Stardew Valley is a fantastic game. It’s calm, relaxing and speaks to casual gamers and completionists alike. Below are the 20 best mods to make an already great game even better.
1. Stardew Valley Expanded
Stardew Valley Expanded is just what the name says, a mod that adds to the game.
Stardew Valley was a game made by one person and that person did an amazing job. But Stardew Valley Expanded adds to the game in a way that makes you wonder if this is what would have been if it had been made by a team. Expanded makes the map bigger, obviously. It also adds new NPCs and new character events. It adds the Wizard as a character you can marry and Gunther, Marlon, and Morris are now all people you can chat with and become their friends. You can also visit 50 new locations, fish new fish and plant new crops and it even boasts two new farms!
This mod is the best simply because it stuck to the original feel and story of Stardew Valley and made it bigger. If you have played the game for long enough, no matter how much you love it, it can get a little stale. SVE adds a freshness to it and even the game's original characters have some new dialogue and friendship events, so just because there are new NPCs, that doesn’t mean you have to ignore Sebastian or Marnie if you want something new. Another problem that can occur for players who play into the fourth or fifth year on one farm is that even between the Ginger Island farm and your home farm things can get tight. If you want a barn for each kind of animal, you are probably going to need to dedicate your entire space to just barns. Stardew Valley gets rid of that and makes the farm land bigger. No more cows bothering the chickens if you didn’t want to put up fences. Just move them to separate sides of the map. No one was ever able to just play one day of Stardew Valley and this mod happily makes that even harder to do.
Key Features:
- New NPCs and character events. You get to meet new people and learn new routines, rather than just trying to remember where everyone is at a certain time of day.
- New crops and foragable items. You can get out of the humdrum of simply growing melons or harvesting the same things over and over.
- New locations and a bigger farm. More to explore means more fun.
Find it here: Stardew Valley Expanded
2. Farm Extended
Can’t pick a starter farm? Don’t worry, this mod has you covered!
When starting a new farm in Stardew Valley you get to pick your farm type. And even if you are a person who knows what their favorite part of the game is, that can be difficult. This mod erases that problem by putting all of them together.
As a person who loves the mining aspect of Stardew Valley and gets very frustrated with the fishing I thought that the mountain top farm would be the best for me. But then I realized how little space I had for the animals and crops. And I still had to fish. The beach farm seemed like a good fit but now there was no mining and I couldn’t use sprinklers except on one small patch. Farm Extended would have saved me a lot of frustration because there is a little of everything. A woods for foraging, plenty of space for farming, an area for mining, a spot to fish and it even gives you an area to put your animals if you want. It has thought of everything and kept the core of the game in focus. You should still unlock the greenhouse, though. Then you can grow whatever you want year round.
Key Features:
- Adds a section of each of the farm types. No more spending ten minutes to choose at the beginning.
- Dedicated space to grow crops is in the middle. Which means when you are grinding at the beginning you can still step outside your door and have your crops nearby.
- Area for foraging on sight means that you will finish the community center faster.
Find it here: Farm Extended
3. NPC Map Location
There is nothing more frustrating than finishing a request for someone and not being able to find them. NPC Map Locations has your back.
Characters in Stardew Valley keep to a schedule, which in theory makes it easy to find them, once you learn said schedule.. However, every character's routine changes by season and for some characters based on the weather. Which can make finding them for birthdays or to complete requests extremely frustrating. This mod allows you to see where everyone is when you open the map and follow them as they move so you can figure out where they are heading.
Elliot is the hardest character to friend early on, simply because if it rains, he doesn’t leave his house. And his birthday is in spring and it regularly rains on his birthday. However, he is also one of the characters who doesn’t have a spot he is at the same time every single day.
Whereas, during the spring and summer Sebastian can be found next to the mountain lake or Emily is in the tavern for work every day after 2, or Robin is normally in her house except for Tuesdays, Elliot and Leah bounce around from location to location, making their schedules harder to memorize.
With this mod, if you need to find either of them you can simply open the map and find them, and see where they are headed or will be. This map also gives you a heads up on the hours of businesses, so if you want to double check that Marnie is actually working, you can check.
