The 17 best Stardew Valley mods to shake up your playthrough

polygon.com:

Despite being released back in 2016, Stardew Valley is still going strong. But even the best-designed games can be tweaked to your liking using mods. New players might decide they prefer a recolored look, while those with hundreds of hours might be searching for an expanded experience. Either way, we’ve gathered some of the best Stardew Valley mods to give you tons of options for your next playthrough.

First, you’ll need to get set up for modding. These mods are predominantly for those playing on a PC, although the Steam Deck and Android versions of Stardew also support some mods. You’ll need an additional piece of software, called SMAPI, which can be downloaded from Nexus Mods. There is also a nice set of instructions for installing and using it available on the Stardew Valley Wiki.

For quite a few mods, you’ll also need to have Content Patcher, so it’s worth setting that up at the same time. Just unzip the folder inside the Mods folder that was created automatically by SMAPI.

Congratulations! You’re ready to dive into the wonderful world ofStardew modding.

The animals scattered around Pelican Town help it to feel alive and in tune with the nature around it. Elle’s Town Animals jazzes them up, with multiple options including dozens of new birds and 42 butterfly variants. You can also randomize which ones appear if, like me, that seems like an impossible decision to you.

Many Stardew Valley mods simply make small changes to how the game looks, and Seasonal Outfits is a popular example. Its subtitle is “Slightly Cuter Aesthetic,” so it’s not here to overhaul anything, but it does tweak NPC sprites so that they have different clothes depending on the weather, as well as giving them special looks for the Flower Dance and