Stardew Valley is amazing

[Mugi]

Okay so, I didn't even know this game existed until the day it released (a few days ago), and I knew I had to get it as soon as I saw it, and would like to spread the word in case you guys haven't heard about it yet. Basically, it's a PC game that is like Harvest Moon, except a lot better (in my opinion). Your grandpa gives you an evelope when you're a kid and tells you to open it once the weight of a stressful life becomes too much to bear. Skip to present day when you're an office worker and just want to escape, you open the letter and inside is the deed to your grandfathers farm in Stardew Valley. 

It's pretty big town with 30 or so NPC's that actually feel like real characters, as opposed to most Harvest Moon games that have pretty bland and one dimensional characters. Most (possibly all, but i'm only 5 hours into this likely to be 120+ hour game, so I haven't gotten to know every character) of the characters have some sort of backstory or problem that they have to deal with, ie. a local shop owner that has to deal with a fancy supermarket trying to take over his business. 

As far as the game play goes, you farm crops, raise livestock and other animals (I think you can even raise bees, not 100% sure though), improve your house, get a waifu/husbando (you can play as both genders, and there is same sex marriage as well), and discover the secrets of the town and it's inhabitants. You can also fish and go explore the mines, where the game basically turns into an RPG. You fight enemies, mine rare ore, get new weapons, etc. 

Also, the game looks damn beautiful. While the sprites could you a tiny bit of work (and that's only some, most look fine) the environment and the character portraits are extremely well done. The soundtrack has been pretty fantastic so far, and it's mind boggling that just one man could make this entire game. To my knowledge, the game has you go through four in game years, with about 40 hours or so per year, plus I think you can just keep on going after the end, there might even be post-game content. 

Anyways, I've rambled for long enough

TL;DR

A game like Harvest Moon or Animal Crossing. Check it out. It isn't a perfect game, there are still bugs here and there, and it might just not be your cup of tea. But for $15 you really can't go wrong, the amount of content you get for that much money is pretty insane. Well, i'm going to go back to playing it. If any of you decide to pick it up and play it, feel free to discuss the game here  

Here is the thread for anyone interested in using mods: http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/mod-list-modding-guides-and-general-modding-discussion.106868/

There are a decent amount already, mostly changing in game portraits/sprites (making the portraits anime-esque, or even putting in the sprites and portraits from earlier in development).

[Decay]

I've played it a little bit, I'm almost to the end of Spring year 1. While the characters have a little bit more depth to them than Harvest Moon, they still feel lacking, somehow. I guess I shouldn't expect too much from a farming sim, but I just feel like all of the dialogue is so bland. Everyone has their canned lines that reinforces their archetypes and there isn't a hint of excitement or emotion in anything anyone ever says. One of the other games in this genre I've played plenty of was Rune Factory 3, and I felt like the characters were better in that, although a bit over the top at times (that rainbow weirdo...). Well, for an indie title it's probably good enough. You probably aren't looking to hire top-tier writers when making a farming game.

As for the gameplay, I sort of wish the sources of revenue were more balanced. Spending time in the mines gives you jack all for gold. In the early game at least, it seems like it's best to stick to farming primarily. A tip for a decent income supplement early on: Build the bridge in the beach area as soon as you can. Corals and urchins spawns in the area beyond it, and they give you a lot of gold for selling them. My first haul gave me like 1500 gold and they keep respawning, about two or three a day. It's just free money, there for the taking!

Also I haven't seen any repercussions yet for rummaging through people's garbage. There's never anything valuable, but you sometimes can find food and stuff there, so I always search cans when I pass by and save the food for when I'm mining or something.

And I don't want to open a can of worms or anything but... 28 NPCs or however many there are, and only one black person? And no other ethnicities besides hella-white? Surely they could have done better than that...

[Mugi]

10 minutes ago, Decay said:

And I don't want to open a can of worms or anything but... 28 NPCs or however many there are, and only one black person? And no other ethnicities besides hella-white? Surely they could have done better than that...

