Discover Some of the Best Stardew Valley Mods

Have you ever been through the experience of playing your Stardew Valley, calmly taking care of your life, but the limited walking speed, even after drinking all of the coffee and Joja-cola in the world, starts to bother you a little bit, due to you losing your precious mine-exploring time walking home before you pass out in the middle of the road? Or are you tired of always cooking the same stuff and want some more variety? Maybe some new places to explore?

In this article, we give you ways to fix all of this and much more! The website Nexus Mods offers players thousands of mod options for you to install and customize your Stardew Valley to your heart’s content. And here, we’ll list some of the most popular, unique and useful mods for your gameplay! Check it out.

To start off simple, let’s first talk about mods that don’t change the gameplay at all, only the game’s visuals. Do you maybe feel that the base game’s colors are too bright and not very realistic? Did you wish that the graphics were a bit “softer” and prettier, with more refined pixel art than the original game? Or even going a little further, what if every NPC in the game had a different look for every season, not only in winter? We can find all of that and a lot more in this category!

From items to clothing, recipes to environments, even modifications for your pets, doing a good search over on NexusMods you’ll probably find something that fits exactly what you wanted to change! There are hundreds of mods made exactly to that end, making the game into a more unique visual experience, tailored to each player’s aesthetic tastes and preferences. Down below, I’ve highlighted some of the most popular ones:

DaisyNiko's Earthy Recolour

This mod recolors the game’s nature, giving everything an earthy and warmer tone that makes it easier on the eyes, less vibrant than the original.

Download this mod here.

StarDust's Maps Retexture

Another one that does exactly what its name claims, the mod applies a re-texture to the event maps in-game, making everything look better and more beautiful. It’s worth looking over the example images available on the mod’s description page in the link down below and, if the presented aesthetics fits your tastes, this mod promises to add more content in the future and, for now, will make the festivals look amazing!

Download this mod here.

Seasonal Outfits - Slightly Cuter Aesthetic

This is the mod that does what I’ve mentioned previously, each NPC in Stardew Valley will now have a different set of clothes for each season, instead of only changing their looks during winter. On top of that, it also makes the sprites and portraits of each Pelican Town (and neighbouring areas) resident slightly prettier.

Download this mod here.

Hats On Pets Plus

One of the best new features that arrived at the last huge Stardew update, Patch 1.6, was the possibility to give hats to your pets. However, the game only allows you to give them to cats and dogs, so this mod’s here to allow you to also customize your customized pets! Have you ever wanted to have a capybara with a little top hat? It’s your moment!

This mod also allows you to tweak and adjust the visual of the pet wearing the hat, preventing any sprites from looking “weird” by being automatically placed in the default position by the original coding.

Download this mod here.

Speed Mod

Imagine this scenario: You’re in the mines, almost reaching an elevator level to save your progress, almost getting that last monster drop or ore you need to complete that Help Wanted quest that’s been bothering you for weeks… but it’s already 1h15AM! If you don’t leave the mines *now”, you’ll definitely pass out in the middle of the way back to your bed and wake up without half a dozen of your precious materials and a good sum of money.

What if you walked faster? Or better yet, if you could use some of your energy to teleport right to your farm? We have the solution!

This mod allows you to do just that, and also configure the increased walking speed of your character. It’s definitely a huge help if you want to focus on collecting resources without having to worry as much with the day/night cycle that’s one of the few limitations the game imposes on us.

Download this mod here.

Tractor Mod

And looking on the other side of the spectrum, another situation. You wake up filled with determination to spend your day exploring the mines, or maybe the Skull Caves, but since today is not raining, you need to tend to your farm first! You still haven’t had a lot of money and resources left to invest in quality sprinklers, so you have to do a lot of the heavy-lifting yourself and, by the time you’re finally done, it’s already two in the afternoon and you’ll have little exploration time. The tractor’s here to help out with that!

This mod makes a tractor available to buy in the game, and it helps you harvest and tend to your crops in a much more efficient and a lot faster way, saving up a lot of your precious time.

Download this mod here.

If you’re like me, there’s one single thing that annoys you in every single farming simulator you’ve ever played, and actually in most games which have this mechanic. Those damn fishing minigames.

Skip Fishing Minigame

But with this amazing mod, your problems are over (and so are mine!)! It allows you to catch any fish that bites your hook instantly, completely skipping the minigame. The capture chances are still the same, that is, there’s still the possibility that you’ll fish out trash, but now the difference is that you won’t waste any more bait trying to get that one specific fish that’s always slipping out of the little bar or any more mental sanity failing the minigame over and over again. Just get to the water and any fish who bite are yours right away, hook, line and sinker.

Download this mod here.

Visible Fish - see catchable fish in the water

You can also combine the mod above with this one here, that makes the “available” fish in each body of water visible in real time. It doesn’t mean that the exact position the fish sprite appears is the spot you have to throw your hook in to catch that one fish, but it’s a very useful visual help for you to avoid having to consult guides to know where to catch that one specific fish you need for a quest or to complete a bundle in the Community Center fish tank!

This mod also indicates the percentage of fish present according to each body of water’s stats: If only 2 sprites for fish X show up while fish Y appears 10 times, then fish X will be a lot rarer to catch than Y, even if you keep trying right over where it appears to be.

Download this mod here.

Better Ranching

One of the most important aspects of the game, in which you’ll probably venture in, is raising farm animals! You build coops, barns and stables, purchase baby animals to care for and eventually start to care for the ones born right in your farm as well. And, of course, gathering the resources from them, be it to sell or turn into recipes or artisan goods.

