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Introduction
Starting Stardew Valley can feel overwhelming at first. With so many crops, tools, animals, and villagers to manage, it’s easy to get lost in the details. That’s why we’ve created this complete beginner series—to help you get your farm running smoothly from day one. Each chapter focuses on a specific aspect of the game, making it easy to follow and apply the tips right away.
Whether you’re aiming for maximum profit, building friendships, or simply enjoying the farming life, this guide has you covered. Here’s how to navigate the series.
Also, a huge thanks to everyone on Reddit who shared their tips — your advice was super helpful! 🙏
Alright, let’s dive right in!
Simple Early-Game money making
Starting your farm on the right foot makes the rest of the year much easier. In this chapter, we’ll cover the essentials for your first days in Stardew Valley: how to clear your land efficiently without wasting energy, pick the most profitable early-game crops, and make some quick cash. Follow these tips, and your farm will be set up for success from day one!
Big thanks to everyone on Reddit for sharing your tips — they were incredibly helpful!
Grow Parsnips or Potatoes
Start with Parsnips
For your first few days (until around Day 5), focus on Parsnips.
They grow fast and give you quick money to reinvest.
Remember: in Stardew Valley, if you skip watering, your crops don’t grow that day.
So, make watering part of your daily routine — it’s worth it.
Then Move On to Potatoes
One of the best tips I got from Reddit players was: grow Potatoes.
On paper, their selling price doesn’t look amazing, but here’s the trick —
there’s a good chance of getting extra Potatoes when you harvest, and sometimes even two extra per plant!
That means your actual profit is roughly 25% higher than what the numbers suggest.
They also grow in just 6 days, and the seeds are cheap, making them one of the most efficient crops for early-game cash flow.
Take the money you earned from Parsnips, buy Potato seeds, and keep reinvesting your profit.
Thanks to compound growth, your earnings will snowball fast.
I didn’t take screenshots back then, but during my first Spring, I once made around 8,000G in a single day just from Potatoes.
Honestly, most other crops in Year 1 are mainly for collection, bundles, or roleplay rather than profit.
Buy a Training Rod and go fishing
Make the Most of Your Free Time with the Training Rod
Once fishing becomes available, head to Willy’s Fish Shop and buy the Training Rod for just 25G.
Whenever you have leftover energy or a bit of downtime, use it to fish — you’ll thank yourself later.
This tip came straight from Reddit, and honestly, it was a total game-changer.
If you’ve just unlocked fishing, you’ve probably struggled with things like:
“I can’t keep the bar on the fish!”
“The gauge drops instantly!”
“Even when I match the bar with the fish, the progress barely moves!”The Training Rod fixes all of that in seconds and turns fishing into one of the easiest ways to make money early on.
Here’s how it works: the Training Rod can’t catch high-quality fish, but it treats your fishing skill as if you’re already Level 5.
That means your fishing bar becomes much longer, making it way easier to keep up with fish movements.The moment you switch to this rod, fishing goes from frustrating minigame to chill money machine.
And honestly, early on you won’t be catching rare fish anyway, so just rely on the Training Rod until your real fishing skill reaches Level 5. It’s totally worth it.
Is the Training Rod Worth It? Absolutely.
The rod costs 25G, but you’ll make that back instantly — even the cheapest fish sells for 30G.
Catch one fish, and you’ve already broken even. Everything after that is pure profit.
Most fish sell for 30–70G, and even if you just fish casually — say, 3–4 fish a day using leftover energy — that’s about +100G a day on average.
In my own first Spring (around Day 11), I made 365G in a single day from fishing, just as a side activity.
For comparison, growing Parsnips with your starting 500G nets about 75G per day on average.
So yeah — fishing is incredible value for the effort.
It’s especially powerful in the early game, when farming income is still low.
Use your fishing profits to reinvest in crops, and you’ll snowball your way to a strong start.
The Training Rod honestly feels like a completely different game — try it once, and you’ll see what I mean.
Where to Fish
When it comes to fishing, location matters a lot.
Avoid fishing in the ponds on your farm, the southern pond, or the river east of town — you’ll mostly catch trash (literally worth 0G), and it just drains your Energy for nothing.
Sure, some river fish are unique and only appear there, but honestly, it’s better to wait until you actually want to complete your fish collection or just feel like some peaceful river fishing.
So where should you fish? Here are my top picks:
- The pier near Willy’s Fish Shop
- The lake in the northeast part of the map (near the mountains)
Especially the mountain lake — fish there tend to sell for around 75G or more, and the catch rate is great even for beginners.
Sell whatever forage you find lying around
Foraging is a Solid Early-Game Money Source
Foraging is a Solid Early-Game Money Source
I’ve learned this way from Reddit
too.
Foraging can be a surprisingly good way to make money in the early game, especially when you’re low on funds and need seeds.