Hm, Maru is half black too. Also I think I recall seeing a kid named Jas that didn't look white. Either way, there's still a lack of other ethnicities I suppose.

Also, apparently stocking up on strawberry seeds at the egg festival is a good idea. I haven't seen them for sale anywhere else, and they constantly re-grow without you having to plant more (until the season ends and they die).

I'm just excited to see what the modding community does with the game, there are already mods for the older bachelor/bachelorette portraits and sprites. I can definitely see people modding in new characters, more new portraits and sprites, etc. Plus we have multiplayer on the way, too. Not sure how that will work though.

[Decay]

I couldn't afford a ton of strawberry seeds but when I saw them for sale I bought as many as I could with the intent of saving them for next year. I wasn't really sure how fast they regrew and I wanted to get the most out of them... I probably should have just planted them immediately.

[bigfatround0]

I don't see how its weird that it's filled with white people. Most rural places in the US have a white majority.

[solidbatman]

I bought the game, but have not gotten into it yet. All I saw was "have children" and I purchased. Gonna create a black panther utopia. 

[Fred the Barber]

I've put about 11 hours in so far, and am something like 5 days into Summer of year 1. There's a big brain dump from me about the game here:

On the characters: they're not deep, but at least they have a bit of personality (vastly more than I recall from original Harvest Moon characters); I don't know the characters that well yet, but you could give me lines from the ones that I do know and I could probably already tell you who said it, at least. Even that is way farther than Harvest Moon went. Can't really compare to Rune Factory - I only played Rune Factory 4, and only for a little while; I got sidetracked and never went back. I'm curious to see how character dialogue changes as time passes and/or affection increases. I'm wooing Abigail, mostly because purple hair, but I admit I find her gloomy goth girl vibe funny and endearing; so I'll report back on if/when you get to see a noticeable personality change there, at least.

The coral cache is definitely a great source of income early on. I didn't build the bridge for a few weeks, but when I did I got 4k gold overnight from handing it all in o_O. Money-wise, mostly I do farming in the early morning and then head to the mines for the rest of the day. Foraging is terrible for cash (aside from the coral), and I'm finding fishing to be about the same as mining, but it won't get you the incidental benefits of metals, coal, and rewards from the museum (which seems to be the big reward for mining, by the way - the museum guy gives out pretty good stuff, like piles of seeds). If you can get through the mine quickly, the monster loot drops become worth a lot more as you get deeper in (for instance, I'm pretty frequently killing bats that drop two bat wings, each of which is 50g, and they're not hard to kill - pretty good)

Overall, I'm 11 hours in, having a lot of fun, and feeling like I've barely scratched the surface. Damn good purchase.

[Decay]

10 hours ago, bigfatround0 said:

I don't see how its weird that it's filled with white people. Most rural places in the US have a white majority.

Except it's not set in rural America? It's set in a weird fantasy land where they could have done literally anything.  Not to mention that it's about 92% white as opposed to the real world figure of 77% white in rural america. Well, that's all I'll say on the matter. I don't think most posters care and this isn't really the right avenue to debate about it. I just wanted to say something.

4 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

I've put about 11 hours in so far, and am something like 5 days into Summer of year 1. There's a big brain dump from me about the game here:

On the characters: they're not deep, but at least they have a bit of personality (vastly more than I recall from original Harvest Moon characters); I don't know the characters that well yet, but you could give me lines from the ones that I do know and I could probably already tell you who said it, at least. Even that is way farther than Harvest Moon went. Can't really compare to Rune Factory - I only played Rune Factory 4, and only for a little while; I got sidetracked and never went back. I'm curious to see how character dialogue changes as time passes and/or affection increases. I'm wooing Abigail, mostly because purple hair, but I admit I find her gloomy goth girl vibe funny and endearing; so I'll report back on if/when you get to see a noticeable personality change there, at least.

