This guide provides tips on what you should do in your first spring in Stardew Valley.
Stardew Valley is an open-ended RPG and farming sim where you can have the freedom to play however you like and engage in various activities like farming, mining, fishing, etc. Players can progress the game in their own good time, and there’s no main objective or endpoint unless you aim to “complete” the game or fulfill all your goals as fast as possible.
But if you’re a pro gamer and want to manage your time better to earn a profit as early as possible, this guide has all the complete tips to help set yourself up for success!
Important Note: This comprehensive guide was written and published before the release of Stardew Valley 1.6. The update changes game mechanics and introduces new content that may render this article outdated. However, this guide provides in-depth advice on optimizing your time, prioritizing tasks, and becoming a good farmer in your first year in Stardew Valley.
Getting Started
In Stardew Valley, you can try different play styles and pursue various goals. Hence, it can be a unique experience for each playthrough. Before we begin, here are some things you need to remember when starting a new save:
- When selecting which farm your character would live in, consider all the map’s features. Remember that each farm type has advantages and disadvantages that can affect your gameplay. Therefore, choose the farm that fits your preferred play style.
- You may try to randomize the Community Center bundles if you have played the game more than once. The game will remix the items required for each bundle, adding more challenges for veterans.
- The way you obtain items in the game is mostly RNG-based. Because of this, it can be hard to chance upon some items in Stardew Valley. There’s an option to make finding things easier for those aspiring to complete the Community Center bundles in their first year. Select the “setting” icon to get to Advanced Options. Under the Community Center Bundles setting, leave a check on the box next to Guarantee Year 1 Complete.
- Those who play with their partner or friends may notice stark differences between solo gaming and co-op. It’s easier to get rich in co-op mode as more players means more opportunities to earn money. You can spice things up by decreasing the profit margins or lowering the worth of your products. Players also have the option to share their income or have individual wallets. (Note that this is a single-player walkthrough. The tips written here are aimed at those who usually play solo.)
Stardew Valley Complete Spring Guide
Spring is when you’re given free rein over your late grandfather’s farm. With loads of activities to do in Stardew Valley, it can be overwhelming to prioritize which actions can bring good results before the season ends. Here are the tasks we suggest you focus on doing day by day:
Stardew Valley Spring 1 Guide: Plant Crops, Meet The Community
Crop seeds will be available on the very first day. You can remove your farm’s scattered rubble using your Starter Farmer Tools.
Planting your Parsnip Seeds and watering the soil should be on your list. After doing that, your inventory will be filled with mixed seeds, sap, clay, etc. Throwing out or shipping these resources will be a waste. Thankfully, a chest can store and manage all these items. Chop at least three trees and craft a chest.
You can purchase more seeds from Pierre to earn more money and fill out the empty spaces on your farm. If you have some foraged items, you can sell them to get more seeds.
Now’s the time to meet and greet all the town locals. All NPCs have set schedules they follow, and that’s why you’ll often see them roam around the valley.
Meet the Community
In the town, you’ll find Mayor Lewis, Pierre, Caroline, Abigail, Alex, Evelyn, George, Harvey, Gus, Pam, Penny, Jodi, Vincent, Sam, Emily, Haley, Shane, and Clint. Elliot and Willy spend most of their time on the beach.
You’ll usually see Robin, Demetrius, Maru, Sebastian, and Linus in the mountains.
On the west side of the valley is the Cindersap Forest. This is where you’ll usually come across Marnie, Jas, and Leah. The Wizard also lives in the forest, but meeting him is not required to complete the quest.
Make sure to give Caroline a Daffodil flower, one of her favorites. Caroline is one of the NPCs that give you an item that will be useful to you in the future. So give her daffodils every chance you get to raise your friendship points with her. Note that giftable characters can only receive items twice a week.
You can plant the remaining parsnip seeds when you get back home. Having low energy can prevent you from finishing all your farming work. If so, you may eat the recovery items you’ve foraged.
Stardew Valley Spring 2 Guide: Get Started On Fishing
On your second day as a farmer, Fisherman Willy sends you a letter to meet him at the beach.
Head to the beach after watering your crops. Once you arrive, you’ll get a cutscene wherein Willy talks you into starting fishing as a hobby. A Bamboo Pole will get added to your inventory after that.
Go to the mountains or the forest to start fishing. Pick up some foreagables you can sell or consume to replenish your health when you run out of energy from fishing.
