Over the holiday season, we’re republishing select articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2023 series. Enjoy!
Fancy yourself a Stardew Valley nerd? Do you feel like you know the game inside and out? We’re here to challenge that, with 25 niche and surprising things that you may (or may not) already know about the game!
25 Things You Didn’t Know About Stardew Valley
Rarecrow references
The Rarecrows, which as rare scarecrows achieved through various means, are all a bit weird. Some are obvious references — aliens, the dwarf from the mines — but others include references to ConcernedApe’s favourite movies, apparently!
Simpsons reference
You can make yourself a pair of Radioactive Goggles by combining Cloth and a Radioactive Bar. These goggles have the description “Doesn’t actually provide any protection from radiation” — a reference to the infamous Radioactive Man episode of The Simpsons, in which Rainier Wolfcastle gets splashed in the eyes with acid, crying, “My eyes! The goggles do nothing!”
Old names
Penny used to be named Dana, Alex was Josh, and Willy was… Dick. Yeah.
Secret animations
You can click on NPC sprites to make them animate!
Dress like trash
Literally! Put a piece of trash in the sewing machine (Broken CD, Broken Glasses, Driftwood, Soggy Newspaper, and Trash all work) and you’ll get a top that looks like a bin. Pair these with the beautiful Garbage Hat, which looks like a bin lid and can be found in (you guessed it) the bins around town, and you’ll look just like a rubbish receptacle. Add a grey pleated skirt to finish the look!
Move out of your mother’s basement
Six of the 12 marriage candidates (Maru, Penny, Sebastian, Abigail, Sam, Alex) live with their parents or grandparents. The rent situation is tricky over there, maybe? There are only a handful of houses to live in, anyway…
Picky eaters
Villagers will complain about having to eat the dishes you sell to Pierre if they’re “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 again.
Crossovers in the farmingverse
There’s a secret Stardew/Terraria crossover with Junimos, blue chickens, and Joja Cola.
Climate change
From @lil_wage on Twitter:
“In Stardew Valley storms are useful for battery packs, but they are rare. There is an item called a rain totem that makes it rain the next day, but not storm. Unless, that is, it is used DURING a storm, prolonging it. It has been storming in Pelican Town for 12 days straight now”
Blood? No, that’s just red water
Lava Eels, Super Cucumbers, Slimejacks, and Void Salmons change the colour of the fish pond water to red, blue, green, and purple, if you want your ponds to match the overall vibe of your Halloween/goth/sewer farm!
Cucumber fashion
Place a Sea Cucumber or a Super Cucumber in the sewing machine, and you’ll get… a tube top. Yes. You are wearing the cucumber as a top. That’s fashion, baby!
Steppin’ in the rain
Did you know that the weather in Stardew Valley is not random, but instead determined by the number of steps that the player has taken? This might sound ridiculously unhelpful, but it’s actually really useful for speedrunners, who can take a precisely calculated number of steps to guarantee rain.
Well, it’s actually a little more complicated than that. The random chance is also calculated by integers like the player’s unique ID number and the number of days they’ve played. Still, if you’re the kind of speedrunner that loves manipulating variables, then all you need is to know which seed you’re using, and then you can reproduce the same “random” output consistently. Cool, huh?
The mayor’s undies are 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 my very private item for this sick purpose”… but the Governor, whom you’re trying to impress in the first place, has the following to say:
“Hmm… It’s a bit tangy… but actually, the flavor is quite good! Just one minute… there’s something in my bowl… what’s this?”
Good soup.
Other undies opportunities
You can also display the purple shorts in the grange display as part of the Stardew Valley Fair (you’ll be offered Star Tokens to take them down), and you can even wear them (Lewis will be upset, but Marnie will giggle). If you’ve unlocked Ginger Island and the 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 tracks how many times you’ve launched the game, and every now and again you’ll see messages in the lower-left corner when you hit an important number. Launch the game 20 times, and you’ll see a little heart; 30 times and you’ll be told to “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 can be really bad at music
…For no reason! If your randomly-assigned ID in multiplayer is divisible by 111, any music your character plays will be off-key. This includes Elliott’s piano and the music emote.
