The Best Gameplay Mods for Stardew Valley

Stardew Valley has been around for almost a decade, and in that time has amassed an enormous community of dedicated modding enthusiasts. So much so, that recent updates to Stardew Valley have made significant changes to its code in order to make modding the game even easier. There are thousands of mods to change the way you play Stardew Valley; if there’s ever been a moment where you thought “I wish this was in the game,” someone has probably made a mod for it! Gameplay mods introduce new features, apply quality-of-life changes to existing mechanics and controls, and provide players with helpful data to make their experience a little better. There’s plenty of them out there, but here’s a few gameplay mods for Stardew Valley you should consider using.

UI Info Suite 2

There are many mods for Stardew Valley that make tiny changes to the overall experience. Mods to add NPC locations to your map. Mods to display how many experience points specific actions will reward you with. There are even mods to let you know when one of your animals still needs a good pet. UI Info Suite 2 does all of these and more in a single package, removing the need to download many independent mods and hoping they all work together. UI Info Suite 2 will also let you look at the calendar and bulletin board from anywhere, and show you the ranges for your scarecrows and sprinklers before you set them down. There’s too many changes to list here, but once you install this mod you’ll never want to go back to a vanilla Stardew experience.

Fast Animations

Once you’ve played enough Stardew Valley, you’re going to find yourself optimizing your playthroughs. Seeing how fast you can complete community center bundles, learning the best sprinkler patterns, and speedrunning marriage in order to gain a second pair of hands on the farm. By comparison, you might start to feel like certain actions are a bit too…slow. Fast Animations changes those slow interactions by accelerating the speed of many of the animations in the game. Breaking open geodes, harvesting crops, and milking cows are just a few of the animations this mod targets. What’s great about Fast Animations is it’s completely customizable with the help of another mod (and honorable mention,) Generic Mod Config Menu. Fine tune the animations in Stardew Valley to whatever speed you prefer, and feel the rush of never having to wait for Clint to swing his hammer down ever again.

AutoGate/Auto Animal Doors

Gates allow farmers to fence out their farms into various sectioned-off areas without making them completely inaccessible. They’re essential! But having to constantly click on gates to open and close them is tedious. AutoGate solves this issue. Like it says on the tin, AutoGate will automatically open and close gates as you pass through them, removing the need to frantically click on them in order to keep moving. By extension, Auto Animal Doors serves a similar purpose; it will open and close your barn and coop doors at set intervals, accounting for the weather, so you don’t have to! Both of these mods automate a small fraction of the Stardew Valley experience to alleviate some of the frustrations that come from seemingly benign elements. You won’t realize how good you have it until you play the game again without them.

Part of the Community

Stardew Valley is part life sim, and that means interacting with various people and becoming closer with them. But this is a tight-knit town where everybody knows everybody. It makes sense for your interactions with one person to affect how the rest of the town might see you. Part of the Community will drastically change the way you go about getting to know the people of Pelican Town. It adds new ways to increase your friendship levels by making certain actions indirectly influence nearby villagers. Visiting shops increases your relationship with their owners. Talking to villagers near other villagers will subtly increase your friendship with the group. Giving someone a gift might earn bonus friendship points with members of their family! Part of the Community seeks to make you play Stardew Valley as exactly that.

Automate

Let’s face it: sometimes your plans for the best farm ever can get out of control. It starts with one blueberry and suddenly you’re filling a basement with as many casks as you possibly can. Keeping track of all the end-game machines and production lines you’ve invested in is a monumental task. When farmers realize their farm has become bigger than any one person can handle, they install Automate. Place a chest next to any machine. Automate will take any valid item for it from the chest, put it into the machine, and then store the result back into the chest for you to check on later. You can even daisy-chain machines together! Automate opens the door for farmers to sink their teeth into everything Stardew Valley has to offer without feeling overwhelmed. It’s a liberating feature you could argue should have been in the vanilla game to begin with.

These are just a handful of gameplay mods for Stardew Valley that elevate it with fresh ideas and convenient changes. There’s more out there to discover, but while you’re browsing mod databases for what you like, give these a try first. See how you like it, and consider supporting the hard-working mod authors who make them! Once you’ve got Automate installed, you’ll have more time on your hands- maybe enough to court one of the town’s eligible bachelors. Check out this helpful list on the Best Characters to Marry in Stardew Valley. If you’re already married and want to use that extra time to introduce children into your playthrough, check out How to Have and Remove Children in Stardew Valley.

Stardew Valley is available on the Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, Windows, MacOS, Linux, and mobile devices.