Using the wood you’ve collected, make a storage chest. NPCs tend to destroy objects like chests that obstruct their usual pathways. You can leave your chests where they don’t usually walk or hang out. Go fishing until you are satisfied with the number you catch.
You can buy more seeds to grow on your farm. Remember that Pierre’s Shop closes on the third day since it’s a Wednesday. Alternatively, you can purchase seeds from JojaMart, but they sell their goods at a higher price. One positive thing about JojaMart is they are open seven days a week (at least until you finish restoring the Community Center.)
Catching Fish
Selling fish can make you money. However, if you choose to revivify the Community Center, do not ship out all the fish you catch. If you catch a Sunfish, Largemouth Bass, Carp, Bullhead, or Sardines, you may leave them in your storage chest.
Sunfish can be found in the forest river from 6:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. Largemouth Bass appear in the mountain lake from 6:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. Carp and Bullhead spawn in the lake anytime. Lastly, you can find Sardines in the ocean from 6:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M.
Meanwhile, JojaMart will require you to earn a lot of money for their projects. To progress in this route, you must give them 15,000 gold to unlock the Minecarts, the cheapest project to fund.
It’s possible to purchase all of Joja’s projects in your first year because you wouldn’t need to worry about gathering items for the Community Center. Instead, making lots of money from selling fish or crops will be more of a priority.
Stardew Valley Spring 3 Guide: More Fishing
If it rains, you can continue fishing to gain more experience points on Day 3. Some fish only come out in rainy weather or at night.
On rainy days like these, the Catfish emerges in the mountain lake at 9:00 A.M. and disappears at midnight. Shads spawn in the lake from 9:00 A.M. until 2:00 A.M. Both are required for the River Fish Bundle in the Community Center.
You can keep fishing until you run out of energy. Or at least until you catch a Bream and Eel. Bream and Eel are included in the Night Fishing Bundle. And thus, they are caught in the ocean only at nighttime.
On the beach shores of Pelican Town, you’ll find more items to gather and forage. Set aside a piece of Clam, Oyster, Mussel, and Cockle, as they can be used to complete another Community Center bundle. If you want to stack up on fertilizers that speed up the growth of crops, you’ll need to save lots of clams. Clams and Pine Tars are the ingredients required to craft Speed-Gro fertilizers.
Players on a Beach Farm can get items you usually find at the Beach. You may often stumble upon useful items like fertilizers or bombs that get washed ashore.
Stardew Valley Spring 4 Guide: Forage All You Can
Day 4 can be dedicated to chopping trees and picking items from the ground. At the same time, you can chat with the villagers if you have not met them all yet.
Chopping trees also gives you a lot of essential resources like wood and builds your Foraging skills. You may have already noticed the broken wooden bridge on the east side of the beach. This bridge can be repaired with 300 pieces of wood. Chop down 15 trees (and their stumps) to acquire this number of wood. Although this is not recommended in the early game, you can buy wood and other resources from Robin the Carpenter.
Once you repair the beach bridge, you can forage Corals and Sea Urchins near the tidepools. The Sea Urchin is another item you can donate to the Community Center. After unlocking this area, you can now catch the Crimsonfish, one of the elusive legendary fish that can only spawn at the beach in Summer.
Gathering Foreagables
Gather all the foreagables available to gain more experience points. Remember to store Daffodil, Dandelion, Leek, and Wild Horseradish because you’ll also need them to complete the Spring Foraging Bundle.
Spring Onions are vegetables you can also forage for free. Sometime in spring, they begin to sprout in the Cindersap Forest.
Don’t throw away or sell the Fiber you obtain from cutting weeds. You’ll need plenty of fiber later for crafting reasons. However, avoid cutting grass you can walk on, as it can be turned into animal food once you get a Silo.
You may also come across some Artifact Spots (wiggly lines sprouting from the ground) where you can dig out items, lost books, and ancient treasures.
Artifact spots sometimes yield Rice Shoots that produce Unmilled Rice when they mature. Rice shoots are easy to grow because you can plant them near ponds so they can self-irrigate.
Copper Ores may also be dug out from these spots. If you get your first ore from digging the ground, Clint will visit your farm the next day and give you a crafting recipe for the Furnace.