The coral cache is definitely a great source of income early on. I didn't build the bridge for a few weeks, but when I did I got 4k gold overnight from handing it all in o_O. Money-wise, mostly I do farming in the early morning and then head to the mines for the rest of the day. Foraging is terrible for cash (aside from the coral), and I'm finding fishing to be about the same as mining, but it won't get you the incidental benefits of metals, coal, and rewards from the museum (which seems to be the big reward for mining, by the way - the museum guy gives out pretty good stuff, like piles of seeds). If you can get through the mine quickly, the monster loot drops become worth a lot more as you get deeper in (for instance, I'm pretty frequently killing bats that drop two bat wings, each of which is 50g, and they're not hard to kill - pretty good)

Overall, I'm 11 hours in, having a lot of fun, and feeling like I've barely scratched the surface. Damn good purchase.

Do you know on what level in the mines iron spawns at?

[Fred the Barber]

4 hours ago, Decay said:

Do you know on what level in the mines iron spawns at?

I don't remember for certain, but I think it was right around 40. The mines seem to work on nice round numbers. Mine mechanics spoilers, in case someone cares deeply about having nothing spoiled at all, but seriously, there's nothing important here:

Spoiler

 

- Every 5 levels there's an elevator

- Every 10 levels, there's a treasure chest

- I think you can even predict the type of item in the chest - something like boots at (10 modulo 30), weapon at (0 modulo 30), and I forgot what's at (20 modulo 30). 

- At level 100, there's a one-off sweet reward - a substantial permanent energy boost.

- every 40 levels, so far, the next metal in the progression starts appearing. I can guarantee there's at least one metal after gold, though I haven't seen it yet, because I just upgraded one of my tools to gold, and now I have the option to upgrade it to Iridium.

I'm at something like level 105 or 110 now, in early Fall. A 5-level trip to the mines nets me around 3-4k cash, which is evenly split between diamonds (750 apiece) and all the other drops. Metals I keep, of course. Not bad at all, really, though it still pales in comparison to a good haul of farming.

 

Incidentally, if the game ever gives you a dagger, don't make the mistake I made, trying to use it. Vendor that piece of crap and keep your sword. I struggled mightily for about 20 levels because of the game giving me a very shiny dagger, and me just blithely selling my old (decent) sword, assuming the shiny dagger with good stats was a good idea. When the game finally gave me a new sword (I was holding out, refusing to spend ~6k on a decent one...), the mine suddenly went back to being pretty easy again.

[Mugi]

Spoiler

 

I think I was just tripping on shrooms from the wizard

THE TREES, MAN

THE TREES

 

Alright so I just finished spring, and a little before that I did Abigail's 2 heart event.

Spoiler

Kind of wish the earthquake was more of a scare than it was. I was expecting everything to be wrecked or at least something more than a few crops getting destroyed. But oh well. I really liked Abbie's 2 heart event though, I found the fact that you actually sit down and play a shoot-em-up with her really charming, and she's starting to seem a bit more like a real character. Super hyped for the years to come.

 

[Fred the Barber]

5 hours ago, Mugi said:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

I think I was just tripping on shrooms from the wizard

THE TREES, MAN

THE TREES

 

Alright so I just finished spring, and a little before that I did Abigail's 2 heart event.

  Reveal hidden contents

Kind of wish the earthquake was more of a scare than it was. I was expecting everything to be wrecked or at least something more than a few crops getting destroyed. But oh well. I really liked Abbie's 2 heart event though, I found the fact that you actually sit down and play a shoot-em-up with her really charming, and she's starting to seem a bit more like a real character. Super hyped for the years to come.

 

Yeah, that event was pretty cool. I'm actually rather excited about the idea that every character in the game (or at least each of the romanceable ones? who knows...) has little events like this.

Spoiler

Also, that game is hard as shit, at least for me. I've made it to level 3, playing it in the pub, and I get a little better each time, but still... surprisingly difficult.

Also, is it just me getting too old for this shit, or is the fishing minigame pretty difficult sometimes? I swear I've hooked a bunch of fish that move the meter around so much and so randomly that it would have been impossible for me to reel them in unless I just got ridiculously lucky. Maybe I just need to keep leveling up fishing (most of the fish I hook are not that difficult) and get a better rod, and those ones will become easier.