Key Features
- The map follows the characters as they move. Helpful if you want to catch them before they walk into somewhere you can’t go.
- Gives store hours. Pierre and Marnie will no longer be able to make you run there just to see they are closed.
- Allows for a better view of the town. No more squinting to figure out what’s what: it’s all clearly labeled.
Find it here: NPC Map Locations
4. Automate
Want to save time on the farm and be able to do things on Ginger Island without having to run back every night? Automate is on it.
Marnie’s store sells an Autograbber, which milks your cows, shears your sheep, and grabs the eggs, saving you a little time. You still have to go pet them all and then remove them from the autograbber and take them to their presses or looms. Should you wish to add things to a cask to let them age, that is going to take even longer. Automate lets you cut out all the middle steps. All you have to do is place the chest and it will feed the raw materials into their specific next steps.
This mod seems simple and like something shouldn’t be this high on the list, but it should for one reason: you can now actually stay on Ginger Island for more than a day. Ginger Island can be so much fun to explore and mine but running back to make sure the eggs are becoming mayonnaise and the milk is becoming cheese can make it stressful. Especially since no one wants to pass out at 2 AM and lose their stuff to the dwarves. So rest easy over at Ginger Island because now you have an Automate to help you out.
Key Features:
- Can feed raw materials into cheese presses so you don’t have to.
- You can hook up multiple steps, saving you even more time and save you from forgetting to put things in the cask.
- Works with more than just animals, you can also use it for tappers to honey to mead to cask, and that’s just one example.
Find it here: Automate
5. UI Info Suite
All the basic information that you normally have to guess at is at your fingertips in the Ui Info Suite mod.
Ui Info Suite provides different information that makes the game easier and planning for future days in the game less of a hassle. It gives you an icon that represents the luck for the day, and you can scroll over a crop to get the crop name and number of days until harvest. It also displays NPC map locations and helps keep track of animal products and whatever Clint is upgrading for you at the time.
Stardew Valley is a farm management sim at the core. No matter how you try to play you have to manage the farm. And Ui Info Suite is great for helping with the management part. You can now plan when you need to go to Pierre’s to buy more seeds and show you the range available for your scarecrow and current sprinkler layout.
Don’t want to go back in and see what the luck is for the day? It’s now on your screen. You don’t have to worry about wondering how long Clint is going to take to upgrade your pickaxe anymore because now it also shows up on the screen. Conveniently, you also don’t have to go into town to view the billboard and calendar anymore. It’s available whenever you need it.
Key Features:
- Luck tracker and Clint tracker making it possible to plan your days and trips to the mines accordingly.
- Shows crop names and how long until they are ready to harvest. Making planning future trips to Pierre’s possible.
- Icons over the animals show if they have milk or wool that needs to be collected and whether or not they have been milked. This is especially helpful with goats who only make milk every other day.
Find it here: Ui Info Suite
6. Tractor Mod
Tired of having to manually redo everything every season? Robin will now sell you a tractor and a garage for it, for a steep price and materials.
At the change of every season more logs, rocks and weeds will respawn on your farm. You will also have to hoe out new crop plots. And that all takes a lot of energy and time. Which, if you have time sensitive quests or want to give someone a gift before they are locked in their house for the night, can be a stressful endeavor. However, this mod allows you to buy a tractor garage and tractor that you can use to help manage the farm maintenance.
As much as I love Stardew Valley, the number of times a rock or log has locked my animals in their coop or barn is extremely annoying. Not to mention, you have to go by seeds first because Pierre, rudely, refuses to stock them before the first of every season.
Well, if you have the resources, you should definitely invest in the tractor and tractor garage. However the cost is steep 150,000 g, 20 iron bars, 5 iridium bars and 5 batteries. I would recommend fixing Willy’s boat first and then going for the Tractor but whichever way you want to do it, the tractor is helpful.
Key Features
- The tractor helps with more than just tilling the ground. It can also help clear the land.
