You start the game on your farm that is west (left) of the bus stop that brought you here. A town is east (right) of the bus stop. Your farm consists of everything you can go to without a screen change. You have 500 gold, 15 parsnips, and whichever farm map you chose (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.)
What am I doing?
The story consists of
Befriending the villagers (including eventual marriage and children), which you mainly do by
Giving them just the right gifts especially on birthdays (!)
Listening when they want to talk
Helping to rebuild the Community Center and the Museum, which you do by contributing a variety of items.
It doesn't matter at all to the story how many years those take. But some things can only be done certain days or seasons each year. This walkthrough follows the story, alerts you to those things, and helps you know what items to save or spend.
See tips for the month at the end of this article.
This Spring walk-through will help you cover all these good goals for your first Spring:
Socializing: Remember every birthday this month with an appropriate gift.
Community Center: Get rewarded for the Spring Crops and Spring Forage bundles. Save 5 gold star Parsnips and Cauliflower for the Gold Star Crops bundle.
Museum: Claim a Cauliflower Seeds reward before Spring 16 for donating at least 5 items. Plant it by Spring 16.
Foraging: Hoe all wigglers, get enough food for mining, save 4 gold star Daffodils for birthdays and one basic Leek, Dandelion, Wild Horseradish, and Daffodil for the Community Center. Tap some trees, mostly oak.
Fishing: Try fishing for at least half a day, and if you are good at it, fish for energy and profit. Otherwise work on leveling up when you have spare time.
Farming: Plant Parsnips on Spring 1 and 2, Potatoes on Spring 5 and 6, Strawberries on Spring 13 and 14, and a few more Parsnips, some free Cauliflower and mixed seeds at least one Green Bean after Spring 13. Make some sprinklers. This calendar balances energy/time and growth by saving all your money to put the most expensive crops possible in the ground. It also has a day of padding in case you miss any watering; the earlier days are always safest.
Legendary crop alert: The legendary crop in Stardew Valley is Ancient Fruit, and you can't buy seeds for it. You must snowball from a single Ancient Seed artifact (or any additional ones) you happen to find into Ancient Seeds (with an "s"), then to Ancient Fruit, more seeds, and more fruit and beyond. So when you happen to find any Ancient Seed artifact, feel very lucky and never sell it or its raw produce.
First Day
Decision
Your decision today is how many Parsnips to plant (from 15 to 40). You want to plant 80 Potatoes if possible on Spring 6, and you can fund them with Parsnips and Foraging or with Fishing this week. If you want to fish for money, plant 15 Parsnips and use your first 500gp for a fiberglass rod and bait if you are a ninja gamer or Trout Soup if you'd like a bit of help on your first day (Spring 2).
To do
Pick up any wild plants (Spring forage) you see
Listen to anything anybody has to say. Good friends listen, and you never know what you may learn.
Plant and water 15-40 Parsnips (not more). (They are the fastest way to grow your farm and profits your first 5 days.)
Chop trees toward 50 wood for a chest. (Ship all fiber for gold and to make backpack room until you get a chest. Ship sap second only if necessary.)
Your weaknesses today
Energy. You are appallingly flabby at the moment.
Don't plant more than 40 Parsnips.
Avoid using your pickaxe at all today. To exit your farm south using no pickaxe and little axe energy, head directly south from your mailbox/shipping bin/pond area before turning west.
Avoid tilling or watering anything unnecessarily.
Chop down tree tops only (leave stumps) only toward the end of the day when you have some food in hand and you've already cleared minimally any small log obstacles. You'll be lucky to chop even one tree top.
Backpack space. You have no storage chest!
Ship all Clay, Fiber, and Daffodils throughout the day today and at the end of the day for space and money.
You do need 20 fiber for a scarecrow in a few days, but scarecrows are the only use for your fiber for a long time.
You won't ever need much clay unless you choose to try Retaining Soil, which has mixed reviews.
You do need 5 Daffodils for gifts (see Spring 10 below) and the Community Center, but you can start collecting them next week after you get your Potatoes planted.
Plant or trash any Mixed Seeds you find today. They are better to save for later in the month, but you don't have space.
Eat Leeks and Dandelions if necessary and helpful. But save as much energy as you can uneaten for tomorrow. Eat Wild Horseradish too for now; later it will be better to sell than eat.
Drop on ground. If you try to craft a chest or retrieve something when your backpack is full, you don't always have to throw something away to make room for it. Instead drop your lowest value stack of items onto the ground off to the side of your menu. It will always drop directly in front of you, so this doesn't help when you are fishing.
Your strengths today
Time. Time is always short in Stardew Valley. But you have very little going on and as much free time as ever today. Greet people you see, forage, and use your scythe as frequently as possible on weeds (on and south of your farm) for fiber to sell and possibly mixed seeds to plant.
Fresh start. Your future is wide open. If you feel lost and would like more time just to explore and window shop Stardew Valley before committing to Grandpa's farm, you can use Exit to Title under the inventory/menu and Load the day again without penalty other than losing anything you did since you awoke. Stardew Valley saves your progress when you go to sleep every night. You can retry the same day as many times as you want until you go to sleep and it's a new day.
