain and, if spoken to, says it will go away tomorrow. Does this mean that he knows something about it?
The game as a whole also applies. Is it a realistic game where dysfunctional families exist? Or is it overcompensating because every single family has problems?
While many players are fans of Shane and the side of him he shows once he warms up to the protagonist (plus the blue chickens), there are still some who think he's too prickly to bother trying to befriend. Some have also questioned the mixed messaging of Shane's romance arc - helping a man wrestle with his alcoholism and poor mental health, the former of which he relapses into after marriage and maintains as a Loved gift.
Alex is another polarizing bachelor. His fans enjoy him for being a Lovable Jock with a tragic backstory after he opens up to the farmer, while his detractors see him as insufferable and sexist, alongside being difficult to befriend thanks to his limited pool of loved gifts. Whether or not you like him tends to be related to what gender you chose for your farmer, due to how differently he treats men and women.
While Sebastian does have arguably the biggest fan base out of all the characters—mainly due to his socially awkward disposition, family issues, and geeky interests making him seem relatable—a lot of other people think he's so overrated that he overshadows the other well-written characters, and even find his brooding attitude far too repetitive and boring to put up with.
Elliott has several fans due to being a polite Long-Haired Pretty Boy with a passion for writing. Others find his romanticized view of the world to be cringeworthy or creepy, or think he pales compared to the other love interests.
Pierre: is he just the owner of a small business who just wants to take down the chain corporation? Or is he just a greedy hypocrite? Earn a high enough friendship with him and it seems like he's driven solely by fame and money, with many players viewing him as no better than the company he tries to throw out of the valley.
Whilst not explicitly stated, it's heavily implied that Caroline cheated on her husband, Pierre, and the Wizard is actually Abigail's father, with some believing that Pierre deserved it due to him being unlikable, whilst others still think Caroline was vastly in the wrong.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Maru's ten heart event has her reveal she created a robot named MarILDA that gains self-awareness within a minute of activating. A few minutes later and it takes off to space, never to be seen again. The only real purpose it serves seems to be showing that Maru is impossibly smart, even if you consider that there's a minor level of magic in the setting. If you go on to marry Maru, very rarely they'll be some dialog from her referencing it, such as wondering if a shooting star is MarILDA flying by to check on them, but that's about as random as any other dialog option.
Rainy days automatically water all of your outdoor crops (though if you have a greenhouse, you still need to manually water the crops in it or use sprinklers), which for early-game players, beach farm players (since that particular farm disables sprinklers), and other non-users of sprinklers saves them a lot of time and energy and lets them focus on other tasks and projects.
Mine levels that are multiples of ten have no monsters and usually contain treasure boxes. Floors 20, 60, and 100 will have fishing spots for rare fish.
Can also apply to Winter, as it's the only season where you aren't able to grow anything other than Winter forage, fiber plants, and powdermelon as of 1.6 (without the use of the Greenhouse or garden pots, that is), and as such can spend the entire season clearing the farm of trees and rocks, exploring the mines, going fishing, or anything else that the player is usually too tired to do after spending an entire day tending their crops in every other season.
The initial decision to release 1.0 without the much hyped multiplayer mode caused a great deal of controversy at the time, as many people were only interested in playing a farming sim with a co-op element. However many fans also accepted that the technical complexity of adding the mode to the game was well out of the reach of Barone's one-man operation at the time of release. With the multiplayer's release in August 2018, roughly 18 months after launch, this eventually died down.
The fishing in the game has been a debate among the fanbase as well. Some people do enjoy it and say it'll get easier, and that fishing is a pretty good way to make extra cash, especially in winter. Others hate it because it can be very challenging to catch the highest-level fish. Plus, barring some really good luck with the travelling sales cart, you've got to do it to restore the community center, which has a whole section dedicated to fishing. Higher-level rods and lures help a little bit, but it ultimately comes down to player skill, timing, and a lot of luck. (Of course, you can always use debug commands to simply give yourself the fish...but that rather defeats the point, doesn't it?).
Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: The game has a very large and dedicated 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 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 went on record saying that one of the objectives of the 1.6 patch was to make it even easier for mod creators to add new content.
Given that prices are static, it's rather expected that people will just grow as many crops that sell for as much money as possible. Voila, fields of Cauliflower, Melons, Pumpkins, Strawberries, Blueberries, Cranberries, Ancient Fruit and Sweet Gem Berry.
Ancient Fruit wine with the Artisan perk is generally seen as the end-game money-maker of choice due to its profitability and infinitely-renewable nature with the use of the Greenhouse. It also requires less time to harvest or process because it only produces one high value crop per week.
Unless someone is doing something very specific, expect to see nothing but the Standard or Forest Farms for reasons discussed under That One Level. As of 1.6, the meadowlands farm has been added to the list.
Most farm plots will eventually be laid out in grids of either 3x3 or 5x5 due to those being the watering dimensions of the upgraded watering cans (1x3, 1x5, 3x3, 3x6) and Quality (3x3) and Iridium (5x5) sprinklers, and the hoeing dimensions of the upgraded hoes. Once a player unlocks the ability to buy magical farm buildings from the Wizard, expect to see eight 5x5 plots (each with an iridium sparkler) ringed around a Junimo Hut.
Players generally stick with the Galaxy Sword as their go-to mining weapon, as it comes for free when unlocking the Galaxy weapons in the desert. You'd have to fork over a lot of money for the Galaxy Hammer (which isn't bad - they're handy for crowd management, but not worth the asking price), and Daggers, even with many buffs in updates, are usually seen as worthless.
You can put Mayor Lewis's shorts on display at the fair. This earns you a visibly angry face from him, a disqualification, and 750 star points as incentive never to do it again. For many players, it's worth the trouble just to see him flip his crap.
Similarly, you can drop the shorts into the potluck soup at the luau, which results in making the governor nauseous and Lewis giving a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to the whole community and ending the luau early. While you do manage to get away with this stunt anonymously, the results are damaging to your friendship levels with the town. Still, many players like to do this at least once for a laugh. This has since been changed to give unique dialogue about a tangy taste and finding the pants in the soup, and no longer affects your friendship levels with the town.
After the tailoring feature was added, you can now make the shorts wearable... by embroidering them with a gold bar's worth of trim. While you're wearing them, Marnie laughs too hard to talk to you, and Lewis screeches like a bat.
Probably unintentional, but if the player befriends Kent, Kent will literally send bombs to them. They aren't ignited or anything, but the fact the Shell-Shocked Veteran is sending you literal bombs is so twisted it becomes hilarious.
Kent's quote for hated gifts is "This... they gave this to me in the Gotoro prison camp. I've been trying to forget about that! *Shudder*". This includes things like Tortillas, Sashimi, and milk.
While the other monsters in the Skull Cavern are a little stronger than the ones in the Mines, the Serpents are wickedly fast and agile, and suffer from Hit Box Dissonance with high offensive and defensive stats.
This gets worse with the Haunted Skulls, which appear in random levels in the mines once you've unlocked the Quarry. They are even faster than the Serpents and harder to kill, and unlike the Serpents they are highly unlikely to drop anything even with the Burglar Ring and a very lucky day (though when they do drop something, it's usually a rare object or an Artifact Trove).
