Stardew Valley/First Spring

You start the game with 500 gold and 15 parsnips, whichever map you chose (and the standard map is recommended for your first game.) On your first day you need to get those planted and watered - so clear the rocks, weeds, and small logs from a patch of ground with your pickaxe, scythe and axe respectively, then till the soil with your hoe, plant the seeds, and water them with your watering can. For your first game the Standard map is a good choice; if you’re playing on another map you may need to think about where your water and your open land are, before choosing where to plant your seeds.

You can then walk into town (exiting your farm to the right) and find the general store (Pierre’s) and spend your money on more seeds. Getting one or preferably two of everything now will position you well for later quests. Apart from that, you may as well buy and grow more parsnips - they are fairly profitable, and the fact that they ripen in only 4 days means that you get money to reinvest quickly.

You can then go back home and organise the planting of those seeds.

You’ll need a chest very early on, so if you have energy left, it’s worth using your axe to cut down whatever trees you can manage. If your energy bar gets right down to scarlet - and you get the message “You are becoming exhausted,” stop right there.

Swinging your scythe takes no energy, so cut down any weeds you can easily find; if you get mixed seeds, plant them.

Once you have 50 wood, which might take until day 3 or 4, make a chest - you need to store the wood and stone and fibre you’re accruing. (Do not sell these, they do not fetch any money worth counting, and they’re useful for crafting.)

You’ll get an invitation to go fishing on day 2, and that’s a good thing to do once you’ve watered your plants. Willy will give you an old fishing rod. Try out the fishing mini game. If you are good at catching fish, then the fishing mini game will be worth the energy - eat some fish (and any algae and seaweed you hook) and sell others, for a nice early income. But if you find it very difficult, go foraging instead - there are valuable shells on the beach, and the forest south of your farm has a wide spread of area where flowers and berries may be found. Foraging does not take energy.

When your first lot of crops is ready to pick, take them straight to Pierre’s and sell them to Pierre - then buy more seeds. This should mean you get the money back into the ground on the same day. Later you’ll sell things simply by tossing them into the shipping chest, which means you get the money the following morning.

Most of your days in spring will revolve around watering your crops, and then exploring. (Unless you’re good at fishing.) Wander around town, introducing yourself to everyone (first quest!) and wander around the forests and the beach, picking up foraged items when you find them - in the earliest days, an extra 200gp becomes that many more seeds in the ground, and it gets your financial snowball going just that bit faster.

As you approach the point where you’re using all or almost all your energy watering your plants, it’s time to stop planting cheap seeds. You’ll earn a lot of good money this way, but planting more seeds than you can water will just create problems. See if you can plant more expensive seeds instead; in general the more expensive seeds yield better profit. Cauliflowers are great but you can’t plant them after the 15th unless you have SpeedGro fertiliser.

Past mid spring, keep one or two of everything - they’re useful for fulfilling quests. It’s not usually difficult to complete the first two Community Centre bundles - one of each item of Spring Forage, which yields seeds, and one of each item of Spring Crops - but you’ll want 5 gold parsnips for the Quality Produce bundle, and that means setting them aside.

Try to have a little coin on hand when the Egg Hunt rolls around (Spring 13) - Pierre will sell Strawberry seeds at 100gp each. (Ignore the Rarecrow. You can get the Rarecrow next year when you have lots of cash.)  Either plant these immediately, or save them until you have a Greenhouse (or the beginning of your second spring) - but probably plant them immediately, sell the quality fruit and keep the basic. Strawberries go well in the Greenhouse and using a seedmaker you can get a lot of them ready to go at the beginning of your second or third Spring.

Salmonberries will be available from Spring 15-18. (The TV show Living on the Land will alert you to this on the 15th.) These are a foraged item - “use” a bush that is decorated in berries to collect them. They’re worth only 5 gp each - even for a new player that’s negligible. But they provide energy, and you can collect a lot of them - some simply as you walk around to places like town and the community centre, but there are many many suitable bushes in Cindersap Forest, south of your farm. You might collect as many as 100 Salmonberries, and this provides good fuel for trips to the mines.

If you cross the river that runs through Cindersap Forest you should find the entrance to the Sewers and some trees near large patches of dirt. These patches of dirt often contain Spring Onions (during Spring, of course) and the Spring Onions regrow - you can pick them right from day 1, and revisit them later. Like Salmonberries, they sell for very little but they are worth eating when you’re running out of energy.

