Recommendations by Elizabeth

Recommendations by Elizabeth

For a general overview of what I'm looking for in a mod, I prefer mods that are:

• Balanced: Nothing should be significantly more valuable than vanilla items without corresponding increases in difficulty. I don't want vanilla tasks to get significantly easier, and when they do get easier, there should be lore to explain why.
• Lore-Friendly: Nothing should severely contradict the vanilla lore, or if they do, it should be part of a conscious effort to develop an alternate plot.
• Game Aesthetic: Nothing wrong with pastels, but they're not my taste. I prefer pixels, saturated colors, and outlines. Part of this is that it's hard to get a matching set in any other aesthetic.
• Mostly Bug-Free: I'm willing to ignore the odd error or do a little debugging, but if something seems to throw difficult to reproduce errors that stop the game, I'll probably pass.
• Medium-Small: I prefer to only add a manageable number of items/crops to the game. I won't get to perfection in every save, but I prefer for it to be plausible that I could.

The recommendations posted here by and large only include mods that I feel I have played with long enough to get a feel for—there's many great mods I'm still yet to try! However, there are a few exceptions, and I may not know all the ins and outs of every mod on the list.

Quality of Life Mods

Automatic Gates: No more fiddling around trying to open those gates and accidentally jumping off the horse/breaking the gate! Not cheat-y at all, just nice. This mod is a must-have for me.

Better Ranching: I hate the squeaky failed-milking sound, and how long it takes for the animation to finish, so of course I love this mod. Bonus helpfulness for the part where it helps you remember to pet all the animals by putting heart icons over their heads when they're unmet. This mod is a must-have for me.

Daily Screenshot: I always forget to take pictures for a long time and then take a bunch at once. It's nice to have a record of screenshots to look back on my progress. This mod is a must-have for me.

NPC Map Locations: The cleanest way to get NPC locations on the map that I know of. No more grumbling about how Leo is so hard to find when I want to give him a duck feather. This mod is a must-have for me.

Quick Responses: I keep finding myself wishing for this mod whenever I play on a save where I forgot to install it. Makes eating, mine carts, and anything with a selection box much easier, as I play primarily with a keyboard and only incidentally with a mouse.

Advanced Save Backup: Helps add more frequent backups of your saves, just in case anything explodes unexpectedly.

Stop Rug Removal: Removing rugs from under things is the worst. This mod is the best.

To-Dew: Always nice to have somewhere to store my memory that isn't my brain. It is especially helpful when I put down a save for a while, I can remember what I was up to by checking the list.

Cleaner Beach and Tidepools: So much nicer to walk through the beach with this installed. Will occasionally let forage spawn in the tideponds.

Simple Crop Label: Does what it says on the tin. Labels your crops.

Better Signs: Before this mod, I kept swapping out the object on the sign by accident, and then having to go back and re-add it.

Better Sort: I haven't actually used this much so far, but when I read the description it was like the mod was answering all my hopes and dreams. Every time I hit the inventory sort button it's instant regret and time for manual re-sorting, and this promises to take away all that pain.

Social Page Order Button: Saves me a scroll down to the bottom when I'm trying to friend the last few NPCs.

Dish of the Day Display: Adds a sign outside of the Saloon showing what's for sale that day, which I think is a cute touch.

Add Berry Seasons to Calendar: Currently, this mod seems to be the best mod that adds this feature, since it also includes the summer shell event. The other mod that adds this is Berry Season Reminder.

Skull Cavern Elevator: I hate combat personally, so I don't really use this to cheat very much at all. It takes away the stress of skull cavern and if you use the way I do, it's not game-breaking.

Waterproof Items: It's always a downer when you accidentally chuck a lightning rod into the pond. It's not fully immersive, but on the other hand, I worked hard to make that lightning rod. I don't always install, but it can be nice to have.

Generic Mod Config Menu: This isn't a mod that does anything in the game, per se, but it is very helpful for configuring mods. My personal favorite feature that it adds is the ability to change the config from in the game.

Almanac: Gorgeous and extremely helpful book, with immersive features.

XP Display: A really nice UI-immersive way to display more specific data on XP progress.

