History YMMV / StardewValley

** It can be hard not to [[HehHehYouSaidX giggle]] when one of the female townsfolk posts a request for a phallic-looking sea/super cucumber and refuse to explain why they need it. Or even worse, an octopus.
** Maru's casual dialog to the farmer to come up to her room and "play with her gadgets".

** Using the club's [[GroundPound special attack]] and regular attack immediately will cause both attacks to [[ForMassiveDamage hit simultaneously]]. However, until the special attack cools down, you have to deal with the club's regular (slow) speed.

** Naturally, a lot of players of this game also enjoy ''VideoGame/StoryOfSeasons'', known as Harvest Moon in 2012 and earlier.

* ComeForTheGameStayForTheMods: The game has a very large and dedicated modding community, since it's very easy for people without a lot of technical knowledge to create decent mods for it. The mods themselves range from simple graphical changes, adding new cutscene events, adding custom villagers or [=NPCs=], introducing new mechanics or quality of life improvements, to full-blown unofficial expansions (see the [[FanficRecs/StardewValley [=FanFic=] recommendations page]] for some individual examples). It is mentioned several times by the community that once you try ''Stardew Valley'' with mods you'll never play it without them again.

* ComeForTheGameStayForTheMods: The game has a very large and dedicated modding community, since it's very easy for people without a lot of technical knowledge to create decent mods for it. The mods themselves range from simple graphical changes, adding new cutscene events, adding new villagers or [=NPCs=], introducing new mechanics or quality of life improvements, to full-blown unofficial expansions (see the [[FanficRecs/StardewValley [=FanFic=] recommendations page]] for some individual examples). It is mentioned several times by the community that once you try ''Stardew Valley'' with mods you'll never play it without them again.

** The Slime Hutch doesn't really have any practical use, especially for anyone who spends a decent amount of time in the mines. Its primary function is to produce and harvest Slime Balls for huge quantities of slime. This slime can then be fed into a Slime Egg Press to create a Slime Egg, which can either be hatched into a new Slime or sold. The problem is that most players will likely walk away from an average trip to the mines or the Skull Cavern with a sizeable pile of slime without needing to pay the hefty costs to build a Slime Hutch and enough Slime Egg Presses to make the venture worthwhile. Add to that the fact that most Slime Eggs don't even sell for a whole lot, with the ones that do being exceedingly rare, and there ends up being no real reason to invest in a Slime Hutch other than for the sheer novelty of being able to farm slimes.

** Daggers are pretty much worthless, given that you mostly fight smaller enemies in large numbers, while Daggers focus on critical hits while having an abysmal reach and attack strokes. It's unanimously better to focus on brute force with swords or hammers/clubs that can decimate enemies in fewer hits.

** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBztexUKhY8 One Youtuber]] took it on himself to complete the Community Center without leveling any of his stats. This requires ridiculous amounts of MinMaxing, grinding, and SaveScumming. [[spoiler:And it turns out to just be a futile task in single-player]].

* ComeForTheGameStayForTheMods: The game has very large and dedicated modding community, since it's very easy for people without a lot of technical knowledge to create decent mods for it. The mods themselves range from simple graphical changes, adding new villagers or [=NPCs=], introducing new mechanics or quality of life improvements, to full-blown unofficial expansions (see the [[FanficRecs/StardewValley [=FanFic=] recommendations page]] for individual examples). It is mentioned several times by the community that once you try ''Stardew Valley'' with mods you'll never play it without them again.

** Some players, disgusted by both Morris and Pierre, created challenge runs where the player doesn't purchase anything from either of them, with potential exceptions such as Pierre's backpack. This forces them to rely on fishing, foraging, and cultivating Mixed Seeds and extracting seeds from the produced crops. Allowances for other merchants vary depending on personal rules.

*** 1.5 reduced the difficulty substantially by allowing players to save their progress by exiting the game. If a good run is spoiled by a death, players can simply reset the day and give the level another try. It's so difficult that even

*** 1.5 added an option to make the Community Center completable in a year by making red cabbage seeds guaranteed to show up at least once in the travelling merchant's cart that year.
** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBztexUKhY8 One Youtuber]] took it on himself to complete the Community Center without leveling any of his stats. This requires ridiculous amounts of MinMaxing, grinding, and SaveScumming. [[spoiler:And it turns out to just be a futile task in single player]].

** "A Complete Collection" requires the player find and donate every donateable item to the Museum. This achievement boils down to a LuckBasedMission for the [[LastLousyPoint last few items]]. Most Museum items can be gamed; the player can hunt for the right Geodes to fill the Minerals collection, and most Artifacts can be found in fishing chests. However, there are a few Artifacts that can only be acquired from an Artifact Spot that spawned in a specific area on the map, with a 1% chance. Players can spend in-game years running around town, digging up Artifact Spots as they appear, in hopes of finding the last few Artifacts.
** "Fector's Challenge" requires you to beat ''Journey of the Prairie King''...without dying. It's so notoriously hard that it's the sole reason the game's achievement/trophy list is a 9/10 in difficulty instead of a 1.
*** 1.5 reduced the difficulty substantially by allowing players to save their progress by exiting the game. If a good run is spoiled by a death, players can simply reset the day and give the level another try.

** Certain levels in the Mines and Caverns are shaped like a long spiral, with you starting at the top left and having to work your way around clockwise to the center. When first visiting a spiral level, the center will have a load of barrels, potentially containing all sorts of gems and other resources and thus making the trek inwards worthwhile. On subsequent visits to the same level, the center is not guaranteed to contain anything special at all. If you encounter a ladder early in the spiral, but want to find out whether there's anything worthwhile at the center, you could end up wasting a whole hour of in-game time just trekking inwards and then back to that ladder. In most circumstances it's better to just immediately start mining as soon as you enter a spiral level and take the first ladder you find.