The "Danger in the Deep" sidequest (and subsequently activating the Shrine of Challenge) turns a lot of mobs into this, but the Putrid Ghost stands out. It's not particularly strong, but it has a chance of inflicting the Nauseated debuff, which prevents you from healing with food and drink for two real life minutes (just shy of three hours in-game). Unless you're stocked up on Life Elixirs or Energy Tonics, you have no way to heal until this wears off, allowing the other mobs to invoke Death by a Thousand Cuts. The saving grace is that this can be remedied with ginger or ginger ale, but even if you puzzle this out thanks to ginger's reputation as a nausea cure in real life, their mediocre healing abilities means you probably didn't think to bring any until too late.
The Magma Sprites found in the volcano dungeon, on their own, merely qualify as Goddamn Bats; they're fast and move erratically so they're hard to hit, and their high HP means they take forever to kill, but individually they don't do a whole lot of damage and are more of a nuisance than anything. The problem is that they're absolutely everywhere, and they just love to swarm you from all directions, especially when you're occupied with more dangerous enemies like Tiger Slimes or Lava Lurks. It gets even worse in the second half of the dungeon, where you're introduced to Magma Sparkers, a yellow, even more dangerous version of the Magma Sprites. These not only have a ramming attack that's extremely difficult to avoid, but they can also randomly inflict the Burn debuff, which both slows you down and reduces your defense - perfect for the other nearby monsters to run over you like a truck.
The Imps in the third world of Journey of the Prairie King are the most dangerous mob in the game. They are extremely fast and aggressive, and as flying mobs they can pass over the tombstones which block your line of fire on them. The fact they have 3 HP means they'll either take multiple shots to kill or you'll need to have purchased two expensive Ammo upgrades to kill them in one shot. All of this makes them bad individually, but they also tend to spawn a half dozen at a time and can spawn at any point on the edge of the map. Their only saving grace is they can get stuck on the much slower moving Mummies which will tend to clog up part of the screen.
Fans widely headcanon Demetrius as autistic thanks to his Literal-Minded 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.
Sam has many characteristics of ADHD: his official profile says that "he does have a habit of starting ambitious projects and not finishing them", and he sometimes says "I just remembered that I was supposed to do something... But I forgot." and "I have to make little reminders for myself or else I'll totally forget to do things."
Haley's Responsible Sister Emily absolutely dominatedthis poll held by ConcernedApe to become the next female bachelorette. She was made marriageable in version 1.1. It also helps that she can provide raw wool as a gift, which greatly helps circumvent That One Sidequest when it comes to getting the Greenhouse.
Alex and Sebastian are also quite popular on the Stardew Valley subreddit, mainly for their character development (especially in Alex's case) and good looks. The same goes with Abigail and Penny, who are similarly attractive with the former's adventurous nature and the latter's troubled family life making them popular marriage candidates.
Robin left a good first impression on players thanks to being an attractive nice girl who is one of the few characters to give you a warm welcome when you first arrive in Pelican Town. It's not uncommon for a new player to be heartbroken upon discovering that they can't pursue a romantic relationship with her in the vanilla game.
Krobus, the shopkeeper for one of the unlockable shops. His politeness, adorable "shadow monster" design, and incredibly useful stock are very endearing to many players. It's not uncommon to see fans wishing he was a marriage candidate whenever he gets brought up. As of 1.4, it's possible to make him a platonic roommate if you have no love interests.
Epileptic Trees: A bizarre theory that Elliott is secretly a junimo given human form spawned on Reddit in 2021. The evidence for this includes a.) his house uses a similar ambient noise soundtrack to the one heard in the Community Center, b.) the painting he has in his cabin looks vaguely like a junimo, and c.) he "acts strange." Other commenters suggested that Elliott is actually a were-junimo and Gunther is three junimos in a trench coat.
Fan Nickname: The collective trio of Abigail, Sam, and Sebastian sometimes gets referred to as "the ASS/Ass gang" by fans.
Of course, all the bachelors and bachelorettes are likable enough (regardless of debate) and it depends solely on you, the player, to choose who you'd like to romance, but the majority of the fandom seems to like pairing the female farmer more often than the male counterpart, especially with Shane or Sebastian for obvious reasons.
Despite Seb and Sam having their own respective female love interests, a lot of fans like to pair the two friends together instead due to their close friendship and the appeal of Opposites Attract. They are by far the most popular pairing on Archive of Our Own that does not involve the Player Character.
Fan-Preferred Cut Content: ConcernedApe has revealed timelines of the ways many characters' appearance changed through the development process. Some fans wish that the old appearances had been kept for each of these characters. Maru in particular has short maroon hair, but in earlier stages of development she had long, curly brown hair, which many fans find more attractive, as well as being a better representation of actual Black women, since she is the only non-White woman in the game.
Fandom Rivalry: A largely one-sided one exists between this and Story of Seasons; there is a certain subset of fans of the game that bash on Story of Seasons and Harvest Moon, which leads to fans of the other series to turn against this game. Not helping matters is the fact that Stardew Valley was released on multiple platforms, while it took a long time for the Story of Seasons games to enjoy the same benefits.
Despite the above, a lot of players of this game also enjoy Story of Seasons, known as Harvest Moon in 2012 and earlier, and it's not uncommon to see fans get along.
Thanks to the two games coming out fairly close together and being developed mostly by one person, there's a lot of overlapping between Stardew Valley's and Undertale's fanbases on various message boards.
There's also a lot of overlap between it and Hollow Knight and Celeste, due to them composing the "big three" indies.
Gameplay Derailment: Sheds can be used to store extra items, most notably items that produce Artisan Goods like Kegs and Preserve Jars. Or one can use a Deluxe Barn instead to get even more inside real estate (rather than using it for livestock like intended), although the cost to make one (including the initial Barn and the Big Barn upgrade) is quite steep. This was squashed in the 1.4 update that introduces the Big Shed upgrade.
Each tier in the mines has some kind of enemy that fulfills this purpose. At first, they come in the form of flying bugs that can spawn from maggots if you don't act quickly enough. Literal bats can and will annoy the hell out of you in the deeper levels of the mines. It gets worse with the occasional miasma that causes bats to briefly spawn at a higher rate than normal. In the Skull Cavern, there are the flying serpents (see Demonic Spiders above).
Shadow Brutes, a type of monster located in the deepest parts of the mines, aren't hard per se. But thanks to having huge amounts of HP and being immune to knockback, fighting them can be a slog, since you have to constantly back away from them after getting one or maybe two hits in, and it's easy for them to hit you if you try to rush it. And if you simply decide to ignore them, they prove to be surprisingly agile and will not leave you alone.
Activating the "Danger in The Deep" quest replaces the Mines' usual enemies with even more dangerous ones:
Jumping Spiders that jump and land randomly everywhere and appear in high numbers.
Blue Squids that move in extremely fast bursts of speed and can easily swarm the player.
If you thought the Shadow Brutes mentioned above were annoying, meet the Shadow Sniper. They have a long-ranged attack that has a chance of inflicting blindness on the player character, making them vulnerable to other mobs of enemies. Fortunately, they can only attack horizontally or vertically.
A non-combat example: Fishing can sometimes give you junk items like driftwood, broken CDs, and seaweed, and irritatingly these items will still use up bait, not to mention they waste valuable time. At the least, algae can be used for some bulletin board and fish pond requests, seaweed can be used to make Maki Rolls, CDs and broken glasses can be put in recycling machines to make Refined Quartz, and soggy newspapers have a small chance to recycle into cloth rather than a torch.
Good Bad Bugs: There's quite a few of them in a game this large. While some of the amusing ones get left in because of humor value, Game Breakers and other strange behaviors are often patched out.
