best mods?

[Keeptrucking]

I never played stardew valley with mods. What are some really good/must have mods to play with?

[Apocaleptic]

All personal but must haves for me are
Ridgeside Village
Adventure's Guild Expanded
Bigger Backpack
Birthday Gift
Experience Bars
Fishing Info Overlay
Stardew Valley Expanded
NPC Map Locations
Look Up Anything

[Coffee Addict]

my must have mods

automate
https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1063

CJB cheats menu
https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/4

CJB item spawner
https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/93

none must have mods that i like

tractor
https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/1401

npc map locations
https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/239

seasonal outfits
https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/5450

recipes for sale
https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/10966

[Iron Cretin]

Stardew Valley Expanded is by far the best mod.

[Queen Droxxanna]

tractor mod and skull cavern elevator make life easier even if you dont use any other mods or map extension mods.

[xicewindex]

Stardew Valley expanded, Ridgeside village and East scarp are all 3 rather big expansion mods.
Where East Scarp also provides housing for npc's from other modders.
I'd suggest to start with 1 of the 3 tough because it might become overwhelming very quickly otherwise.

Stardew Valley expanded changes things up in and around town from the start, few more npc's you can befriend ( some also marriage candidats)
More ground to cover, Cinderforest, mountainarea, trainstationarea are all bigger ect.
However gameplaywise it dos not feel very different from the original Stardew in the first year.
From second year onwards you get acces to new area's and questlines tough so SDVE adds much more than you initally can see.

Ridgeside Village is a ready to go mountainvillage from the start with alot of new npc's and questlines. It has its own bulletinboard and Lewis's big sis is running it.
For me it feels like a 'second' Stardew Valley added like its a seperat place and feels less integrated with the main game.

East Scarp is added to the east side of Pelican Town and feels like Pelican Town became much bigger.
East Scarp itself dos not add that much more stuff but the place is littered with empthy houses where other modders 'rent a place' for them npc families to live.
This means you also need to download all those mods with there own dependacies to populate the village.
Its a nice little place but also, because its made up by so many different modders it can feel abit ..... 'off?' It's like a mixture of styles that sometimes feels charming and sometimes not so.
But that is just my opinion.

And these are just the 3 big expansion mods.
There are so many other mods that adds alot without adding more spaces.
The PPJA stuff for ALOT more trees, crops, cookingrecipes, artisan goods ect ect.
Wildflour mods wich also give more of everything really but in a cute flimsy artstyle.
Raffadax adds a zillion more crops and trees (and lots more) and gives a rather complex artisan experience, personal I love the complicated crafting from this mod altho I can't say it is very balanced. But it sure is alot of fun tough!
Plentifull Harvest is also one worth mentioning for more crops/trees. It's less overwhelming than PPJA and well made.

And there are so many Quality of life mods I'm sure others wil mention.
One mod I really love is MARGO but its abit harder to get since it is not on Nexus anymore. You can stil get it on Github.
Margo gives a complete overhaul of proffessions, combat and much more.

I would not start modding before 1.6 is out tough because most mods will probebly need abit of time to iron out bugs after the update on the 19th.

[Útost Alronbem]

EnergyTime to fix time spent to energy spent ratio.
If there exists some mod which makes fishing less of a nuisance - grab that too, you won't regret it.
Everything else is a matter of personal taste and interests.
Say, I highly doubt that many people really need Shane Expanded despite me considering it as mandatory for myself...

[Keeptrucking]

Thank you so much for all your suggestions. I really appreciate it!

[Queen Droxxanna]

Originally posted by Keeptrucking:

Thank you so much for all your suggestions. I really appreciate it!

WARNING, you will find it is super easy to get carried away with using mods, I eventually had over 300 installed, and when SMAPI had a major update last year alot of my mods stopped working and I could play but not save the game. Recently I started a new file but first I deleted my entire mod file. Then I added just a few of my favorite mods, adding one or two at a time.
Start small, play the game as it is first. Adding several large map expansion mods all at once is a bit overwhelming, I did that and didnt have time to visit everywhere or do everything I wanted to do.

