Summary
There’s no game quite as cozy asStardew Valley. Farming crops, tending to animals, and participating in the village festivals are all great ways to spend the day. It’s a game with a cute atmosphere, loveable characters, and an engaging story. What’s not to love?
The tasks in Stardew Valley can certainly be relaxingand can lead you to some nice rewards. There are five skills in total:Combat,Farming,Fishing,Foraging, andMining. Some skills will take more time to master than others, but they can lead to better professions. So, be prepared to put the work in before considering yourself a true expert.
5Farming
Farming is the main activity in Stardew Valley. More often than not, you’ll spend your days tending to the crops you plant around the area and visiting the animals you’ve nicely housed in a barn nearby. As harvesting and selling crops is the main way to make money in the game, especially early on, it’s no surprise to say that farming will be the first skill that reaches level ten.
Farming will level up by petting animals, harvesting crops, shearingSheep, and milkingCows, along with a few other activities. Given the range of tasks you can do, it’s only natural for farming to be considered the easiest skill to master. Luckily, farming is also an activity only limited by the space you have. While your farm might start small, you can plant and plant until you no longer see the ground, making it a skill that practically levels itself throughout the game. One (very small) downside to farming is the energy cost. The land needs to be tilled before anything is planted, and crops can be watered; both take up an energy point, so a large farm can be hard work.
4Mining
If you don’t spend your days farming under the warm Stardew sun, then you’re most likely deep inside the mines, cracking a pickaxe against rocks to collect and sell. Breaking rocks gives a decent amount of experience, and, as you go further through the levels of the mines,gems and oreswill give a little more.
There’s a chance you’ll spend a lot of time mining throughout the day, making it an easy skill to level up; just not as easily as farming. The energy cost for mining is quite similar to farming; each successful swing of the pickaxe will take up two points of energy, so you’re able to gather quite the haul while you’re out digging. A pickaxe is the most obvious choice, but bombs can come in handy in certain cases, too.
3Combat
Even though Stardew is one of the calmest games available right now, there are still many enemies that you’ll need to defeat on your travels. With this comes your combat level. The combat skill will level up whenever you defeat monsters, so take a weapon with you wherever you go. More difficult monsters will grant you more experience, but it’ll take a while to come across those.
While leveling up the combat skill is straightforward, enemies don’t roam the streets as they do in many other games. Instead, you’ll have to head into the Skull Caverns or the mines to seek them out, making the skill slightly harder to level. Your energy levels can prove to be a hindrance here, too. While defeating monsters might be easy, it can get a lot harder if you run out of energy when you’re in the middle of a fight. There are many weapons and pieces of equipment that you can gather to make your journeys easier, so while combat isn’t the easiest skill to master, it certainly isn’t the hardest.
2Foraging
While foraging’s similarity to farming makes it seem like a simple skill to level, it’s a limited activity. The limit comes from the number of items you’re able to forage, which will reset every Sunday. That means if you manage to forage all the items in one day, you’ll still have to wait for the entire week to end before doing it again. Thankfully, there areplenty of places to forage items, so you’ll be wandering around lots if you decide to dedicate a whole day. Picking items doesn’t take any energy, making it a nice activity to do in between any of the others.
Other than picking items, you can chop down trees, either ones that grow in certain areas around town or the ones you plant yourself back at home. Chopping trees will also take some daily energy, so that may cut into your daily plans. It’s a nice addition to the foraging skill and makes it a little easier to level, but it remains one of the harder skills to complete.
1Fishing
Fishing is arguably the most difficult skill to fully master in Stardew Valley. It’s a simple task and can be quite relaxing, but you have to have a good amount of patience to catch fish. Like farming and mining, fishing is usually an activity that you’ll dedicate a whole day to get the most out of it. As with other activities, you’ll be rewarded as you level up, which can improve your skill, like using bait or a better fishing rod. Fishing also takes up quite a lot of energy, which means you’re unlikely to catch as many fish as you’re hoping for during the day.
There are several tips to make fishing an easier task, and practice certainly makes perfect. However, because of its requirement for time and stamina, fishing can easily be considered the hardest skill to master within the game, no matter how relaxing it may seem.
