When I first got Stardew Valley last December, I spent days playing it. To date, I have 70 hours on record. I swapped study time with hours of slashing monsters, caring for crops and livestock, and doting on my husband, Harvey. But lately, I’ve been bored with Stardew Valley.
So I turned to the Stardew Valley community’s primary source for making the game interesting again: modding. There are mods for every conceivable aspect of the game. Want to go swimming? Mod your game to make that possible. Hate the shade of yellow in the desert? Change it to a more realistic tan. Here are some of the my favorite mods:
What time is it? Adventure Time—at least, it can be even if Finn and Jake aren’t there. This mod replaces your drab brown horse with the whimsical and rainbow equestrian lady-in-waiting, Lady Rainicorn. (To really get a full Adventure Time experience, try adding these hairstyles for your farmer.)
Maybe you’re too hardcore for a rainbow horse. In that case, you can try out this flaming demon skeleton horse from the depths of hell.
Terrify the residents of the valley and look cool while doing it. This particular horse mod comes in five different colors.
Milking Machokes
In Stardew Valley, there are a lot of Pokémon mods. One of the more interesting mods I found turns your white and brown cows into Machokes. (Calves can also become Machops using another mod.) They walk around as your cows do, hauling boxes, because I guess that’s all that Machokes do. You can still milk these Machokes like they’re cows. How do you milk a Machoke? I don’t know if you want to know.
Use characters from Up
If you’re like me, you’re still hurt over the opening minutes of Up. I don’t know if anyone can ever recover from that amount of emotional damage. Luckily, there’s a mod to bring Carl and Ellie together again. Using this mod, you can turn George into Carl and his wife Evelyn into Ellie.
However, you cannot fill their house with a ton of balloons to fly through the sky.
I think Stardew Valley has improved a lot of the problems I’ve encountered in similar games like Harvest Moon. However, one thing that some Harvest Moon games have that Stardew doesn’t is the ability to have more than one pet. In Stardew, you have to choose between either a cat or a dog.
This mod is cool because you can adopt more dogs or cats. Simply visit the box over by the mine cart in the bus station area. When you look into the box, you’ll find either an abandoned cat or a dog. If you have 500 g, you can take the animal to Marnie and have her groom him and perform a check up. The next day when you walk out to the pet area, you’ll find another lovely animal sitting there that you can interact with!
I wanted to try more complex mods, like adding new areas to the map. This jungle temple area, which is hidden at the back of the secret wood, is a cool place to explore.
Currently, there’s not much you can do right now other than explore the areas that are open, but the developer of the mod says that they plan to add more in the future. Personally, I like the added biome, as it makes the geography of Stardew Valley more diverse.
Do you dislike Clint as much as I do? Okay, I don’t dislike Clint, but he’s not exactly my favorite character in Stardew Valley. This mod incorporates more diversity into the game by changing Clint to Clarice, a black woman who identifies as a lesbian. For now, the dialogue for Clarice remains the same as Clint’s, but the developer plans to add unique dialogue for her in the future and possibly new events that may let Clarice marry Emily. I like the idea of being able to help other townspeople with relationships, but more than that, seeing how a developer will incorporate an entirely new character into the game. I’m definitely looking forward to future versions of this mod.
I have two children, and yet not a lot of toys for them. Maybe that’s why they do random things like run into walls or just stand in front of my bed in the morning.
This mod replaces some of the furniture items with toys like dollhouses, an easel, and even a rocking horse. Your kids can’t interact with them, but I like the addition of these items. It makes my home feel like more of a home.