Try Something New
Stardew Valley’s mod scene is huge, and the best upgrades usually come from changes that make your farm run smoother or look more like your style. The picks below stick to farm-friendly improvements, from automation and storage to layouts and visual upgrades.
1. Stardew Valley Expanded
Stardew Valley Expanded adds new locations, questlines, NPCs, and tons of extra events while still playing nicely with the base game’s rhythm. It also includes multiple farm map options, which can change how you plan space for crops, paths, and buildings. It’s one of the best ways that long-time players of the game can reinvigorate their interest.
2. Ridgeside Village
Ridgeside Village drops a whole new area into your world, complete with a big cast of NPCs, festivals, shops, and quests. It’s not just dialogue-based either; you’ll get new reasons to earn money and manage time carefully. A journey to Ridgeside gives your days more variety aside from fishing, mining, or digging in trash cans.
Patrick Robert Doyle on Unsplash
3. Automate
Automate links chests to machines so they pull inputs and return finished goods automatically. That means fewer laps around sheds and less micromanaging when you’re running kegs, jars, and furnaces. You can also configure what it will interact with, so it’ll always work no matter what changes you make to your farm.
4. Tractor Mod
Tractor Mod lets you hoe, water, and harvest, and clean faster and on a much broader scale. It’s especially helpful once you’re scaling up into big fields and season-to-season resets take too long. Since it’s adjustable, you can keep it balanced or go full convenience mode.
5. Better Junimos
The Better Junimos mod upgrades Junimo huts with smarter helpers and more options for what they can do. With the right settings, they can handle extra tasks like planting and fertilizing, and their working range can be improved, too. If you already love hut-based farming, this turns it into a real strategy.
Joshua van der Schyff on Unsplash
6. Chests Anywhere
Chests Anywhere lets you open and manage your storage from wherever you are, including things like fridges and shipping bins. It’s a big upgrade for organizing, especially when your farm has multiple sheds and ends up spanning well into other areas of the map.
7. UI Info Suite 2
UI Info Suite 2 puts helpful info right on your screen, which cuts down on constant menu-checking. Features include hover details, reminders, and daily info, making planning crop days and errand runs easier. Because it’s customizable, you can trim the UI down to only what you find useful.
8. Lookup Anything
Lookup Anything gives you quick details about whatever you’re pointing at, so you can make decisions without leaving the game’s flow. It’s especially handy for crops, animals, and objects where timing and requirements matter. Instead of guessing, you get the info and move on.
9. NPC Map Locations
NPC Map Locations shows where villagers are on the map, which is perfect when you’re trying to squeeze gifting or quests into a busy farm day. It also helps when you’re running expansion mods and the world becomes harder to navigate by memory. All in all, it's a great way to manage your time more effectively.
10. Generic Mod Config Menu
Generic Mod Config Menu adds an in-game settings menu for mods that support it. That’s huge when you’re tweaking keybinds, toggles, and balance options across a modded save. If you like your setup precise, it saves you from constantly editing files by hand.
11. AutoAnimalDoors
AutoAnimalDoors automatically open and close barn and coop doors, so you don’t have to remember to do it every morning and night. It’s a small change, but it keeps your routine cleaner when you’ve got multiple buildings. Fewer tiny chores also means you can focus on the fun stuff faster.
12. Better Ranching
Better Ranching adds clear indicators so you can tell which animals still need petting, milking, or shearing. It also helps avoid failed interactions, which makes barn time less annoying when animals crowd together.
13. No Fence Decay
No Fence Decay repairs fences and gates every morning, which stops your carefully planned pens from falling apart. It’s perfect if you care about tidy layouts or if replacing fences has become a recurring chore. Long saves benefit the most because it removes maintenance you’ve already proven you can do.
14. Automatic Gates
Automatic Gates makes gates open and close as you approach, which speeds up movement across your farm. You can adjust timing and set ignored spots if you don’t want everything automated. It’s a quiet quality-of-life win, especially around barns, coops, and tight pathways.
15. Range Display
Range Display shows the coverage for sprinklers, scarecrows, bee houses, and Junimo huts. That makes planning fields simpler, and it helps you avoid dead zones that leave crops unwatered or unprotected. If you’re tired of tile counting, this is the clean fix.
16. Harvest With Scythe
Harvest With Scythe lets you use the scythe to collect crops and forage, while still keeping normal harvesting available. It’s most useful during big harvest days when you’re gathering rows of crops and don’t want to mash buttons.
Rasa Kasparaviciene on Unsplash
17. Bigger Backpack
Sometimes 36 inventory slots just isn’t enough. Bigger Backpack adds another backpack upgrade you can buy, pushing your inventory up to 48 slots. That’s great for long days where you’re farming, mining, and shopping without wanting to unload constantly.
18. Better Artisan Icons
Better Artisan Good Icons changes icons so artisan goods reflect what you used to make them. When your storage is packed with different wines, jellies, and juices, you can spot what’s what instantly. It’s a simple upgrade that keeps processing sheds and selling days organized.
19. Casks Everywhere
Casks Everywhere lets you use casks outside the cellar, so aging isn’t limited to one room. This makes selling high-quality wines so much easier, and lets you turn out a real nice profit as well.
20. Elle’s Seasonal Buildings
Elle’s Seasonal Buildings gives your farm buildings seasonal texture swaps, multiple themes, and palette options. You can tweak details like fences and bins, and keep everything looking consistent with your chosen recolor style. This is a popular choice for folks who like to prioritize aesthetics just as much as gameplay.