Walk-through
Plant your free seeds
Get out of bed, pick up your free seeds, and look at the TV programs for the weather tomorrow and the luck today. Rain tomorrow means no watering, which could be nice to know later so you can drop off your watering can for an upgrade. Good luck is useful mostly for affected activities you can control that you want to repeat all day, like finding ladders, coal, and geodes under rocks when mining (doesn't affect spawning ladders on load or when monsters die), getting treasure chests while fishing, and chopping for maximum wood. Bad luck days are great for unaffected activities like trips around the valley to forage, shop, break geodes, socialize, and donate to the Museum and Community Center. Bad luck days are also okay for affected activities you can't control or repeat like crops and trash can rummaging.
Look around your farm and Stardew Valley. If you are lost, Exit and Load the day again (your day is not saved until you go to sleep) until you can follow the map in your backpack and find your way around the valley and your farm. Once you are not lost and know what Spring Onions (they look a little different in the ground), Leeks, Dandelions, Wild Horseradish, Daffodils, Artifact Spots (aka worms or wigglers), and Weeds look like, continue.
Zoom all the way out (75%) so you can see better. Zoom is under the menu/inventory box, Options tab. After every zoom change, your screen will reset, and you will need to scroll down again to the Zoom option. Your zoom level is saved when you go to sleep.
Turn on "Always Show Tool Hit Location" to help you save energy by avoiding errant tool use.
Now it's time to plant. Pause the clock without obscuring your farm by checking your mailbox or trying to chop a big stump (only once, and only if necessary; it uses energy) While the clock is paused, choose a place to plant your Parsnips. Whenever the clock is not paused, clear weeds generally in your preferred area with your energy-free scythe. It needs to be near a water source, and you don't want to clear even one rock today (later you do, but today you would like to get close to the 50 wood you need for a storage chest if you can muster the energy). So find a mostly clear or grassy/weedy patch of ground (away from big stumps, nearly rock-free, maybe not obscured by trees, and not too big; you still have city slicker muscles and cheap tools) near a pond.
3x3 squares
For the first year, a layout of 3x3 squares is perfect.
Leave the middles empty, at least temporarily.
Helps you visualize your layout and count things easily while you till, plant, harvest, and make your shopping list.
Trains yourself not to "commit" your sprinkler spaces to anything slow-growing
Allows for your first sprinklers in case you want to stop watering. You can fill in the middles anytime if you decide you don't want sprinklers or you want to see giant crops.
Allow for a scarecrow. Plan for a 3x3 square empty in the middle of a field shaped like a box with flaps for 160 crops. Scarecrow in middle of 20 squares Or leave a space left (west) or right (east) of a future rectangular field. Either way, one scarecrow can guard 5 squares in the first column near it and 3 squares in the second (64 crops on one side) without obscuring any crops. Two scarecrows centered on the edges of a field can cover 3 x 5 squares (9 x 15 tiles) wide or tall. (Scarecrows are very soon cheap enough you don't need to worry too much about optimizing them, so relax and have fun.) Tall 3 x 5 grid of square
Using your scythe and hoe only, prepare and water a tile here for each of your 15 seeds. If you get mixed seeds using your scythe on Weeds now or anytime today, plant them too until every seed is planted and watered. Note how much energy that all cost you.
Get wild plants and more seeds
Ship any clay you found.
Go foraging around the valley with a shopping stop
Forage around the valley using your Scythe more to chop weeds and picking up all the plants you can find. If you get any plants with stars, it means you leveled up Foraging. Eat your Leeks and Dandelions if you need backpack space. Practice noting Artifact Spots, Garbage Cans (there are 7), and the Beach, but leave them alone for now. Listen to anybody you see who has anything to say (before you listen to them, make sure your scythe is equipped instead of a wild plant or they will take it as a gift). If you want a route suggestion, try clockwise going by (as shown on your map) Tent, the nearby lake, Carpenter's Shop, Community Center, playground and fountain, Harvey's Clinic, Pierre's General Store (stop to shop), JojaMart, Blacksmith, Museum, Leah's Cottage, across the bridge to a Spring Onions patch), then maybe west and clockwise around the nearby lake before returning home, then checking the Bus Stop outside your east exit. When you pass Pierre's General Store (closes at 5pm) in the middle of town, go to the greenish counter, and interact with the register to the left of it.
At the counter you have a big decision to make about fishing, which starts tomorrow and can be great income this week, but takes some gaming skill. If you plan to fish for income this week, save your money for a fiberglass rod and bait or Trout Soup. Otherwise, buy 25 Parsnips.
Sell Pierre all your Daffodils and Wild Horseradish if you want (you can also ship them at your farm). Don't risk selling him your Spring Onions, Leeks, or Dandelions. Those are best as food. Energy is one of your main weaknesses today, and you may need them more than money. Either way, you will either sell them or eat them today. Remember in a few weeks it won't matter much how many seeds you planted today. Even tomorrow, you may find that more today wasn't better. 40 seeds is enough to care for and give you the experience you need at this point.
