I never played with mods. What do you recomend?

[Joker]

I've played Stardew Valley without any mods for years (I think I've been playing since 2016). But now, it's difficult to stay interested in the game, so I thought: why not try mods?

So, that's my question for you: what are the best mods, in your opinion?

About my gameplay style: I've learned a lot through practice, so for me, it's easy to complete the Community Center in one year and maximize almost everything in two years. But because of that, I always stop playing before finishing the second year...

My favorite thing about the game is the NPCs and their dialogues.
And I think that defines my gameplay style.

[ChrillBill]

I hope you will have fun trying out mods! I assume you already know how to add them so I will dive into some of my recommendations after giving a little advice. When you are adding mods, always make sure to read through the description page for each mod. This can be a bit time consuming, but your game will thank you as this is very important in terms of compability and possible dependencies. In the long run, you can avoid a lot of headaches if you just take the time to process the information available ^.^

Now for some of my recommendations!

Two of the best expansion mods for this game that I can recommend are:
*Stardew Valley Expanded[www.nexusmods.com]
*Ridgeside Village[www.nexusmods.com]
^These are great if you really want to expand the game in terms of gameplay, npcs etc. Makes the game feel quite massive. Keep in mind though that these mods are meant to be used from the beginning to end - meaning you should not add them in the middle of a playthrough and should definitely not remove them during a playthrough!

I also want to throw in some visual recommendations, as this helps creating a new atmosphere to the game (and especially if you want to renew your experience):
*DaisyNiko's Earthy Recolor[www.nexusmods.com]
Beautiful recolor mod that changes the look of the game, giving it a more toned down and therefore also easier on the eyes look. It looks even better combined with this:
*DaisyNiko's Earthy Interiors[www.nexusmods.com]

DaisyNiko also has a lot of fantastic farm maps, many of which I have used myself and can therefore recommend if that is also something you would be interested in.

If you want a cute medieval theme I can also recommend these:
*Medieval Buildings[www.nexusmods.com]
*Medieval Craftables[www.nexusmods.com]
*Gwen's Paths[www.nexusmods.com]
*Cottagecore Fences[www.nexusmods.com]
*Way Back Pelican Town[www.nexusmods.com]
These are all made by the same artist called Gweniaczek and they can give both the farm and also the rest of the town a very earthy and medieval look.

The following is a great mod when you want to add and change a lot of textures in the game. With this you can for example have different coops and barns on the farm at the same time and there are also many packs for craftables, furniture and animals:
*Alternative Textures[www.nexusmods.com]
^ There are so many different texture packs to pick from, so best advice I can give is to browse nexus to see if there is one or several that interests you.

This is similar to the one above but focus on the farmer you have created:
*Fashion Sense[www.nexusmods.com]

This is also a nice mod to help getting the valley to feel more alive:
*Visible Fish[www.nexusmods.com]
Makes the waters look really cool by displaying fish swimming around in it. A nice effect that makes the game feel even more alive.

*Dynamic Reflections[www.nexusmods.com]
Also a must have for me. Makes it so that you can see your reflection in mirrors, waters and as an extra cool effect you can also see stars and comets reflecting in the waters during night time. This mod also generates reflecting puddles during and after rainy weather for more realism which is a really nice touch.

Additional favourites by the talented Aimon111:
*Aimon's Tidy Cozy Cellar[www.nexusmods.com]
*Aimon's Fancy Shed[www.nexusmods.com]
*Aimon's Fancy Greenhouse[www.nexusmods.com]
*More Lively Farm Cave[www.nexusmods.com]
*More Lively Sewer Overhaul[www.nexusmods.com]
*Distant Lands - A Small Witch Swamp Expansion[www.nexusmods.com]
I hope you will find something to your liking!

[Joker]

Originally posted by ChrillBill:

I hope you will have fun trying out mods! I assume you already know how to add them so I will dive into some of my recommendations after giving a little advice. When you are adding mods, always make sure to read through the description page for each mod. This can be a bit time consuming, but your game will thank you as this is very important in terms of compability and possible dependencies. In the long run, you can avoid a lot of headaches if you just take the time to process the information available ^.^

Now for some of my recommendations! :staxelCow:

Two of the best expansion mods for this game that I can recommend are:
*Stardew Valley Expanded[www.nexusmods.com]
*Ridgeside Village[www.nexusmods.com]
^These are great if you really want to expand the game in terms of gameplay, npcs etc. Makes the game feel quite massive. Keep in mind though that these mods are meant to be used from the beginning to end - meaning you should not add them in the middle of a playthrough and should definitely not remove them during a playthrough!