[Mugi]

8 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

Also, is it just me getting too old for this shit, or is the fishing minigame pretty difficult sometimes? I swear I've hooked a bunch of fish that move the meter around so much and so randomly that it would have been impossible for me to reel them in unless I just got ridiculously lucky. Maybe I just need to keep leveling up fishing (most of the fish I hook are not that difficult) and get a better rod, and those ones will become easier.

It's not just you, the fishing mini game is pretty difficult until you get it down. Kind of wish they made it easier, since I think you HAVE to fish to complete some community center bundles, but oh well.

[Fred the Barber]

So it turns out there's festival around the middle of Fall where you'll want to be pretty good at fishing. There is a festival-only currency, which you can acquire by buying it, by playing mini-games, and by winning the contest associated with the festival (you'll hear about the contest from the mayor a week before, don't worry about it - I won, and pretty easily I expect)

- buying is pretty much off the table (at the absurd rate of 50g for one point)

- The Slingshot mini-game will give you about ~60-80 points if you're good at it, for one game at 50g. It's kind of stressful though. I think it was a little faster than the fishing mini-game, so this is probably about as efficient as the fishing game.

- the fishing minigame will often give you ~200 points, for a single 50g game. But only if you're good. The only way to get that many points is if you get a "perfect" when catching about half of the fish you catch during the time limit (if you don't know what a "perfect" is on fishing, well, practice more ). But there's no super-hard fish, only one moderately difficult type. And the rest are all pretty calm, so it's not actually that difficult to do well at this.

- When I won the contest, it gave me 1000 points.

You should do the contest first, and only then go to the mini-games - the festival won't end until you walk back to your farm. You're probably going to want a lot of the currency, because there's a Stardrop (the item I mentioned before that permanently increases your energy) for 2000 points, a Rarecrow for 800, and a Fedora for 500.

 

Aside from that scheduled event, the Abigail relationship is progressing nicely. I'm at 9 hearts, of which I jumped one or two because giving a birthday gift means tons of bonus points, apparently. I also gave her the flower item to start the romancing events, once the game told me about it (presumably it does that as soon as it's a good idea). I got another cute little event, and then a rather melodramatic, teenager-ish event, which seemed a little immature to my stoic farmer (and you could tell that with just a glance at his face), but I guess is to be expected from the still-living-with-her-parents Abigail. Well, we'll see where things go from here, but I expect it'll all turn out for the best pretty shortly.

[Mugi]

Alright, so I was always curious about what would happen if you buy a Joja membership and the community center gets replaced. Well, now I know. 

Spoiler

If you pay the 5000G, it gets torn down and replaced with a warehouse. However, you can still get the bundles, but you buy them instead. It seems to be a much better alternative if you don't want to farm all those bundles for those amazing rewards. I don't think i'll buy one though, since I hate the manager, and completing bundles seems to be a pretty big part of the game.

 

[Fred the Barber]

I went into the JojaMart once, was horrified by the appearance (seriously, the pixel art in this game is awesome, in its ability to communicate mood and ambience), and never went back. The initial premise of the game hit a little too close to home, so I've been passionately avoiding the Joja Corporation.

[Mugi]

Just going to leave this here http://community.playstarbound.com/threads/mod-portraits-like-anime-style.107707/

Modding community already accommodating to waifuism

Made Maru best girl tbh 

[Fred the Barber]

Pretty cool! I actually really like the feel of the game's original portraits, but these are great as well. If the modder ever completes the whole cast, I might give it a try just to see if it changes how I feel about the characters.

[Mugi]

Just now, Fred the Barber said:

Pretty cool! I actually really like the feel of the game's original portraits, but these are great as well. If the modder ever completes the whole cast, I might give it a try just to see if it changes how I feel about the characters.