Stardew Valley Spring 5 Guide: First Crop Harvest
If you’ve planted all your parsnip seeds on Day 1 and watered them regularly, you can harvest them all on Spring 5. Since this day is when the Mines also become accessible, you can spend the whole day exploring the dungeon mining for more ores.
Before checking into the mines, you can quickly stop at the Community Center. The fifth day is when you can enter this building as long as it’s not raining. After talking to Mayor Lewis about the Community Center being infested with rats. After inspecting the shiny tablet inside the building, you can head back to the town square.
If you talk to Morris in JojaMart after this cutscene, he will urge you to buy a Joja Membership for 5,000. Membership allows you to fund projects for Joja Corp, so you can no longer go through the Community Center route.
Next, go to Pierre’s store. Sell your harvested parsnips to him so you’ll have money to purchase more crop seeds, but leave one parsnip in your chest for the Community Center. You’ll also need five quality parsnips for the Quality Crops Bundle.
To make quality crops, you must level up your farming skills. You’ll gain EXP by planting crops, as the farming skill involves watering and harvesting crops. In addition, you’ll get high-quality crops if you add fertilizer to the soil. Saps that you get from chopping trees can be turned into basic fertilizer.
Best Crops
Parsnips and Potatoes are the best picks in the early game. Not only are they cheap, but they only take a few days to grow. Bean Starters produce Green Beans, also needed in the Spring Crops Bundle.
Remember that Green Beans grow on a trellis, meaning you can’t walk over them. Try not to place them between two rows of green beans, or you’ll risk being unable to water or harvest them.
Cauliflowers are also included in the Spring Crops Bundle, but they’re a bit pricey, so we don’t recommend buying a lot of cauliflower seeds early in the game.
Other seeds for sale are not very relevant and profitable when you’re in your first spring. For example, flowers are pretty, but you can only profit from them if you place them near Bee Houses and sell the bees’ honey. Bee Houses can produce honey despite not being surrounded by flowers, but they can yield a much more expensive product when placed around Tulips or Blue Jazz.
You can buy food from Gus’ Stardrop Saloon and the Traveling Cart. The Merchant who runs the shop comes to the Cindersap Forest every Friday and Sunday. She sells random items that change every time she visits.
The Merchant has products you’ll need for the Community Center, such as the Red Cabbage, which you can’t grow in the first year because Pierre usually sells Red Cabbage seeds in Year 2.
You can either explore the mines right away or plant crops beforehand. If you have foraged items or money to buy consumables that restore energy, you can go deeper in the mines to obtain more resources.
The Cave Carrot is one of the restorative items in the early game. Incidentally, you’ll also need one for the Exotic Foraging Bundle.
Stardew Valley Spring 6 – 7 Guide: Copper Ore Farming, Copper Bar Smelting
The rest of the weekend can be spent on mining and farming. If you’ve already gotten to Level 3 in Farming, you can now craft Scarecrows. It is used to ward off crows that feed on your crops. A scarecrow can protect your crops if they are within its radius.
We suggest you try to reach 50 to 60 floors before spring ends. The faster you get to the 120th of the Mines, the sooner you can acquire a special key that unlocks another dungeon called the Skull Cavern. Of course, frequently visiting the mines means you’ll get more opportunities to level your Mining skills.
Luck determines the outcome of your mining activities. Watch the Fortune Teller channel daily and check if the spirits feel happy that they bless you with good luck. If you have bad luck on Days 6 and 7, you’ll encounter more enemies and fewer nodes. You’ll get a copious amount of loot if you have excellent fortune. Other aspects, like the chances of getting treasure chests from fishing, also get affected by luck.
Upgrading Your Tools
Regardless of your daily luck, you have to upgrade your starter pickaxe to descend quickly to the bottom. Clint does the job for you for 2,500g and 5 Copper Bars (from smelting 25 Copper Ores.) Once you’ve gotten your Copper pickaxe, you can gather more ores for tool upgrades.
Copper Bars are needed to make useful objects like the Basic Sprinkler. Sprinklers are essential tools that help minimize farming activities and save time. You can make at least five Furnaces to expedite the production of your Copper Bars. Additionally, you’ll need to donate one Copper Bar to the Junimos in the Community Center.
Another item that’s considered a farming necessity is the Tapper. It collects sap from regular trees that spawn everywhere on your farm. You can craft a tapper once you reach Foraging Level 3. It’s good to make tappers early in the game, as you’ll need tree saps like Maple Syrup for some bundles and crafting purposes. Attach one to any common trees and wait six days for them to produce sap.
