Stardew Valley is an extremely well made game, with tons of things to do. In my first year it almost seemed overwhelming, trying to balance planting, tending to my animals, mining, etc. However, I still found things to be missing. Most of these things are probably more personal annoyances than anything, but there could definitely be a lot more added. With that, I started a new farm on the Standard map and began writing down ideas for improvements, and any bugs that I found. I thought that I should share this list with everyone. NOTE: Most of these things came from personal preference and what I found to be either annoying/lacking. It's fine if you disagree with any or all of these changes, but nevertheless I felt I should share this. NOTE: If you would quickly like to see all the ideas, they have been underlined. If you want to see more of an explanation as to why I think it should be added, just read the text next to it. NOTE: If you see something on this list that has wrong information regarding the current game or something that was already added/fixed, please feel free to tell me and I will remove it. Additions/Improvements Add a minecart at the beach. All the current cart locations feel like they should be there and actually serve a purpose (maybe not so much the quarry), but the beach is another huge location that could really use one. I feel making a small clearing over on the far-right of the beach, or over by Elliot's cabin would be a fitting spot for the cart to be. Add palm saplings. These could be obtained first from the Calico Desert, and then brought back and planted on the normal beach. This is small but could provide a source of wood, and possibly the ability to grow coconuts on the beach. Allow an option to upgrade the Greenhouse. Once unlocking the Greenhouse, the player would be able to talk to Robin and upgrade it. This would allow for more space, or possibly even a basement level. Buying the basement would basically be like getting a second version of the mushroom/fruit cave, but possibly bigger. Add a boat. The boat could work in a few different ways. Option 1 being the boat is broken down, and must be repaired through a new bundle, (Similar to how the bus works). Then once repaired, the player could pay a small fee to travel with it, (Traveling location explained later). Option 2 being it is used by Willy. You could either require a certain friendship level with Willy to use it, or make a new quest-ish system where Willy requires certain fish to be caught. The 'fishing quest' could basically be a much smaller community center based around aquatics, that when completed allows access to the boat. Add an island. This island would be only accessible through repairing the new boat, and could be used for a lot of things, depending on how big it would be. Something like this would have a lot of potential features, so here are the few I thought of: -Volcano. This could serve many uses, such as an indoor area overlooking a large lava lake. Inside you could find random pieces of fire quartz, or other possibly new items. It could also be scalable, and at the top have some sort of easter-egg or other feature. -Small Village. This could vary in size, and possibly just be one house, but it would be nice to have some new characters. They could have their own quests, and possibly have a shop that sells exclusive items, similar to Sandy in the Calico Desert. -Fruit Trees. This is the more lame approach, but the island could simply have some foragable items along with fruit trees. -Hot spring. The hot springs would be similar to the Bath House, where standing next to them gives you energy back. Foragable items could spawn such as coral, but new ones such as starfish could also spawn. Fishing in the spring would also have exclusive fish and items. Add more use for the train. The train currently is currently pretty useless, honestly. The best thing you can get from it is a geode, and even that isn't all that great. It would be cool if you could get better items out of it, and more often at that. It really is not worth making a run for the train, only to go and have it drop a few stone or wood, (which is what normally happens). Graphic improvements could also be made, such as having actual people in the passenger cars. A very large feature that could also involve the train would be to actually make it boardable, and have it take you somewhere. Another city, town? Allow for the southern beach to be accessed. When I was first exploring the map and saw that beach with trash on it, I immediately looked for a way down. I was pretty disappointed learning that I could not go down, seeing missed potential for another cave or fishing spot. It isn't a very major change, but it would still be cool nonetheless. Add more in Calico Desert. When I repaired the bus and went to the desert for my first time, I had my hopes up way to high. I got there and realized all that was there was a single shop, 2 new foragable items, and a cave. Not saying that those features aren't a lot in terms of the whole purpose they serve in the game, it still just felt like it was missing things. New buildings with characters could possibly be added, or more foragable items like cactus or tumbleweeds. Add more NPC text and events. This is really nothing special, other than making characters more unique. This is more so in events than normal days, because the characters have no different event text. So after the first year, there is no reason to talk to any NPC, as they just say the same thing as the prior year. More random events would be cool as well, maybe between other NPCs rather than just a single NPC and a player. This would make the game less cookie cutter when playing, and make the game feel fresh. Add more levels to the mine. The current normal mine only has 120 levels. While that may seem like a lot, you can easily reach the bottom while still having your default tools. I thought that an appropriate depth would be around 200 levels. This wouldn't add any new mine themed areas, but just expand the current ones to be larger. Allow for kids to grow up. I have seen so many other forums and people talk about this idea, and I completely agree. Kids serve very little purpose, other than getting in your way once they can crawl. But if the kids could actually grow up, have their own dialogue, interact with other characters, and even get married themselves, it would feel a whole lot better. Even if they stopped growing up at their late teens, it would also be nice to have them able to work on the farm. Instead of your spouse occasionally watering your crops or such, it would so much cooler to have your kid do it. It would give them some use and add a whole new dialogue. Better yet, when the kids grow up, it would be cool if the kids physical features were taken half from your own character, and half from your spouse. Add a new panning item. The pan feature itself seems a bit lacking. However, what would make it better is being able to build a place a panning item, similar to a crab trap. You would have to place these in rivers, and every so often it would produce some copper or gold, (not just those specific ores). Add more with Junimo. The Junimo are very cute, and an interesting bunch. But you see and learn very little about what they actually are, other than the small texts that come up after completing bundles. My idea was to have some sort of secret clearing open in the forest behind the community center after all the bundles were complete. Entering this would lead you to a Junimo village, with huts and a small village. This would allow for more events and possibly some exclusive items. These are currently all the ideas I had. Some are better than others, but maybe these can inspire people for some cool mods or possibly make it in the game Thank you for reading and please leave and feedback or other ideas.
Adding on to the kid thing, it could be that they grow up until in their late teens, and then they could ask the parent whether they are allowed to leave Stardew Valley and look for what they want to be in life. If the parent says no, then they could maybe get a job at Pierre's/Robin's/Marnie's/help with Demetrius' studies, but if they say yes, then the child would leave and could return a few times to check in with their parents.