Whenever you see the green “+” icon, just right-click to collect the item.
Even selling just one item can earn you 30–60G.
- Parsnip Seeds: 20G
- Potato Seeds: 50G
So basically, selling one foraged item can easily cover the cost of at least one seed.
The Cindersap Forest (south of your farm) is a goldmine for foraging.
Even if you’ve spent all your Energy on farming and fishing, a quick foraging trip here can still bring in a nice little profit.
Plus, foraged items aren’t just for money — they’re also handy for restoring Energy later on.
Keeping a couple of items in your inventory as a backup is always a smart move.
Skills & Tool Priorities
Your farming journey isn’t just about planting crops—it’s also about leveling up your skills and upgrading your tools efficiently. Focusing on the right skills and improving the right tools at the right time can save you energy, maximize your profits, and make your farm much easier to manage. In this chapter, we’ll break down the basic skill priorities, explain how tool upgrades affect your gameplay, and show you the optimal order to tackle them. Follow these tips, and you’ll be ready to handle anything Stardew Valley throws at you!
Skill Priorities & How They Work
It depends on your playstyle, so there’s no one-size-fits-all approach… but there are some basic priorities. In general, here’s the order to follow:
- Farming – Gain XP by harvesting crops. Different crops give different amounts of XP internally.
- Foraging – Big XP from chopping trees, small XP from picking up items.
- Fishing – Gain XP when you catch something (even trash gives XP).
- Mining – Gain XP when you break rocks with your pickaxe or bombs.
- Combat – Gain XP by defeating enemies.
Why Farming Comes First
Farming is the easiest and most powerful early-game money maker, so it should be your top priority.
Higher-selling crops give more XP.
As your Farming level increases, Energy cost for using the Hoe and Watering Can decreases, and you have a higher chance to harvest high-quality crops.
Foraging Skills
Leveling Foraging makes it easier to collect large amounts of woods and helps you customize your farm layout efficiently.
Higher levels reduce Energy cost for the Axe, and at Level 4 and Level 8, you’ll sometimes get bonus items when foraging. The quality of foraged items also improves.
Fishing
Leveling Fishing increases the size of the fishing bar, improves the quality of caught fish, and reduces Energy cost.
I personally use fishing as a side money-making activity, so I rank it here, but if you want to be a full-time fisherman, go ahead and max it early.
Mining
Leveling Mining reduces Energy cost when breaking rocks.
Small stones on your farm break in one swing, so if you don’t spend much time in the mines, Mining is lower priority.
Also, leveling Mining doesn’t improve item quality, so it’s mainly for convenience.
Combat
Leveling Combat increases max health by 5 per level.
It makes a noticeable difference, but if you don’t go to the mines or dungeons often, it’s lower priority.
Energy Consumption
For all skills except Combat, each skill level reduces Energy cost by 0.1×level.
For example, watering a crop normally costs 2 Energy.
If your Farming is Level 10, it costs only half as much as at Level 0.
Energy Reduction & Skill Perks
For all skills except Combat, each skill level reduces Energy consumption by 0.1 × level.
For example, watering a crop or tilling soil normally costs 2 Energy.
If your Farming skill is Level 10, it only costs half the Energy compared to Level 0.
Level 5 & Level 10 Perks
When any skill reaches Level 5, you can choose one of two special perks, and gain one more park at Level 10.
You can always switch later if conditions are met, so just pick whichever seems most useful at the moment.
Tool Upgrades — Effects & Priority
Tool Upgrades — What They Actually Do & What to Prioritize
Here’s the thing about tool upgrades that you might be wondering about:
Upgrading tools does NOT directly reduce Energy consumption.
(Some tools, like the Axe or Pickaxe, will use fewer swings to break objects after an upgrade, which indirectly saves Energy, but the Energy cost per swing itself doesn’t change.)
So, when upgrading tools, you’re mostly looking at effects other than Energy savings.
Upgrade Effects
- Hoe: Hold to till multiple tiles at once.
- Watering Can: Hold to water multiple tiles at once; higher levels also increase the water capacity you can store.
- Axe: Fewer swings needed to chop trees; can chop harder stumps at higher levels.
- Pickaxe: Fewer swings needed to break rocks; can break bigger boulders at higher levels.
- Trash Can: Increases the amount of money you get back when disposing items.
My Experience
By the end of Summer Year 1, I upgraded all tools except the Trash Can — but honestly, only the Axe and Pickaxe were really necessary.
Why?
- Fewer swings = time saved and Energy conserved.
- Certain resources (like Hardwood) can only be collected with at least a Copper Axe, so these upgrades naturally boost productivity.
Hoe & Watering Can Are a Bit Tricky
The extra water storage in the Can didn’t feel very noticeable to me.