Artifacts
Geodes are hollow rocks that drop from breaking boulders and sometimes kill monsters. It’s not wise to sell them as they contain artifacts and minerals you can donate to the Pelican Town Museum. Gunther, the museum’s owner, will reward you with various items upon giving him treasures.
Quartz, Earth Crystal, and Frozen Tear are artifacts you can forage in the mines. They are also included in one of the Community Center’s bundles.
After reaching Floor 5 in the mines, Marlon will reach out to you and invite you to join the Adventurer’s Guild. Marlon is a non-giftable NPC that you first encounter in the mines. As a part of the guild’s initiation, you’ll be asked to slay ten slimes.
Once you’re in, you can access the guild’s building east of the mines. Here, you will find Marlon’s weapon shop. You’ll also get a quest to slay monsters in the dungeons. Finishing different types of monsters in a specific quantity will earn you rewards that can improve your combat skills.
Check out our guide to learn more about this Adventurer’s Guild quest.
Spring 7 falls on a Sunday. And it’s also Mayor Lewis’ birthday. Giving villagers gifts on their birthdays greatly increases your bond with them. And if you want to get on the Mayor’s good side, you can give him your foraged items like dandelions, daffodils, and leek. Most of his loved items are not yet accessible early in the game.
Stardew Valley Spring 8-9 Guide: Befriending Villagers, Fulfilling Quests
On Days 8 and 9, you can be more social with the locals. Day 8 is the second week of the season, meaning you can once again gift NPCs their favorite items. Neglecting to mingle with NPCs will cause Friendship Decay, and you’ll lose friendship points.
Aside from Caroline, becoming friends with Pam and Clint will also be beneficial in the early to mid-game. Pam occasionally sends you Battery Packs in the mail. Batteries are used to craft powerful machines like the Crystalarium. Meanwhile, Clint may not have the best reputation in the game due to his obsession with Emily. But he usually sends Copper, Iron, or Gold Bars via the mail.
There are also NPCs you can marry later in the game, but you’ll need to gain eight friendship hearts to date them. Without minding the player’s gender, all 12 NPCs can have romantic and intimate interaction with you as you get closer to them.
Help Wanted Board
The Help Wanted board can be used to view and accept quests from villagers. The board is displayed near the entrance of Pierre’s General Store. Fulfilling these quests will earn you gold and friendship points. Story quests that progress the game can also be brought up by clicking the “journal” button.
If you have not met the Wizard residing in the enchanted-looking tower in Cindersap Forest, now’s the best time to visit him. After your initial encounter with him, you’ll gain the ability to understand the mysterious tablet found in the Community Center.
Before meeting the Wizard, the writings on the tablet are incomprehensible as it’s written in the Junimo language. You may now donate spring foraged items to the Junimos to get the Spring Seeds reward.
Your second batch of parsnips should be ready to be harvested on Day 9, assuming you planted them on the fifth day. Buy more crop seeds, but try not to splurge on them at once. You’ll need to save gold for some profitable but rare spring seeds.
Stardew Valley Spring 10-12 Guide: More Fishing and Farming
The Egg Festival approaches and is the first annual town event you’ll encounter in the game. But most importantly, this is the only day you can buy Strawberry Seeds. Strawberries are worth investing in because they don’t disappear after you harvest them. Instead, they regrow their fruit. These fruit crops also make profitable artisan products.
The festival happens every Spring 13, so you’ll have plenty of time to prepare for the strawberry seeds. If you planted your potato seeds on Day 5, your crops should be ready for picking on the eleventh of spring. Of course, selling fish could make you money fast. You can pick a period between Days 10 to 12 to dedicate an entire day to fishing.
Once you raise your Fishing skill to Level 3, you can make Crab Pots. These money-making enclosures trap small aquatic animals from the ocean, rivers, lakes, etc. You can place Crab Pots on the edge of the water. Next, insert bait inside the Crab Pots to get aquatic creatures from them the following day.
Spring 10 is Vincent’s birthday. Be careful not to give him vegetables like potatoes because he dislikes them. But he’ll also appreciate getting daffodils like his neighbor, Caroline.
On the 11th, Robin will ask for your help to locate her axe through the mail. Go to the Cindersap Forest and head to the south until you find the Sewer Pipe. The axe can be found on the ground around some trees on the left side of the screen.