If your ride horse parallel to a fence that runs up and down (by the orientation of the screen) and quickly shift directions into the fence, you can pass through it. Mostly just amusing, but depending on your farm layout this can actually save you a bit of time when traveling to the forest, the town or the mountains.
Prior to patch 1.06, there was a glitch/developer oversight which meant Abigail would appreciatively ask the player "How did you know I was hungry?" when being given various non-food objects, including gemstones, making her seem like an Extreme Omnivore. In the updated spouse dialogue in Patch 1.06, this seems to have become◊ an Ascended Glitch.
There's also a humorous bug where, if the player is married to Maru, she may occasionally be found wearing her nurse outfit to bed after a festival that ends at night. If the player speaks to her, Maru will say "Shhh! Don't let the doctor see you!" The fandom was quick to run with all kinds of jokes about it. The same bug while married to Shane has him bringing his pet chickento bed.
In the summer, Alex can be found by the museum selling ice cream from a small stand. Because of how the game checks that a shop is being tended, the player could leave their horse by the ice cream stand (as the 'shopkeeper') in Alex's place to purchase ice cream, even if it wasn't summertime. This was a quick way to get everyone to like you, since most people liked ice cream (Demetrius in particular loves the stuff), and it's sold on the cheap. Once again, this eventually got patched out.
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 1.07 update, so that trees can now only grow in spaces that could support them. However, patch 1.1 reverted the previous fix for planting fruit trees inside the greenhouse outside the dedicated soil area, making it an example of an Ascended Glitch.
If you get a Joja membership before Lewis talks about the Community Center, it's possible for him to lament about how nobody uses it and how Joja wants to turn it into a warehouse...even though it's already been turned into one and even has the logo on it. The dialogue inside is also unchanged, despite it being full of Joja products! However, you get stuck in an infinite loop of trying to walk somewhere that's blocked by crates.
It was possible to get an infinite amount of gold pumpkins by having a full inventory when completing the Spirit's Eve maze and dragging the pumpkin out of the chest so that it ends up on the ground. Since this didn't count as you obtaining the pumpkin, opening the chest again produced another pumpkin... which repeated until you freed an inventory spot. The amount of pumpkins underflowed if you had too many in your inventory, but you can just drop them and get more if you accidentally did that, provided you didn't throw away the item you removed. This has since been fixed, however.
Due to how string parsing works, %name, %adj, %noun, %place, or %rival results in other NPCs calling the player character a randomly-generated name every time it would occur in dialogue.
It's possible to obtain items using numerical name codes for certain items for NPC dialogue name mentions, which are compatible with player and animal names alike. By using the right codes, it's possible to obtain any item, including late-game ones, like an Iridium Sprinkler, Prismatic Shard, Ancient Fruit, etc. every time someone says your name, which was so popular it became an Ascended Glitch. Patch 1.5 even lets you change your name to such item codes via a makeover in the Wizard's Basement, but also has a message that admonishes you for doing this. This ended up being forcibly removed by Nintendo on the Switch version for unknown reasons on patch 1.3.
Gus, the bartender, uses recycled dialogue over and over that has your name in it when he asks you if you want to buy something. Talking to him over and over will net you an increasing amount of items, breaking the game wide open.
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. All wallpapers can be obtained for free infinitely once you've bought the Catalog from Pierre. 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.
You can put a yellow couch into a loom and it'll make cloth. Craft a bunch of looms, buy the Furniture Catalog from Robin to get as many free couches as you want, and you basically have a money printing press ready to go. Sadly, this one got the axe in the 1.6 update.
Facing a doorway and constantly slashing your sword or scythe can allow you to bypass the doorway's 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.
Sometimes, NPCs can appear on walls or out-of-bounds. Usually your pet and children do this, but sometimes, normal NPCs do this as well.
Using the club's special attack and regular attack immediately will cause both attacks to hit simultaneously. However, until the special attack cools down, you have to deal with the club's regular (slow) speed.
Planting Grass Starters on Winter 28 will cause them to multiply explosively—up to 40x according to the wiki—when Spring 1 rolls around, provided you don't exit the game inbetween. This makes it much easier to get grazing land set up for the year.
Frustrated that Robin is closed on a day you really needed to start an upgrade? Don't worry about it! So long as she's near the counter she's apparently working, so if you talk to her at exactly the right moment when she's, say, returning from exercise, you can still buy new buildings.
When salmonberries and blackberries start spawning on bushes, you can exit to the main menu, reload the file and more bushes will have berries on them. Repeat until every bush has them, eat something that boosts foraging along with triple-shot espressos for a speed boost, and load up on four bountiful days of berries!
With the ability to sit added, you can take a chair to the stump blocking the Secret Woods, put it down on the other side, then hit the interact button to make your character hop over the stump to sit in the chair. From there, you can hop off and enter the Secret Woods early. Aside from getting early access to morel mushrooms and fiddlehead ferns, the slimes there can drop mahogany seeds, so you can plant those to get a head start on stockpiling hardwood. And depending on the farm you chose, your house might even come with a free chair or two! note farms with free chairs are the standard, riverland, forest, and beach farms Borders on Ascended Glitch as ConcernedApe has admitted to being aware of the exploit, but deliberately leaving it in due to being an interesting mechanic for those who can figure it out.
When the 1.5 update first dropped, there was a bug that, on rare occasions, would not credit the player for collecting a Golden Walnut, thus locking the player out of 100% Completion if it struck. To remedy this, the chat command "/recountnuts" was added into the game, allowing the player to fix the walnut count if the glitch occurred. Now keep in mind that once you've purchased all of the upgrades on Ginger Island, you'll have a few nuts leftover, which you can exchange for a small amount of Qi Gems in the Walnut Room. Due to an oversight, using the /recountnuts command at this point will cause those surplus nuts to be added back into your inventory, allowing you to exchange them all over again for even more Gems. Doing this over and over will effectively net you infinite Qi Gems, allowing you to purchase as much as you want from Qi's shop without completing a single QiQuest.
Prior to 1.6 a bug allowed the player to use a rain totem during a storm to ensure the next day would be a storm as well. This made for a very easy way to farm batteries using a lightning rod, one of the ingredients for iridium sprinklers.
Jerkass Woobie: Shane is very standoffish and rude at first, but it's impossible not to feel for him once you learn about his life, including his struggles with alcohol and depression.
Junk Rare: When you go to bed, there's a tiny chance of a random event occurring. Two of these are the strange capsule and stone owl event. The chances of either of these two occurring are extraordinarily rare, since they only occur after year 1 and require your farm to have 50 clear tiles after their 1% probability is triggered. However, the game may choose tiles you can't access nor even control, making this event nearly impossible to occur without mods. On the chance of them actually occurring, the item that spawns from these two events are nothing more than decorations. 1.5 not only made these items much less rare, but even added a small Easter Egg for after the Strange Capsule breaks.
LGBT Fanbase: Thanks to the game allowing players to romance and marry characters of the same gender, unlike the series it was based on.note The only exception is the Japanese version of DS Cute, where you can be "Best Friends" with a special bacherlorette. Where it's marriage in all but name. The Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town remake has it as well, but it admittedly came after Stardew.
In terms of characters, Leah seems to be a hit among lesbians and bisexual women as she's a tomboyish outdoorsy artist.
Love to Hate: Morris and JojaMart. How satisfying is it to see either the Stardew villagers banding together to force them out, or Pierre fighting Morris hand-to-hand and finishing it by punching him through the Community Center ceiling.
