Many games have access to modification, meaning players can “mod” the game to make improvements or changes. Some of these make the game easier, some of them make something hilarious, and some are purely aesthetic. Stardew Valley is one of these games, with a huge modding community around it.
Stardew can be modded in so many ways that there is a library of available mods in the hundreds, if not thousands. There are mods for Stardew that improve farming, some that change the appearances of the villagers, and some that are hilariously nonsensical. But, there are some very popular ones that are vital to your playthrough. Here are some of the best mods available to Stardew players.
10 Big Silo
Trying to keep your animals fed and full-up is sometimes difficult. You can plant grass for them to graze, but it seems like always eat all of it faster than it can grow. You can fill up your silos with hay, but that seems to deplete quickly as well.
If you’re running a large truffle oil operation, it can be expensive and tedious to keep your pigs fed. This is where the fantastic Big Silo mod comes in handy. This mod makes it so silos can hold a whopping 200,000 pieces of hay. You’ll never need to fill it up again.
9 Winter Crops
There are a ton of ways to make money in Stardew: raising animals, planting crops, fishing, mining, and more. Through the winter though, you’ll need to move away from farming and focus on other revenue streams, as there are very few crops that will grow in the coldest season.
But if you love to farm and want to keep it going through the winter, you’ll need the Crops Anytime Anywhere mod. This mod permits you to grow crops on tiles you couldn’t formally and allows you to grow crops in the winter.
8 Stardew Valley Expanded
It’s nearly impossible to begin summarizing everything the Stardew Valley Extended mod can do. It’s perhaps the most expansive and useful mod ever created for the game. Per the mod’s description, it adds 21 new locations (including a new village), more than a hundred new events for different characters, seven new NPCs, updates to the festivals and maps, new farm layouts, and much, much more.
Adding this mod to your game will feel like discovering the wonder of Stardew all over again for the first time. It’s recommended to anyone who wants to double the amount of time they can already get out of the game.
7 NPC Locations
When trying to romance the eligible bachelors and bachelorettes in Pelican Town, or even just trying to befriend the rest of the locals, it’s frustrating to find them sometimes. Each NPC has a different schedule that can be hard to track, and they never seem to be where you think they are.
Luckily, there’s a fix for this. The NPC Map Locations mod will show where each villager is on the map at all times. Using this, it should be easy to find who you’re looking for without the hassle of looking up their schedule.
6 Romance Rasmodius
Alright, this mod is more fun and humorous than actually useful or important. Perhaps none of the available romance options suit your fancy. You can spend your life forever alone, or you can download this mod and find the man of your dreams.
That’s right — the Romanceable Rasmodius mod allows you to woo Pelican Town’s resident wizard. This mod adds the wizard as a marriage candidate and several heart events as you get to know him better. It even makes your babies have purple hair. Maybe this is the mod that Caroline used when she had her alleged affair with the wizard.
5 Chests Anywhere
Trying to find what you’re looking for in the thousand chests you’ve placed around the farm is frustrating and difficult. How many of us have burned through an in-game hour trying to find one particular item in a chest that was on the opposite side of town?
The Chests Anywhere mod fixes this problem. This mod lets you access your chests, shipping bins, dressers, junimo huts, and fridge from anywhere. You’ll no longer have to run home before passing out in the mines to store your stuff!
4 Farm Extended
Stardew offers several map options when starting on your farm for the first time. There’s the Riverland Farm, which focuses on fishing, the Forest farm, which is surrounded by thick woods, and the Hilltop farm, which spawns ore and gems like you’d find in the mines.
But, what if you wanted the best of each of these maps? The Farm Extended mod will be there for you. This mod creates a farm map that combines the elements of each available farm from the base game. It even has minecarts and boats to help you get around!
3 Tractor and Scythe Harvest
Farming is tedious in Stardew. You have to till the land with your hoe, plant seeds by hand, water everything repeatedly, and then harvest crops one by one. A junimo hut and some upgraded tools can help with these tasks, of course, but what if it could all be done much quicker?
There are a few mods that help with farming, but these are two of the best. Scythe Harvesting allows you to harvest every crop with the scythe instead of just wheat, amaranth, kale, and rice. The Tractor mod, on the other hand, lets you clear debris, till dirt, plant grass, distribute fertilizer, break rocks, harvest crops, and even water them, plus more.
2 Automate
One of the downfalls of Stardew is the tediousness of many tasks. Needing to manually place different items in machinery takes forever when it’s done in large quantities and some items require multiple steps in their process.
For example, taking bait from the worm bin to a crab pot, then taking the trash that appears in the crab pot and putting it into a trash recycler. This is about three steps just for a piece of wood. The Automate mod looks to fix this. It will run these processes automatically, meaning you can just sit back and relax.
1 Aesthetic Changes
Stardew Valley is a beautiful game. Somehow the simple graphics and pixellated art are gorgeous and charming in their simplicity. But, if you’re looking for a bit of a different vibe, consider one of the countless aesthetic-changing mods available for Stardew.
There are mods that make everything pink, mods that make the villagers look like anime characters, and even some that give the entire town a steampunk vibe. There is a visual mod for basically every look you could ever want. If you’re looking to give your game a different appearance, you’ll never run out of options.
NEXT: 10 Things We Wish We Knew Before We Started Stardew Valley
