My Stardew Valley 1.6 farm

[estirose]

So, currently I am running Stardew Valley 1.6 vanilla as suggested by ConcernedApe. Thanks to some very heavy playing evenings/weekends, I am up to nearly the end of year 2. I am nowhere near where I normally am and... you know what? That's okay.

My current farm is the new Meadowlands farm. For some reason, I expected it to be smaller, but still clearing trees out etc. The fact that you're farming chickens instead of parsnips makes early game so much more easier. Eggs are an easy income for the first few weeks (after the chicks grow to adulthood, of course) and it's not like you're starving until you can get everything up and running.

I'm behind in finishing up the Community Center. I went with the standard bundles instead of the randomized ones and I've got 4/6th of the stars done (just missing Bulletin Board and Pantry). I'm probably going to have to wait until mid year 3 to finish the bundles as I don't have a pig for truffles and I'm severely behind on the gold-quality crops.

I also am not used to manually putting in and removing fruit/veggies/eggs/milk to process so my artisan goods are a bit lacking.

According to Stardew Valley Checkup, I'm still not doing terribly - I'm at two of the four candles, which means Grandpa's Shrine is just going to look pretty for a while.

I've gotten to the bottom of the regular mines, but my weapon is too weak for Skull Cavern right now, so I have to either get really lucky with a Prismatic Shard drop or buy the lava katana for the meantime.

In the meantime, I've been really trying to hit the mastery mechanic. I'm up to level 10 in one skill (fishing), very close in two others (combat and farming) but have a ways to go on the last two (foraging and mining).

I'm loving the new 1.6 mechanics of the books, the mystery boxes, and the tickets. Also as someone who uses the fishing mechanic a lot, the summer and winter fishing contests (for rainbow trout and squid respectively) are an easy way to get things.

Next time around I'm going to do Joja route as I think I've only done it once before, and it's shaping up to be more appealing with this update (thanks to the new Ginger Island additions of the golden parrot - which may be worth the cost to not have to do that stupid gem memory game - and the guy that will let you get that last sliver of perfection without having to get everything). I'm going to get perfection the hard way this playthrough but next time around, I'm putting in minimal modding (just the Automate/Chests Anywhere/UI Info Suite combo) and doing that run.

ETA (3/30/24): I forgot to mention some of my other favorite new changes! Not only do we have the fisherperson-friendly trout and squid competitions, but the layouts of the existing festivals change every other year (I think we can safely attribute this to FlashShifter idea-wise as these festivals are changed up - albeit in a different way - in Stardew Valley Expanded. In fact, I saw some of the same tricks that are in the SVE Spirit Eve mazes show up here in the vanilla Stardew Valley game and I love that). I'm looking forward to the new Spring festival in the desert that apparently functions in some ways similar to the Night Market in that shops are still open etc but apparently has its own activities.

(Also: I got the Pantry done and so I have the greenhouse heading into winter - a great time to grow some year-round crops, especially once I've got a seedmaker and can start making new Ancient Fruit seeds.)