Top 15 Stardew Valley Best Mods For Beginners
Knowing that there are downloadable mods available to help make the game a little bit simpler is always beneficial for a beginner in any game. One game with a vast number of modifications is Stardew Valley, which includes mods for the user interface, gameplay, visuals, and more. In order to aid you, we've included 15 mods that we think new players may find useful. The majority of the mods on the list below require SMAPI, a mod loader for Stardew Valley, in order to function.
15-Simple Crop Label
It can be a little difficult for a new player to figure out the different types of crops once they've been planted. Players may choose to plant one or two of the crops necessary to finish the bundles, most likely taking the Community Center path. However, if you can't tell what you've grown, it can be a little challenging to make sure you have the crops you need while keeping track of your finances. But don't worry, this interface modification includes a tooltip that enables players to recognize the crops and fruit plants on their property.
Why it's good for beginners:
When you first start playing the game, it will take some time to recognize and recall what each seed and tree looks like. This mod is excellent for teaching you about the different crops and is also helpful if you simply forget what you planted.
Because most trees have a similar appearance and you might only need one of each when starting out on your farm, this mod is especially useful for differentiating every kind of tree. Having this patch will help you avoid purchasing a second tree if you don't require one.
What's Fun About Simple Crop Label:
- It’s pretty easy to use! Simply right-click on a plant, and a label with its name will show up. There is the option to configure the mod so that the label shows while hovering over crops.
- It’s good when mixed seeds are planted, which gives an assortment of the current season’s crops.
- This mod is great for everyone, as even seasoned participants can benefit from it.
Simple Crop Label details.
14-Nari's Naturally Valley
This mod is a recolor of the terrain in Stardew. The vanilla color is a little bright to the eyes, and this one retouches everything, making it a little more soft and realistic.
Why it's good for beginners:
This mod is good for beginners because, while the colors of the terrain are done beautifully, they can be a bit bright for some. So for those who want something a little softer, this is for them.
It is a simple mod that does a lot for the visuals of the game. It works well for those just starting out and those who have been playing for some time and are ready to see their game look a little different.
What's Fun About Nari's Naturally Valley:
- The terrain for every season has been recolored.
- This includes the ground, grass, and water features. However, the trees haven't been included.
Nari's Naturally Valley details.
13-Seed Information
Ever been in a situation where you bought seeds and planted them, hoping to get a nice yield of crops, only to reach the end of the season and find out they died at the change of the season? Been there, done that, and hopefully not again with this mod.
The Seed Information mod does as its name states by giving valuable information on every seed in the shops. By hovering over the seed, it tells you whether seeds can be planted today as well as the value of their various produce items.
Why it's good for beginners:
Every crop has a set growth time, and it can be hard to remember how long each plant takes to grow. When starting out, this is important information to have, as it can save you both time and money.
What's Fun About Seed Information:
- It not only informs you if a crop can be planted that day, but it also informs you if a fertilizer like Speed Grow can be used to grow it.
- The information displayed varies based on the seed type, such as coffee beans, hops, wheat, and tea leaves, and it illustrates the worth of their artisanal products.
- Any modifiers, such as professions and other factors, are taken into consideration in the prices and growth rates.
Seed Information details.
12-Loved Labels Redux
Discovering that animals produce better-quality items the higher their friendship level adds a slight challenge to the game. This can be easily incorporated as part of the daily chores, but sometimes we forget while busy with other tasks! In order to help remember whether or not your pets and animals have been petted, players can add this new interface in the Loved Labels mod. Based on the Loved Labels mod, this is an updated version with extra configurations of that mod.
Why it's good for beginners:
Petting animals is important to encourage them to produce quality products, which is useful to earn a higher profit for both the animal products themselves as well as better quality artisan goods.
What's Fun About Loved Labels Redux:
- The labels are very clear to distinguish between an animal that needs to be petted and one that has already been petted.
- This mod is compatible with all PC platforms and works for single-player, local co-op, and multiplayer.
Loved Labels Redux details.
11-To-Dew
It can be hard to remember that you wanted to ask Robin to build a shed before a certain time while also working on reaching deeper levels in the mines. In order to combat that, players can download To-Dew! This is a mod that adds an in-game to-do list that shows up on the top left of your screen.
Why it's good for beginners:
Once you’ve gotten your farm started with different crops growing and animals available in barns and coops, as well as having several quests to complete, there can be a lot to remember. Using this mod is a great way to keep everything in one quick-to-see place.
The mod is extremely useful to just keep information about things that you want to keep on hand instead of going to the Wiki page, such as when a certain type of fish can be caught.
What's Fun About To-Dew:
- It’s easy to set it up and start making lists! Bring up the to-do list by pressing the configurable hotkey, which has been set to the default L for "list". Once something on your list is completed, you can mark it as done.
- The list is editable with different settings for how and when the to-do tasks show up on the list. You can also move tasks up and down the list or delete them.