- While expensive seeming, if you get it late in the game the cost and resources won’t break you
- Saves time. Especially on the first of the month when you need to buy seeds and Pierre’s only open until 5.
Find it here: Tractor Mod
7. Winter Grass
Tired of spending a fortune during the winter on grass? Now you can grow your own in winter.
During the warm months of Stardew Valley your animals will eat mostly what they find outside. And it’s easier for you to find or grow hay to fill the silo too. But in winter your choices are buy from Marnie or fill a building with grass and use your scythe to cut it down (yes you can actually do that, you buy the grass at Pierre’s). But with this mod, it still grows on your farm, even in the winter.
The biggest factor that puts this mod ahead of the others is that you don’t have to worry about Marnie and whether or not she is open. Because she is closed Monday and Tuesday and sometimes it feels like she is closed other days just for fun. And honestly, it’s annoying. Because the animals need food, Marnie. I need you to be open. Thankfully, with this mod you don’t have to worry about that anymore. And it saves you a lot of money, especially if you have several barns and coops worth of animals.
Key Features:
- No longer having to rely on Marnie for hay. And as much fun as covering Pierre’s store in grass is, he would probably appreciate it if you didn’t.
- Grows on your farm all year and more often. Allowing you to spend less money on the Grass Starter from Pierre’s.
- Changes the look for winter, so you don’t have a very springy looking grass growing in your snow. It’s really nice to look at, too. If your cows weren’t so hungry you would be tempted to just leave it where it grows.
Find it here: Winter Grass
8. Instant Tool Upgrades
No more waiting for winter to upgrade your watering can now. Clint gives it back to you immediately.
Upgrading tools in an essential part of Stardew Valley if you want to make any sort of progress or changes to your farm. To upgrade your tools you need to have 5 bars of whatever metal you are wanting it upgraded to (the order is copper, iron, gold, iridium) and pay Clint. Then Clint takes your tools for a couple of days and upgrades them. Which is fine for the most part for any tool except the watering can. You need the watering can everyday, unless it’s winter. With this mod there is no wait. Hand Clint your tools, the bars and the money and he makes an instant upgrade and you can be on your way.
The way that upgrading your tools works in the normal game is okay. It can be a bit annoying waiting for tools, especially since Clint won’t even process your geodes while he is working on your tools. Thankfully, this mod takes care of all of that.
No more waiting until winter to upgrade your watering can or hoe and hoping you can at least upgrade them to gold by the time spring rolls around. And you no longer have to worry about how many geodes you will have to remember to take to Clint once he finally finishes whatever tool he is upgrading.
Key Features:
- Immediately upgrade any tool. You can begin using your much better tool immediately.
- You can get Clint back to processing your geodes faster.
- You can upgrade them all at once now. Assuming you have the materials and supplies.
Find it here: Instant Tool Upgrades
9. Gift Taste Helper
Some villagers are more picky than others about what they will accept as a gift. Gift Taste Helper is a mod to help you not screw up their birthdays.
Friendship in Stardew Valley is a key feature, because you can’t unlock certain recipes without leveling up friendship, and you definitely need to level up people if you want to see new dialogue and get more story information. Giving an NPC a gift that they like or love gives you more friendship points than a gift they are only okay with. And giving them a gift they hate or dislike will lose friendship points. And giving them a bad gift on their birthday loses you 8x the points.
The Gift Taste Helper mod takes the guesswork out of it by showing you what each NPC loves when you hover over their birthday on either the calendar or the social screen in your menu.
There have been multiple times where I have been trying to up my friendship with any given character and I accidentally give them a gift they loathe, because I didn’t know what they liked and decided to guess (tip: DO NOT GIVE SAM MAYONNAISE). Hovering over their icon and getting a list of their most loved things is incredibly helpful.
And while granted, some NPCs have an almost impossible list of loved items for any farmer first starting out, there are NPCs like Leah who will be happy with a salad from Gus’s bar. You can also do this from the menu, which means you can grab all the gifts before you leave the farm, eliminating the need to run back and forth constantly.