Next, buy any Parsnips you decided on up to 25. Today's planting is as much about experience as money. So don't plant more than 40 Parsnips. After you select your quantity of seeds, you must place it a slot in your backpack before you can exit or continue. Click carefully because Pierre does not offer refunds even if you have not put your purchase in your backpack.
Next be a good neighbor and go behind the counter and listen to Pierre.
Continue your foraging round back to your farm listening to people and picking up any wild plants on the way home you missed before. Don't miss a Spring Onion patch in the southwest part of the valley.
Plant any seeds you bought.
Plant more seeds
Using only your scythe and hoe again (since you have little backpack space or energy), clear, till, and water more tiles for every seed you have until every seed is planted and watered. If your energy bar gets right down to scarlet - and you get the message "You are becoming exhausted," stop right there and eat the smallest stack of forage in your backpack. Here's a guide to using your tools today.
Obstacle
Tool
Cost
Uses
grass (you can walk through it)
scythe
time only
none yet
weeds (you can't walk through it)
scythe
time only
money today, fiber for scarecrow soon
small logs, trees
axe
energy
wood for chests (50) and bridge repair (300) and sap for fertilizer (2) this week
small rocks (until you get a chest, aim for zero; after two chests, aim for 100 then your entire farm to level up mining)
pickaxe
energy
coal for scarecrow soon and stone for saving
Your seeds should be ready for harvest on Spring 5th if you keep them watered every day. Note how much energy that all cost you.
Use extra time
Get your sleep. Be convenient to your house by 11:30 and go to bed as soon as you get sleepy (Zzzz) at midnight after shipping all Clay, Fiber, Wild Horseradish, and Daffodils before you sleep. If you don't you won't get a full rest (unless you leveled up any skill today; check your skills tab), and you will get billed 10% for being carried to your bed.
Work on a chest. It would be very nice to have a chest tomorrow morning before you go fishing. You need 50 wood to make one, so if you have energy left, it’s worth using your axe to chop down a tree top or two (stumps don't level up your Foraging skill much) or clear the bare minimum of small logs (they don't level up your Foraging at all) if you can manage it, but don't get exhausted! Exhaustion doesn't go away, and it lasts through tomorrow. If your energy bar gets right down to scarlet - and you get the message "You are becoming exhausted," stop right there and eat or switch to your scythe only for the rest of the day.
Clear your farm. If you still have time left, swinging your scythe takes no energy, and weeds stand in the way of your your movement, crops, trees, and off-farm forage, so cut down as many weeds as you can easily find until you are out of time. If you get any more mixed seeds, plant them tomorrow when you have more energy to hoe and water them. Before you run out of time, ship all Fiber for overnight gold and go to bed.
First two weeks
Spring 2
Farming
Rare Offer Alert: There is an Egg Festival on Spring 13 where you can buy seeds for Strawberry to harvest and sell twice before Summer comes. This is very valuable because it will put lots of money in the ground without taking all your time and energy to water that money. You can do this if you transition to Potatoes (they cost 2.5 times as much as Parsnips and take 1.5 times as long--6 days) by Spring 6. Pierre's store is closed on Festival days, so you can't sell your harvest on Spring 13. To step up from Parsnip (Spring 1 and 2) to Potato (Spring 5 and 6) to Strawberry (Spring 13 and 14), you need to harvest and sell everything on or before the 12th to get enough money to buy lots of Strawberry at the Egg Festival.
Planting calendar: Today is 4 days before Spring 6, so it's the last day to plant more Parsnips that will be harvested in time to help you buy Strawberries. If you aren't confident in your gaming skills, save 500gp now to buy Trout Soup for 250gp each to boost your fishing today and just plant all the Mixed Seeds you can today. Otherwise plant any more Parsnips you can buy and maybe any mixed seeds you found (up to about 80 total crops max) to sell in time for the Egg Festival Potato transition deadline on Spring 6 (see Spring 5). You won't have time for two more harvests of Parsnips before the Egg Festival, so you may as well save up from here out for Potatoes on Spring 5 and 6. Switching to potatoes on Spring 6 helps you keep your field small to save time and energy to work on other important things.
Today: Water, make a chest, plant and water more, empty your backpack except for food and hoe, and go fishing.
After today, don't plant anything again until Potatoes on Spring 6.
Foraging
Chest. You may wake up with close to 50 wood. Focus on tree tops leaving stumps again (for maximum Foraging experience) until you get 50. Then make a chest and put it near your field, your house, and your path to town. Before you leave your farm, unload everything except your hoe and food into the chest.
Artifact Spots. Today, if you see Artifact spots, till them with your hoe.
Wild Plants: Don't bother looking for anything but Spring Onions today. Spring Onions respawn independently every day, so you can swing by there any day you need the energy, but the other wild plants accumulate 0-4 per screen area through Saturday night up to 6 per area. So wait until Saturday to look for them or sooner (normally Tuesday/Wednesday) if you need the energy badly.
Fishing
Today you’ll get an invitation to go fishing. Some people are able to make more money at the beginning with fishing than with early crops, which really helps you upgrade and build things, so it's a good thing to try today once you’ve watered your Parsnips and possibly visited Pierre for more seeds. Willy will give you an old fishing rod.