If you can afford the energy to collect 300 wood, you’ll be able to repair the bridge at the beach. The tidal pools on the other side usually yield about 300gp worth of foraged items per visit - varying between 100gp on a poor day and 1000 gp on an exceptional one. This is usually well worthwhile. Forageables do not disappear every night - they accrue over a few days, then they reset. This means that you are best advised to forage once or twice a week. (Berries are an exception; berry bushes replenish daily.)

After Spring 15th you need to stop and think before planting, or preferably before buying seeds. Have you got enough time for these seeds to grow? If the packet says (in mouseover text) 13 days, that really means 13 nights, so Cauliflower should be planted by the 15th (16th with Speedgro, which you might get from a Community Centre bundle) to be harvested on the 28th. You can plant parsnips as late as the 24th.

Rainy days are particularly good to go mining as you have not exhausted yourself watering plants. You will be using your pickaxe to break rocks. Take food with you as even a full day’s energy doesn’t last long when you’re breaking rocks in the mines; it also restores your health after fighting with the monsters. At this stage in the game the monsters are unlikely to threaten your health; energy is usually the problem. However, if the screen goes “glowy” then you’re going to come under attack by several air creatures, which is a good time to either eat to refill your health bar, or run for the ladder. Or just get ready with your sword. Every 5th level in the mine, there is an elevator door, but the elevator will only take you to floors you have already visited. So your goal is usually to get down 5 floors per visit to the mines. This means that if you uncover a stairway down, you may take a short look around for any particularly attractive rocks, but otherwise you’re best advised to go down.

At the end of Spring, it is desirable to have enough money to buy a nice fat heap of Summer seeds, to upgrade your backpack for the first time (2000 gp) and preferably to also buy and plant an Apple and a Pomegranate tree which will fruit in Fall. They take 28 days to mature, and you want them for the Community Centre bundles; the fruit is also good for wines, jellies, or just selling outright. If you can only afford one, make it the Apple, and consider getting the Pomegranate in mid Summer.

You could chop down all your plants on the 28th, but it’s far less work to take a scythe to the dead remains on the first day of Summer; you don’t have to re-hoe any soil after that.

Once you have some copper to spare, craft three Tappers and put them on the three different types of trees. Choose trees you will often pass near, so that you notice when the sap is ready. (Later tappers will mainly go on Oak trees because the resin is needed for Kegs.) The different types of sap are useful for Community Centre bundles and for crafting; and most villagers like Maple Syrup. It is rare to sell the produce from Tappers!

A silo and a Coop are nice additions to your farm if you are doing well enough to afford them (and the chickens) by the end of Spring, but otherwise you can probably organise them after you’ve got some Summer harvest in. Mayonnaise sells for a lot more than eggs do, so craft one or more Mayonnaise machines once your hens start laying. Carry your scythe when walking across the farm, and swing it just once every few steps through grass, to cut some but not all of the grass and fill your Silo with hay.

Getting the Copper upgrade on your watering can will noticeably increase your capacity to water your crops. The problem with upgrading tools is that Clint holds onto the tools for two nights, and if you don’t water your crops for a day, they grow only slowly; if you miss two days they die. So the way to manage it is to check the TV’s weather forecast every morning until the forecast includes rain. Water the crops, and deliver your can to Clint; the rain will water your crops for you on the middle day, and on the next day you can collect the upgraded watering can at 9am, take it home, and water your crops - and never a day has been missed! Alternatively, there’s no benefit to watering your crops on the 28th, unless you have a Coffee Bean somehow. So if you can spare the Copper and the cash, you can take your watering can to Clint’s on the 27th.

If you have done particularly well earning money in Spring, you may reach the point of having earned 25,000gp before the end of Spring. When this happens, Demetrius will drop by and ask to use your cave for Science; Fruit Bats or Mushrooms. Fruit Bats deliver an erratic range of fruits and berries - they can bring you anything from Salmonberries (5gp) to Pomegranates (140g), often one, sometimes four; the frequency is also uncertain. Mushrooms deliver different sorts of mushrooms (mostly Commons), every second day - from six planter boxes. Mushrooms are usually recommended; they’re more reliable, probably worth more, and it’s harder to come across them by other means.