Stardew Valley Spring 13 Guide: The Egg Festival
The Egg Festival takes place in the Pelican Town Square. The cheerful and lively event starts at 9:00 in the morning. And if you don’t head to the town square before 2:00 P.M., the festival will stop. Before heading there, you can till and water the field where you plan to scatter the strawberry crops. Doing this will help you save time and lessen your work later since these events usually end at 10:00 P.M.
During the festival, giftable and non-giftable villagers gather around the town square, so this is a good chance to talk to them, in case you have not met them all yet. Players participate in the Egg Hunt, where they pick up all the scattered and hidden eggs in the event venue. The first prize for getting most of the eggs is the Straw Hat. This accessory does not provide a special buff or power. But it can improve your character’s appearance.
You can read this guide to learn more about the festival and winning the egg hunt.
Strawberry seeds can be purchased from Pierre’s Stall for 100g each. As mentioned above, strawberries are quite lucrative. So you may buy around 20 to 25 strawberry seeds.
After the Egg festival, you’ll find yourself standing next to your farmhouse at nighttime. Try to plant all the strawberry seeds on Spring 13 to get two harvests from your Strawberry crops before the season ends.
Stardew Valley Spring 14 Guide: Spring Crops Farming, Haley’s Birthday
Chances are, you’ve spent all your gold on strawberry seeds. But if you still have a couple hundred gold, buy more Potatoes or Kale. For those who have not acquired five gold-quality parsnips, parsnips are still the ideal crops to grow.
You can also plant a few cauliflowers, should you have not acquired them yet. Gunther will give you nine cauliflower seeds for free. But you’ll need to return five items to their museum to get these costly seeds.
Cauliflowers mature 12 days after planting them, so you may want to plant them now, or you won’t get cauliflowers this season. Day 16 would be the last day you can plant these seeds. One cauliflower can be delivered to the Junimos and another for Jodi when she asks for one on Spring 19.
There’s another spring event that will occur on Spring 24. It’s called the Flower Dance, where the forest will be filled with flowers, and all the unattached NPCs will do a dance number. You can invite one of them for a dance. But players usually meet with rejection in their first year because the characters will only accept your invitation if you reach four hearts with them.
Getting a “yes” for an answer from the characters is possible if you put effort into befriending them, like talking to them every day and giving them gifts they like twice a week.
Haley is one of the easier ones to befriend and invite to the Flower Dance because her birthday falls on Spring 14. She likes flowers and would also appreciate a dandelion as a birthday present. You may gain 340 or 640 friendship points with her. But that depends on whether she likes or loves the gift.
Stardew Valley Spring 15 Guide: Foraging Salmonberries, Expanding Inventory
Day 15 is when Salmonberries start to spring on bushes. Salmonberry bushes are everywhere, so you’ll get a lot of foraged fruit for a few days. A bush yields one salmonberry. You’ll get two salmonberries per bush if you’re at Level 4 Foraging.
When consuming salmonberry, players recover 25 energy and 11 health. This gives you more power to mine, fish, and do other strenuous activities. Plus, Salmonberries are liked by Shane, Leah, Robin, Linus, Jodi, and Kent. Sandy from the Calico Desert is also fond of salmonberries. You can only get to Calico Desert once you fix the bus at the bus stop. Donating 42,500g to the Junimos at the Community Center or funding JojaMart’s bus repair project.
Players who haven’t upgraded their backpacks can make chests and place them where they usually gather their resources. For example, you can place one near the entrance of the mines or in Cindersap Forest. Again, Place it out of the NPC’s usual paths so it won’t get destroyed.
However, if you have sufficient money to buy a larger backpack, you may head to Pierre’s and upgrade your inventory. You’ll have more opportunities to acquire a hefty stack of resources and materials.
Stardew Valley Spring 16-18 Guide: Hitting the Mines, Pam’s Birthday
You may want to go mining on Days 16 through 18. You’ll need more copper ores for upgrading the rest of your tools. Upgrading both your axe and pickaxe in your first spring is recommended, as you can mine and forage faster with these tools.
In Summer, you’ll have plenty of profitable crops to plant. So, it would be good to start gathering crafting materials needed for Quality Sprinklers.
The Quality Sprinkler is crafted using one Iron Bar, Gold Bar, and Refined Quartz. The recipe for Quality Sprinkler is unlocked at Farming Level 6. It’s quite a stretch to acquire this much farming experience at this time unless you’re heavily focusing on multiplying your crops.