Key Features:
- Each villager’s most loved gifts are available anytime. Making it easy to figure out what to give on the spur of the moment.
- No more guessing and making a villager angry on their birthday and losing a full heart’s worth of friendship.
- Does not show dislikes, so be careful to avoid giving anything that could be considered a dislike by everyone. Everyone except Krobus likes home cooked meals, for instance.
Find it here: Gift Taste Helper
10. Crops Anytime Anywhere
Crops Anytime Anywhere allows you to turn the quarry into a garden…if you want.
Crops are seasonal. That’s one of the truths of real life and Stardew Valley but should you install this mod, you can grow whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want. This means that if you stock up on your favorite seeds or go buy them in the desert, you can plant some of the biggest money making crops all year round.
The first winter in Stardew Valley can be difficult, especially if you haven’t unlocked the desert mine or you're not a fan of fishing. Crops don’t grow in winter, and this takes away a good chunk of the morning routine and leaves you with a bunch of time and not a lot of ways to make money.
So, thankfully, you can install this mod and grow whatever you want whenever. Or if you just want to free up space on your farm, you can install this mod and start your garden in town or in the quarry…or on the beach. Seriously the valley is your oyster now, the citizens just live here.
Key Features:
- Ability to grow any season crops whenever you want, including in winter.
- Ability to grow them wherever you want, freeing up space on your farm. Setting up the quarry is a great way to save space and put the quarry to good use.
- This also applies to fruit trees. Meaning you will be able to keep your wine business going all year long.
Find it here: Crops Anytime Anywhere
11. Fishing Made Easy Suite
Fishing Made Easy Suite helps those of us who have a terrible time trying to play the fishing mini game.
Fishing Made Easy Suite not only makes the mini game easier, it makes finding fish easier too. It also makes it possible to catch Prismatic Shard, you can now fish in the pond at your farm and even increase how much fish sell for.
This mod can feel a little like cheating but that’s what mods are for sometimes and sometimes the fishing in Stardew Valley makes the whole game incredibly frustrating. This mod not only makes fishing easier but you can fish for the most precious items in the whole game, prismatic shards.
Also, let’s say you are working on the fish tank part of the community center and you realize that you have missed the season to catch a specific fish and will have to wait until the following year. Not with this mod. Just like Crops Anytime Anywhere you can now fish for a fish anytime. No matter the season or weather.
Key Features:
- The fishing mini game is easier. Which is this mod's biggest plus. Anything that makes that easier is a good mod.
- You can catch prismatic shards. So you can finally give one to Gunther for the museum.
- You can catch fish in any season. Even if it’s not their usual one.
Find it here: Fishing Made Easy Suite (Content Patcher)
12. The Love of Cooking
Cooking, something you are able to do once you upgrade your house, becomes so much more than it is with The Love of Cooking mod.
The Love of Cooking mod makes cooking much more interesting and something to become invested in. You get a whole new menu that has been revamped with new sprites and new recipes. You get a frying pan, which you can upgrade at Clint’s, like you do other tools. In keeping with that Cooking now becomes a skill that you can level up the same as you would the others.
This mod is great because it makes cooking in the game something more enjoyable. Unless you use this mod it’s just something you do to make gifts for people or to make something to give you a boost. With this it can become a competition you have with yourself, another way to achieve more in the game. Especially since, if you want to make more in depth recipes with more ingredients, you are going to need to upgrade that frying pan.
Clint will also be happy, as he regularly points out, he needs the money.
Key Features:
- New menu to cook from, so you have more recipes to make with more boosts.
- New tools and the tools are upgradable at Clint’s. As grumpy as Clint is, he probably can’t decide how he feels about it
- Gives you the cooking skill. This can be leveled up the same as the other skills (i.e. farming, mining, foraging)
Find it here: The Love of Cooking
13. Artisan Valley
Make more on your farm with the Artisan Valley mod.
Stardew Valley really has plenty of ways to make money on your farm. One of the biggest ways is with artisan goods. And the goods sell for a decent price. This mod takes the artisan goods in the game and adds more. It gives you over 200 new products to make and new machines to make them on.