He's currently planning to re-make all bachelor/bachelorettes, and has been doing it pretty quickly (he started Wednesday). Should be done with them in less than a week. Might even be doing the other villagers, which would be crazy, but pretty nice so that you can have everyone with matching art styles. Not a huge fan of most of the new in game portraits, especially Abigail and Maru's, I much prefer their older ones from earlier in development. Anyways, the game is making significant progress modding-wise, so i'll put a link to the mod thread in case you or anyone else wants to see what's available  

[Fred the Barber]

I'm starting a list of ridiculous things I've shouted while playing Stardew Valley:

"No! I shipped my eel!"

The ship bin needs to let me take more than just the last item back out of it. Say, last 10 or last 15? I think I've accidentally shipped things I really didn't want to three times now: the other two were a nautilus shell (to complete that collection) and my entire stack of copper bars (ugh).

Anyway, I've clearly been playing this game too much - I've finished an entire year and am back in Spring again. Some highlights:

- The next day is going to be rainy, so I'll be buying the marriage item and putting it to use. I'm interested to see how marriage changes the game experience. I should be able to afford the last home upgrade (a nursery, so you can have a kid), in a couple more game weeks.

- I learned that fruit trees are actually not nearly as great as their price would imply. They produce a single piece of fruit per day, with no maintenance, so they're not bad per se, just not great given the cost and time investment. You also have to keep the surrounding tiles completely clear - that includes not hoeing them (if you accidentally hoe a tile, you can smooth it with the pickaxe)

- Producing artisan goods is where it's at. Basically, for your best produce, you should probably be turning it into an artisan good instead of selling it directly. Turning fruit into wine takes forever but puts a huge multiplier on the value - very useful for super-expensive items like Starfruit. For vegetables, I think pickling is the best option - a pickled normal pumpkin nets > 1000 cash. But where this really shines is for animal produce - milk -> cheese, eggs -> mayonnaise, and so on. The nice thing about those is that the machines to do the conversion work pretty quickly (unlike the keg to make wine), so you can get 2x the value of your animal produce on the same day just by having enough cheese machines and mayonnaise machines on your farm.

- Getting to the bottom of the mine rewards you with a key to another dungeon, which doesn't have the equivalent of an elevator, and which has random drops in addition to stairways, where you go down ~6 floors at a time. I got a quest to reach the 25th floor of it, which I did, but I don't yet know how deep it goes...

- Irridium is a major pain in the ass to get. The best source for me so far has been buying it off the traveling salesman, who appears on a random day (I think) once per week, down near the wizard's tower.

[Mugi]

4 hours ago, Fred the Barber said:

- The next day is going to be rainy, so I'll be buying the marriage item and putting it to use. I'm interested to see how marriage changes the game experience. I should be able to afford the last home upgrade (a nursery, so you can have a kid), in a couple more game weeks.

- Getting to the bottom of the mine rewards you with a key to another dungeon, which doesn't have the equivalent of an elevator, and which has random drops in addition to stairways, where you go down ~6 floors at a time. I got a quest to reach the 25th floor of it, which I did, but I don't yet know how deep it goes...

- Irridium is a major pain in the ass to get. The best source for me so far has been buying it off the traveling salesman, who appears on a random day (I think) once per week, down near the wizard's tower.

- Let me know what all changes, i'm really curious to see what it's like to be married in this game

- It's infinite. Also quite worth getting to floor 25 if you can, because it nets you like 10k gold from that guy.

- You're probably best off getting a ton of Omni Geodes/Magma Geodes. I've gotten quite a bit of Iridium from them. Also the Quarry you unlock by completing that one bundle spawns Iridium occasionally. 

[Mugi]

PENNNNNNNNYYYYYYY (Anime Maru still best gril)

Spoiler

 

[Fred the Barber]

51 minutes ago, Mugi said:

- You're probably best off getting a ton of Omni Geodes/Magma Geodes. I've gotten quite a bit of Iridium from them. Also the Quarry you unlock by completing that one bundle spawns Iridium occasionally. 