I also want to throw in some visual recommendations, as this helps creating a new atmosphere to the game (and especially if you want to renew your experience):
*DaisyNiko's Earthy Recolor[www.nexusmods.com]
Beautiful recolor mod that changes the look of the game, giving it a more toned down and therefore also easier on the eyes look. It looks even better combined with this:
*DaisyNiko's Earthy Interiors[www.nexusmods.com]

DaisyNiko also has a lot of fantastic farm maps, many of which I have used myself and can therefore recommend if that is also something you would be interested in.

If you want a cute medieval theme I can also recommend these:
*Medieval Buildings[www.nexusmods.com]
*Medieval Craftables[www.nexusmods.com]
*Gwen's Paths[www.nexusmods.com]
*Cottagecore Fences[www.nexusmods.com]
*Way Back Pelican Town[www.nexusmods.com]
These are all made by the same artist called Gweniaczek and they can give both the farm and also the rest of the town a very earthy and medieval look.

The following is a great mod when you want to add and change a lot of textures in the game. With this you can for example have different coops and barns on the farm at the same time and there are also many packs for craftables, furniture and animals:
*Alternative Textures[www.nexusmods.com]
^ There are so many different texture packs to pick from, so best advice I can give is to browse nexus to see if there is one or several that interests you.

This is similar to the one above but focus on the farmer you have created:
*Fashion Sense[www.nexusmods.com]

This is also a nice mod to help getting the valley to feel more alive:
*Visible Fish[www.nexusmods.com]
Makes the waters look really cool by displaying fish swimming around in it. A nice effect that makes the game feel even more alive.

*Dynamic Reflections[www.nexusmods.com]
Also a must have for me. Makes it so that you can see your reflection in mirrors, waters and as an extra cool effect you can also see stars and comets reflecting in the waters during night time. This mod also generates reflecting puddles during and after rainy weather for more realism which is a really nice touch.

Additional favourites by the talented Aimon111:
*Aimon's Tidy Cozy Cellar[www.nexusmods.com]
*Aimon's Fancy Shed[www.nexusmods.com]
*Aimon's Fancy Greenhouse[www.nexusmods.com]
*More Lively Farm Cave[www.nexusmods.com]
*More Lively Sewer Overhaul[www.nexusmods.com]
*Distant Lands - A Small Witch Swamp Expansion[www.nexusmods.com]
I hope you will find something to your liking! :brownchicken:

Thank you so much for the recomendations! Stardew valley expanded and ridgeside village seem to be awesome!

[LT2483]

Along with seconding the recommendations for Stardew Valley Expanded and Ridgeside Village (both amazing content mods, probably both the size of the base game in terms of content), here a couple of my personal must-haves and other significant content mods:

• Noclip Mode: It's a "cheat" mod, but when adding a lot of content to your game, sometime map edits end up funky, and this mod can be used to fix that.
  
• Better Crafting: Just a couple of crafting improvements, like easy bulk crafting.
  
• Cornucopia - More Flowers, Cornucopia - More Crops, and Cornucopia - Artisan Machines: Three mods that I personally think act as best best expansion to the game's farming. It strikes the perfect balance between feeling vanilla, while still also feeling fresh.
  
• Fast Animations: Speeds up a lot of "time-waster" animations. Just some really nice QoL.
  
• Convenient Inventory: Item quick stacking. Also stuff like favoriting items and optional automatic organisation. This mod has saved me hours of inventory management and item depositing.
  
• Combat Controls Redux: Lets you swing weapons and tools towards your mouse, instead of your characters current facing. This one's necessity will very from player-to-player, but it's one of the reasons I'll never play vanilla stardew again.
  
• Friends Forever (1.6), or any other mod that prevents friendship decay: Mainly when using multiple large expansions like SVE and RD together. When there's 70+ NPCs, friendship decay can be a significant problem. Of course, you might like the challenge.
  
• NPC Map Locations: Shows NPCs on the map. Again, a kind of necessity when running multiple expansions at once, so you can actually find everyone.
  