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 highlight this cost further, 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. The fact you need level 8 fishing to get the recipe certainly doesn't help. 1.6 buffed the Worm Bin by having it now give out 4 bait at minimum, lowering the unlock requirement to level 4 fishing, and lowering the hardwood needed to 15.
Cookout Kits are also considered 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. 1.6 changed the unlock requirement to level 3 foraging instead, but the usefulness is still lessened upon getting the house upgrade.
Moment of Awesome: Finishing the Community Center bundles will result in the Junimo restoring the building to its former glory and the JojaMart cronies being run out of town by the community. Depending on your choice, Pierre either rallies the townsfolk behind him in a boycott which convinces them to leave, or alternatively he dramatically punches Morris through the roof.
Memetic Loser: 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. 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 geodes, artifact troves, or golden coconuts (the latter of which can't be opened otherwise).
Abigail really likes rocks. ExplanationGiving Abigail a gift she likes will cause her to comment on how it "looks delicious," because the majority of her liked gifts are food. However, her liked gifts also include several gemstones, and she reacts the exact same way when receiving them. This has led to jokes about her being an Extreme Omnivore.
THE SHANE TRAIN.ExplanationBefore he was a romancable option, Shane was an Ensemble Dark Horse for the fanbase. There was much rejoicing when he was added as a potential partner.
Anything involving Mayor Lewis's shorts. ExplanationUsually it's players finding more creative things to do with them instead of giving them back to Lewis. One example is placing them in your grange display at the fair and another is dropping them in the soup at the luau. Both events later had unique reactions added in patches. Recently, Redditors have begun staging "protests" by putting the shorts on signs around town. As of patch 1.4, it is possible to craft them into wearable clothing.
Grandpa's fucked-up bed. ExplanationFans like to affectionately make fun of the wonky perspective of Grandpa's bed in the intro to the game (ConcernedApe later stated on Twitter◊ the scene was a very last second addition, leading to its weird appearance). This further spawned several mods changing the bed in the cutscene, ranging from improving the bed, making the bed look even worse, removing the bed entirely and putting Grandpa in the Family Guy Death Pose, to turning Grandpa INTO the bed.
"Your Copper/Gold/Iridium Hoe is ready". 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 deliberately 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.
Misaimed "Realism": Zig-Zagged. 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. You also can't stay up indefinitely and do need to sleep...which makes sense. Except you will immediately collapse and fall asleep at 2 AM on the dot, even if you've done nothing all day. And of course, you can never pull an all-nighter or even just stay up a little later.
Moe: Penny, due to her adorable design and sweet nature.
The sound of a star triggering when you score an achievement.
The sound of rain pouring, which means Mother Nature just saved you some time and energy that would otherwise be spent watering all of your crops, especially during the early game when watering them can easily take over half of your energy, or if you have a beach farm and thus can't use sprinklers.
The sound when you collect a Golden Walnut on Ginger Island.
Choosing to dance in the Flower Dance. The player is not in costume unlike all of the NPCs, and not in sync with the other dancers. Male farmers just do their normal walking animation to the beat, and female farmers just duck and raise their arms in time with the music. It all makes the farmer look very out of place, and it becomes hard to take the dance seriously.
Entering Marnie's house can sometimes cause her to give her scripted line when she's not at the store. Even when she's staring at the microwave or during the Green Rain event (and she's closed) makes her come off as having Skewed Priorities.
Giving Alex some of his favourite gifts (such as food) implies he eats it right there... and he will do this with eggs. Does he just toss the shells on the ground?
Maru's gifts come from her scrap pile. Which include things like Fried Mushroom and Crab Cakes.
The Help Wanted requests outside of Pierre's store are created through random algorithms. As such, some of the requests can be so ridiculous that they are hilarious. Such as Demetrius wanting to dissect a grape, Pam wanting to use Joja Cola in a casserole, or Kent wanting to serve an Iron Bar for breakfast.
During Shane's six-heart event, you can find him passed out in the forest amid a pile of beer cans while it's raining or storming. It starts off absolutely cheesy ("I'm just a p... piece of soiled garbage fluttering in the wind *bluurp*"). But it quickly drops all humor when you realize you're interrupting a suicide attempt, and literally end up trying to talk him off the ledge. Suddenly, the emotional impact of the scene changes.
Alex's eight-heart event features him crying over his dead mother's music box, complete with an image of his mom holding Alex as a baby floating up across the screen, with Alex lamenting that twelve years ago, his mother died, and he feels like he Never Got to Say Goodbye. The visual is a little silly, but considering the emotional weight of the scene, it still works.
You have to personally pick up Lewis's underwear and deliver it to him for a quest. Oh, and if you wanna gross out the entire town and yourself, you can put them in the Luau soup, with the Governor reacting appropriately when he has a sip then notices the shorts in the broth.
Jack-o-Lanterns are nice for decorations and all, but come winter and they abruptly turn into slimy, disgusting Rotten Plants. Rotten Plants can also be obtained by leaving out Lewis's gold statue out somewhere in town and then coming back to its spot the next day, only to find the statue gone (Lewis took it back) and an inexplicable non-plant blob in its place.
1.6 gave you the ability to drink Mayonnaise. Not just eat, drink as if it was a beverage! Unsurprisingly, the townsfolk will react with disgust if you drink mayonnaise in front of them.
As of 1.6, characters have unique dialogue for when you give them certain gifts. Giving Alex eggs usually implies he just eats the eggs right there in front of you. While eggs are quite healthy and high in protein, it's generally not advised to eat raw eggs because they sometimes have salmonella!*Sure, these are farm-fresh eggs, which are a bit less likely to have salmonella - but still, you shouldn't be eating them raw just to be safe
Nintendo Hard: Not the game itself, but the game within the game, "Journey of the Prairie King" is this. All the enemies can one-hit-kill you and you only start with three lives. Although there's some Fake Difficulty as well, considering that whatever or not an enemy will drop 1-ups and power-ups is completely random, meaning that the success of the player is essentially a Luck-Based Mission.
Not-So-Cheap Imitation: Depending on whom you ask, Stardew Valley is this to Harvest Moon (now known as Story of Seasons). It started out as a fan-game aimed specifically at Harvest Moon fans but became a Sleeper Hit upon release. This is largely because it has a PC release (thus allowing for modding), because it's on more consoles than the mainly Nintendo Harvest Moon franchise, and because it was under twenty dollars. While which series is better is up to debate, Stardew Valley has sold over five times as many copies as the best selling Story of Seasons title.
Quicksand Box: One of the draws of the game was that it is a Wide-Open Sandbox that gives you a lot of content available. To some, however, this actually can be quite stressful, as the sheer amount of content available to you with little explanation or guidance can be overwhelming.
Play the Game, Skip the Story: Some players ignore the main story and just focus on building the most amazing farms they can.
Porting Disaster: The console versions have many issues in regards to running smoothly and consistently. They also have a mouse cursor to select choices, despite the fact that it would be far more efficient to control menus without it (though some things do use buttons), and that it doesn't do anything outside of allow you to check the numbers of your stamina/health bars and act as a slow way to open menus. They've slowly been given better treatment over the course of the game's development, though, adding in better controller functionality.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The sentiment's far from universal, but some fans admit to respecting Pierre for punching the cartoonishly evil Morris through the ceiling in one of the endings to the community center sidequest.
Clint is sometimes called an incel or a "nice guy" by some people in the fandom, even though he doesn't act like he Wants a Prize for Basic Decency or do anything else to deserve any of those adjectives. In Emily's 8-heart event, he even respectfully accepts that Emily's into the farmer and not him. His only creepy behavior is to keep lusting over Emily even after she's dating or married to the farmer, but this is likely an oversight due to Emily not originally being a potential spouse.
