There is a boatload of content in Stardew Valley, from your day to day chores to exploring the perilous mines. The adventure continually changes as well as the seasons pass by and romance flourishes across the town. There are regular holiday events, tons of unique NPC interactions, and many story-based cutscenes to trigger as well...but what if, you just wanted more? Or wanted it to be easier? That's where the wonderful world of modding enters the fray!
Stardew Valley Mods allow so many unique changes to the vanilla game, including massive overhauls to the original title. Everything from changing simply how everything looks visually to adding an entirely new location, dozens of new NPCs, romance-able options, and so much more. To get started modding your Stardew Valley server, checkout our Shockbyte knowledgebase articles:
Here are the best Stardew Valley Mods:
SMAPI | Visible Fish | Show Item Sell Price | Stardew Expanded
Experience Bars | Better Ranching | Automate | Stardew Anime Mods
Lookup Anything | Fishing Info Overlays
Stardew Valley Modding SMAPI
The father of all mods...the one mod to mod them all. SMAPI. We had to include this mod on the list as this mod is basically required in order to actually use any of the other mods on the list, whether you're playing singleplayer or on your Stardew Valley Dedicated Server. Once you've installed SMAPI you can navigate to your Stardew Valley files and manually insert whichever mods you're interested in playing! If you aren't sure how to install SMAPI, here's a Shockbyte knowledgebase article to get you started:
Shockbyte Stardew Valley servers already have SMAPI installed, so as long as everyone connecting to the server has the same mods installed as the server, then everything will work!
Stardew Valley Visible Fish
The Stardew Valley Visible Fish mod provides a much more immersive experience compared to the original fishing experience of Stardew Valley; where players would cast their line into a dark pool of water, completely unaware of what they may pull up. Instead the Visible Fish mod clears up the waters of the Stardew Valley, allowing players to see currently obtainable fish in each unique area before actually attempting to fish there.
We've got another mod on this list that will further assist in your fishing endeavors, but being able to see the available fish at a glance will significantly enhance the fishing experience for players! Spend less time fishing in the wrong place, and more time finding the perfect scenic fishing spot!
CJB Show Item Sell Price
One of the most frustrating things to know throughout the early game of Stardew is how much items in your inventory are actually worth! Depending on how long it's been since your last playthrough, you may have forgotten how much simple items like stone and seeds actually sell for from day to day. While you're out foraging it would be significantly handy to know things like that...look no further than CJB's Show Item Sell Price!
Hover over any item to see how much selling an individual case of that item would net you in profit, as well as how much the entire stack you're hovering will sell for! This is particularly great for foraging players who aren't particularly interested in keeping much of the items they found out while foraging.
Stardew Valley Expanded
Stardew Valley has tons of content split up by it's four seasons, and 28 days across those 4 seasons. From tons of places to explore, unique story decisions to decide as the player, romance interactions, the mine to delve into, and much much more, it can easily grasp many player's attention for hundreds of hours. It was however released in 2016, making it just about 7 years old now.
Stardew Valley Expanded looks to add a massive amount of brand new content to the mix, from 27 new NPCs to 50 new locations, and even 260 new unique character events. Relive 2016 Stardew again!
Experience Bars
As many regular RPG players are aware, experience bars to show the progress in a skill are a very regular addition in any games that include leveling-up skills generally. As an example, games like Runescape or Skyrim are perfect skill-based roleplaying games that take full advantage of experience bars to show level-up progression. This wonderful mod finally adds this similar functionality to Stardew Valley, allowing players to track their Mining, Fishing, Foraging, Combat, and Farming skills.
Stardew Valley Better Ranching
Rather than attempting to milk, sheer, or pet your animals every day in hopes that is what they require, why not just have them tell you exactly what is available? With the Better Ranching mod, you can immediately tell the daily produce roll for each animal in your barn, allowing you to only spend time milking and sheering the animals that can actually provide a resource for the day. Get even more value from this mod by choosing the Shepherd or Coopmaster Profession!
Automate
For fans of games like Satisfactory or Factorio, this mod will turn the relaxed farm game of Stardew Valley into the optimization nightmare of your dreams. Introducing the mod, Automate! This mod allows you to place chests (or containers of any kind) next to machines of any kind to push raw materials into crafting systems, and then after they have crafted the items into something more useful..place them back into a container!
This could lead to long chains of automation that provides the players the same amount of experience and achievements as though they had crafted the items themselves. Thanks technology!
Stardew Anime Mods
If you're a fan of anime RPGs and Stardew Valley's portraits just aren't anime enough for you, then boy have we got the mod for you today! While this doesn't make any massive overhaul to the game as many of the other mods in this pool do, the artistic direction of games can entirely change the enjoyment for a player. Re-experience your favorite moments alongside the classic characters of Stardew Valley with brand new emotions, and stunning anime art for each and every character.
Stardew Lookup Anything
The absolute BEST mod in this list for new players of Stardew Valley. As you traverse the game for your first or even second time, many items may not be very self-explanatory to the player, or it may not be immediately obvious how your farm is performing. Instead of guessing or looking everything up a hundred times on your first run, simply install "Lookup Anything"! This mod will give you the absolute full details of any item you hover over by simply pressing F1 while you do! So many videogames could benefit from mods like this.....
Fishing Info Overlays
Pairing extremely well with the Stardew Visible Fish mod, this Fishing Info Overlay mod provides the player with a completely brand new HUD with statistics on exactly what fish are available in the current fishing area, and once you begin fishing, it also highlights exactly what fish you have hooked! Just like many of other mods in this list, once you've played with this mod long enough it'll be impossible to play without it again.
Stardew Valley Mods Honorable Mentions
Bigger Backpack - One of the biggest gripes many players have with Stardew is the limited backpack space...which is solved by 50,000 gold, a 48 slot backpack, and this mod!
Skull Cavern Elevator - The Skull Cavern is a massive undertaking on it's own requring upwards of 100 levels of exploration, why doesn't it come with an elevator? Finding the ladders is a tedious process, but climbing down every single one of them each time you return is so much worse.
Enemy Health Bars - One of the many RPG elements that Stardew Valley is missing is the ability to see enemy health bars. For some games it can be an immersive experience, but for combat as shallow as Stardew's it only serves as an annoyance to the player.
NPC Map Locations - For longtime fans of the Stardew genre, and if you've played the game Rune Factory, you may be used to seeing exactly where each NPC currently is relaxing at all times on your map. This feature is absolutely great, and transfers over great into Stardew Valley as well through the NPC Map Locations Mod!
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About Shockbyte
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