The 21 best Stardew Valley mods May 2024

What are the best Stardew Valley mods? The mod scene for ConcernedApe’s acclaimed life sim has been thriving on PC despite having no official Steam Workshop support. Dedicated modders have been working to alter almost everything available in the game, from adding game-breaking cheats like god mode to texture overhauls that turn Stardew Valley into a pixelated fairytale.

Despite thousands of daily concurrent players enjoying the base indie game, Stardew Valley is getting on a bit, so we can’t blame you for wanting to shake things up. Thankfully, the modding community is here to help bring other IPs to the valley, along with new maps and improvements to married life. We’ve compiled our favorite Stardew Valley mods that celebrate the creativity of the modding scene. Here are our top picks that provide visual overhauls, gameplay changes, and, yes, even some cheats, making one of the best PC games even better.

The best Stardew Valley mods list

Our picks for the best Stardew Valley mods can do almost anything, from adding new NPCs and quests to the farming sim, to changing how the world looks, and even adding Pokemon. Some simple mods also simplify vanilla features, making your easy life all the more relaxing.

The best Stardew Valley mods in May 2024 are:

Book Subscription

We love nothing more than a good book subscription in real life, so why not gift one to our Stardew Valley character, as well? The Stardew Valley Book Subscription mod triggers the new mechanic once you have given 15 items to the museum, at which point you can choose to receive weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly, book deliveries. These books can’t be read, but they do offer XP. There is also an option to include Power Books in your subscription as well, but the selection will be random.

Nora the Herpetologist

A herpetologist, if you aren’t aware, is a specialist in adorable reptiles and amphibians, and Nora, a herpetologist herself, is a new NPC in Stardew Valley thanks to the Nora the Herpetologist mod. By adding this red-haired beauty to your town, you are also adding 14 unique events with the NPC, and you’ll be able to meet her amazing pets: Stupid the gecko and Pinkie Pie the snake!

Auto Fishing 2.0

It might feel a bit cheeky to automate a Stardew Valley mechanic, but fishing is supposed to be relaxing, right? In the Auto Fishing 2.0 mod, Tibsz carries on the work of SorryLate and the original Auto Fishing mod, adding auto-casting, automatic hooking and reeling, and customization options, and it also knows when to stop your characters fishing before you run out of stamina. Simply set up your requirements,  sit back, and watch the catches come in.

SF Daphne’s buildable ice cream truck

The nostalgic chimes of an ice cream truck are enough to have those in warmer climates sprinting from their desks and down the road for a sweet treat. So surely our Stardew Valley characters would also appreciate some iced desserts, right? With the adorable, pastel-colored Daphne’s buildable ice cream truck mod by Stardew Valley creator Abi Wabi, new NPC Daphne and her truck will be available for all your in-game iced-treat requirements. However, she’ll only visit your town if you download it from the mod page.

Always Welcome

Always Welcome is a simple but effective Stardew Valley mod, allowing players to visit NPC homes outside of the usual hours, provided your friendship level is high enough. More than anything, this makes it easier to visit and gift NPCs, as you might find yourself locked out if you lose track of time – particularly frustrating on NPC birthdays.

Holiday Sales

The Holiday Sales mod allows you to dictate shop opening times. While this is only useful if you’re already using other mods with other towns, it does allow you to solve a problem within those mods. You might find your shops are shut when there’s a festival elsewhere. Keep them open, even if that stops your shop owners from enjoying themselves.

Stardew Valley Expanded

FlashShifter created this mega-mod, which includes a plethora of free content. The Stardew Valley Expanded mod lists all the content available in the description section, explaining that the mod features “ten new map locations, 38 new character events, over 400 location messages, reimagined maps and festivals (all maps), remastered Immersive Farm 2, a new town map reflecting all changes, and many miscellaneous additions!”