Doing the artisan stuff in Stardew Valley can be really rewarding. For one thing, it does pay more. For another it just feels fancy. But there are only so many things you can do. And if being an artisan is something you really enjoy you are going to want this mod. New machines to explore how to use keeps the game feeling fresh. Not to mention with over 200 new items to make, it’s going to take you a while to discover everything!
Key Features:
- New machines to craft and unlock, which keeps the game feeling new.
- New products to make and sell. This gives you even more ways to make money and make a name for yourself.
- These new items will definitely impress Lewis at the fall fair and you can easily beat Pierre. Which is always a plus.
Find it here: PPJA - Artisan Valley
14. Look Up Anything
Lookup Anything gives you information on all the aspects of your game with the press of a key.
The Lookup Anything mod will tell you pretty much anything you want to know. All you have to do is move your cursor over something and press F1. You will immediately have as much information as you want. This includes, but is not limited to, all information about NPCs, how long the fences on your farm have before they need to be repaired and what you have being made in preserve jars and kegs.
Lookup Anything feels a bit like cheating but that’s okay because sometimes you just don’t want to try to remember every little thing going on in the game. The fence repair is handy because it means you can have fences ready when the old ones break. Not to mention how great it is having everyone’s favorite gifts available to see whenever you want.
You can also see your own stats and how long you have until you level up. Meaning you can actually see how long you have until you can finally stop fishing all the time.
Key Features:
- Look up villagers birthdays and all their information. Helpful if you forgot their birthday until you were standing right next to them.
- See why your animals are upset. Upset animals don’t produce their products so it’s important to get this taken care of as soon as possible.
- Get information on anything. Yes, really. Anything.
Find it here: Lookup Anything
15. Chests Anywhere
Your entire inventory is now right at your fingertips with the Chests Anywhere mod.
As you play Stardew Valley you will accumulate things. Seeds, furniture, crafting materials, gems, etc. And you have to keep it somewhere, after all your backpack only has space for 30 stacks of objects. That’s why it’s important to craft chests and buy dressers and refrigerators. Chests Anywhere brings them all together and allows you to access them anytime you want while playing.
This mod is probably one of those quality of life mods that once you play with it you aren’t going to want to go back to vanilla gameplay. Because it is incredibly helpful to not have to run back to your house, or wherever else you are storing materials everytime you need one or forgot one before you left the farm to start for the day.
You can also go back into the shipping bin and pull out something you accidentally shipped. Or ship directly from where you are.
Key Features:
- Access storage anywhere on the map. It’s a simple matter of being able to access all the storage from the menu.
- Organize your chests by name and utilize a pull down menu to change the view.
- When you move your cursor over a chest it shows you the label, so you don’t have to guess.
Find it here: Chests Anywhere
16. Loved Labels
Love Labels means you no longer have to repeatedly click on your cat waiting for a heart to pop up and avoiding repeating dialogue boxes above the farm animals.
Petting your animals is important for more than just giving affection to the animal. It makes them happy and happy animals means better animal byproducts. You’re more likely to get a high quality gallon of goat milk from a goat you pet everyday than one you ignore.
But it’s easy to forget, especially if you have a lot of animals which you interacted with and which you haven’t. Meaning you could find yourself stuck with the dialogue pop ups repeatedly. Loved Labels allows you to move your mouse over the animal and it will tell you whether or not you have pet that animal today.
Who doesn’t love their farm animals? But also…they can be insanely hard to tell apart. Especially when you have all brown or all white cows or chickens. It’s very easy to be trying to figure out who you need to pet and just repeatedly click on the same animal over and over.
Having a label that says “hey you already loved this one today” makes this a lot less annoying and a lot less time consuming.
Key Features:
- Easily see who you have and have not pet.
- Picture labels as well as words so you can just glance quickly.
- Also applies to the pet dog or cat, so you don’t repeatedly click on them and annoy them.
Find it here: Loved Labels
17. Stack Everything
Stack Everything takes care of the inventory problems caused by things that don't want to stack, such as Bone Swords.
