Stardew Valley is no stranger to regular updates thanks to its passionate creator, ConcernedApe. Over the years, the game has gone from a small indie project to overtaking Harvest Moon in popularity. While the game has been out for some time, there is always new content releasing that brings fans coming back for more. The free updates have recently introduced a ton of new content, along with new game plus features to help give veteran players even more of a reason to fire up the title once again.
For those looking for a better gaming experience, there are quite a few settings that can be tinkered with, along with some additional help from the game's beloved community.
9 Mix Up The Bundles
The bundles at the community center are an important part of the gameplay experience. By completing the bundles, players will unlock helpful features like the minecart transport or their very own greenhouse. The bundles generally take a year or two to complete and the items needed stay the same.
A new option now allows players to mix-up the needed items making the completion of the bundles unpredictable.
8 One Year Completion
Most players are able to get almost every item for the standard bundles within one year. The one item that won't appear until year two is red cabbage, which is needed to complete the dye bundle on the bulletin board. For players who aren't huge fans of the bundles, they can choose to have the seeds appear early.
This allows the bundles to be completed within one year, which quickly gives players access to content like the volcano dungeon, skull cavern, and even the ability to unlock the movie theater for extra friendship.
7 Mix Up The Mine
For even more challenge, players can choose to shuffle around the mine. This won't change up the floors, but the rewards players receive after every ten floors will be shuffled. This can make it much easier early on or much harder, depending on how the game decides to allocate the chests.
Some players may even try to use this to their advantage in order to make high-level weapons appear early on to move on to the skull mine faster.
6 Monster Spawns
For players who want a little bit more excitement on their farm, they can toggle on monster spawns. This will allow random monsters to hunt on your farm at night, which can be great for those trying to get more monster loot or needing just a bit more excitement in their gameplay.
This will also make it much harder to work on the farm at night early on in the game as the monsters will follow the player around.
5 New Farms
For players coming back to the game after a long hiatus, there have been a few new farms added. Four corners is great for multiplayer farming, while the beach farm is a brand new challenge that will have most of the farm turned into a sandy wonderland that is surrounded by saltwater.
The beach farm comes with some interesting rules about sprinklers and the ability to find washed up packages with goodies inside.
4 Profit Margin
Another thing that can now be edited is the profit margin of sold items for those who really want to make their game hard. The profit can be adjusted down to 25% of the item's original value, which can make building up the farm incredibly slow for those who have already spent years playing.
While this feature certainly isn't for the faint of heart, being able to make a thriving business with it on is nothing short of a gaming achievement.
3 Multiplayer Cabins
Multiplayer was added a while back, but it is a great way to help make the game a bit harder. All the players can share the same money, and from the new game screen, players can choose to add-in cabins so that they can begin playing with their friends starting on day one.
For gamers who all want to upgrade their homes and get married, managing a successful multiplayer game can be a challenge all on its own. It's also worth mentioning that all the new game plus features can be used in multiplayer.
2 Seeds
Stardew Valley now has seeds much like some of the other popular games on Steam. The seeds can be shared between players to create interesting combinations of games. For example, this can be used to create a game session that allows the player to get the Obsidian Edge on floor ten of the mines.
While the seed library may take a while to grow, popular Stardew Valley groups have already started to find amazing combinations.
1 Mod Installation
One of the best ways to spice up a game is by adding in mods. For those who have only played the vanilla version of the game, looking at the mods available on Nexus is a great way to spice up the game. There is even a mod that overhauls the whole game and adds in over a hundred new NPCs.
Mods can also help to make the game harder or even look a bit different for those looking for a simple cosmetic change.