Stardew Valley Expanded / YMMV

Accidental Innuendo:
- Scarlett while working as a farmhand at Susan's farm: "Have you ever tried Susan's melons? They're large and juicy!"
- Camilla saying "You like swinging your sword so much, why don't you swing it for me?" when asking a male farmer for a favor in the Crimson Badlands.
Anti-Climax Boss: Apophis, the huge Corrupt Serpent found in the west side of the Crimson Badlands, is, for all intents and purposes, supposed to be the de facto Final Boss of SVE, sporting a whopping 12,500 HP and attacks capable of inflicting a One-Hit Kill without defensive buffs. However, as it turns out, Apophis merely looks intimidating, as its massive size often ends up being a hindrance, rendering it barely able to move. As a result, as long as you have one of the Infinity weapons handy to prevent your attacks from missing, the fight devolves into clearing the immediate area of smaller mooks, then just whaling on Apophis until it finally keels over. The Bully Rex at the Highlands Summit, despite its smaller health pool and weaker attacks, ends up being a much bigger threat due to its ranged flame breath and the fact that it can actually move around on a consistent basis.
Brutal Bonus Level: SVE has two of them in the form of the Crimson Badlands and the Highlands. Both are large dungeon-like areas chock full of ultra-powerful monsters, and both contain the closest thing to boss battles Stardew Valley will ever have. What's worse, these two dungeons alone sport a unique mechanic: your attacks can randomly miss unless you're holding one of the Infinity weapons, meaning that not only do you do no damage, but the foe you tried to attack is virtually guaranteed to get in a free hit... and these bad boys hit like a truck. To give you an idea of how bad it is, Lance mails you two dozen Life Elixirs after you visit the Highlands for the first time, and you will need every one of them. However, the rewards for completing these dungeons are, for the most part, well worth the slog required to get there.
Heartwarming Moments: Looking in the back room of the Stardrop Saloon shows that Gus always keeps a stock of Sophia's Trademark Favorite Food even though literally everyone else in town hates it. Talking to Sophia on Winter 18 will further reveal that he serves it as the Saloon's 'Dish of the Day' on Winter 19. Going through their friendship events will reveal why: Gus was good friends with Sophia's parents and has known her since she was a child. He knows what happened to her parents, the effect it's had on her, and is trying to help her the only way he knows how to. He'll only sell the farmer that dish if they've shown they're committed to helping her too.
Game-Breaker: With all of the new content the expansion introduces, there's bound to be a few:
- The "Crusader" weapon enchantment^*, in the base game, is little more than a novelty that spares the player from having to burn through bombs in order to kill mummies in the Skull Cavern. In Expanded, however, it becomes an absolute godsend for traversing the Crimson Badlands, which are not only crawling with mummies of even stronger types than those found in the Skull Cavern (including a massive horde of Corrupt Mummies which guard the cavern holding the Galaxy Slingshot), but whose monster pool consists almost entirely of undead types, allowing you to slice through what would otherwise be a grueling gauntlet of monsters with relative ease.
- Similarly, the Slime Charmer ring^* was really only useful in the base game in the odd chance you decided to take up slime ranching. Here, it's a borderline requirement for visiting the Highlands for any serious length of time, seeing how it's already crawling with powerful slimes as it is, and due to the fact that they reproduce the entire time you're there, a slime infestation can easily occur in the span of just a few minutes if the conditions are right.
- Monster Mushrooms are even more valuable than the much-vaunted Starfruit despite taking a similar amount of time to grow. The seeds aren't even that hard to come by; they're a fairly common drop from the mushroom monsters found in the Highlands, to the point where you could easily end up with over a hundred after just a dozen or so trips (not to mention the fact that said monsters are also a pretty decent source of coal). The only real downside is that, being classified as a vegetable, Monster Mushroom juice ends up being less lucrative than Starfruit wine... but with how valuable the base crop is by itself, there's really not much need to process it to begin with.