The sunflower seed conspiracy
When JojaMart and Pierre’s exist at the same time, Pierre’s prices undercut Joja by quite a bit — except for Sunflower Seeds, which cost 200 gold at Pierre’s and only 125 gold at JojaMart. If you purchase the Joja Membership, prices across the board will decrease to match Pierre’s shop, but the Sunflower Seeds decrease too, taking them down to 100 gold at JojaMart.
It gets weirder, though! When you harvest Sunflower seeds, you get extra seeds back from the flowers, and you can then sell these back to Pierre for 20 gold each — unless you bought them from JojaMart in the first place, in which case Pierre will buy them for 100 gold instead. Pierre, what is wrong with you?
Frog hat
You can get a frog hat by fishing in the Gourmand’s Lake on Ginger Island. Who put it there? Don’t worry about it.
Coffee hipster
Put a Coffee Bean in the sewing machine, and you’ll get… a flannel shirt. The uniform of coffee hipsters everywhere.
Friendly slimes
Hatch a slime in town, and it will be a friendly little guy, greeting the townsfolk by name. Awww.
Wumbus
The two “Strange Doll” artifacts in the game are actually a reference to ConcernedApe’s old work — namely, a webcomic he used to make called Wumbus World. You can also see Wumbus in the sci-fi movie “Wumbus” at the Movie Theater and by getting 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 made the moon angry
Click on the moon on the 27th of any month to summon an angry little moon face, which is potentially a reference to Georges Méliès short silent film ‘A Trip to the Moon’, in which a rocket crashes into the eye of the man on the moon. Hence why he’s wearing a monocle.
Shrimp Enthusiast
If you love shrimp, why not make yourself a T-shirt that lets everyone know it? Put Shrimp Cocktail in the sewing machine to make this shrimp-tastic piece of clothing. Shrimp!!
No ice cream for you!
If you marry Alex, he will simply refuse to work at the ice cream stand during summer, presumably because he knows he can mooch off you instead. Boo.
Stylish urchins
You probably know you can put hats on children and horses, but did you know you can put hats on sea urchins in the fish tank in your house? It’s very cute. You can place hats on the Alien Rarecrow, too!
Over the holiday season, we’re republishing select articles from Nintendo Life writers and contributors as part of our Best of 2023 series. Enjoy!
Fancy yourself a Stardew Valley nerd? Do you feel like you know the game inside and out? We’re here to challenge that, with 25 niche and surprising things that you may (or may not) already know about the game!
25 Things You Didn’t Know About Stardew Valley
Rarecrow references
The Rarecrows, which as rare scarecrows achieved through various means, are all a bit weird. Some are obvious references — aliens, the dwarf from the mines — but others include references to ConcernedApe’s favourite movies, apparently!
Simpsons reference
You can make yourself a pair of Radioactive Goggles by combining Cloth and a Radioactive Bar. These goggles have the description “Doesn’t actually provide any protection from radiation” — a reference to the infamous Radioactive Man episode of The Simpsons, in which Rainier Wolfcastle gets splashed in the eyes with acid, crying, “My eyes! The goggles do nothing!”
Old names
Penny used to be named Dana, Alex was Josh, and Willy was… Dick. Yeah.
Secret animations
You can click on NPC sprites to make them animate!
Dress like trash
Literally! Put a piece of trash in the sewing machine (Broken CD, Broken Glasses, Driftwood, Soggy Newspaper, and Trash all work) and you’ll get a top that looks like a bin. Pair these with the beautiful Garbage Hat, which looks like a bin lid and can be found in (you guessed it) the bins around town, and you’ll look just like a rubbish receptacle. Add a grey pleated skirt to finish the look!
Move out of your mother’s basement
Six of the 12 marriage candidates (Maru, Penny, Sebastian, Abigail, Sam, Alex) live with their parents or grandparents. The rent situation is tricky over there, maybe? There are only a handful of houses to live in, anyway…
Picky eaters
Villagers will complain about having to eat the dishes you sell to Pierre if they’re “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 again.
Crossovers in the farmingverse
There’s a secret Stardew/Terraria crossover with Junimos, blue chickens, and Joja Cola.