** Tea Saplings. You obtain the recipe to craft them after having only 2 hearts with Caroline and, while you can plant them to have a constant supply of tea leaves in all seasons except Winter, they also cost 500g each, take relatively few resources to craft and can be sold to Pierre, making them an excellent source of money in the early game.

** Shane is very popular for this reason as well. He works a terrible dead-end job that he absolutely hates, he's obviously depressed and hopeless with his lot in life, he self-medicates with alcohol, and he's very cold and standoffish to you at first, but he will warm up to you considerably if you take the time to get to know him. His character arc ''seems'' so much like that of a potential love interest that many first-time players were surprised that he isn't an actual bachelor - the farmer marrying him and rescuing him from a life of drudgery stocking shelves at [=JojaMart=] (or unemployment, if you complete the Community Center) feels like the natural conclusion to his story arc. As a result, there have been loads of requests for [=ConcernedApe=] to make him into a bachelor in a future update, and these seem to have won him over; he describes himself as "already on board the shane train" in response to [[https://www.reddit.com/r/StardewValley/comments/4b8s7v/im_concernedape_developer_of_stardew_valley_ask/d16zeh5 a question on his AMA thread]]. As of v1.1 Shane is now romanceable too.

** It can be hard not to [[HehHehYouSaidX giggle]] when one of the female townsfolk posts a request for a phallic-looking sea/super cucumber and [[ADateWithRosiePalms refuse to explain why they need it.]] Or even worse, an octopus.

** Pierre is not much liked amongst players, especially because he is the most obnoxious competitor in the Grange (he's the winner if you don't meet the points quota), and he has a tendency to [[StealingTheCredit steal the credit]] for your high-quality produce if you sell it to him.[[note]] As of v.1.4 at the very least if you talk to people around town, you'll hear them talk about Pierre taking credit for finding/growing produce they really enjoyed, but that specifically matches an item you recently sold to him. If it's regular quality, which is perceived as "bad," he has no problem letting them know it was yours.[[/note]] It gets worse with the special orders, as one of his quests ends in him not only underpaying you for your produce but turning around and trying to sell it at a ridiculous markup. Fans of Abigail have an additional disdain for him because of the StayInTheKitchen attitude he has towards his wife and daughter.

** While the player never finds out just who has been harassing Linus and destroying his tent, the limited pool of suspects means that just about any of the local villagers could have a far nastier side to them not displayed in-game; it could be entirely possible, however, that the culprit is known JerkAss Morris or someone visiting from outside town.

** Sebastian claims to dislike the Flower Dance and will gripe about having to attend in the lead-up, as well as on the day itself. However, if the play asks him to dance and does not meet the heart requirements, he says no because he wanted to ask Abigail. If the player does meet the requirements, he smiles happily and expresses excitement. This could suggest that he secretly enjoys the Flower Dance and only complains to uphold his image.

* AuthorsSavingThrow:
** From the game's launch, a common point of criticism was the fishing minigame, which many players considered far too difficult to be worth bothering with. Update 1.4 added in the Training Rod, which can be bought from Willy's shop for dirt cheap (25g) and makes the game far easier from the start, at the acceptable expense of only catching the most basic fish.
** An update gave some much needed buffs to Dagger weapons which previously had a quick three-strike ability that was almost useless since the first hit would knock the enemy away. Now the first two hits lock enemy in place and only the last one knocks it away.
** The Forge introduced in 1.5 also makes certain styles of combat much more viable, namely making use of Critical Hits which were extremely uncommon even with the right set of skills. The same update also introduced weapons with higher Critical Hit Rate as well.
** One of the most common complaints about the Greenhouse was that it was simply too small, with only 120 tiles to plant on, some of which would be occupied by sprinklers. This made the space incredibly valuable, leading players to just fill it with Ancient Fruit since that was the only place they wouldn't lose their extremely rare, extremely precious first few Ancient Fruit plants when winter rolled around. This was addressed with the addition of the Ginger Island farm, which has much more growing space and follows the same rules as the Greenhouse.

*** The "Explore the Mines" goal is notoriously difficult as the player count drops. The problem here is that, unlike every other goal in the game, this one doesn't scale with the number of players; you have to reach level 12, no matter what. Given how fewer players means fewer actions to work with and how the mines are [[LuckBasedMission entirely determined by dice rolls]], getting this goal [[CharacterSelectForcing basically forces somebody to take the Miner profession and the pickaxe]] in order to swing the odds in your favor as much as possible. It's not uncommon for games with fewer players to implement a HouseRule changing this card to require that three levels be completed per player, making it more in line with the other Grandpa's Goals in the game.

*** Of course, to many people, it sounds even naughtier: It sounds like stabbing, not anything "dirty".

** Clint is sometimes called an incel or a "nice guy" by some people in the fandom, even though he doesn't act like he WantsAPrizeForBasicDecency or do anything else to deserve any of those adjectives. His only creepy behavior is to keep lusting over Emily even after she's dating or married to the farmer, but this is likely an oversight due to Emily not originally being a potential spouse.

** The fact that Kent will, once you have a good enough relationship with him, will mail you bombs that have been "gathering dust" implies he's either working in the monster-infested mines, or possibly an aspiring Unabomber. Or a reformed RightWingedMilitiaFanatic after facing life in a prison camp.

** Ancient Fruit wine with the Artisan perk is generally seen as ''the'' end-game money-maker of choice due to its profitability and infinitely-renewable nature with the use of the Greenhouse.