Try out the fishing mini game from the pier for 3 to 5 casts. Ignore your success on the first cast; it's fake and not representative. Then evaluate your prospects and start formulating a decision: Will fishing this week be frustrating, distracting, or profitable? It doesn't delay the story to delay fishing for a month. But it may delay the story to neglect your farm by fishing this week. Feel free to spend your money on Parsnip Seeds (General Store) and/or Salad (220gp at the Saloon) and return straight home to level up your farming, mining, and foraging by planting, watering, and chopping tree tops and small rocks. If your prospects don't look good, but you still want to at least level up Fishing today, do the following:
Buy one or two Trout Soup from Willy if you have gold. It's good general food (a little worse than Salad from the Saloon), so it's not a waste of your money to buy two.
Go straight north and east to the Carpenter's Shop and the Mountain Lake, either at the east end of the long fence or the south tip of the east island. Many of the fish here can be caught passively (no clicks).
Eat the fish and algae you catch for energy and note whether you are already making fishing energy-positive.
If you start to have success and feel good about your spot(s), but your fishing is energy-negative or you would just like a bit of help for 4 1/2 real-world minutes (maybe to see if you will be able to endure this once you level up), eat a Trout Soup and fish non-stop as you note the Buff icon near your clock.
If your casts suddenly get longer even after your Trout Soup Buff is gone, congratulations. Check your skills; you just leveled up in Fishing. Now you can reach silver star fish that are a little further from walkable areas. You may not be fishing for income this month, but at least you know you can eventually succeed.
If after all that, you still bombed out at fishing, just forget about it for now.
If you want to fish for income, keep fishing from the pier until 4pm and decide if you want to sell any to Willy. You can probably use the energy more than the money at the moment. And you can always sell them later to buy Potatoes on Spring 6.
Keep an empty space in your backpack at all times. Eat your smallest stacks of fish, forage, algae, and seaweed to make space or just for energy. All this will get you to fishing level 1 or very close today. From there on out everything just gets better.
If you are an expert fisher, keep fishing until 10pm. Then decide whether fishing will be worth income until you become a rich farmer.
If you strike out early at fishing (due to lack of funds and skill), leave it for later (or never) and prepare for mining by chopping more tree tops for another chest (50) and lots of rock-breaking on your farm.
If you are not going to fish, it may also be worth your effort to repair the Beach bridge to the tidal pools (300 wood) for income toward Potatoes and Strawberries. Keep getting wood by chopping tree tops until you reach Foraging level 3 (Tappers).
At the end of the day, check your skills tab. Any night you level up in any skill, your energy is restored to 100% even if you go to bed late. The game really doesn't like you to fall asleep outside your house; you may even rarely lose tools. But you can be inside by 1:30am on those days without any trouble.
Spring 3
Today is rainy (Future rainy days are random, but not today). Work on clearing your field and farm including rocks and tree tops, just don't waste your energy tilling it with your hoe ahead of time; early tilling can revert.
Farming and Forage
Prepare for Spring 6 Potato planting. Get your field area planned and cleared (not tilled) to a size of about 80 tiles. Save all possible sap for fertilizer; 20 fiber, 1 coal, and 50 wood for a scarecrow; and your foraging and fishing money for Potato seeds. As soon as you get a chest, start using your pickaxe to clear your field and your entire farm of all small rocks. If you can finish this today and tomorrow, you will unlock Staircases for rapid descent in The Mines. When you run out of energy, continue to focus on weeds by the dozens all around your farm since you are still quite flabby, the sale value of the fiber is still significant to you this week, and weeds stand in the way of tree regrowth on your farm and forage spawning off your farm.
Cut the tops of trees that are crowded enough to obscure each other. The stumps don't help you level up as much, and they continue to spawn seeds (they do not regrow). Chop them later for wood. As you need more wood, thin your farm more, especially on the west end, but do not clear cut beyond your field area, and leave one of each type close enough to see while you tend your crops. Avoid felling Oak trees (the ones with a tight canopy and reflective mop top vs visible branches) until you start getting seeds. Collect seeds, especially Acorns (Oak), for planting around the farm and the valley for Tapping.
Resist the temptation to snowball your field unmanageably large; you will be rolling in money soon enough, and a week or two either way won't ultimately matter much. What will matter is missing out on the things that this walkthrough alerts you about. Instead of overplanting willy nilly, keep your field size well below 80 tiles (ten squares) and save your money for Potatoes on Spring 5 and 6.
You need to learn to carry your hoe at all times and notice wiggling "worms" Artifact Spots sticking out of any dirt you pass by. Digging up these spots is an important way to get some of the Artifacts to donate to the museum. And keep all Geodes. You want to donate 5 items to the Museum on or before Spring 16 to get free Cauliflower Seeds.
The rewards for reaching 5 and 10 donations are Wild Seeds for Spring and Summer, respectively.
See also: First Spring Mining tips at the bottom of this article.