Rooting for the Empire: There's a substantial amount of players that despite everything, prefer to side with Joja Corp, imagining many unseen positive developments if they do so.
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 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. 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 Stay in the Kitchen attitude he has towards his wife and daughter. There's even a subreddit called r/FuckPierre with more than 50,000 members!
Demetrius. While his relationship with Robin seems mostly stable, it's clear that both his daughter and stepson have issues with him. Maru, being the favorite, gets all his attention and he wants her to leave the town to follow her dreams. Her dreams involve her staying there, which has caused some friction. In his 2-heart event, he'll passively get annoyed at the prospect of the player "getting in the way of her bright future". Sebastian is completely ignored by Demetrius (he never even discusses his stepson with the player), but Sebastian mentions that when he and Maru made snowmen, Demetrius told him to tear his down for being a snowgoon (which isn't an offensive snowman), but Maru got to keep hers up. Combined with the fact that Sebastian drops his Emo Teen personality and depression, as well as giving up his smoking vice, after marrying and moving in with the player, really paints a picture that Demetrius is not a very good parent. One wonders what the context would have been for ConcernedApe's considered romance of Robin that would have involved breaking her and Demetrius up... On a different note, Demetrius often posts the mission that involves killing the difficult-to-find rock crabs on the bulletin board (see That One Sidequest below).
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.
The fandom also hates Clint, due to his awkward work hours, his creepy crush on Emily that persists even if you marry her, and his much reviled "nice guy" attitude. It's not uncommon for people to marry Emily just to spite Clint.
Mayor Lewis gets a good bit of hate for his refusal to commit to his relationship with Marnie and the apparent hypocrisy involved; while he laments he has no family and seemingly lives to be mayor, he also won't take the opportunity to have a family lest it damage his mayoral image. He's also frequently accused of being corrupt with the advent of Spoiler Note #19 which leads to a hidden solid-gold statue of himself, leading players to wonder how he could afford it. Putting it in town has 'someone anonymous' (almost certainly Lewis himself) bribe the player to not do it again.
Marnie's schedule makes buying anything from her shop extremely difficult. She's closed two days in a row. On Tuesday she goes to fitness class with most of the other women in town. Monday is more frustrating, as she goes shopping in the morning, goes home, then spends a chunk of the day staring at the microwave even though you want to buy pigs for 16,000g or need 200 pieces of hay. (What's worse is that even if you repair the community centre, she doesn't adjust her hours or hire Shane to handle the shop for her!) Clint's shop has a similar problem as mentioned above. Most places open at 9:00 AM and close at 5:00 PM. Except for Clint who closes at 4:00. If you don't remember this, it gets really annoying going back into town after a productive morning of mining geodes (which involves walking across most of the map if you don't have the minecarts repaired, by the way), thinking you have an hour to spare to get them processed before everyone closes. Think again! Then once the community center reopens, he's completely closed on Friday. Thankfully Marnie's erratic schedule becomes less of a problem in 1.6, with the addition of a purchasable catalogue that lets you access Marnie's shop interface when she's not there.
Sometimes you may walk into a store during business hours only to discover that its respective owner is not present, so you can't conduct transactions. This means you could load up on stuff to sell, haul ass halfway across town (to get to the fish shop for example), and end up not being able to sell your wares, leaving you with backpack clutter that you have to dump back at your house. While some store owners will give you hints as to when they'll not be around (such as the ladies who are part of the exercise club that meets on Tuesdays), this is something a new player will likely not know unless they take the time to talk to as many NPCs as they can every day. (This is different from visiting a store outside of its business hours or during days where it's stated to be closed, like Pierre's on Wednesday; in those cases, it's your fault for not checking the map.)
Once you've built the resort on Ginger Island, certain townspeople will go there to hang out on certain days. One of these townspeople is Pam, who is your primary means of getting to the desert. Want to go mining in the Skull Cavern on a day with high luck? If Pam decides to go that day, too bad; unless you've got a Desert Totem handy or have gotten far enough in the game to have built the Desert Obelisk, you're completely out of luck. Thankfully, you can close the resort to make everyone stay in town, and 1.6 lets you drive the bus to the desert yourself if it's fixed but Pam is busy elsewhere.
If you want to propose to your significant other, you need to buy a special shell from the Old Mariner, who's only found on the right side of the beach when it's raining. You have to use 300 wood to fix the bridge to reach that side of the beach (not hard to do, but time-consuming all the same - especially before you get any stardrops), and the fact you have to wait until it rains to see him makes the random nature of it a pain. Also, want to see the Old Mariner in winter? You can't, because it doesn't rain in winter; it snows. You can use a Rain Totem to get rain, though. The idea of having to wait weeks to buy the shell just to propose, up to and including an entire season, is one that can get really annoying if you didn't reach your chosen mate's ten-heart event in time, even if you did everything else correctly. Doubly frustrating is that you can't even buy it unless you're at 10 hearts already, so if you happen to be doing a replay, already certain on who you're going to romance and marry, and figure you'll take advantage of an early rainy day to buy it sooner as opposed to later... well, you can't. Simple as that. The Old Mariner won't let you buy it unless you're actually able to marry someone already.
The jealousy mechanic was this before the 1.4 update all but removed it. If you continued to give gifts to the other single bachelors and/or bachelorettes after you got married, even if it was just to maintain your level of friendship, your spouse might get jealous and complain, lowering your relationship level with them. While the chances of this happening were somewhat low (between 20 and 40 percent each time), the fact it happened at all was rather annoying. 1.1 alleviated this somewhat by making birthday gifts exempt, and then 1.4 nipped it even further by only applying it to townsfolk of the same gender as your spouse whom you're currently dating. At this point you have to be actively cheating on your spouse for the jealousy mechanic to kick in, so now if you get smacked by it, it's safe to say that you probably deserve it.
Fences inevitably decay, and the pieces that fall off sometimes destroy items that are too close. Particularly conspicuous in a game where no other buildings require maintenance. Thankfully, Hardwood fences last for long enough that it doesn't matter, and your spouse will sometimes fix them and reset their decay timer for no cost.
Spouses can randomly redecorate your house — which wouldn't be so bad except for how only one/two types of wallpaper and flooring are available per day, and it can already take forever for the ones you want to turn up. As of 1.1, this is not as big of an issue anymore, as Pierre sells a Catalogue item, from which you can receive any wallpaper or floor covering you want without cost, though the catalogue item itself costs 30,000 gold, which is a rather steep price.
Marriage in general is often considered disappointing by many fans. While the spouses might cook you food and repair your fences for no cost, they seldom ever do anything you can't do yourself, occasionally watering the crops that by that point are already watered by sprinklers. This has resulted in mods that make spouses more useful, such as having them harvest crops or perform their helpful actions more often. It was worse in the earliest versions, where there was little differentiation in dialogue and players felt all the characters with unique interests and dreams had been squashed into generic supportive spouses (i.e. Sebastian no longer rode his motorcycle).
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. You can put hats on them though.
Timed requests. Specifically because some of the fishing requests can ask you to catch fish that are out of season, or like in the case of catfish, only available during certain weather conditions, or are simply a pain in the ass to complete and register (such as the rock crab hunting mission). Same goes for some impossible crop requests during year 1, like Melons on the first day of summer.
The random nature of luck for each day. There's no real control over how each day will go in this regard. At times, there will be a streak of bad luck days when the player really needs to go mining (where luck shines the most), and good luck on festivals where the player will spend the majority of the day at the festival, resulting in a huge waste.