- The mod works in both single-player and multiplayer modes, with one list for the whole farm and everyone being able to edit it.
To-Dew details.
10-Bigger Backpack
Throughout your gameplay, there will be many items to collect, which makes your inventory space very important. When first starting out, players get only 12 inventory slots, which isn’t that much once you start exploring the whole of Pelican Town and go mining. There are two backpack upgrades available for players to purchase from Piere’s, but even with that extra space, there can still be times when your inventory gets full. When that happens, this mod will definitely come in handy.
Why it's good for beginners:
This makes all the explorations and mining expeditions much easier now that you will be able to carry more items that you foraged, mined, and harvested from monsters.
While this new backpack upgrade costs 50,000 gold to buy, it is well worth the amount, as you can hold a lot more items than ever before.
What's Fun About Bigger Backpack:
- Going from 12 inventory slots all the way up to 48 slots is a game changer!
- It can be a great goal to reach enough funds to be able to purchase the upgrade.
- It’ll take a while longer for your inventory to get full and reach the point where you have to decide what to keep and what to discard.
Bigger Backpack details.
9-Lookup Anything
Stardew Valley includes many different things for players to learn about and try to remember, such as what gifts NPCs enjoy or when is the best time to plant and harvest a crop. As people tend to say, if you need help with something, there’s a mod for that, and that’s where Lookup Anything comes in.
Why it's good for beginners:
This mod is a lot easier to use than taking the steps to search for information from the Wiki pages, as everything is found in one place.
It’s a great tooltip function for when information is needed quickly. When stuck in a bind and needing to remember certain information, this mod hands players all the information they need just by pressing F1 and hovering over what they need information on.
What's Fun About Lookup Anything:
- Learn about anything you want relating to individual farm animals, monsters, and even any children you may have.
- The mod gives a lot of information about the different crops, such as which NPC likes what, what it’s needed for, and if it’s used in any recipes.
- It is compatible with Linux, macOS, and Windows, as well as with single-player and multiplayer.
Lookup Anything details.
8-AFK Pause
There have been times when you may stop whatever activity you were doing and forget to press escape to pause the game, leading to rather unsavory results. Imagine being on a mining expedition and stopping for a moment to do something off-screen, not realizing that a slime or bat has come to pester you, reducing your health pretty badly. Pretty scary! To stop that from happening, this AFK mod pauses the game for you if you haven't moved after a specific number of seconds.
Why it's good for beginners:
This is good for beginners who are still learning the mechanisms of the game and forget that time can go by pretty quickly, leading to players either getting knocked out by monsters or by not making it to bed in time.
Since the mod defaults to pausing the game if no mouse or button movement has been made for 60 seconds, this can save a player’s life or prevent them from losing a day of work.
What's Fun About AFK Pause:
- Enabling the mod in the config will also cause it to show a scroll with the word "AFK" in the center of the screen.
- The timer will restart upon any user input, including cursor movement. The configuration menus allow you to customize the seconds.
AFK Pause details.
7-Recyclable Artifacts
Discovering artifacts is exciting each time a new one is found to donate to the museum. After that, most of them become pretty useless and just sit in your chests, taking up space. They can be sold for a small amount of gold, but the amount is pretty small. This mod changes things up, as now you can recycle almost all artifacts through the Recycling Machine.
Why it's good for beginners:
Instead of letting these extra artifacts take up valuable chest and inventory space, why not turn them into something more useful with the recycling machine?
Each artifact item turns into a certain resource item, which can be a small amount but over time really adds to the necessities.
What's Fun About Recyclable Artifacts:
- You get more use out of the recycling machines since artifacts tend to be easy to come by.
- It’s very possible to get valuable resource items such as ores and bars.
- Some of these items can even contribute to certain quests, such as collecting a certain amount of skeleton bone shards.
Recyclable Artifacts details.
6-Automate
We all love when we can get things done automatically, saving time and effort for things we really want to work on. This mod works by allowing players to place a chest full of raw materials next to a furnace or crystalarium. The machines will then automatically process all the raw materials in the chest, provided they can.
Why it's good for beginners:
This can eliminate several steps in needing to make multiple items at a time, leaving more time available for completing other important tasks. Have a chest full of eggs and a row of mayonnaise machines? Let the mod do the work for you.
Placing a chest next to a crafting station in any direction, including diagonally, will link them as a basic automation. A chest can be used to join various machines together.
What's Fun About Automate:
- Automate by default enables appliances like cheese presses, crab pots, bee hives, and mayonnaise makers.
- You will receive the same XP, achievements, and items from automated machines as you would from using them manually.
- Simply by positioning each chest or machine so that it is contacting another one, you can join any number of them to form a "machine group."
- Compatible with Linux, macOS, and Windows, single-player, local split-screen, and multiplayer.
Automate details.