While you can't mine yet, you can prepare now. What you really want on your farm are sprinklers so your fields can grow beyond your ability to water and so you can just relax between planting and harvest. And the way to get sprinklers is to descend into the mines as quickly as possible to floor 80 (or 90 for a special sword) to unlock the required ore-bearing floors and the armor and weapons that make farming ore and coal easy. Clearing 100 rocks (Mining level 1) will unlock a recipe for cherry bombs for The Mines, and 380 (Mining level 2) will unlock a Staircase recipe for The Mines. Clearing your entire farm of small rocks will get you to level 2 and build up coal, copper, and stone for your rapid descent. Beyond enough wood for two chests (one near home and one at the mines), clear every small rock from your farm.
Fishing
There are no fish unique to Spring for the Community Center, so you have a couple of months to save one Sunfish and as much time as you want to save the other CC fish you find, so feel free to delay fishing until your fields are sprinkled or sell and eat anything you catch right now. After a couple of months, the only significant value of fishing will be fun and CC completion
Spring 4
Today is a good day to forage thoroughly again for wild plants and start saving some of them. Here's how to use the wild plants you find:
Spring Onion: food as needed
Leek and Dandelion: food as needed and Community Center Crafts Room "Spring Foraging Bundle"
Wild Horseradish: money or food as needed and Community Center Crafts Room "Spring Foraging Bundle"
Daffodil: money as needed, birthdays, and Community Center Crafts Room "Spring Foraging Bundle"
There is a very helpful Community Center checklist tool you may want to start using at stardewcommunitychecklist.com.
Keep using your hoe on Artifact Spots around your farm and the valley. And keep all Geodes as you clear every small rock from your farm. You want to donate 5 items to the Museum on or before Spring 16 to get free Cauliflower Seeds.
If you've cleared your farm of rocks, now would be a good time to plan and start planting a double-spaced row of Oak seeds (Acorns) along the newly cleared south border. You collect seeds by chopping tree tops or fallen seeds.
Spring 5
Skill upgrade alert: Today is your first harvest. Hopefully that will unlock recipes tomorrow for a Scarecrow (from 20 fiber, 50 wood, and 1 coal) and some Fertilizer. Make sure your field is ready for them and Potato seeds, but wait until tomorrow (last day for planting potatoes to beat the Egg Festival) to plant them with fertilizer and crow protection.
Birthdays alert: Save one of your new Parsnips for Mayor Lewis's birthday on Spring 7. And young Vincent would like a Daffodil for his on Spring 10. Mark the dates! Note that gold star quality always impresses people most on birthdays.
You’ll get a notice that the path to a mine is open today, and that’s good since the ore you find there is necessary to upgrade your tools and is all you need to build sprinklers if you are tired of watering. Meanwhile, if you keep your field small by stepping from Parsnips to Potatoes to Strawberries, you will have time to fish, mine, and follow the Stardew Valley story. When you reach Mining level 2 (by clearing your farm of all small rocks) and have lots of food (forage, fish, or Salad from the Saloon), read Stardew Valley/Mining especially about ladders, then grab your pickaxe, hoe, fishing pole (just in case), stone, copper, coal except one for a scarecrow, food, and a new chest and go early in the day out your north exit to The Mines in the northeast corner of the valley. Once inside The Mines, put your chest by the elevator and leave everything but sword, pickaxe, coal, copper, stone, and food. Now start your first day of mining in rapid descent mode toward floor 80 or 90! Maybe you will make 5 or even 10 floors today if you start early enough. For the rest of the month, use any long days starting mid morning and rapid descent strategies to unlock 5 or 10 floors in a day, reaching floor 80 in time to have or envision sprinklers when you shop for Summer crops.
See also: First Spring Mining tips at the bottom of this article.
Today your first parsnips will be ready to harvest. Equip your scythe for safety and harvest them. You have been losing crops to crows, but you need to get Potatoes harvested by Spring 12, a day before the Egg Festival. They take 6 days, and you have 7 days. So decide whether to plant them today for a day of schedule padding or tomorrow for full scarecrow protection and maybe some fertilizer.
If you decide to plant tomorrow, toss all Parsnips but a gold star one for Lewis in the shipping bin and go to The Mines or fishing. You will get the Parsnip money tomorrow morning. Or take your Parsnips tomorrow to Pierre’s and sell all but Lewis's gold one to Pierre. However you get the money (fish, forage, Parsnips), buy all the Potatoes you can afford (up to 160) to plant tomorrow.
If you get out of The Mines before midnight, you may want to catch the Friday night action at the Saloon and listen to the villagers. Later on, you can keep chests full of gifts in a safe location near the Saloon and hand out gifts on Fridays after 5pm and evenings.
Spring 6
Farming and Museum
Harvest
Craft a scarecrow and all the fertilizer you can. Place them.
Go to town at 8:30 with nothing in your backpack except:
All your Parsnips except a gold star one for Lewis' birthday tomorrow
Anything you have for Clint (geodes) and Gunther
Drop off whatever you have for Gunther to get reward money and make room in your backpack. Check your Journal and collect any gold you have coming to you for completing Story Quests so far.
