Reaction Post: Stardew Valley (Part 2)

[flamebyrd]

Since my last post I've been playing a lot of Stardew Valley, because it's immersive enough to get me out of my head for a while but not overly stressful now that I've got a bit of automation going.

Spoilers below! All the way through year 2 and into early year 3.


At some point I gave up on not metagaming and started consulting the wiki a lot. I think if I hadn't been struggling so hard with cash and development I wouldn't have felt the need to, which I'm honestly going to consider a minor flaw of the game because it taught me nothing. When I think back to the early days I was so stressed trying to keep everything running, I had no cash, and I was spending so much time watering crops I couldn't even get to the mines to get the resources to buy sprinklers. It was really stressful!

But now I'm in spring of year three it's much better. I restored the Community Centre on like day 2 of spring (I was just waiting on a truffle, because I didn't get pigs until winter of year 2), so I quickly threw a diamond into Grandpa's Shrine and I now have a regular source of Iridium *rubs hands in glee* In order to build up some cash for home upgrades, I've been using this crop profit calculator. I'm not sure how up to date it is but it's super useful.

I have 8 hearts with all the love interests aside from Harvey (I just rarely see him around so I don't remember to give him stuff) and 10 hearts with a handful of the others. Still no intention of dating any for now.

I still haven't settled on a final farm layout. It goes against all my instincts but I think I want to try going for aesthetics over optimised. I've been playing around in the Stardew Valley planner accordingly.

Assorted notes:
- I named my farmer Byrd, which is becoming my default name for games.
- Shane ;_; He's raising blue chickens and cuddling them. My heart!
- Cannot believe Alex not only revealed a sad backstory, he apologised for his prior behaviour! I definitely had him in the "boring jock" box.
- Haley is SO RUDE though
- I may be saying this because I gave her a blackberry once and she spared me no mercy
- Nice attempt to make it seem like she wouldn't absolutely hate living on a farm, but I'm unconvinced
- Also cannot believe Maru's 8 heart event was her electrocuting me
- In general most of the love interests feel so young. I just feel weird thinking about dating them (in a way that I wouldn't if the protagonist were less of a blank slate).
- The fortune-teller accused me of playing with people's hearts, how dare she! I'm just a friendly person, okay! I haven't given anybody a bouquet which means this is all platonic, right?
- I'll just keep believing that while ignoring Abigail's accidental declaration of love via Fantasy Ouija Board
- I got a giant melon! I didn't keep it though, it wasn't in an aesthetically pleasing location.
- I haven't installed any mods yet but I have done some save reverting to replay days I messed up. I replayed the first day of Year 2 Fall like 3 times trying to create a farm layout I liked. I really should have thought about that in Summer.
- May end up using a mod to move my fruit trees at some point, I put them in very much the wrong spot, and it turns out that was partially due to a bug telling me I couldn't place trees in seemingly-valid locations.
- I named my void chicken Wei Wuxian and one of my bunnies Lan Wangji. What? Tempted to rename my other coop animals to match.
- This game's anti-corporate agenda is very sweet, although I hope Shane and Sam are able to find other sources of employment and that Pam and Jodi can still afford to feed the family without JojaMart!
- I got a Prismatic Shard from an Omni Geode somewhere around mine level 90 and immediately trekked it over to the recently-unlocked Calico Desert and got the Galaxy Sword, and that made the mines a lot easier.
- The whole thing with the witch and the wizard is, uh, not great.
- On that note, the way the wizard phrases his belief that someone in town is his daughter - "It's rare, but it does happen." - makes it sound weirdly like sometimes just being in an area with a wizard makes some of the children born in the village genetically his.

This post is getting long so I'm going to stop now. There will probably be a part 3.

Comments

[9ofswords]

Dooood. I have never ever encountered a prismatic shard. Ever.
I have a tree moving mod ya it is amazing because everyone put trees in the wrong place. I have the river farm so layout is already very tricky and you put tree in the wrong place and things get much much trickier.

[silverflight8]

I am always so amused by reading accounts of games I don't play when they're the kind of games that intersect with RL (like the sims too). You only gave her a single blackberry! hahaha

[flamebyrd]

All the villagers really like it when you give them vegetables, and occasionally fruit! I gave someone a single ear of corn for Christmas and she was very thankful XD (If I'd been thinking I would have checked but Haley just seemed like she would like blackberries.)

[flamebyrd]

Oh wow, I knew it was rare but not that rare. I also got a dinosaur egg while fishing but I donated it to the museum because I didn't realise I should keep it -.-

Which tree mod do you use?

[lilacsigil]

I love Shane and his blue chickens! The love interests do seem very young - in one game I married Leah and in another one Eliot, but apart from those two and Shane, Emily and Harvey, I just don't want to romance them! Sam in particular.

[flamebyrd]

Yeah, Leah was my first 8-heart and I would probably pursue that if I did decide to marry anyone! And all of the young-seeming love interests don't read like they'd be happy on a farm, so that's hard too.

[9ofswords]

Ya, also never seen a dino egg. And I have got a lot more hours in the game as you. Damn!
Anyway, the mod I use is call tree transplant.