[Bathory]

Originally posted by Queen Droxxanna:

tractor mod and skull cavern elevator make life easier even if you dont use any other mods or map extension mods.

skull cavern elevator seems like cheating imo

[xicewindex]

Originally posted by Bathory:

skull cavern elevator seems like cheating imo

In a game where there is no competition there is also no cheating.
Everyone plays as they want to, what player 1 dos in its game dos not affect gameplay for player 2 in any way.

[Phirestar]

If you’re like me and you’ve experienced the vanilla game fully, and you find the normal progression too simplistic - items selling for a lot of gold, sprinklers making it easy to mass produce large quantities of crops, etc. - then I’d highly recommend trying out the Longevity mod. It’s definitely an essential for all my future modded playthroughs.

Longevity does a bunch of stuff to touch up parts of the game, but the two functions I actually use from it are the ones that alter the in-game economy.

First, it changes items to no longer have fixed buy and sell values. Each day the value of items fluctuates up or down, within a range of the original value, based on several price modifiers that can be observed through the mod’s menu. So a parsnip, which is normally worth 35g, might be worth 32g one day, then 36g the next. There’s also seasonal modifiers, meaning that a parsnip will pretty much always have a higher value in Fall versus Spring, because it’s “out of season” and thus harder to come by. The point is to encourage players to sell their products strategically, waiting until the right day in order to maximize profits, and even hold onto some stuff in order to make an even greater profit in the long term - hence “Longevity”. It also fixes the problem of one crop being the dominant, most valuable crop, removing the ability to rely on meta strategies for making money like going all-in on strawberries during Spring Year 1.

And the other system it adds is a tax system. At the end of each season the game will take a portion of your current money out to pay your bills. You pay upkeep or running costs for all the buildings and other structures on your farm, and you also build up an income tax for everything you do to make money, whether it’s selling items, completing quests for NPCs that reward gold, and humorously even just receiving free gold from things like Pierre’s “cash back” policy and letters from your parents in the mail. This exists to introduce a soft cap to certain areas of progression in order to balance out the game, so that you can’t build up tons of gold quickly and become a millionaire like in the vanilla game. You’re limited in how fast you can progress through the game, because every time you have Robin build another barn or shed, or each time you place down a new sprinkler, it contributes to the amount that gets taken out at the beginning of the next season. You have to expand more slowly, and in turn you’ll engage with more of the game’s systems and have to figure out new methods of progressing, along with needing to manage your time and energy more efficiently now that you cannot automate your entire farm.

I know it’s not everybody’s thing, but I absolutely love how these changes affect the gameplay. Longevity makes the process of growth in Stardew Valley feel so much more rewarding by having you work for it, and if you’re the type of player who typically focuses on being as efficient as possible and making as much money as you can, this will make you experience the game in a whole new way.

[justlaura_exe]

elf ears sdjkjdfnk

[Queen Droxxanna]

Originally posted by Bathory:

Originally posted by Queen Droxxanna:

tractor mod and skull cavern elevator make life easier even if you dont use any other mods or map extension mods.

skull cavern elevator seems like cheating imo

not really, there is an elevator in the town mine, so why not in skull cavern. What is does do is allow you to elevate back to the top entrance and heal, then return to the level where you left off. The elevator is only available EVERY 5 floors, so you still need to battle and find the stairs to progress down, and you cant use the elevator to skip levels you have not done.
My biggest issue with the mines is my backpack quickly fills up, so I take elevator to entrance to put items in a chest and then carry on.
the major quest with skull cavern is to get to level 100, the elevator does not let you cheat to just ride down there and skip the rest of the floors, you still have to battle thru 100 levels.

[Maya]

I love the original look and feel of Stardew Valley color palette. But the main mod I prefer to play with, is Info Suite 2.0
It adds a lot of useful information and I like it more than Look up everything.

[Keeptrucking]

Originally posted by Phirestar:

If you’re like me and you’ve experienced the vanilla game fully, and you find the normal progression too simplistic - items selling for a lot of gold, sprinklers making it easy to mass produce large quantities of crops, etc. - then I’d highly recommend trying out the Longevity mod. It’s definitely an essential for all my future modded playthroughs. (...).

I'm very conflicted about this because as much fun as it sounds to introduce the price fluctuations and making it harder to amass gold, I really don't like the sound of introducing the real world headache of taxes paid in full at the end of the year. :P