Get your geodes smashed by Clint at the Blacksmith. Then return to the Museum if you have new donations. Count your donations. If there are already 5 or as soon as there are, collect a reward of free Cauliflower seeds and plant as many of them now as you want to commit to watering alongside your Potatoes (count the cost) for big experience points to unlock Preserves Jars and start processing early (200%+ value). Save the rest to grow alongside your Strawberries after your Potatoes are harvested (there is only time for one full Cauliflower harvest either way).
Buy, plant, and water all the Potato seeds you can buy to beat the Egg Festival.
Community Center
Today if it's not raining (if it is raining, go tomorrow) and you go to town between 8am and 1pm, Lewis will tell you about the Community Center. When he does, take the time immediately to go in the Community Center and interact with the floor slab in the southwest part of the building. Tomorrow the Wizard may invite you to see him about it all. When he does, take the time to do it so you can start getting prizes for donating. The prizes will make a difference to you at this early stage. Here are the things you can start saving now to get a few prizes right away.
1. There is a Pantry "Spring Crops Bundle" of donations to complete at the Community Centre. These things are only farmable this month. And if you donate them all, you will get a helpful prize now. Be aware of the time it takes to grow them. Start them after planting Strawberries.
1 Parsnip: 4 days
1 Green Bean: 10 days + regrowth
1 Cauliflower: 12 days
1 Potato: 6 days
2. There is a Crafts Room "Spring Foraging Bundle" at the Community Centre also. These things are only forageable this month. And if you donate them all, you will get a helpful prize now.
1 Leek
1 Dandelion
1 Wild Horseradish
1 Daffodil
3. There is a Community Center Pantry "Quality Crops Bundle" you can't complete now. It requires 5 gold star examples of three of the following: Parsnip, Corn, Melon, or Pumpkin. If you save 5 gold star Parsnips, you can complete it next month with Corn and Melon. The frequency of gold will increase toward the end of the month. So keep only Lewis's gold star Parsnip for now. Sell all your other Parsnips to buy Strawberry seeds, then start saving gold star ones for the CC and Pam's Birthday after you get Strawberries in the ground.
It may be worthwhile to put a chest in your house now for your Community Center, Birthday, Luau (see Spring 14), and Fair (see Spring 14) items. And soon you may want to categorize your chests further to help you reserve the right things.
Foraging
This week's wild plants are wiped out tonight, so today would be a good day for foraging (looking to save five Daffodil and one each Leek, Dandelion, and Wild Horseradish) and socializing. Four of the saved Daffodils are for the birthdays this month shown on the appropriate dates below, so gold star would be good.
Spring 7
Don't miss Lewis's birthday today. He would like a parsnip.
Visit the the Wizard if he invites you. Then donate to the Spring Foraging Bundle when you have all four. You will receive a reward of Spring Seeds. Spring Seeds are also known as the Spring version of Wild Seeds (Wild Seeds (Sp)). They are not the same as the Mixed Seeds you get from chopping weeds. Mixed Seeds grow into random farm crops with a few failures. Spring Wild Seeds grow into Leeks, Dandelions, Wild Horseradish, and Daffodils as crops on your farm. That said, it saves more energy and gives you up-front money for Strawberries if you sell the seeds immediately.
Save all your money for Strawberries at the Egg Festival. Resist the temptation to upgrade your backpack until you get your Strawberry seeds.
Spring 10
Young Vincent would like a Daffodil for his birthday today. The official Wiki can tell you where to find him.
Today would not be a bad day to make a wild plants round.
Keep saving for Strawberries.
Spring 10-12
Get ready to buy Strawberry big at the Egg Festival on Spring 13. Prepare your field with fertilizer. Sell all your harvests except 1 Potato for the Community Centre. Buy and plant seeds for any missing Community Centre Spring Crops (1 Green Bean and 1 Cauliflower if they aren't already growing from Mixed Seeds) and about 16 Parsnips on fertilizer to try repeatedly for five gold star (six including Shane's birthday on Spring 20) through the end of the month (12th, 16th, and 20th). Depending on your Farming skill level, around 1/4 of your fertilized crops will be gold star, and that will increase through the end of the month.
Make a wild plants round by Friday if you want. Save one of everything and a gold star Daffodil for Haley (Spring 14) and maybe Pierre (26) and Emily (27).
Friday night is a good time to catch many of the villagers at the Saloon after 5pm.
Spring 13
Egg Festival!
1. BEFORE you go, water your few crops that may be in the ground and prepare and water spaces for all the Strawberries you can afford at 100 gold each. Make sure you have Scarecrow coverage.
2. At the festival, buy Strawberry seeds BEFORE you start the egg hunt.
3. When you get back home at 10pm, plant the Strawberries in the prepared and watered spaces.
End of Spring
Spring 14-16
Birthday alert: Haley (Spring 14) would like a Daffodil on her birthday.
As soon as you can afford them (from fishing, foraging, and mining income), plant
8 to 16 Parsnips in fertilizer and repeat through Spring 24 until you get 5 gold star for the CC Quality Crops bundle or more because Pam loves them.