The “hold to use multiple tiles” feature is annoying to control:
Once you start charging, you can’t change direction or cancel, which wastes Energy if misused.
The hit detection is a little inconsistent, so sometimes tiles right in front don’t get tilled or watered.
At Copper level, only 3 tiles forward are affected — not a huge time-saver.
Relationships & Animals
Relationship Points — Just Focus on Who You Like
Raising friendship levels is nice and all, but honestly, you don’t need to overthink it early on.
When someone likes you enough, they’ll occasionally send you gifts in the mail — but don’t expect anything super rare or valuable at this stage.
So yeah, just focus on the characters you actually like, not on who gives the “best rewards.”
Here’s how friendship works in simple terms:
- Talking to someone every day gives a small boost.
- Gifting them (up to twice per week, and only once per day) gives a bigger boost.
- At 2 hearts, you can enter their room or cottage.
- If you ignore someone for too long, their friendship slowly decreases over time.
I put together a fairly detailed guide covering how gifts work and roughly how many you’ll need to give to max out someone’s friendship, so feel free to check it out if you’re interested!
The main takeaway is that giving someone a gift on their birthday—even if that’s the only time you do it—seems to be the easiest way to raise friendship.
Hitting 2 hearts lets you enter their room, which really makes you feel like you’re getting closer. It’s a small thing, but it definitely makes the game feel more alive.
By late spring, you should start building your animal setup.
Try Raising Chickens Around Late Spring
By late spring, it’s a good time to start trying out livestock — especially chickens.
Raising animals gives you a steady income with very low running costs, which makes it a great investment early on.
Around this point, your farm will start expanding quickly, and both money and energy will disappear fast. Having a “self-sustaining income source” really helps keep things stable.
To start raising animals, you’ll need two basic buildings:
- Silo
Stores hay for your animals. Without it, you’ll have to buy hay constantly, which defeats the whole “low-cost profit” idea.
The silo costs 100G, 100 stone, 10 clay, and 5 copper bars to build. - Coop
Let’s you raise chickens. It costs 4,000G, 300 woods, and 100 stones, and can hold up to four chickens.
You can ask Robin (at the Carpenter’s Shop in the north) to build both of these structures.
And don’t forget — chickens themselves cost 800G each, and you can buy them from Marnie in the southwest area of the map.
How to Take Care of Your Chickens
Here’s how animal care basically works:
- Cut the grass on your farm with a scythe — the hay will automatically be stored in your silo.
- Inside the coop, you can use the hay dispenser to pull hay out of storage. Place it in the feeding trough (the long wooden rack inside the coop) so your chickens always have something to eat.
- If they run out of hay, they’ll stop laying eggs, so don’t let that happen!
- You can open the small door on the side of the coop to let your chickens outside. They’ll eat grass on their own, which helps you save on stored hay.
- Once a day, you can click on each chicken to pet it. This raises their friendship level — the higher it gets, the better-quality eggs they’ll lay.
Everything quickly becomes part of your daily routine, so you’ll get used to it in no time.
Note: Newly purchased chickens won’t lay eggs right away.
If you make sure, they always have food and wait about three days, they’ll start laying one egg per day in the coop. So just be patient for a little while!
Boost Egg Profits with the Mayonnaise Machine
Once you reach Farming Level 2, you can craft a Mayonnaise Machine, which greatly increases the profitability of your eggs.
You’ll need:
- 15 wood
- 15 stone
- 1 Earth Crystal
- 1 Copper Bar
The Earth Crystal can be found directly in the mines or by breaking geodes at the blacksmith. So, to get your livestock going, it’s worth spending a little time exploring the dungeon.
Back to the Mayonnaise Machine:
- Insert an egg, and it’ll turn it into mayonnaise.
- A regular egg sells for 50G, but mayonnaise sells for 190G — almost four times more!
Processing is fairly quick, so making four mayonnaises in a day is totally doable.
That’s 760G per day with no energy cost and no running costs, giving your early farm a very reliable source of income.
In short, it’s an extremely useful way to boost your profits from livestock.
Bundles — Do Them When You Feel Like It
After the Community Center event and the follow-up scene at the Wizard’s Tower, you’ll unlock Bundles.
They’re basically little collections where you turn in specific seasonal foraging or crafting items in exchange for rewards.
That said… you really don’t need to stress about them early on.
Even if you complete a whole early-game set, your reward might be something like “10 packs of Wild Seeds” — which sounds nice, but isn’t actually that exciting in practice.
Finishing a Bundle unlocks new ones, but yeah… you can take your time with it.
Honestly, it’s better to think of Bundles as something you do with your leftover items — or as a fun side project once your farm is running smoothly.
Don’t feel pressured to complete them right away.
