Credit to raenboe for this awesome guide.

Stardew Valley is an open-ended country-life RPG! You’ve inherited your grandfather’s old farm plot in Stardew Valley. Armed with hand-me-down tools and a few coins, you set out to begin your new life. Can you learn to live off the land and turn these overgrown fields into a thriving home? It won’t be easy. Ever since Joja Corporation came to town, the old ways of life have all but disappeared. The community center, once the town’s most vibrant hub of activity, now lies in shambles. But the valley seems full of opportunity. With a little dedication, you might just be the one to restore Stardew Valley to greatness!

Do you like Harvest Moon? Do you like running a farm? Do you like incredibly rude NPCs that judge your every move (hey man, I can dig in the trash if I want!!)? If yes, then what are you waiting for!?

Stardew Valley is a refreshing take on Harvest Moon with combat similar to Rune Factory and the museum side of Animal Crossing. Customise your character before joining a friendly village full of glorious quests and addictive activities such as growing crops, looking after animals, designing your farm, befriending villagers, exploring mines, kicking monster butt, fishing and of course a captivating storyline where your decisions affect the gameplay.

Depending on your playstyle I’d say there is at least a good 80+ hours of gameplay to experience!

•Check the TV daily – you can unlock cooking recipes by watching a cooking show, and find new items in the wild such as berries by watching the foraging show.

•Ignore grass on your farm - don’t cut down patches of grass (the big patches with flowers on them, you are fine to cut down weeds which are the single plants) with your scythe until you have built a silo! Grass, when cut down, is automatically added as hay to your silo which is used to feed your animals. By cutting it down you are wasting a bunch of free feed and you’ll be losing money for a while by paying to feed your animals.

•Build a Silo BEFORE a Coop - (100 Stone, 10 Clay, 5 Copper Bars) you should have built this to store all hay from your grass before buying a Coop. Otherwise you'll run out of food very fast or have to spend a lot buying it from Marnie.

•Collect 300* wood to be rich – you need this to repair the bridge on the beach. Doing this will unlock an area that fills with valuable items such as Coral (80g) and Sea Urchin (160g) that you can collect usually on a daily basis to sell.

•*Collect another 50 wood for storage – you can build a chest with this that gives you a huge extra storage (36 slots?) for all those items you collect. Trust me, you’ll need it quickly.

•One mans trash.. - check the 7 trash cans in town daily. You can get ores, bars, food and who knows what else! Don’t let people see you do it though, as they can react with a WTF type message. You can find them in the following places. (1) next to 1 Willow Lane, (2) next to 2 Willow Lane, (3) next to Mayors Manor, (4) next to the Saloon, (5) next to 1 River Road, (6) next to the Museum (7) next to the Blacksmith.

Welcome to Pelican Town!

If you have just started the game and you have no idea what you should be doing and you feel like 'This is boring' have no thoughts like that no more. Let me show you how to get through the basics and get hand of the game, like i did!

After watching your introductory cutscene, you will awaken in your house at 6am. You are able to move furniture around by clicking on it and while you are holding it you can right click to rotate it.

You will see in the top right hand corner there is an interface that gives you some information about the current time in the game.


From top to bottom you have the day and date, the weather (sun for sunny), the season (flower for spring), time of day and daylight clock (days last from 6am to 2am - so 20 hours (although you will pass out if you are still awake at 2am and wake up the next day)), your current money (gold), and a shortcut to your quests menu (or you can press F).

Because your quest icon is "pulsing", that means you have a new quest! Once you open your quest interface you'll see you have a quest called "Introductions", which is to introduce yourself to all of the 28 NPCs currently in town (you have already met Lewis and Robin hence the 2/28). You can find villagers all over the town, they tend to wonder around during the day as they all have their own schedules. There is no rush to complete this quest so take your time to talk to everyone while exploring.


I'd advise pressing E to open your inventory and have a look through all the tabs and options. There are a lot of things to collect! You can also see who you haven't met yet by ???'s next to their pictures in the social tab. There is also a map you can press M to bring up directly. Your clock is paused while your menu is open.

Now that that's over, you will see a parcel on the floor. Walk up to it and click it to open.
Grab your hoe and hit the soil, grab your seeds and plant some, finally water the patch with the watering can (the soil will turn dark to show it is watered for the day).

Plants take a few days to grow, you can see on the seed packet how long they will take. Plants need to be watered once every day to make them grow. Plant all the seeds and then feel free to wonder around.

You will see that using tools causes the energy bar in your bottom right hand corner to deplete. There are 2 ways to avoid hitting full exhaustion and walking around very slowly and completing actions more slow than ever. You can either

A) Run all the way back to your farm and go to bed for sleep
B) Eat something that will boost your energy.

You can normally get food from fishing, picking avaliable bushes or buying them from the jojamarket or any general store. The clinic may include food if your lucky. The most expensive place to get food is the fish store near the coast of the beach where most people go hunting for fish.

If you hover over an item, you can see what category it falls under as well as how much energy and health eating it will restore. You can eat an item by selecting it and then clicking anywhere around your character. Some items may have silver or gold stars on their icon, this means they are of higher quality and will sell for more gold as well as restoring extra energy/health.

When you go to sleep at the end of the day, you will recieve a breakdown of everything you shipped and how much it sold for. The gold made will be added to your total and you can check how much you've earned so far in your inventory page.

If you continue to explore, you may come across villagers. You can click on them to talk to them and automatically "introduce" yourself. You must be right next to an NPC to talk to them, if they are behind a counter you must go around it to speak to them. You can also gift items to villagers to increase your friendship with them.

Be careful, some people hate certain items!

Don't forget to check out the Calendar outside Pierre's Shop. This contains dates for festivals as well as villager birthdays, and giving them gifts on their birthdays is a big deal if you want to be friends!

If you see a yellow ! on this board, it means a quest is available. A random NPC will have requested a random item and will reward you with gold and a friendship heart. Most quests have a duration of 2 days before they are automatically failed. You don't have to do quests, they are completely optional and there is no repercussions for failing them. However, they are often good gold to a newbie!

You can open a shop by clicking on the counter. Click an item to buy it, or hold down your mouse to buy a lot. You can also sell items if they are not greyed out in your inventory below. Be careful because you can't undo what you buy, you will sell items back for less than you bought them.

So now it's up to you... farm, explore and meet people! As time passes you will unlock new skills, new areas and soon there will not be enough time in the day!