At least one green bean and potato or a couple more for Help Wanted quests
Cauliflower season: Cauliflower is the next most expensive crop available to you right now, and you can use two gold star ones to show off at the Luau and the Fair. These three days are good for planting as much Cauliflower as you can afford (see Museum reward freebie).
Festival and Friendship Alert: There is a Luau on Summer 11 where you can win friendship with every villager by putting a gold star Cauliflower in the soup. This is potential friendship boost is unique among all the festivals. So plant whatever Cauliflower you can afford these three days now and save the best Cauliflower you get for the Luau.
Museum reward and cauliflower deadline: Gather your geodes, artifacts, and minerals as soon as you finish watering on or before Spring 16 and take them to the blacksmith (closes at 4pm) and the museum to see if you can reach 5 donations to the museum and get Cauliflower seeds as a reward. It's worthless to plant them after Spring 16, and a day of padding doesn't hurt.
Spring 17-21
Birthday alert: Pam (Spring 18) would LOVE a Parsnip on her birthday. Shane (Spring 20) would like a parsnip, green bean, or potato on his birthday. Gold star is always best, of course!
Now you can upgrade your backpack any time you want or use the same 2,000 to buy gold ore for your first Quality Sprinkler assuming you are now rolling in Iron and Quartz, but not Gold.
Plant potatoes as money comes in. Do not keep more than one Strawberry (to turn into seed for a Greenhouse operation). Sell them. Now is when you need the money most.
As soon as you level up in Foraging to the Tapper recipe, tap one of each tree where you can see them while you tend your crops. Then start tapping Oak trees on the west end and south row you've planted. You can also cut all those stumps you left now.
Make a wild plants round by Saturday for birthday Daffodils etc.
Spring 22
Last day to plant potatoes. Don't plant any more crops this month unless you still don't have 5 gold star Parsnips.
Spring 23-28
Birthday alert: Pierre (Spring 26) would like any of your vegetables or a Daffodil or Dandelion on his birthday. Emily (Spring 27) would like a Daffodil or LOVE an Emerald, Aquamarine, Ruby, Amethyst, Topaz, or Jade on her birthday. Gold star is always best!
Spring 24 is your last chance to try for your last gold star Parsnip(s).
Spring 26 (Friday) is the best day for a wild plants round if you need birthday Daffodils or want to upgrade what you have to gold star to impress more. You can find many villagers in the Saloon after 5pm.
Do not keep more than one Strawberry (as long-term seed for a possible Greenhouse project). Sell them. Now is when you need the money most. Next year you can buy plenty when you are rich.
As soon as you reach The Mines floor 80 in descent mode, you should have at least four Furnaces in operation near your mining chest and start hitting elevator floors 30-75 in picky quick-bail farming mode for Coal and ore (pick up everything else too with a priority to Quartz) to make basic Sprinklers. When you reach floor 110 (nice rewards down here!), hit elevator floors 100 and 105 to make Quality Sprinklers. Basic Sprinklers can be used in the mid-term as field extenders, and they have some specialty uses even later on, so don't feel you need to leapfrog them to Quality Sprinklers. Just lay them out like Quality Sprinklers and use them either to cut your watering in half (this doesn't work well with watering can upgrades, and that's why this walkthrough doesn't step you through a watering can upgrade) or as field extenders half planted until Quality Sprinkler service arrives.
Time and energy management
A good routine
Most of your days in Spring will revolve around watering your crops, and then fishing, mining, or exploring. Wander around the forests and the beach, picking up foraged items when you find them - in the first few days, an extra 200 gold pieces (gp) becomes that many more seeds in the ground, and it gets your financial snowball going just that bit faster. Later, use the food you find to restore your health and energy in the mines when the monsters get you or to clear your farm and forage areas. If you are feeling sociable, wander around town, introducing yourself to everyone (first quest!), or it's okay to put your social life on hold (gifting and quests can be expensive and overwhelming at first) until you are a rich farmer with sprinkled crops or an upgraded watering can. On rainy days, if your luck on TV is good, try mining another 5 floors down, and if it's not so good, go fishing, foraging, exploring, and socializing.
Lazy seeds
As you approach the point where you’re using too much time and energy watering your plants (probably at your first harvest), it’s time to move to more expensive seeds. Cheap seeds build your wealth fastest, but planting more seeds than you can water will just prevent you from getting important experience fishing, mining, foraging, and socializing. See if you can plant more expensive seeds instead; in general the more expensive seeds save you time and energy. That's why this walkthrough steps you from Parsnips to Potatoes to Strawberries in the first two weeks.
Limited fields
Limit the size of your fields carefully.
Even if you want to stay on your farm and have the biggest field possible, you will want to move beyond your basic watering can, and to do that, you have to explore the rest of Stardew Valley a little. So it's a good rule of thumb to be able to finish watering your field at its largest by 2pm at your fastest. That will allow you time on days when you need to harvest and replant or make a pre-rain upgrade trip to the blacksmith who closes at 4pm.
This walkthrough helps you finish your watering mid-morning to give you time for mining copper, iron, and beyond for tappers, sprinklers, and tool upgrades or fishing for cash and energy. You can finish watering as early as 9am at your fastest and still profit well if you step methodically from Parsnips to Potatoes to Strawberries.
