Stardew Valley/First Summer

Your first Summer
Once again, you want to plant a few of everything, so invest everything you have on seeds from Pierre’s. You want a few of everything, but lots of Melons (which sell for a lot) and lots of Blueberries (which allow recurring harvests, so while you can plant Melons later in the month, Blueberries are best planted early.) Corn is also a recurring harvest - and one that will keep producing into Fall - so they’re well worth planting, now or when you’ve got some of the Summer harvest in.

Three days into Summer, an earthquake will open up a new area. This is the train station and Spa area to the north of Robin’s house. As in Spring, you’re probably working til you’re nearly exhausted. The Spa is refreshing! Once you’ve run low on energy, you can go and soak in the pool for 20-30 minutes - sit *still* - and your energy bar will refill. The shortest way to the Spa is via the Backwoods - in other words, the northern exit to your farm. After you’ve had a soak, you probably have the energy to chop wood or go fishing, and sometimes you’ll have the time to go mining. It may be worth doing this every day!

Keep mining, any time it rains (barring a fishing day or two), or any day you finish your chores early. Iron is very useful in your first summer, it is needed for crafting several highly desirable things, including kegs; you’d also like to upgrade your watering can, then your axe and your pickaxe. For that you have to get past level 40.

If you can get a steel axe before the end of summer, you can cut your way into the Secret Woods and find some Fiddlehead Fern; otherwise you will have to wait until next summer for Fiddlehead. (You can’t complete the Bulletin Board bundles before Summer of year 2 anyway, because Red Cabbage seeds aren’t available until then, so don’t get too excited if you miss this one in your first year.)

Steel axes also let you get Hardwood, which is initially useful for crafting the Cheese Press. If you can afford a Barn and some Cows before the end of summer, cheese sells for nearly twice as much as milk. If you haven’t got a Coop, you probably want that before the barn.

Use the hopper in your Coop or Barn to draw hay from the Silo (the day after rain, so that the hay rack isn’t full) - you’ll want 10 for the Community Centre, but stow the rest in a chest and then you can cut more without paying for a second silo.

Kegs take about 7 days to triple the value of most produce; wines and juices are very profitable. To get kegs, you need copper, iron, wood, and oak resin - it’s a good time to Tap another oak tree or two. You might even plant some oak trees in a nice line - when the nearest has syrup, you’ll know to collect from all of them.

A keg turns Hops into Pale Ale very quickly, taking about 1.5 days to go from a 25gp crop to a 300gp artisan good, and this is an unusually good rate of return on both money and time. Wheat into Beer is just as fast but the output is not quite as profitable.

Try to go fishing in a few different times and places - if you’re serious about the Fishtank bundles, make a list of the fish you need, and consult a reference to find out which ones you can catch in Summer and what the conditions need to be.

The last few days of summer (specifically, 24-26) is actually quite a good time to plant some wheat. It survives into Fall (as does Corn, but that’s most profitable if planted earlier in Summer) and ripens in only 4 days. So any soil under Wheat is still hoed, and even still fertilized (normally the fertilizer disappears at season change), and you should still be able to get two Pumpkin crops through before Winter. (If you plant wheat on day 27 or 28 this won’t quite work. There’ll still be time for other crops.)

It’s good if you can put together one or two lightning rods by late summer - these will yield batteries the day after a thunderstorm, and a few batteries may let you craft iridium sprinklers for the Greenhouse in winter. This is not the only way to water the greenhouse, of course, just the easiest.