On a related note, it's entirely possible to go through an entire season without any rainy days (not counting Winter, of course), given the random nature of the weather. While the use of a Rain Totem can guarantee a rainy day the next day, this item requires Truffle Oil to be crafted, which is a late-game item. Some events, such as a number of Heart events and buying a Mermaid Penant, require rain, and are often best done as quickly as possible, but droughts can prevent this from becoming an option. Inversely, there can be times where there's many rainy days in a row, and there's no such thing as a Sun Totem. This can be a real pain in the ass when one has to hand in requests for people who often spend their time in buildings that can't be accessed until they're at two hearts' worth of affection (such as Leah and Elliot).
For some players, the whole concept of the In-Universe Game Clock is this. Time ticks at about 10 in-game minutes for every 7 real-life seconds, and early on you lack the mobility options to quickly get around town. It can make the game feel more demanding than a farming game ought to be, and a common mistake is forgetting to take something important with you to a shop across town (like a tool you want to upgrade or the materials for it), meaning you just wasted half the in-game day for nothing. Because of this, there are mods for the PC version that make the in-game clock more forgiving, but that's obviously a non-option for console and mobile players.
The combat system is notoriously wonky, mainly in that there's no consistency in whether your attacks follow the direction you're facing or the direction of the cursor. Sometimes you can swing the cursor all around the screen and your character will continue attacking in the same direction, whereas other times moving your cursor even a few pixels off-center causes you to turn to the side and start swiping away from the enemy you're trying to kill. Simply having an option to have weapons stick with one or the other at all times would go miles towards making monsters less frustrating to fight. There are other quirks in the combat system that can make it frustrating. Slimes have a tendency to spam their leap attack many times with no break in between, turning them into Lightning Bruiser enemies that are nearly impossible to hit when combined with the facing problem mentioned above. There's also no collision at all, letting aforementioned slimes jump through you (leaving you attacking the wrong way) and letting all enemies stand inside you where you can't hit them. Finally, attacking enemies below you is significantly more dangerous than attacking in any other direction since the weapon's hitbox barely extends past your feet.
Flowers seeds can produce different color variations of the same flower, looks nice, but the problem is that different colored 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.
Unlocking the Shrine of Challenge for the mines requires completion of Qi's "Danger in the Deep" quest. Completing the quest itself isn't the bad part in spite of it being a challenge to get through the mines from scratch with enhanced difficulty. The issue comes from accessing the quest in the first place; Qi's quests are randomized every week with no control over which two quests will appear. It may take ages for this quest to become available, making the benefits of the endgame mines inaccessible for a potentially long time.
Crab pots and their mechanic aren't enjoyable for many. You need a lot of them to make it even worthwhile and each one requires either 1,500g or 3 iron bars plus 40 wood. You're unlikely to have a substantial amount of any at level 3 fishing. Even then, crab pots only give you 5 exp no matter what you catch and it's only normal-quality creatures, with the most profitable one, the lobster, only having a 4% catch chance 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 will still have to manage them daily.
The Green Rain is seen as an interesting event due to how out of place it is. But it has its own Scrappy Mechanics:
It can absolutely flood the path with plantlife, getting in the player's way as they try to explore the valley. On the other hand it’s a great way to stock up on fiber.
It overrides everything on the TV. As cool as this is to add to its atmosphere, if you were waiting for a recipe on Queen of Sauce that appears on that day? You have to wait until it turns up in a rerun.
You can't ride the bus to check on Sandy because Pam is inside the saloon, you can't break any Geodes because Clint is inside the saloon, and Marnie's closed.
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 who 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.
Daggers are pretty much worthless, given that you mostly fight smaller enemies in large numbers, while Daggers focus on critical hits while having abysmal reach and attack strokes. It's unanimously better to focus on brute force with swords or hammers/clubs that can decimate enemies in fewer hits.
It's entirely possible to rebuild the Community Center within your first year, a feat that requires meticulous planning, Min-Maxing 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 though version 1.5 added the ability to have it guarantee it'll show up before so). 1.5 added an option to make the Community Center completable in a year by making red cabbage seeds guaranteed to show up at least once in the traveling merchant's cart that year.
One Youtuber took it upon himself to complete the Community Center without leveling any of his stats. This requires ridiculous amounts of Min-Maxing, grinding, and Save Scumming. And it turns out to just be a futile task in single-player.
Some players, disgusted by both Morris and Pierre, created challenge runs where the player doesn't purchase anything from either of them, with potential exceptions such as Pierre's backpack. This forces them to rely on fishing, foraging, cultivating Mixed Seeds and extracting seeds from the produced crops. Allowances for other merchants vary depending on personal rules.
After seeing a line in the Stardew Valley Wiki about accessment to the perfection tracker with just the minimum 3% only being possible with cheats, someone decided to see how accurate that was. Sure enough, it is indeed possible to get that percentage without cheating.
Slow-Paced Beginning: The early game can be rather tedious because you first have to clear the farmland for planting, then you use half of your energy daily watering your cheap crops one at a time. By the time the second year comes, you'll hopefully have the tools to improve farming efficiency and automate your crop watering, allowing you to rake in tons of gold for your projects, which in turn will help you make even more money, and devote your energy bar to other tasks like dungeon-crawling.
Getting the "Craft Master" achievement, which requires you to craft at least one of every item available. Which would be fine... except there not being an 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 Anti-Frustration Feature that shows how many objects of each type have been crafted.
"Polyculture" requires that the player "ship 15 of each crop". It can be challenging to get because the achievement description is vague on which crops are needed and which are not. A rule of thumb tends to be that any crop available at Pierre's or at the Oasis is counted toward the achievement, but this doesn't include flowers and fruit trees, and post-1.1 update, coffee beans are required despite being only available from the Traveling Cart or through monster drops.
"A Complete Collection" requires the player to find and donate every donateable item to the Museum. This achievement boils down to a Luck-Based Mission for the last few items. Most Museum items can be gamed; the player can hunt for the right Geodes to fill the Minerals collection, and most Artifacts can be found in fishing chests. However, there are a few Artifacts that can only be acquired from an Artifact Spot that spawned in a specific area on the map, with a 1% chance. Players can spend in-game years running around town, digging up Artifact Spots as they appear, in hopes of finding the last few Artifacts.
"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 ConcernedApeexpressed 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.
Skull Cavern. It's the best way to get Iridium, but good lord, the enemies are a nightmare. Mummies that don't stay dead unless you use a bomb (or explosive slingshot ammo) AFTER killing them (or kill them with one in the first place), slimes that jump about, invincible bugs, and as of 1.3, a crab that pretends to be an iridium rock (although if you kill it, it drops Iridium).
Certain levels in the Mines and Caverns are shaped like a long spiral, with you starting at the top left and having to work your way around clockwise to the center. When first visiting a spiral level, the center will have a load of barrels, potentially containing all sorts of gems and other resources and thus making the trek inwards worthwhile. On subsequent visits to the same level, the center is not guaranteed to contain anything special at all. If you encounter a ladder early in the spiral, but want to find out whether there's anything worthwhile at the center, you could end up wasting a whole hour of in-game time just trekking inwards and then back to that ladder. In most circumstances, it's better to just immediately start mining as soon as you enter a spiral level and take the first ladder you find.
Levels 30 to 39 of the mines are also generally hated, since they're very dark, making it difficult to see rocks, enemies, and ladders, and by that point the player likely won't have yet been able to craft or find a Glow Ring.