Tractor mod

Planting seeds, watering crops, and collecting your bountiful crop is a lot of work. But Pathoschild’s Tractor mod makes every farmer’s life easier. To get the tractor, buy the tractor garage from Robin. When she’s done building it, hop on and get to work. The tractor is all your tools built into one. It can clear twigs and rocks, fertilize dirt, plant seeds, harvest crops, and water the ground. If you dive into the config menu of the mod, you can even use your tractor to kill monsters – mow them all down!

Pokemon retextures

If GameFreak and Nintendo won’t ever officially bring Pokemon to PC then you can be damn sure we’ll try to mod it into every game possible. There’s a massive post on the Stardew Valley forums for Pokemon-themed retextures in Stardew Valley, doing everything from reskinning your livestock into Mareep and Miltank to turning buildings into Pokemon Gyms and, uh, even turning villagers into Pokemon if you so desire. If this mod doesn’t quite cut it, there are games like Pokemon on PC for you to try instead.

NPC map locations

With everything possible to do in a single day in Stardew Valley, memorizing the daily routines of the game’s many characters can feel daunting, especially when many have routines that change depending on the season or weather. With the NPC map locations mod, you can view where each villager is at any time and fully customize it to your preferences, which is handy if you’re only looking for the location of a select few characters.

Simple Crop Label

It is easy to pick Stardew Valley up after a break, venture into your farm, and wonder what you have planted in the soil on earth. A small but useful overhaul, the Simple Crop Label mod adds an option for a name tab to appear over a crop once you hover over it with your mouse.

No Fence Decay

Fences are an aesthetically pleasing piece of garden decoration, besides helping keep animals and certain crops contained in one part of your farm. The downside, however, is that they decay over time, with regular wooden fences only lasting 30 days before deteriorating. No Fence Decay makes all fences and gates last forever by repairing them to full health every morning.

CJB Item Spawner

With great power comes great responsibility, so you will want to use this item spawner mod wisely, lest you wish to break all the balance in your game. This Stardew Valley Item Spawner mod allows you to conjure any item, at whatever quantity and quality, straight into your inventory. Using this mod can take you from rags to riches in no time, or you can put its creative potential to use and build your dream farm without enduring the dozens of hours it would take otherwise.

Chests Anywhere

With all those items in your inventory, you may wish to access your chests from anywhere. We have all felt the pain of being deep into a mining session only to realize your inventory is full of the item. Maybe you have been out trying to impress your favorite villager, and the gift you are looking to give them is back at home in one of your chests. Chests Anywhere, by CJBok and Pathoschild, allows you to access your chests, fridge, shipping bin, and Junimo huts from anywhere on the map, so no more pesky trips back to the farm to pick up or drop off items.

Health and Stamina Regen

Stamina is a very limited resource in Stardew Valley, and with so much to pack into a day’s work – from farming to battling your way through the mines – it can feel like you have never got enough of it. The Health and Stamina Regen mod can relieve such a setback, allowing you to regain stamina and health overtime.

All Crops, All Seasons

A mod that defies nature itself, this cheat allows you to grow and harvest any plant or crop regardless of the season and does not cause crops to decay when a season changes. Usually, each crop is restricted to being grown in a certain season, with no crops being able to be grown in winter without using a greenhouse. Still, with this All Crops All Seasons mod, you can grow all the strawberries in the autumn that your heart desires. Note that this mod does not change store inventory, so you must stock up on seeds each season to plant them later in the year.

Configurable Day Lengths

Sometimes, it can feel like everything is against you in Stardew Valley, even the clock. Part of Stardew Valley is learning how to manage your day effectively, choosing to finish a few tasks rather than stretching your time across many jobs. Rather than deal with that stress, this TimeSpeed mod allows you to adjust your time each day, doubling the day by default but allowing for customized lengths depending on how much you need.

Horse Flute Anywhere

Turns out it is surprisingly easy to misplace a horse, so thank god this Horse Flute Anywhere mod exists. Simple in design, this mod allows you to summon your horse, regardless of where you left it, by pressing ‘H’, with the horse teleporting to your location using what we can only assume to be genuine magic.

