Doll Plays:
Stardew Valley Expanded

28 Winter, Year 1

The Format

As you might have gathered based on the in-game date given above, I had the idea for this Let’s Play a bit late. Which is fine. I think doing bigger updates covering larger periods of game time works better for me and Stardew Valley lends itself well to this format, especially for a written Let’s Play. I might try to do seasonal updates going forward, depending on how much there is to talk about.

Updated, Expanded, and Modded

It was time for me to do another run of Stardew Valley, but this time I wanted to do my first modded run. My initial idea was for a Vanilla Plus run with a new farm type and some quality of life stuff like the tractor and machine automation. But when I saw Stardew Valley Expanded while browsing through mods, I thought it might be good to go a bit further with modding.

Much as I love Stardew Valley, and as much as ConcernedApe has added to it over the years, after a decade each run starts to feel just a bit more stale than the last. The tedious bits feel more tedious, the rewarding parts less rewarding, and even without min-maxing I have enough experience and knowledge that there’s not much challenge until the end game.

Stardew Valley Expanded looked perfect. Big enough to make my next run feel fresh while also trying to blend and integrate with the base game as much as possible. It’s also been long enough since my last run that another big update released, adding even more changes and additions.

Along with Stardew Valley Expanded I added the Frontier Farm as recommended. I also included a handful of quality of life and aesthetic mods:

Automate allows machines to pull materials and push finished products into connected chests. You’ll see some examples in the Farm East section below. I use CJB Cheats Menu to prevent friendship decay because that shit’s annoying. Shed expand actually doesn’t work and I’m too deep in the run at this point to see what’s up with that. Got the tractor mod to hopefully make larger crop fields in the late game more feasible.

Visible Fish and Winter Grass are the two visual mods. Visible Fish adds fish, trash, and plant sprites to bodies of water based on what can be caught with a fishing pole in that location, with respect to time and season. Winter Grass just prevents grass from dying off during Winter. It can be planted but won’t grow and can’t be harvested for hay.

First Year Impressions

One thing about coming back to a major update and huge mod is it’s kind of difficult for me to tell if a lot of the new stuff comes from the official update or the mod. I know the new characters and most of the major changes - like the Wizard’s house and expanded Cindersap Forest - come from Expanded, but stuff like new seasonal events, NPC routines and seasonal clothing, etc. I’m not sure. While that makes it hard to talk about either specifically without doing more research, I think that does speak somewhat to the quality of Stardew Valley Expanded.

Of the content that I know comes from Expanded, I think it does an amazing job at blending in with the base game. The new characters and events, new and reimagined areas, everything just fits really well. It feels like I’m coming back after multiple major updates rather than playing a modded version of the game.

Progress

I’ve never been the type to go for peak efficiency, but also this ain’t ya girl’s first rodeo. My first Spring and Summer were a bit slow going as I took my time exploring the re-imagined Valley, meeting new and old friends, starting the skills grind, and getting my farm started. By the time Fall came around I had settled into a routine and made enough progress on my farm to focus more on building friendships, fishing and the mine.

I’ve always disliked the grind of running from villager to villager grinding up friendship points. Fortunately, I’m a dirty cheater so I can be very lax about that while still making decent progress thanks to removing friendship decay. I have at least one heart with all met characters except Morris and the Dwarf, and at least two hearts with the rest. Clint, Lewis, Linus, Penny, and Robin are at five hearts each.

The mines were the same ol’ same ol’. I reached level 120 in Winter like planned. Just by taking advantage of the occasional good luck days throughout the year I managed to hit level 80 before the snow came without much effort and it only took a few more trips to knock out th last few sets of levels.

My farm, as you’ll see below, is coming along… okay. It’s messy, but that’s how it normally is for me until later. I have all the debris, weeds, and wild trees cleared out, with sprinklers for as many crops as I’m willing to deal with with my current equipment. Got my house upgraded to level 2.

Progress on the Community Center is also okay. The boiler room is done and I’ll be finishing the vault, pantry and crafts room within the next year. The fish tank and bulletin board have always been the bottlenecks in the past. And they still are. The other bundles don’t take much active effort to get the items for, but these two require going out of the way to attain a lot of the items.

Plans

Just gonna keep on keepin’ on, basically. In Spring I want to save up the last 20,000G I need to upgrade my house to level 3. Summer and Fall I’ll be focused on building up my farm with more buildings, more animals, more production, as well as knocking out the pantry and crafts room bundles. I also want to start working on some more decorative builds around my farm. Throughout the whole year I’ll also be doing the usual stuff like working on friendships, special orders, grinding more skill levels, etc.

Farmgirl 02613

Doll Farm

Home Sweet Home

The Frontier Farm adds a big backyard to the house which I thought was the perfect spot for the stable. I put the coop here at first but with the addition of my horse Arro it felt a bit crowded. If you’re wondering, Arro is named after the horse in Shadow of the Colossus but I remembered its name wrong so...

Besides the fruit tree and stable I don’t think I’ll be doing much in the backyard. Maybe some more paths and pet bowls.

Farm East

Right below my farmhouse is a nice little plot with space for 120 crops, a well, a tree farm for tappers, and a few rows of tea trees. Off to the side is a handful of production machine setups making use of the Automate mod and a small storage shed. Also growing grass and pine trees at the bottom in preparation for Spring.

This area will become more and more focused just on crops as time goes on.

Farm West

Over across the creek are homes for my animal friends, a silo for the food, and a large mahogany farm waiting for Spring. The area to the left of the animal enclosures is much bigger than what’s shown, with an old, rundown house on the far end. I have more than enough space for crops on the other side of the farm, so this area will end up being where I put more animal and production buildings and decorative builds.

Animals