• Lookup Anything: Basically an inbuilt wiki, dynamically generated from game data, and so supports every mod. EXTREMELY helpful, especially since many mods leads to many items you'll have no clue about otherwise.
  
• Show Birthdays: Again, for when you have a bunch of new NPCs. The base game's calendar can't support multiple NPCs with the same birthday, this mod fixes that. NOTE: This mod should be installed from the unofficial update that someone posted in the posts tab on the Nexus page for the mod. It's a GitHub link, and the post was on the 3rd of August 2024.

[Queen Droxxanna]

well thats a big list for you to start with, but I recommend you start small with just a few mods, dont over whelm yourself. My favorite mod, that I never want to play without is the Tractor Mod, which makes lots of things easier , like chopping trees, clearing grass. But the tractor also makes you invulnerable in the mines and you can zip thru each level quickly.
Second, I would recommend the Skull cavern Elevator! Its the only way you can get really deep in there as there is no real bottom to the mine.

So just do a few mods a once, you dont need to add them all at the same time, learn to use a few first and see the difference in the game, like Stardew valley Expanded adds a lot to the game. And texture mods can come later... I have used over 300 different mods in the past and some I kept and some I got rid of.

Keep in mind that SMAPI and mods frequently get updated and some mods are old and no longer work, so be sure to read the details of each mod before using it, and keeping your long list of mods up to date can be time consuming and annoying --- I know I have spend an entire day updating my mods at different times.

You will also want to bookmark https://smapi.io/log website in order to check your stack of mods and game for errors and needed updates if you have any problems with the game once you have a bunch of mods,
The good news is you can click follow on Nexxus all of your mods and Nexxus will let you know when your mods have been updated if you check in there.

Have fun and dont over whelm yourself with mods at first, but if an old lady like myself can learn to use them, so can you.

[Queen Droxxanna]

also keep in mind that any mods that add more content (crafting, cooking recipes, and npc's ) will also add to the games requirements for 100% completion for Perfection. I went to Ridgeside before I had done initial quest to meet everyone in town and that more then doubled the number of people I had to meet.

[BirbNotBird]

I will throw in another recommendation:

+ Upgrade Empty Cabins: You can now use "Multiplayer" cabins as your own cabins in single player. You can also upgrade those cabins in Robin's place. No longer player-exclusive starting boxes or beds will frustrate you, as they can be toggle off.

+ Automate & PFM Automate: Turn Stardew into Factorio. This is a "heavily cheat" mod, but either you craft many stations and put ingredients, or just craft a few and have spare time visiting villagers. I think it's good when you have to do some expansions mod.

+ Non Destructible NPC: No longer your chest or your station will be voided if a NPC pass by. Sadly Nexus mod is no longer maintained, but an unofficial patch is on Stardew Forums (Look up in Nexus page's comment section).

+ Multiple Obelisks: Simple mod that make obelisks more useful. Best when pair with huge farm mod, or you just want to go somewhere else.

+ [Any kind of mod that add Auto-Petter to Community Center route]: Self-explanatory. Maybe lore broken, but I find that automates the ranching things.

+ The return of Immersive Sprinklers/Scarecrows: No longer make them grid-based but more like grid-corner based for realistic approaches. Sprinklers can be paired with two endgame upgrade at same time.

+ Weather Wonders: Include new weather which can kill your crops or make them grow faster. Introducing Moon cycle like Blood moon or Harvest moon.

+ Timespeed: Manually adjust speed of time to your liking.

+ Auto Axe/Pichaxe/Watering Can/etc: Help you stop clicking more and just draw a zone and move your character to do the task.

[LT2483]

Originally posted by BirbNotBird:

+ [Any kind of mod that add Auto-Petter to Community Center route]: Self-explanatory. Maybe lore broken, but I find that automates the ranching things.

Just a note, but as of SVE 1.15, it has a way to obtain auto-petters without skull cavern or golden mystery box RNG. So if using SVE, this type of mod is unneeded.

The source of the auto-petters in SVE:
SVE adds another coop and barn upgrade tier, and those upgrades include petters.

[PichuYang]

I have not run expansion mods bcs I am still enjoying 1.6 content up till first Perfection. I had done casual and min-max run a couple of times, and I don't think mods really change the outcome.

More Pleasant Elevator Sound
would be the only one I think is necessary due to "elevator farming".