Immersive Family

While you can settle down and have a couple of kids in Stardew Valley, they don’t really do much once they’re here. With the Immersive Family mod, your children will interact with your spouse, and the villagers, and have their own activities.

Cheats, cheats, cheats

OK, we all know what you’re really here for. As the holy grail of Stardew Valley cheat mods, CJB cheats menu provides access to every cheat under the sun and then some. They range from an unlimited watering can to infinite health and stamina. You can freeze time, adjust your relationships with the villagers, and warp to any location on the map. This might be the closest we’ll get to Stardew Valley having a sandbox mode.

Schedule Viewer

A low-impact mod, Schedule Viewer shows you what the townsfolk are up to on any given day based on the current state of the world. It’s as if we’ve been keeping an in-depth diary of people’s comings and going. Not creepy at all, and definitely not something we do in real life…

How to install Stardew Valley mods

Stardew Valley does not have any Steam Workshop support, so getting mods working requires you to change the game’s internal files. Therefore, for peace of mind, we highly recommend backing up all your files – especially your save files – before downloading and installing any mods. Bear in mind that, as Stardew Valley is a game that still receives regular updates, a future update may break any existing mods you have installed.

There are two primary mod types in Stardew Valley: mods that replace existing XNB files in the content folder and mods that require the ‘Stardew Modding API’, or SMAPI for short, to install.

XNB Files

Most Stardew Valley mods make small changes to the game, such as altering visuals and reskinning assets. To install, you must replace the existing XNB file with a new, modified version.

Once you’ve downloaded your XNB mod file, which, for example, may be named ‘cat.XNB’, you must find the corresponding XNB file in the Stardew Valley content folder. By default, the Stardew Valley content folder is located here: C:/Steam/steamapps/common/Stardew Valley/Content.

There are several subfolders in the content folder, with most of the important assets, including animals and villagers, having their own, making them easy to find. With our new ‘cat.XNB’ file, go into the ‘Animals’ subfolder and replace the existing ‘cat.xnb’ file with our new modded file, which will appear in-game next time it is booted.

As a reminder, we recommend keeping any unmodded files backed up should you ever wish to uninstall a mod.

SMAPI

For mods that make larger changes to the game, such as altering events, SMAPI is required for installation. It is an open-source piece of software that is maintained by the Stardew Valley modding community that allows for the installation of DLL files SMAPI can also help to manage your files by checking when your mods have received a new update, as well as rewrite any installed mods when an official Stardew Valley update changes any part of the game that affects your mods. Once you have installed SMAPI, all you have to do is place your files into the SMAPI mod folder, and you should be ready.

Content patcher

Content Patcher is a mod for SMAPI that allows you to download content packs, which can change the game’s visuals or assets like XNB mods, but without requiring you to alter the XNB files manually. This is a much more reliable way of installing mods than replacing XNB files, as they can be automatically updated, installed, and uninstalled through SMAPI. Most XNB file mods have content pack equivalents.

Stardew Valley Mod Manager

If you like to keep your mods neat and organized, modder Akago has created the most up-to-date Stardew Valley Mod Manager. This allows you to keep track of all your mods and manage SMAPI. Its best feature allows you to turn mods on or off without deleting the files, which is helpful if you, like us, are incredibly indecisive or have half a dozen different grass mods you want to try.

Now that we’ve sown the seeds for expanding your Stardew Valley mods experience. Get back in and nurture that farm, or look for more mods at the Stardew Valley Nexus game mods hub. If you weren’t already plowing enough time into the farming game as it was, these best Stardew Valley mods would keep you coming back. Love it so much that you’re considering a real-life change of career? We asked a Californian farmer how realistic Stardew Valley is. Finally, if you want something similar, we have recommendations for games like Stardew Valley for you to give a go.