You may now begin collecting iron ores and turning them into bars. Try to make it to the 40th or 50th floors in the mines to access nodes and boulders that contain iron ores. You can go deep in the mines faster by focusing on finding the ladders instead of coming after all the enemies.
Pam’s birthday is on the 18th. She likes alcoholic beverages, but you won’t be able to acquire those until you get a Keg. However, she wouldn’t say no to parsnips. Those with extra spare money can also easily buy her beer when she is at the Saloon.
Harvest all the salmonberries from bushes before Spring 18, as they go out of season or disappear the next day.
If you can pay Clint to refine your Axe on the 16th, you can get your Copper Axe on the 18th. Now, you can remove the bothersome large stumps that ruin the layout of your farm. However, there are some larger logs you can’t break with a copper axe.
Stardew Valley Spring 19-21 Guide: Fishing Tips, Shane’s Birthday
There are days when good fortune is not on your side. Exploring the mines when there are more enemies than spoils can be a wasted labor. On bad luck days, you can concentrate on fishing instead. After tending to your crops, you can start fishing until you tire.
If you have been following this guide, you may have racked up enough gold to buy a Fiberglass Rod and loads of Bait. This upgraded pole increases your fishing proficiency and allows you to use bait. Otherwise, sell some of your fish to Willy in his shop until you can afford the Fiberglass Rod.
Try to consider the fish’s behavior while trying to catch them. Some sink to the bottom, while others float near the surface. Others are quite slippery, swimming up and diving down at random intervals.
You can “entrap” even the most slippery fish easily if your green rectangular bar is longer. Whenever you gain one fishing level skill, the green rectangular bar elongates. So keep fishing or using the crab pots to gain more experience points.
Linus is the man who can help you with fishing. After you gain four friendship hearts with him, he’ll give you the recipe for Wild Bait, a type of bait that lets you acquire two fish per catch.
Shane’s Birthday
Spring 20 is Shane’s birthday. He loves gifts like beer and pizza that you can buy from the saloon. But you can give him a salmonberry if you don’t want to spend your money on him. His initial rude attitude towards you may drive you up the wall, but he’s the only bachelor who can allow you to raise Blue Chickens. If Shane’s bluntness somehow makes you swoon, here’s a guide to winning his heart.
The strawberry crops you planted on Day 13 can be harvested on the 21st of Spring.
Stardew Valley Spring 22-23 Guide: Gathering Materials
You may notice some pieces of Hardwood that fall from chopping large stumps. Hardwood is a crafting material used in various recipes. Ten pieces of hardwood are also required to complete the Construction Bundle. Large stumps occasionally spawn on the Forest Farm. But if you’ve chosen another map type, these stumps disappear forever after you break and chop them up. Therefore, hardwood is a scarce item at the start.
More large stumps spawn daily in the Secret Woods west of Cindersap Forest. Unfortunately, a large log is before the Secret Wood’s entrance. You can only destroy it using the Steel Axe or an improved version of the Copper Axe. So, you may want to reserve 5,000g and 5 Iron Bars for an axe upgrade.
It’s the last week of spring, and this is when you can start gathering resources and saving up for the Coop and Silo. Once you have 100g, 100 Stone, 10 Clay, and 5 Copper Bars, you can purchase a Silo from Robin. Chop down more trees, and you’ll soon have enough materials to buy a chicken Coop from Robin. She’ll build you a coop if you give her 4,000g, 300 pieces of wood, and 100 stones.
Stardew Valley Spring 24 Guide: Flower Dance
The Flower Dance Festival begins at 9:00 AM when you enter the Cindersap Forest. Remember that the event will end if you don’t enter the venue before 2:00 PM. All the NPCs you can befriend crowd in one place in these events, so it’s easier to find them all and socialize.
The characters you can invite are the ones available to date and marry. You can talk to them twice to initiate the invite. If they accept, they become their partner in a group dance. You’ll gain 250 Friendship Points (equivalent to 1 heart) with whoever you pick.
Perhaps you’re already thinking about how to make your farm more beautiful and presentable. Pierre has a selection of items to get you started on shaping the layout of your farm. He sells Seasonal Decor and Flowers that you can place outside your farmhouse.
Players usually start planning the endgame layout of their farm in Year 2, but there is no harm in putting a few furniture anywhere on your farm if you have a penchant for decorating.
