Welcome to Stardew Valley

Greetings everyone, the past month I’ve been getting back into simulation games and after hearing a lot from my fellow bloggers raving about Stardew Valley, I decided to give it a shot.

I’ve played simulation games before, but they were hard to commit to because they either ran along with real-time or had microtransactions. (I’m looking at you Farmville!) Even Animal Crossing was hard to commit to because it runs with real-time and I felt like there wasn’t much to do after I paid off my house.

When I got into Slime Rancher, I loved how it ran on it’s own clock so that way if life caused me to take a break, I wouldn’t miss anything. That eventually led to receiving recommendations to try Stardew Valley and I’ve already become hooked after a month.

Here is what it looks like around the beginning. My farm is called Sunrise Farm since I’m an early bird at heart. My farm kitty I named Nyreen (which is after Mass Effect’s first female turian who leads the Talon mercenary group in the Omega DLC).

Now here is what my farm looks like now.

I know, I know, from above there aren’t any crops growing in the winter because I’m still learning how to find things like how to get the winter seeds. There’s tons of tips online and even a bunch of videos made by veteran players telling you things you need to avoid doing, especially during the first year, but I don’t listen to them, I just figure things out on my own.

I’ll admit that there is a TON to do in this game, you can make your farm look however you like (and there are sooo many trees that I need to clear to make room for things I want), and you can also befriend the NPC’s who live in the town, and even marry and start a family with one of your choice who’s on the market. The greatest thing about marriage in this game is there are no boundaries, everyone is basically bisexual so it’s a great game for LGBTQ+ gamers too.

I struggled at the beginning to decide what I needed to do every day because in-game days go by really quick! So, it started with me just doing what I felt needed to be done like water my crops every day and after a few in-game days had passed, I decided I really needed to upgrade my tools to clear away more of the land. I would spend oodles of time in the mine looking for ore and coal until past 10pm and managed to make it back home without passing out! That stuff was primarily needed to upgrade my tools and some of the things I wanted to craft.

I also was doing a lot of multitasking, like when I’m not taking care of my crops and chickens, or mining, I’m going around talking to everyone to make friends and trying to figure other things out like completing bundles. I didn’t know how to fish in this game but I started practicing and have significantly improved; especially during the fall fair where I binge played the fishing game to get enough tokens for the Stardrop!

In terms of relationships, I had to constantly refer to the Wiki to find out NPC’s schedules and the gifts they preferred. After talking to at least everyone, I started considering marriage. I felt bad that I didn’t have enough hearts with anyone to dance with them at the Flower Dance the first time, but it’ll be different next year!

As a straight woman, I first thought about Alex the jock, but was turned off by him when he made a remark that I couldn’t play with him because I was a girl during one of our first conversations. (Don’t worry I warmed up to him later!) Shane appeared to be rude to me all the time, except when I gave him some of my chili and we met for drinks on the dock one night.

Sam seems sweet but I wasn’t totally crazy about him, and Sebastian I almost chose because I liked how he was into sci-fi and computers, but I wasn’t really big on the emo look, the fact that he smokes, and when I first started playing, he was hard to find until around nighttime if he was not in his room and he didn’t talk much.

I will admit that he does have an interesting personality being a loner and possibly with social anxiety so I think he would be interesting to pursue romantically in a future playthrough.

I decided I wanted to get together with Elliott, I just thought he was really handsome when I first saw him, as well as very kind. I love how he enjoys writing, plays the piano and I’m about to do his eight-heart event next time I play. I got it up that quickly by talking to him everyday and giving him pomegranates which I found in a small cave on my farm and that was one of the easiest gifts to obtain that he loves. One of them I gave to him on his birthday which really boosted my friendship with him. I enjoyed getting drunk with him at the Saloon though! He was also such a gentleman ordering a drink for me.

But, I don’t want to rush the relationship with him because I would also like to make friends with the others too.

As for all the other characters, some I like and some are okay. Haley frequently makes rude comments about me. I can see why Abigail is popular with fans now. Penny and Leah are both nice and Maru appears to be a science geek. I also like to talk to Vincent and Jas a lot for some reason. Marnie is really sweet and I kept talking to her because she had Lewis’ shorts in her bedroom and he had asked me to retrieve them.

What am I going to do now? I should really get going on crafting some features I need on the farm to create things like coal, cheese, cloth, etc. This game is definitely something you have to grind at, even for the simplest stuff. I wonder where I should put the barn?

👽Emily