Most things in Stardew Valley can actually stack in your inventory. But there are other things that for one reason or another absolutely do not. This app gets rid of that by being true to its name. You can stack furniture, dressers, bobbers and more with this mod. It is a quality of life mod that makes things much easier, especially for seasoned players.
Weapons still do not stack and neither do clothes but that’s only a small problem. Moving things and redecorating used to be a pain, especially since furniture and casks didn’t stack. But with this mod the problem has been removed. So has buying or crafting bobbers for fishing and then not having enough inventory space, as those now stack, as well.
Key Features:
- Stack furniture, saving up storage space and saving you from needing 1000 chests.
- You can now stack bobbers for fishing, as well.
- You can also stack casks. So, if you choose to move your wine cellar, this will save you time.
Find it here: Stack Everything
18. Babies Take After Spouse
When your spouse and you have a baby there are two sprites that you can get, and you only get two kids so it works out that you will always get both. But the kids always look exactly the same. This mod makes the babies and toddlers resemble whichever NPC you choose to marry. The mod also comes with different hair styles and clothes.
The great thing about this mod is not only does it make the children look like your spouse but recent updates to the mod have given you the ability to choose different features. The mod comes with the ability to choose hair color and skin tone, allowing your in-game children to resemble both you and your spouse.
You can also choose different clothes so your toddlers are no longer running around in their pajamas.
Key Features:
- Different sprites for each spouse. Rather than looking like random children who don’t resemble either parent.
- You can manage the appearances of the babies and toddlers, so you can add diversity to your game.
- Gives you control over the hairstyle and clothing of your children. They don’t have to look the same as everyone else’s anymore.
Find it here : Babies Take After Spouse
19. Elle’s New Barn Animals
Elle’s New Barn Animals lets you raise Alpaca. Yes, really, Alpaca.
The animals in Stardew Valley are adorable. There is no doubt about that but they could really use some variety. Which is where this mod comes in. It gives you different looks for the already available farm animal, while also adding Alpaca, Deer, and different kinds of cows and goats.
The animals in Stardew Valley, as I said, are great, but man can it get hard to tell them apart, especially when Marnie decides she is only going to sell you one style of cow. The goats can also be a different variety of colors and looks rather than just the standard from the vanilla game.
And this app does that perfectly. The alpaca are an excellent touch, helping to make different colors of wool as well. The mod also changes the icons in Marnie’s store, so you can buy them directly from her store, not within a separate menu. It keeps you completely immersed in the game.
Key Features:
- New animals to liven up your farm and customization looks for the regular animals.
- Easy to navigate choice menu, so you can choose what each animal looks like, rather than leaving it up to the Fates, or Marnie.
- You can select all of these when you buy them at Marnie’s shop. Handy for not removing you from the game.
Find them here: Elle's New Barn Animals
20. Farm Type Manager
Spawn anything you want on your farm with this mod, perfect for anyone who knows what they want from their farm.
Farm Type Manager allows you to control what spawns where and when on your farm. That means if you have chosen a farm that doesn’t have a specific type of item or if you want more something on your farm, you can tell the mod and it will start spawning that item.
This does require some coding but is extremely handy if you don’t feel like grinding for everything all the time at the beginning of a new farm.
It’s definitely going to feel like cheating but if you want to play Stardew Valley as if it were Creative Mode in Minecraft, this mod is the one for you. You can use it to get more wood, rock or hardwood. You can spawn more foragable items on your farm.
Not to mention you can cause swarms of enemies to run amok in the village if you feel like being a supervillain one day. There is also a request from Evelyn for 25 leeks for George in the spring and you will no longer have to scour the entire map (twice) every day to find them.
Key Features:
- Spawn wood and rock on your farm at certain points or as needed. You might want to get this one if you are in need of hardwood, which can be hard to come by no matter when it is in the game.
- Spawn monsters. Whether you want to do it for combat purposes or to wreak havoc in the valley that is up to you.
- Spawn foragable items. You can use them as gifts or finish the community center faster.
Find it here: Farm Type Manager (FTM)