Suffice to say, if it isn't the traditional, Forest, (which has the actually beneficial gimmick of extra Hardwood sources and foraging items in addition to not being too restrictive with land availability), Beach (which has the benefit of yielding beach fish from its shores, saving potential trips to the actual beach, and generally has extra foraging items and a reasonable amount of space in exchange for the non-functionality of sprinklers on the sand tiles), or the Four Corners Farms (which is a Jack of All Trades setup catered towards multiple players that has the benefits of multiple farm types with far fewer hassle), it'll be considerably more difficult to make a profit.
The Riverland Farm map looks beautiful, but it significantly cuts your growing space, in favour of river fish that could easily be caught in town anyway.
The Mountainous Farm map is similar in that it breaks up the farm with cliffs and a river going through it, while only sporting a mini-quarry that's trash to anyone who frequents the mines/caves.
Finally, there's the Monster Farm, which looks no different from the traditional Farm, but has monsters that constantly impede your progress. Additionally, 1.5 added the option to allow monster spawns on the other farm maps when starting a new file, completely nullifying the use of the Monster Farm.
Mining for Iridium is a Luck-Based Mission where the best odds are in the Skull Cavern, since the odds in the Mine are pathetically low. It'll be years before you can get enough to upgrade all your tools and then you'll need it for Iridium Sprinklers. It can be made easier by hunting purple slimes with the Burglar Ring equipped though, or getting the Statue of Perfection, which gives free Iridium ore every day, with your Grandpa's evaluation at the beginning of Year 3.
Qi's Challenge. To get the cash reward, players must reach level 25 of Skull Cavern. The monsters down there are much stronger than in the mines (the mummies won't even stay dead unless you blow them up with a bomb), there's no elevator so you have to start at the beginning every time, and unless you a) get lucky with shafts or b) bring masses of stone to craft staircases, it can be tough actually getting there before the day runs out. Nor does it help that unless you've totally ignored the farming aspect of the game, by the time you're reasonably well-equipped to think about taking on Skull Cavern, Qi's reward of 10 grand probably won't be all that much money to you anymore (you have to drop four times that just to unlock the area, and spend another 500 every time you want to visit it).
A quest from a Secret Note requires the player to reach level 100 of the Skull Cavern. As if it wasn't hard enough just to reach level 25 for "Qi's Challenge", going four times as deep in one day is close to impossible. You've either got to be beyond luckynote which you can literally do by eating a Lucky Lunch with finding holes to let you drop multiple floors (at the expense of some health), or play with three other friends and all load up on "Stair" items to go down quick enough. Your reward for making it to level 100 feels like a total Bragging Rights Reward, as Mr. Qi gives you a potion that increases your maximum health. If you're good enough to go down a hundred levels in the game's hardest dungeon, you definitely don't need a health boost. Finally, this will invariably take so much time that you'll have to jet back to your farm or use a Warp Totem if you don't want to collapse from exhaustion, which is a massive hit to money and items.
Catching the Legendary Fish, which takes the fishing mini-game (already hugely divisive due to its difficulty) and cranks it up to eleven. The fish itself is very valuable, selling for 5000 gold at minimum, but it might not be worth it for how hard it is to catch.
The lava eel is also a notorious pain to catch. Not only is its appearance rate abysmally low (resulting in you just catching heaps of garbage), but when it finally does show up, it puts up a good fight, likely getting away and making the whole day a waste. If you can catch it, it's best used in a fish pond, as it produces the most valuable roe.
The Octopus is far and away the hardest fish to catch in the entire game, beating out even the Legendary Fish which are supposed to be tough by design. For starters, it only shows up in Summernote though once you unlock Ginger Island, it's available in the ocean on the west side of the island year-round, and then only until 1:00 PM, basically forcing you to bolt for the beach the moment you wake up if you want to maximize your chances of catching it. Then it's got an astoundingly low spawn rate, meaning it's possible and, in fact, quite common to spend every minute between 6:00 AM and 1:00 PM fishing non-stop and not get even a single Octopus to so much as nibble on your line. Then, if the off-chance that you do manage to hook one after all that, it's a right bastard to catch, practically necessitating the use of skill-boosting food and/or tackle to have even a remote shot at landing the damn thing. For most players, the Octopus will likely be one of the, if not the last fish they catch for the Master Angler achievement, which is rather egregious considering there's otherwise absolutely nothing special about it.
Demetrius often posts missions that involve hunting the rock crabs in the mines. The problem is that they're difficult to come across and identify immediately, and by the time a player has somehow met the quota, Demetrius is locked in his house at night, thus rendering the mission impossible to hand in.
Nearly all of Mr. Qi's Special Order quests have absolutely ludicrous requirements. Thought reaching Level 100 of the Skull Cavern was already tough on its own? Try doing it with even tougher monsters, or without using any healing items, both under a seven-day time limit. Or if that doesn't suit your fancy, try catching all five Legendary Fish again in only three days. The worst part is that, once you've spent all of your extra Golden Walnuts, completing these quests is the only way to earn Qi Gems, which are required to purchase some of the crafting recipes for 100% Completion along with some of the most useful items in the game, like the Horse Flute.
Despite being a friendable character, Sandy gets very little in the way of character development other than wishing she could take time to go to Pelican Town and spend time with you, and she appears in no cutscenes for heart events, whether it be hers or someone else's. She mentions being friends with Emily, but this is never followed up on. Finally, she seems like she could be a marriage candidate, given her apparent similarity in age to the player character and the lack of any known pre-existing romantic relationships; ConcernedApe did put out a Twitter poll to decide which existing character should become the next candidate for marriage, with Sandy as one of the options, but she lost out to Emily. Improved upon slightly in 1.5, where Emily travels to the Oasis on Sandy's birthday and the two spend the day walking around the desert. With the 1.6 update, Sandy can now visit the Stardew Valley Fair in the autumn.
Many fans are quite curious about Gunther, as, despite having an interesting design and some hints of a likable personality, he never appears at any events nor leaves the Museum building at all. It's impossible to befriend him, as there isn't a way to reach the other side of his counter to talk to him or give him any gifts.
The same applies to the cashier at JojaMart, who doesn't speak and is never given any identity, but is nonetheless memorable for her exhausted, miserable appearance. In version 1.4 she's implied to be the same person attending the concessions stand of the movie theater, looking happier and saying how this is a step up from her previous job.
The Dwarf, much like Krobus, is an unlockable non-human merchant isolated from the rest of town. They have an interesting design and there's a lot of potential for insight surrounding their people, but they never become more than just a lonely shopkeeper and can't become the player's roommate like Krobus can.
Usually when you put something into a keg, the output is wine if it's fruit or juice if it's a vegetable. There are a few unique items you can get: Hops make Pale Ale, Wheat makes Beer, Honey makes mead, and so on. Many players were disappointed to find that putting Potatoes and Unmilled Rice into a keg only output juice and not vodka or sake, respectively. This was lampshaded in-game with the 1.5 update, which added Special Requests from various characters. One of them is Pam asking you to put a dozen potatoes in kegs and give her the results, as she'd heard it'll make a spirit that "really packs a whallop". Upon completing the request, she's extremely disappointed to discover it's just potato juice.
Fridge Logic here: fermenting grain or potatoes is only the first step in making spirits. You need to distill it further to increase the alcohol content, which the game doesn't have the tools/machines for. There are mods for this specific purpose, though.