Plot Mods

Marnie's Special Orders: In case you realized a bit too late that only Joja sells Auto-Petters, but you also really aren't that into Skull Cavern dives, this mod provides an immersive way for Marnie to also sell Auto-Petters, in a way that's reasonably balanced.

Stardew Aquarium: In case you feel like showing off your fish collection to the in-game world, this lets you donate fish to the aquarium! My only complaint would be that the star level of the fish disappears once you donate, but this is an extremely petty complaint and this mod is otherwise perfect the way it is.

Swim: This mod definitely has a few interesting quirks that some might call bugs (coming back from Ginger Island is a little tricky), but it's also just really fun. It's a little OP in the beginning of a game, but it does time-limit your dive in a way that makes it more balanced. There's pretty fishies!

Ginger Island Mainland Adjustments: This mod adds extra options for characters to go in groups to Ginger Island (or to go at all), and more options for dialogue they can have on the way there/back. You'll want to also nab the content pack that goes with it to make sure characters have dialogue to say. Plus, you get bonus handy debugging tools for schedules!

Pierre's Balcony: This mod is really small, but it's a cute idea. Pierre's balcony is visible to you every time you walk past, but you can't go up and see it...until this mod!

Mx. Qi: A small tweak to a mysterious character that fits in nicely with my headcanon that Mr. Qi is an alien, and aliens have no concept of gender.

Immersive Shane: Changes Shane's story arc to have a more satisfying conclusion: he does manage to get sober, and he even runs Marnie's shop for her sometimes.

Canon-Friendly Dialogue Expansion: Adds more variety to the dialogue, so that you aren't always hearing the same things from the villagers a few years in.

Festival of the Mundane: Party in the sewer on Halloween! A really fun addition to the Spirit's Eve Festival.

Happy Birthday: I love getting birthday presents in the game! Slightly unbalanced in early game if you have a spring birthday. I have not tried out the new content pack system.

Random Flower Queen: This mod uses ImagEd to allow a Flower Queen to be chosen at random for the Flower Dance, plus optional colorful dresses/suits. Also lets Vincent live out his dreams!

Market Day: A rush of setting up shop and restocking to keep all the customers happy. Highly configurable, interesting progression, and very fun to watch everyone stop by the market.

Sam and Vincent's Cola Shop: Absolutely adorable brotherly bonding time. The store stock is exactly as bizarre and hilarious as you might imagine something dreamed up by a teenager and a small child would be.

NPC Mods

Jasper: I've played through most of this mod's content, and I really enjoyed it. The storyline is very well-written, and the event in the museum with the shard is a really cute touch. The mod is much bigger and more immersive than it appears at first glance!

Juliet and Jessie: I haven't quite finished playing through this mod, but I really like the idea of bringing background NPCs to life, so to speak. Both of the characters are interesting to get to know and have vibrant personalities.

Always Raining in the Valley: I definitely haven't finished playing through this, but so far the integration into the valley is very nice, and Mia sent me pancakes so I'll love her forever.

Hey Kitties: Adds two tiny, adorable kittens to the game. Note: does require PyTK!

Juna: I've just met her, but so far she's shown a very colorful personality.

Mister Ginger: I have not played through this, but so far I have enjoyed hanging out with him.

Ayeisha: The Mister Ginger event was adorable, and I'm looking forward to building up hearts to see further events.

Crop Mods

Lumisteria's Flowers and Crops: Very balanced, gradual, non-overwhelming crop mod. Plus, the flowers are very pretty!

More Giant Crops: More giant crops more better. Pairs great with 6480's Giant Crops, which is a content pack for this mod. I also have mixed and matched BBR's Giant Flowers and Neo's Giant Flowers to add giant flowers too.

Six Plantable Crops for Winter: Adds a neat little set of crops to grow in the winter. The art is pretty and the crops are thematic. Note that the manifest is broken, you can either fix or remove the update keys.

Magical Crops: A cute series of puzzles to figure out in crop form. The mechanics are quite fun to figure out.

Sunberry Crops: Two beautiful new plants to grow on your farm that can processed into Solar Essence and Void Essence.

Lumisteria Small Fruit Trees: Cute little decorative trees to grow with those garden pots you chucked into a chest and never looked at again.