Misc Tips & PC Mods
Even after you’ve mastered the basics of farming, relationships, and tool upgrades, there are plenty of small tricks that can make life in Stardew Valley even smoother. In this chapter, we’ll cover useful miscellaneous tips—like managing your daily routine, optimizing foraging, and organizing your farm efficiently. For PC players, we’ll also introduce beginner-friendly mods that enhance gameplay without breaking the game. These tips and mods will help you enjoy Stardew Valley to the fullest, whether you’re here for efficiency, fun, or both!
Keep Land Clearing to a Minimum
When you first start the game, your farm looks like a total mess — rocks, weeds, and trees everywhere. It’s tempting to clear it all up right away, but resist the urge!
Just clean up a small area for your crops and a path to your water source.
Clearing land (chopping trees, breaking rocks, etc.) costs Energy, and early on your tools are weak and your skills are low.
If you spend too much time cleaning, you’ll end up too tired to actually grow anything.
So, just make enough space to get started — that’s totally fine for now.
For convenience, I recommend setting up your first crop field near the pond in the middle-right of your farm.
That way, watering is quick and easy.
Keep Your Energy Up with Foraged Items
At the very start, when your skills are low and your tools aren’t upgraded yet, running out of Energy is a real problem.
If your Energy hits zero, your character gets “Exhausted”, and your Energy recovery the next day is cut in half.
If your Energy drops to -15 and you pass out outside your house, you’ll also lose 10% of your money.
A simple way to prevent this is by eating foraged items.
Just select the item and right-click to eat it.
- Dandelions restore 25 Energy
- Leeks restore 60 Energy
Since watering a single crop costs a set amount of Energy, this is perfect for those moments when you’re like: “I just need a little more energy to finish watering!”
Salmonberries are so helpful
Also, after Spring 15, Salmonberries start appearing in bushes around town — another great early-game energy snack.
The red berries you see in bushes around town are Salmonberries.
Just walk up, hover over them, and right-click to collect.
Each Salmonberry restores 25 Energy, and since they grow all over town, it’s easy to stock up.
Plus, they only sell for 5G, so you don’t have to worry about wasting money — just eat them whenever you need a quick energy boost.
Crafting Chests and Scarecrows Early
There are tons of items you can craft in Stardew Valley, but early on, two of the most useful ones are chests and scarecrows.
Chests can be crafted from 50 Wood, which is doable right from the start.
Your inventory fills up pretty quickly, so it’s a good idea to start chopping wood early and craft some chests.
Chests let you store items, and you can even change their color by right-clicking and opening the menu — makes it super easy to organize and tell them apart.
Scarecrows protect crops from crows within a radius of 8 tiles, so you’ll want to craft them early to keep your valuable crops safe.
You can craft them once you reach Farming Level 1.
To make a scarecrow, you’ll need:
- 50 Wood
- 1 Coal (usually drops from breaking rocks with your pickaxe, using Charcoal Kiln)
- 20 Fiber (gathered by cutting grass with your scythe)
I wrote a guide to explain the efficient range of scarecrow in real game display.
If you are interested in it, please read it.
Both chests and scarecrows can be picked up by holding left-click, so you can relocate them wherever you want on your farm.
Check Trash Cans for Useful Stuff
You can search each trash can once per day by right-clicking it.
It’s mostly random, but sometimes you’ll find things like bread (restores 50 Energy when eaten).
Early on, this little boost can really help keep your Energy up.
Upgrade Your Backpack Once You Have Enough
Once you’ve saved up 2,000G, you can upgrade your backpack.
Just check the backpack at the right side of the counter in Pierre’s shop, and you’ll be able to expand your inventory.
With a bigger backpack, you can carry work items and energy-restoring food, go fishing on the go, or pick flowers to give as gifts — basically, it opens up a lot more options and makes your farm life much more flexible.
Upgrading your backpack should be a top priority for a comfortable start.
Keeping around 500G on hand after the purchase is plenty.
If you’ve saved enough for a backpack, it usually means your character’s skills and your player knowledge have grown enough that earning money from here on out isn’t too hard.
You can do the next backpack upgrade too, but it costs 10,000G, so that’s usually something you aim for around Summer.
Thinking About Installing Mods (PC Version)
As you play more, you’ll probably start thinking, “I wish this part of the game worked differently…”
There’s a Japanese saying: “The best day to act is the day you think of it.” And that’s exactly the mindset for mods!
I’ve also written a guide on installing mods, so if you’re a PC player, check it out for some ti
Conclusion
I wrote an overview for beginners.
Stardew Valley is so worthy on freedom.
Mistake is a special right for beginner.
Take it a try!!
So, enjoy your gaming life!!
Thank you for reading to the end!!!
*In addition!!*
To my surprise, a board game that lets you experience life in Stardew Valley had been released before I knew it.
If you’re interested, be sure to check it out.
