Think you’re a Stardew Valley geek? Do you feel like you know the game inside and out? We’re here to challenge that, with 25 niche and surprising things you may (or may not) already know about the game!
25 things you didn’t know about Stardew Valley
References Rerecrow
Rare crows, which as rare scarecrows achieve in various ways, are all a little bit strange. Some are obvious references – aliens, a gnome from the mines – but others include references to ConcernedApe’s favorite movies, obviously!
The Simpsons reference
You can make yourself a pair of radioactive glasses by combining fabric and a radioactive rod. These glasses have the description “It doesn’t actually provide any radiation protection” — a reference to the infamous Radioactive Man episode The Simpsonsin which Rainier Wolfcastle gets acid in his eyes, crying, “I eyes! The glasses don’t do anything!”
Old names
Penny used to be called Dana, Alex was Josh, and Willy was… Dick. That.
Secret animations
You can click on NPC ghosts to animate them!
She dresses like trash
Literally! Put a piece of junk in the sewing machine (Broken CD, Broken Glasses, Driftwood, Wet Newspaper, and Trash Works) and you’ll get a top that looks like a bucket. Pair them with the adorable Garbage Hat, which looks like a bin lid and can be found in (you guessed it) bins around town, and you’ll look like a bin. Add a gray pleated skirt to complete the look!
He is moving out of his mother’s basement
Six of the 12 marriage candidates (Maru, Penny, Sebastian, Abigail, Sam, Alex) live with their parents or grandparents. Maybe the rent situation is awkward there? There are only a few houses to live in anyway…
Picky eaters
The villagers will complain that they have to eat the meals you sell to Pierre if they are of “normal” quality. Apparently everyone in town has really high standards, and if you sell a ton of meals to Pierre, you’ll get this dialogue over and over and over.
Crossings in the farmingverse
There’s a secret Stardew/Terraria crossover with Junimos, blue chicks, and Joja Cola.
Climate changes
From @lil_wage on Twitter:
“In Stardew Valley, storms are useful for batteries, but they’re rare. There’s an item called a rain totem that causes rain the next day, but not a storm. Unless, that is, it’s used DURING a storm, prolonging it . Storm in Pelican Town has been going on for 12 days in a row”
Blood? No, it’s just red water
Lava Eels, Super Cucumbers, Slimejacks and Void Salmons change the color of the pond water to red, blue, green and purple if you want your ponds to match the overall vibration your Halloween/goth/sewer farms!
Cucumber fashion
Put a sea cucumber or a super cucumber in a sewing machine and you get… a tube cannon. That. You are carries a cucumber as a top. That’s fashion, baby!
Walking in the rain
Did you know that the time in Stardew Valley is not random, but determined by the number of steps the player has taken? This might sound ridiculously useless, but it really is really useful for fast runnerswho can take a precisely calculated number of steps to guarantee rain.
Well, it’s actually a a little more complicated than that. Random chance is also calculated with integers such as the player’s unique identification number and the number of days he has played. Still, if you’re the type of speedster who likes to manipulate variables, then all you need to know is which seed you’re using, and then you can consistently reproduce the same “random” output. Cool huh?
The mayor’s underwear is delicious
If you put Mayor Lewis’ purple shorts in the soup at the Luau, Mayor Lewis will yell at you for ruining the soup and “using a very private item of mine for this sick purpose”… but the governor, who you’re trying to impress in the first place, says this:
“Hmm… It’s a bit spicy… but actually, it tastes pretty good! Just a minute… there’s something in my bowl… what is this?”
Good soup.
Other opportunities for underwear
You can also display the purple shorts in the showroom as part of the Stardew Valley Fair (you’ll be offered Star Tokens to take them off), and you can even to wear them (Lewis will get upset, but Marnie will giggle). If you’ve unlocked Ginger Island and Resort, you can give them to him while he’s visiting, and he’ll wear them on the beach!
The game will remember that
Stardew Valley keeps track of how many times you’ve started the game, and you’ll occasionally see messages in the bottom left corner when you’ve hit an important number. Run the game 20 times and you will see a small heart; 30 times and you will be told “Beat Journey Of The Prairie King without dying”; 10,000 times and you’ll get a special message from ConcernedApe (which we won’t spoil).
Your player may be very bad at music
…For no reason! If your randomly assigned multiplayer ID is divisible by 111, any music your character plays will be incorrect. This includes Elliott’s piano and musical emotion.
Conspiracy of sunflower seeds
When JojaMart and Pierre’s exist at the same time, Pierre’s prices are significantly lower than Joja’s – except for sunflower seeds, which cost 200 gold in Pierre’s and only 125 gold in JojaMart. If you buy a Joja membership, the prices will drop to match Pierre’s shop, but sunflower seeds also drop to 100 gold in JojaMart.
It gets weirder though! When you harvest sunflower seeds, you get extra seeds back from the flowers, which you can then sell back to Pierre for 20 gold each — unless you bought them from JojaMart, in which case Pierre will buy them for 100 gold instead. Pierre, what about you?
Frog hat
You can get the Frog Hat by fishing in Gourmet Lake on Ginger Island. Who put it there? Don’t worry about it.
Hipster coffee
Put a coffee bean in a sewing machine and you get… a flannel shirt. Coffee hipster uniform everywhere.
Friendly servants
Hatch a slime in a town and it will be a friendly little guy who will greet citizens by name. Awwww.
Wumbus
The two “Strange Doll” artifacts in the game are actually a reference to ConcernedApe’s old work — namely, a webcomic he did called Wumbus world. You can also see Wumbus in the sci-fi movie “Wumbus” in the cinema and so get the Wumbus statue in the crane game. You can even put the green doll in the sewing machine to make a Wumbus T-shirt!
You angered the moon
Click on the moon on the 27th of the month to summon a little angry moon face, a potential reference to Georges Méliès’ short silent film ‘A Trip to the Moon’, in which a rocket lands in the eye of a man on the moon. That’s why he wears a monocle.
Shrimp enthusiast
If you love shrimp, why not make yourself a t-shirt to show off to everyone? Put the prawn cocktail in the sewing machine to make this prawn flavored garment. shrimp!!
No ice cream for you!
If you marry Alex, he will simply refuse to work at the ice cream stand during the summer, probably because he knows he can beat you up instead. Boo.
Elegant urchins
You probably know you can put hats on children and horses, but did you know you can put hats on sea urchins in your aquarium? He is very cute. You can put hats on the Alien Rarecrow too!
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