Eggs, wool and milk are just some of the examples. You have to go from animal to animal to check if they’re ready for you to collect their resources and there’s a chance of it failing and you ending up with nothing. But with this mod, everything gets a lot easier!

With Better Ranching installed, the chance of the “harvesting” failing is nullified, optimizing your animal resource production, and it also adds an indicator above the animal whenever it’s ready to be collected! And it doesn’t only apply to resources, an indicator also appears above the animals with which you haven’t interacted that day yet. It’s an excellent tool to avoid getting lost when you start to have many identical animals, and increasing your relationship with them all equally, which results in happy animals and better quality products.

Download this mod here.

Custom Companions

This one’s for you who wants to have a companion in the game, one who follows you everywhere. Despite this mod allowing you to even get a copy of an NPC as your companion, its main feature is that you can spawn any animal, be it a pet or a farm one, animals which normally you can’t buy or adopt, or even a bat from deep within the mines, which will fly by your side during your adventures.

Download this mod here.

Pet Modifications

There are also the mods that allow you to have pets other than just cats, dogs and turtles. Some add extra options for you to purchase, others are just re-textures for the already existing pets, only changing their appearance. Here are some of the most popular ones, but again, there are endless mods made exactly to that end in NexusMods, if you want another type of animal, just search for the ideal one!

The Capybara Pets mod adds the option to adopt a capybara, right at Marnie's ranch! Cute Fox and Red Panda on the other hand is a re-texture for your horse, turning it into one of these adorable animals. And the Fox Replacer does something similar, but this time it’s your dog that’ll turn into a fox.

The next three mods are some of the most useful tools you can have in the game. It’s simple stuff, but they’ll spare you a lot -a lot- of time walking around and hitting alt+tab to check guides.

Chests anywhere

The name says it all. This mod allows you to access your chests, fridge, shipping bin and pretty much any other storage place remotely, and move items between them. Who has never walked all the way to the museum just to realize that the one artifact you wanted to donate was left in a chest in your room, right? With this mod installed, that’s one issue you’ll no longer have!

Download this mod here.

Npc locator

Another huge help. Over time you end up memorizing the routine of some NPCs, be it your favourites or the ones you interact with the most. But there’ll always be that one specific quest that requires you to talk to one specific person whose whereabouts you have no idea of.

With this mod, your days of hunting people down all over Pelican Town are over, whenever you open up the map there’ll be small tokens with each NPC’s faces, showing exactly where they are at that exact time, for your convenience.

Download this mod here.

Lookup anything

Alt+tab is over. You can close all Stardew Valley guides, the Wiki, everything you usually need to remember that one gift your girlfriend loves or how many days are left until your crops are ready for harvest. With this mod, you just need to hit the f1 key and everything will be right there, every information available for you.

Whatever’s under your cursor the moment you hit f1, a window will open with a complete description about the element. Is it an NPC? You’ll see their birthday, what they like, a gift list, their name… is it a crop? You’ll know what it is, purchase and selling prices, and how many days it needs to fully grow. Is it any other item? Their value, whether it’s possible to be crafted, the materials you need if that’s the case, etc. The usefulness is infinite!

Download this mod here.

And in this final mod category, we have expansions! For you, who’s tired of always exploring the same places, who loves the game but wants something new, something more to make your eyes sparkle once again. We’ve brought you four excellent options, but it’s worth remembering that there are hundreds more options available over at NexusMods! There can be many more amazing places just waiting for you to discover, install and explore them.

Ridgeside Village

This mod adds the Ridgeside Village, which adds on top of the new location, 50 new NPCs, new items, stores, festivals, music, quests and a lot more!

Download this mod here.

The Forgotten Woods - A Secret Woods Expansion

An expansion for the Secret Woods area from the base game, considerably expanding it and giving you new resources to gather, new secrets and hidden treasure, and the possibility for you to set up a tree tap farm in there as well!

Download this mod here.

Stardew Valley Expanded

This one is a fanmade expansion for the base game, a lot larger than the official update, in size! It’s worth checking out if you’re looking for more extra content, and this mod’s quality speaks volumes for the creator’s passion for the game.

The mod adds 28 new NPCs, 58 locations, 278 character events, 43 new fishes, a reimagined version of some areas, three new farm maps, a world map that reflects every update and change, and on top of all of that, new music, quests, objects, seeds, festivals and lots more! It’s basically an entire new world within Stardew Valley, and one that’s worth getting to know.

Download this mod here.

Baldur’s Village

Yes, you’ve read that right! In early march, the Baldur’s Village mod was released, being a result of the creator’s love for both Stardew Valley and the highly acclaimed Baldur’s Gate 3. It brings 6 new areas, 20 new NPCs, including your favourite characters from Larian Studios’ game, new stores, items, and one new (and, for now, the only one among the new characters) romance option- And the choice couldn’t be any more appropriate. Astarion, our favourite sassy vampire, can now be romanced by your farmer.

The mod’s still in its 1.0 version and promises updates, improvements and expansions in the future.

Download this mod here.

The Stardew Valley modding community is one of the most impressive ones in the genre, and it’s full of gamers who truly love the game and are creating the most diverse, fun, challenging and interesting mods, all so that players like you can have a more fun or more complete experience! Every creator mentioned in this article and so many more who publish their works in NexusMods deserve all of our support and appreciation!

What about you, do you play with any mods or have you never tried to install them? Did any of the ones mentioned here caught your interest, do you have any other good recommendations or maybe have you even created a mod yourself? Leave it in the comments for us to check out!

Thanks for reading and until next time!