Don't sell/ship everything; start organizing
As you get richer, but before Spring has ended, make sure you've kept a few things for quests, the community center, and maybe the fair. Organize them in dedicated chests you can color code if you want.
In your Quests chest, keep one basic example of every item on hand throughout the month for quests. As you get richer, keep two.
In your Community Center chest, keep one example of each item of Spring Forage, and one of each item of Spring Crops to complete the first two Community Centre bundles. And if you want to put 5 gold parsnips (instead of waiting until you are richer to get gold corn, melons, and pumpkins instead) in the Quality Produce bundle you also need to set them aside in the chest.
In your Fair chest, keep a gold star example of the most valuable items you want to show off at the fair grange display in the Fall. Showing off at the fair is fun and optional (There is something special to buy at the fair, but maximizing your grange display is not the only way to get the tickets to buy it).
Special tips for Spring only
Bedtime
At the beginning, get to bed on time (minutes after midnight) so you get your nightly free energy.
Later, fall asleep occasionally on the job at 2am when energy becomes cheap.
Keep your pockets empty throughout the month (by selling only when you need money) in case you fall asleep since you get taxed 10% (1000gp max fee) for the service call based on your cash on hand.
Don't clear-cut your farm trees or grass beyond the area(s) needed. If you just thin your trees, they will reseed around themselves. Clear them when there are a few young trees around them.
Pick up the brown seeds lying around your farm using your axe, pick, or hoe and plant them elsewhere.
If you till first with your hoe, you can plant trees (but not crops) all over the valley, even on the beach. And clear your weeds, rocks, and logs mercilessly to make way for trees and grass.
Forage
If you cross the river directly south of your farm 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 and reset every day - 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. Unlike Spring Onions, all other forageables do not disappear every night - they spawn every day and accrue up to a limit until Saturday night. Then they reset on Sunday. This means that you are best advised to forage once or twice a week for everything else and possibly every day for Spring Onions if you need energy more than time.
Prioritize eating your extra forage in this order: eat Salmonberry (15th-18th), eat Spring Onions, eat Leeks, eat Dandelions, sell Wild Horseradish, and gift, save, or sell Daffodils.
Calendar
Plan to buy and plant Strawberries on Spring 12 at the Egg Festival since they are the most energy-saving crop you can buy right now. Pierre will sell Strawberry seeds at 100gp each that are great for income and experience. (Ignore the fun Rarecrow. You can get the Rarecrow next year for fun when you have lots of cash.) Right now you need income and experience more than you ever will again, so grow and sell them and save one Strawberry in case you want use a Seedmaker before the next Egg Festival to start a Strawberry crop in your Greenhouse.
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) 12 days, that really means 12 nights, so Cauliflower should be planted by the 16th (17th 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.
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 farmer 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.
Repairing the bridge at the beach before Spring 6 if you can afford the energy to collect 300 wood, especially if you are fishing at the ocean often, can help you buy more Strawberry seeds and provide several weeks of significant income before you get too rich and busy to care. 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.
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. Leeks are the most dense Spring food forage, and Kale is the best Spring food crop. You can also buy Salad from the Saloon if needed. As you proceed through the mine floors your skills, defenses, and weapons will grow along with the monsters, so you will need food all the way. 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 floor 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 (or rarely 10 on Good Luck days if your farm is small) per visit to the mines. This means that if you uncover a ladder down, you may take a short look around for any particularly attractive rocks, but otherwise you’re best advised to go down. You can build bombs and stone staircases to rush your way to the bottom in an emergency and come back later with better tools for more mining. After this month you can take more time to mine the goodies on each floor using bombs if necessary to rush things along.
It's common to find fishing frustratingly hard. The only way through that is to level up your character's skill, and you may not have time for that until later in the year if ever. Depending on how bad your skill is, you may want to start by fishing even for trash for hours in your own pond or the mountain lake east (right) of the Carpenter Shop (the south end of the island in the lake is often recommended) until enough skill-free fish happen along over a few sessions to level you up. Once you have any personal skill at all or are able to put bait on your upgraded pole to keep the fish biting, buy trout soup from Willy to boost your fishing level for a few real-world minutes while you fish. Maybe you will even start to like fishing!
End of Spring
At the end of Spring, if you have spent most of your days watering, you will have hundreds of crops, and hopefully 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. But if you don't have enough, there is always next year. Alternatively, if you have spent most of your days mining you will have limited your field to around 120 crops, but you will hopefully have lots of ore to automate your watering to focus on fishing and socializing soon.
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.
Late Spring or after
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 invest in animals 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.
If you have chosen not to mine much, 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 by 2pm, and deliver your can to Clint by 4pm; 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 focused on mining, you probably will have plenty of copper and iron to make a dozen basic sprinklers before the end of the month and before you ever upgrade your watering can. Basic sprinklers cut your watering in half and free you to expand your farm more. Sprinklers and watering can upgrades don't work particularly well together.
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. Whether this happens in Spring or later, 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. Just be sure to plant trees for fruit.