Stardew Valley Spring 25-26 Guide: Mining Spoils, Pierre’s Birthday, Tree Planting
If you’ve been spending a lot of time in the mines, you probably now have plenty of artifacts or treasures you either kept or donated to the museum.
There are artifacts we suggest not to give to Gunther because they have other uses besides being a museum piece. First is the Prismatic Shard. If you can find one this early, be sure to save it. You can use it to extract a mighty weapon in the Calico Desert.
The second is the Dinosaur Egg. Dinosaurs can be raised as pets in this game. Put a dino egg on the incubator inside the big or deluxe coop, and it hatches into a green dinosaur that lays an egg daily.
Some treasures you must turn in to the museum right away. An Ancient Seed, for example, is an artifact you can donate to Gunther. In return, he’ll give you a seed that grows into an Ancient Fruit plant. Ancient fruit crops are worth a lot of money, so you may want to grow them immediately if you can get them.
Other items meant to be displayed in the museum at once are the four dwarf scrolls. You’ll get the Dwarvish Translation Guide. This special item allows you to talk to the Dwarf in the Mines.
Spring 26
Spring 26 is Pierre’s birthday. You can gift him some good old silver or gold quality dandelions, daffodils, or parsnips. While in Pierre’s shop, consider buying some Apple, Orange, Peach, and Pomegranate Saplings. These trees bear fruit that is needed for some Community Center bundles. You can plant them now because they take 28 days to grow. And they can only bear fruit in the summer season.
Plant the saplings three tiles away from any object on all sides. If you plant them next to an object, such as a building, they will not be able to grow.
Tree saplings are inarguably expensive for a struggling farmer. You don’t need to buy all summer tree saplings if you have a fruit bat cave. If you’ve managed to earn a total of 25,000 in Spring, Year 1, Demetrius will come to your farm and ask if you want to turn your cave into a fruit bat cave or a mushroom cave.
Different kinds of mushrooms grow in the mushroom cave. You can save mushrooms for the bundles, such as the Morel or Purple Mushroom. The bat cave has bats that leave various fruits. Pomegranates, Peaches, and Oranges are often found here. Apples can also spawn here, but only rarely. Therefore, if you choose the fruit bat cave, you’ll only need the Apple Tree sapling.
Additionally, if you can befriend Caroline, you can finally get Tea Saplings. They take four weeks to grow into tea bushes. But they do not wilt like seasonal crops. Tea Bushes are guaranteed money-makers as they can produce tea all year except in Winter.
Stardew Valley Spring 27 Guide: Plans for the next season, Emily’s Birthday
There are only two days left in spring. Don’t worry if you haven’t caught every fish needed for the Community Center bundle. You can still encounter some of them in Summer.
Eels and Sardines will be gone in the summer but return to Pelican Town in the Fall.
Those who chose the Joja route should now have enough money to purchase the Glittering Boulder and Bridge Repair projects. Funding these projects will allow you to access the Quarry in the mountains and unlock Panning.
It may also be a good idea to get a Silo and a Coop now if you can afford them. You can buy some chicken after you ship out or sell the last batch of your spring crops.
Emily’s birthday is on the 27th. Minerals like Amethyst and Topaz are her favorites. A gold-quality daffodil is also something Emily would appreciate.
Stardew Valley Spring 28 Guide: Last day of Spring
On Spring 28, you can focus on setting up your farm for the next season. For example, get rid of some more debris on your tillable land to make room for more crops.
All the seasonal crops you planted in spring will be gone and wilted in summer. Despite that, you don’t need to destroy them right now. Destroying them all using a pickaxe is a waste of energy. They will be easier to remove with a Scythe because this tool does not consume energy.
Don’t forget to donate your Parsnip, Potato, Green Bean, and Cauliflower to the Community Center to complete the Spring Crops Bundle. You’ll receive 20 Speed-Gro fertilizers that you can use on your summer crops.
Conclusion
The first year is a critical time in your playthrough, especially in spring. This season introduces the game’s mechanics and sets the foundation for your farm. There may be some items you’ve missed or tasks you haven’t done this season, but no worries! You can still get a do-over next year and try to optimize your time and resources better — all thanks to the experience and learnings you gained during your first spring.
Stay tuned for the next part of this guide, where we will cover the goals you must fulfill in the first Summer of your playthrough!
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