- Even before Monster Mushrooms are widely available, Salal Berries can quickly become your go-to cash crop for both Spring and Summer. Having a guarenteed 2-4 berries per drop at a base rate of 75 gold a berry, Salal Berries are more lucrative than Strawberries and Blueberries with a respectable 4 day regrowth rate. The problem with them is that to maximize profits, your Preserves Jars are going to be full up more often then not. Best of all is that the large number of berries means that you can use seed makers to replenish them between years.
Fan-Disliked Explanation: The old explanation (removed in 2022) of why the player only uses swords and melee weapons against monsters is because conventional weapons are useless against monsters, and that the game's weapons are actually imbued with magic, has been disliked by several players as nonsensical, since monsters are also shown to be vulnerable to non-magical ammunition from the slingshot and more tellingly, bombs. Some players even question why not magic imbued gun ammunition exists then.
Good Bad Bugs: If you haven't married her and are using Grandpa's Farm, there's a small chance that Claire will just randomly show up on top of the hill north of your farm at night, making her look like a major stalker (especially if you've married someone else).
Hilarious in Hindsight: Sophia mentions one of her favourite anime to be "My Super Villain School", a few months after the mod was first published we got this on the MHA manga.
Moe: Sophia, thanks to her cute design, Cosplay Otaku Girl attributes, tragic backstory, and Prone to Tears moments.
The Scrappy: There are quite a few players who find Apples very annoying; which incentiviced the mod's creator, FlashShifter, to expand upon the Joja route since he will not appear in it.
Suspiciously Similar Song: Camilla's leitmotif, "Camilla's Tower", sounds very similar to the theme of the Voodoo Lady from Monkey Island.
Take That, Scrappy!: Several of the less-liked characters in the original game have bad things happen to them in this one that are directly related to some of the reasons people don't like them.
- Clint, disliked for his Can't Spit It Out Dogged Nice Guy crush on Emily:
  - He gets an extra scene where he'll call the player out if they encourage him to ask Emily out then marry her themselves, something a number of players actually do.
  - There's another scene in which he finally confesses his feelings to Emily, but she rejects him telling him that she only thinks of him as a friend, finally ending the entire affair.
- Lewis, disliked for his unwillingness to commit to Marnie to preserve his status as Mayor and the Secret Note hinting that he may be somewhat corrupt, can potentially lose his mayorship to Morris on the Joja route.
- Pierre is disliked for too many reasons to list, but the relevant ones here are his obsession with making money, his Stay in the Kitchen attitude, and his neglect of his family. Notably, he loses regardless of what path you take:
  - Completing the Joja route results in Joja opening a new superstore in Pelican Town, finally putting Pierre out of business and resulting in Caroline having to get a job.
  - Completing the Community Center route and enabling Mature Events has Abigail discover a Junimo, which can't be seen by people who aren't sensitive to magic. This snowballs into the revelation that Caroline and Pierre briefly broke up following an argument; Caroline spent that time with Magnus, and Abigail is Magnus's daughter, not Pierre's.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Martin is easily the least fleshed-out of the major new characters added to the game, with his entire character arc basically revolving around him having a crush on Claire. There's a small bit where he expresses an interest in genealogy, but it ultimately never goes anywhere, and the entire event comes off like a major Big-Lipped Alligator Moment because of it. There's not even any real benefit to befriending him other than progressing towards 100% Completion, which especially sticks out considering just how difficult it is to do so to begin with due both to his relatively small pool of "loved" gifts and the fact that he's only ever in town three days a week. Considering how much depth the other new characters got, it's hard not to think of Martin as nothing more than an afterthought.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: After the Wizard learns that he's Abigail's biological father, he mentions that she will need training in the magical arts and that he'll do so, but nothing else comes out of this; instead he focuses all his efforts on Morgan who becomes his apprentice in year 3.

YMMV / Stardew Valley Expanded

Edit Locked