Panning for ore. Not only is it fairly difficult to complete the bundles that even unlock the ability to pan, ore doesn't appear in water particularly often, hauling the copper pan with you takes up an inventory space and the amount of ore you get from panning is pathetically small compared to what you get from mining, panning spots might not be accessible, and unlike foraging spots panning spots will disappear after a short time. It's common for players to unlock panning, and then completely ignore it for the rest of the game outside of the Professor Snail sidequest, where it is necessary. 1.6 made the pan upgradable, making the mechanic a bit more enticing.
Ostriches. A barn animal that produces eggs has the potential for some very interesting farm set-ups, particularly with the mayonnaise machines, but can't raise them until completing the Professor Snail sidequest AND finding the rare Ostrich Egg item. By that point, the game is nearly over. Shipping an ostrich egg is necessary for 100% Completion though.
The Slime Hutch doesn't really have any practical use, especially for anyone who spends a decent amount of time in the mines. It doesn't count for 100% Completion, and its primary function is to produce and harvest Slime Balls for huge quantities of slime. This slime can then be fed into a Slime Egg Press to create a Slime Egg, which can either be hatched into a new Slime or sold. The problem is that most players will likely walk away from an average trip to the mines or the Skull Cavern with a sizeable pile of slime without needing to pay the hefty costs to build a Slime Hutch and enough Slime Egg Presses to make the venture worthwhile. Add to that the fact that most Slime Eggs don't even sell for a whole lot, with the ones that do being exceedingly rare, and there ends up being no real reason to invest in a Slime Hutch other than for the sheer novelty of being able to farm slimes.
Unintentionally Sympathetic: In Penny's two-heart event where she helps George get his mail, George is meant to be seen as unnecessarily harsh and rude for snapping at her afterwards. However, given that she pushed his wheelchair out of the way to reach the mailbox (and that he wasn't expecting that, as shown by his surprised reaction as it happens), many physically disabled players found themselves sympathizing more with him instead of her; touching someone's wheelchair or other mobility aid without permission is considered a major faux pas in those circles, particularly because it can and has gotten people injured in real life. While there is an option to tell Penny she should have asked him before helping him, this option gives negative friendship points, while taking Penny's side is considered the positive outcome.
It's hard to feel bad for Pierre struggling with his business considering his Scrappy traits listed above. It doesn't help that when his business is not in immediate trouble, he comes off as boastful and greedy. Most players will still side with him over Joja, however.
Demetrius's awkward situation with Sebastian and the evidence that he's trying to be a good father would make him sympathetic, but that's undermined by his overprotectiveness and Parental Favoritism towards Maru and his complete lack of acknowledgment of Sebastian making him look like he's not even trying. Not helping his case is the fact that he orders Sebastian to take down an inoffensive snowgoon while saying nothing about Maru's snowman, which is hard to justify outside of him being an abusive dick.
On paper, Mayor Lewis is a nice, reasonable politician with character flaws that aren't any more severe than anyone else's. But for a lot of players, he comes off as a self-centered power hungry scumbag thanks to making an obviously unhappy Marnie keep their romantic relationship a secret despite there being no good reason to do it other than paranoia over having his 20+ year reign as mayor be potentially challenged, which is completely unfounded due to how much the townsfolk like him. Then there's the secret golden statue of himself that he's been working on, which comes off as little more than an expensive vanity project that has likely leeched off funds better spent elsewhere.
Despite Shane being popular enough to be romanceable, some people prefer to be Just Friends with Shane simply because Shane appears to suffer a bit of a relapse if he does marry the player. On top of that? If Shane does marry the player, they don't get the option to adopt Jas, which some interpret as being all too willing to give up his responsibilities (that he himself presumably accepted) despite his arc also learning to be a better provider for Jas. It can be even worse since, as the spouse, Shane will be the one to initiate the question about having/adopting a kid.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Some of the spritework (most notably, the plant sway animations) are very beautifully done.
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Stardew Valley is pretty family-friendly overall, but a few heart events deals with some pretty heavy themes (i.e. Shane's depression and suicide ideation or Kent's PTSD) and, besides that, there's a few (subtle) sexual innuendos here and there.
This is what attracts a lot of players to Penny. The cute girl admits to feeling shame about living in a squalid trailer instead of a real house, but what's worse, she also has to share it with her aggressive, irresponsible, alcoholic mother. Many players marry her just out of feeling sorry for her and wanting her to come live as a farmer's wife. One (notably very well-received) player feedback to ConcernedApe on the game's official subreddit even made a suggestion: If the player marries Leah, have Penny move into her now unoccupied lake cabin.
In the 1.3 update, you can build Pam a house, and regardless of your actions, Pam declares she's going to turn her life around and treat Penny better.
Shane is very popular for this reason as well. He works a terrible dead-end job that he absolutely hates, he's obviously depressed and hopeless with his lot in life, he self-medicates with alcohol, and he's very cold and standoffish to you at first, but he will warm up to you considerably if you take the time to get to know him. His character arc seems so much like that of a potential love interest that many first-time players were surprised that he wasn't an actual bachelor - the farmer marrying him and rescuing him from a life of drudgery stocking shelves at JojaMart (or unemployment, if you complete the Community Center) feels like the natural conclusion to his story arc. As a result, there were loads of requests for ConcernedApe to make him into a bachelor in a future update, and these seem to have won him over; he described himself as "already on board the shane train" in response to a question on his AMA thread, and Shane was made romanceable too in v1.1.
Linus is either a lazy, homeless bum or another shining example of this, depending on who you ask. The fact he is often mocked by others, made to feel like an outcast and has had his tent destroyed several times goes some way to cementing this.
Alex's childhood firmly cements this status for him; between dealing with a verbally abusive father who later walked out on him, as well as the death of his mother, it's hard to not feel at least a little bad for him. It doesn't help matters that he has some serious self-esteem issues in regards to his intelligence, and at one point in his path even outright calls himself worthless.
Sebastian falls here for similar reasons as Alex: having a rather difficult family life. His step-father is neglectful and makes it clear Sebastian is The Unfavorite, he thinks his sister hates him, and his mother while loving is rather oblivious of these issues. Unlike Alex, however, Sebby hasn't escaped from that hell. Read above under The Scrappy for why. It's also worth noting that Seb after marriage immediately drops the Emo Teen personality without losing any of his unique personality (he still rides his motorcycle, though admittedly late at night when he gets insomnia while the player is asleep; he still smokes; and he still hangs with Sam and Abigail at least once a week), resulting in the emo kid becoming a well-rounded version of The Pollyanna. There's a reason he's considered a Rescue Romance by many in the fandom.
Due to being a traumatized veteran who spent time in a hellish POW camp, it's not hard to feel bad for Kent. He can't handle hearing his wife make popcorn anymore thanks to it triggering his PTSD, he's lost the ability to bond with his sons, and he tends to spend his days aimlessly wandering around town feeling lost and purposeless due to not having a war to fight. And unlike similarly troubled individuals such as Shane, there's no helping him through his trauma.
1.5 does give you a couple things you can do to help him a bit. First, you can give him a photo of one of the friends he lost in the war so he can at least remember what one of them looked like. Second, opening up the beach resort will have him say he feels a rare sense of peace whenever he visits.
Low-Tier Letdown: 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.
Nintendo Hard: Thanks to the Random Number God and the compressed gameplay, the game can be brutally difficult. Even when things are going the players' way, the game still demands efficiency.
Eric Barone: It's easy to play once you learn the rules, but it's not a short, casual game.
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 entirely determined by dice rolls, getting this goal 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 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 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.
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