Climate change
From @lil_wage on Twitter:
“In Stardew Valley storms are useful for battery packs, but they are rare. There is an item called a rain totem that makes it rain the next day, but not storm. Unless, that is, it is used DURING a storm, prolonging it. It has been storming in Pelican Town for 12 days straight now”
Blood? No, that’s just red water
Lava Eels, Super Cucumbers, Slimejacks, and Void Salmons change the colour of the fish pond water to red, blue, green, and purple, if you want your ponds to match the overall vibe of your Halloween/goth/sewer farm!
Cucumber fashion
Place a Sea Cucumber or a Super Cucumber in the sewing machine, and you’ll get… a tube top. Yes. You are wearing the cucumber as a top. That’s fashion, baby!
Steppin’ in the rain
Did you know that the weather in Stardew Valley is not random, but instead determined by the number of steps that the player has taken? This might sound ridiculously unhelpful, but it’s actually really useful for speedrunners, who can take a precisely calculated number of steps to guarantee rain.
Well, it’s actually a little more complicated than that. The random chance is also calculated by integers like the player’s unique ID number and the number of days they’ve played. Still, if you’re the kind of speedrunner that loves manipulating variables, then all you need is to know which seed you’re using, and then you can reproduce the same “random” output consistently. Cool, huh?
The mayor’s undies are 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 my very private item for this sick purpose”… but the Governor, whom you’re trying to impress in the first place, has the following to say:
“Hmm… It’s a bit tangy… but actually, the flavor is quite good! Just one minute… there’s something in my bowl… what’s this?”
Good soup.
Other undies opportunities
You can also display the purple shorts in the grange display as part of the Stardew Valley Fair (you’ll be offered Star Tokens to take them down), and you can even wear them (Lewis will be upset, but Marnie will giggle). If you’ve unlocked Ginger Island and the 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 tracks how many times you’ve launched the game, and every now and again you’ll see messages in the lower-left corner when you hit an important number. Launch the game 20 times, and you’ll see a little heart; 30 times and you’ll be told to “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 can be really bad at music
…For no reason! If your randomly-assigned ID in multiplayer is divisible by 111, any music your character plays will be off-key. This includes Elliott’s piano and the music emote.
The sunflower seed conspiracy
When JojaMart and Pierre’s exist at the same time, Pierre’s prices undercut Joja by quite a bit — except for Sunflower Seeds, which cost 200 gold at Pierre’s and only 125 gold at JojaMart. If you purchase the Joja Membership, prices across the board will decrease to match Pierre’s shop, but the Sunflower Seeds decrease too, taking them down to 100 gold at JojaMart.
It gets weirder, though! When you harvest Sunflower seeds, you get extra seeds back from the flowers, and you can then sell these back to Pierre for 20 gold each — unless you bought them from JojaMart in the first place, in which case Pierre will buy them for 100 gold instead. Pierre, what is wrong with you?
Frog hat
You can get a frog hat by fishing in the Gourmand’s Lake on Ginger Island. Who put it there? Don’t worry about it.
Coffee hipster
Put a Coffee Bean in the sewing machine, and you’ll get… a flannel shirt. The uniform of coffee hipsters everywhere.
Friendly slimes
Hatch a slime in town, and it will be a friendly little guy, greeting the townsfolk by name. Awww.
Wumbus
The two “Strange Doll” artifacts in the game are actually a reference to ConcernedApe’s old work — namely, a webcomic he used to make called Wumbus World. You can also see Wumbus in the sci-fi movie “Wumbus” at the Movie Theater and by getting 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 made the moon angry
Click on the moon on the 27th of any month to summon an angry little moon face, which is potentially a reference to Georges Méliès short silent film ‘A Trip to the Moon’, in which a rocket crashes into the eye of the man on the moon. Hence why he’s wearing a monocle.
Shrimp Enthusiast
If you love shrimp, why not make yourself a T-shirt that lets everyone know it? Put Shrimp Cocktail in the sewing machine to make this shrimp-tastic piece of clothing. Shrimp!!
No ice cream for you!
If you marry Alex, he will simply refuse to work at the ice cream stand during summer, presumably because he knows he can mooch off you instead. Boo.
Stylish urchins
You probably know you can put hats on children and horses, but did you know you can put hats on sea urchins in the fish tank in your house? It’s very cute. You can place hats on the Alien Rarecrow, too!