5-Multi Save
Maintain numerous save points for every playthrough; enable automatic saving every day, every week, or every month; and handle and restore save points from the game's Load menu. With this mod, you can make autosaves or actively save the current day using a hotkey to create and switch between numerous save points during a playthrough.
Why it's good for beginners:
If you forgot to complete a time-sensitive task, such as a quest, you can start the day over in order to complete it.
If, for instance, you roll back to an earlier save point and then continue playing from there without deleting the current save points of later dates, you can have numerous save points with the same in-game date thanks to this mod.
What's Fun About Multi Save:
- Saves are based on the start of the current day, so anything you did during the day will not be included in the save file since, by necessity, Stardew Valley saves are always at the start of the day.
- The mod creates temporary backup saves before the game does, so you can always choose to go back to one of the saves in case something goes wrong. You can always roll back to any of the previous seven in-game days because it retains saves from the previous seven days and deletes older saves every morning.
- You can switch to having the mod save every week and/or month, change the maximum age of saves, and set a hotkey to manually save the current day instead of using the config.
Multi Save details.
4-NPC Map Locations
With so many different NPCs to meet, it can be hard to find them when you first start out. Every NPC has a set schedule, but not knowing it can be frustrating when you need to meet everyone for the first quest or to give them something they asked for. NPC Map Locations can help take those frustrations away by showing the locations of every NPC as well as any friends during a multiplayer game.
Why it's good for beginners:
With this mod, you don’t have to memorize everyone’s routine and can find them at a click of a button. Now getting into their houses and rooms is another matter.
Tracking NPCs is much easier using this mod, and it even includes the times when you can enter people’s homes.
What's Fun About NPC Map Locations:
- It includes an optional minimap.
- The map is redrawn to be much more accurate to the game layout and positioning, and the player position will also be much more accurate.
- The map will change for each season automatically and adjust tracking automatically for larger custom map sizes.
- The map supports custom NPC outfits automatically, which is fun when using special clothing mods.
- Compatible with Linux, macOS, and Windows, as well as single-player and multiplayer. In order for it to work in multiplayer, the mod must be installed by the host player and also by any farmhand who wants to see NPCs on the map.
NPC Map Locations details.
3-Chests Anywhere
If, like me, you start to have several chests of items in order to try and be organized but find that some items are scattered across two or three chests, then you may like this mod. It gives you access to all of your chests, dressers, fridge, shipping bin, and even Junimo huts from anywhere you are and organizes them the way you like.
Why it's good for beginners:
This not only helps you stay more organized and saves you time, but it also enables you to give chests names to make them the most ordered chests possible. From the comfort of your bed to the deepest mine level, you can now move things without taking your time to run around.
This mod is pretty customizable, with settings that allow you to create categories for the chests, set the sort order in the list, and even take things out of the shipping bin before they’re shipped.
What's Fun About Chests Anywhere:
- The mod works in multiplayer, with chests only working for farmhands in synced locations, mainly the farm, farm buildings, and their current location. This is excellent, as it helps everyone be organized.
- The mod is local, so it's fine if only some players have it, and it'll only work for those who do.
Chests Anywhere details.
2-Instant Tool Upgrades
This mod makes Clint give you your upgraded tools immediately, so you no longer have to wait two days for your important tools! This mod gives the player their new tool right away.
Why it's good for beginners:
Getting your tools prepared right away is extremely helpful when you need those tools back in order to keep watering your crops, further explore the mines, and more without having to take a pause.
Two strings in the English version of the game were changed to remove Clint’s references to the wait time. This makes the in-game conversation appear smooth.
What's Fun About Instant Tool Upgrades:
- You don’t have to be forced to wait before going back to the mines or to plan out when you will not have crops that need watering.
- Compatible with the PC version of Stardew Valley. It also works on mobile, except for upgrading the Trash Can.
Instant Tool Upgrades details.
1-Warp Network
After some time playing the game, it will quickly dawn on players just how much time it takes to get from their farm to other destinations on the map. While it might not take as much time to get around once the mine carts are unlocked, it can still be a small hassle to not get to certain places quickly, such as from your farm to the beach. Teleportation is the answer to this problem! Designed to be an easy-to-use mod, Warp Network is a flexible and lightweight fast-travel mod for Stardew Valley, allowing players to quickly teleport across the map via the warp statues.
Why it's good for beginners:
Being able to teleport to each area is time-saving for getting a headstart on the day as well as getting back home in time for bed without passing out.
This works well enough that you might not choose to build a stable later in the game to get access to the horse, though it should function well once the horse flute is acquired.
What's Fun About Warp Network:
- You can teleport to the Mountains, your farm, the Beach, the Desert, and Ginger Island later on from any of the warp statues.
- The mod is configurable, with options to make the farm destination always accessible with the Return Scepter or not, or if the statues are enabled to be used only after their corresponding obelisk has been built on the farm.
Warp Network details.