Yeah, geodes have been my best bet so far as well. Although it turns out that extra dungeon rarely spawns Iridium nodes, and I got super lucky in my last trip through and got a cluster of them (5 nodes for 10 ore). So, that helped a fair bit. Now I just need a good storm so my lightning rods can charge up some battery packs, so I can make more Iridium Sprinklers (I think I have two right now, and I love them).

Marriage is... interesting. The ceremony is really quick and doesn't pass any time on the day it happens. Honestly, I didn't like this - I'd rather it totally screwed up your day, and you had to deal with it. As it is, it feels like it diminishes the importance.

Anyway, after that, back in the farmhouse the bedroom will get extended substantially, and the extended area will have all of your partner's stuff that was in their old bedroom. It looks pretty amusing for my house and Abigail, at least. Then the next day when I woke up, Abigail was in the kitchen complaining about the house layout (which is, in total fairness, absolutely abominable and really needs to be fixed - but I don't know if that's just something she'll always do, or if she did it because the house layout actually is that bad). After complaining, she handed me some bread with a line about how I had to make sure I ate something during the day. That was actually rather subdued but cool. A big part of me was wondering whether marriage meant that your partner would do anything (either continue their own profession, for those that have one, or take up some of yours, if not) - apparently the answer is, to at least some minimal extent, they'll help you out. But now I kinda want to see what happens if you marry the doctor...

I've only been through two days married. I haven't seen big changes yet, but the little touches are nice. And I don't know if maybe bigger changes are on the horizon.

I've unlocked most of the bundles now, and the Greenhouse unlock is amazing. You can grow whatever you want, whenever you want, and I happen to have just bought a bunch of strawberry seeds, so I just started a (presumably) never-ending strawberry patch in my greenhouse. Outside of that, I think I'm going to stock it with as much starfruit as I can fit (starfruit is ludicrously profitable, especially if you make it into wine).

My focuses now are:

- Getting the last house upgrade so I can have a kid. The spring money just really started rolling in, from a big rhubarb crop, so I should be there before too long.

- Leveling up relationships with all the townspeople. I realized that's the way to unlock both a lot of recipes and a lot of amusing cutscenes. I'm constantly carrying about 10 random items that I can hand out as gifts when I run into people, including a big stack of gold bars which I just dole out to Clint and Maru on sight. Some people are more convenient than others - Leah, in particular, likes to hang out at the bar, where I can always just buy and hand her a 220g salad that she loves. Similar story with Shane and Pam, although beer is decidedly not cheap. Willy, on the other hand, is a pain in the ass.

- Fishing whenever I can force myself, since my fishing skill has lagged way behind my others. Farming has been at 10 forever, everything else is at 9, but I think my fishing is a paltry 7.

38 minutes ago, Mugi said:

PENNNNNNNNYYYYYYY (Anime Maru still best gril)

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Holy shit that's cute. Penny and Maru are the ones who most need the makeover, in my opinion, so it's good to see them both getting some love.

[Flutterz]

Never played Harvest Moon which is what this game is supposedly the most like, but things like Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio, Recettear, etc. are like crack cocaine for me so I'm going spend a ton of time playing this. 

The customization is pretty nice too :3

[Fred the Barber]

3 hours ago, Flutterz said:

Never played Harvest Moon which is what this game is supposedly the most like, but things like Minecraft, Terraria, Factorio, Recettear, etc. are like crack cocaine for me so I'm going spend a ton of time playing this. 

The customization is pretty nice too :3

I heard about Recettear years ago, but it got very little noise on the communities I was on at the time - given your mention of it in tandem here, I'm guessing I should try it?

[Flutterz]

46 minutes ago, Fred the Barber said:

I heard about Recettear years ago, but it got very little noise on the communities I was on at the time - given your mention of it in tandem here, I'm guessing I should try it?

It's good fun, the combat mechanics aren't amazing but they're passable (though so far there's even less to the combat mechanics in Stardew Valley, at least Recettear has several classes and each one has a few different abilities), and you'll be spending more time haggling with customers than you will be dungeon crawling anyway. Squeezing every penny out of people without getting them pissed off is surprisingly fun.