Colorful Tulip Pride Edition: Some lovely tulips in a range of different pride colors. Might be nice to get Flower Color Picker if you want to grow a design.

Orchid Crop: Some really nice orchids converted to be growable plants.

Bonster's Crops: Adds some really well-thought out new plants to the game. A good mix of trellis and non-trellis plants, and reasonably balanced.

Fish's Flowers: Two new flowers, pansies and hyacinth are added to the game.

Mouse-Ear Cress: I love when someone makes a mod about something really specific they happen to love a lot. A neat little plant to grow.

Korea Blossom: A nice pack of flowers native to Korea. I particularly like the purple Geumgang-Cholong flowers.

Rei's Big Crops v2: A retexture for the giant crops that makes them look a bit prettier and less strange.

Crafting and Cooking Mods

E's Teas: There are a few different mods that expand on the tea available in-game, but this one is my favorite. It has vanilla-aesthetic sprites and a generally reasonable set of mechanics for making different teas. It's also not dependent on any other giant mods and adds a reasonable number of items to the game.

Krobus Sells Vinegar: For all of your boycotting-Pierre needs. Cute little mod that does what it says.

Okay Recipes: The premise of this mod is extremely funny, and very relatable. Due to limitations in JA, you'll have to read the descriptions to know what the context tags in the ingredients are referring to.

Lumisteria More Pickled Products: It's such a shame you can't pickle eggs in the base game, and I know I tried to pickle some of the forage repeatedly before installing this mod.

Dwarf Recipes: A whole mod based on a single line from the Dwarf. It's a nice compact little cooking mod, and it's cool to get to actually give the Dwarf these foods.

Realistic Looms: I'm always down for some niche crafting expertise injected into the game.

Lumisteria Clumps and Nodes: The art is excellent and I've been really enjoying hitting the new nodes to see what appears.

Discoveries in the Depths: I've been very amused by some of the genuinely weird things to find in the mines that are added by this mod.

Furniture Mods

Lumisteria Flower and Plant Set:: Beautiful decorative furniture that matches the vanilla art style extremely well. The link goes to the DGA version, which I helped convert! Just pick "Lumisteria DGA Flower And Plant Set" under Files.

Lumisteria Spring Furniture: This set has tables, chairs, and dressers. It's a nice compact set of matching furniture. This link is also for the DGA version, pick "Lumisteria DGA Spring Furniture" under Files.

Flower Power Furniture: Very cute flowery decorations. I haven't yet gotten the cash together to buy any in-game, but one day I will!

Adorable Cottage Bathroom Furniture: Extremely adorable, as the name says, and comes in multiple variations! The fishtanks may still have floating fish, but that's a DGA bug.

Pumpkin Junimo Plushies: Everyone needs more junimo furniture, right? Perfect for Halloween.

Lumisteria Walls and Floors: Some really cute new options for wallpaper, using the new non-replacing wallpaper option in 1.5.5.

Sand Dollar Wallpaper: A nice patterned wallpaper. Uses either AT or CP.

Farm Map Mods

Tiny Farm: I was challenged by this mod to see how far I could get, and somehow that farm is progressing the fastest out of any of mine. It's tiny, but not so tiny as to be unworkable, just an interesting challenge. I think it's very possible to achieve perfection with this farm, but I haven't yet.

Meandering Farm: This is a really big farm map. It's like having a whole forest to yourself. It's probably a bit too big for just one player, but I really enjoy cutting down trees and feeling like I'm actually having to put in effort to clear the land.

Overgrown Garden Farm: This is a very cute and fun layout! My only minor complaint is that there are a bunch of weirdly unwalkable tiles and also weirdly walkable tiles that make me wonder if there's some offset going on.

Wren's Expanded Greenhouse: Not too large, just big enough to fit sprinklers really nicely into it and with some nice clean areas for trees. If you wanted to leverage the extra space to grow more trees it could get a little cheat-y but the way I use it's just nicer and neater than vanilla. It's configurable and seasonal and really very pretty.

Greenhouse Sprinklers: I love the concept and execution. A very clever and fairly balanced way to make your greenhouse even prettier.

Farm Cave Spawns More Tree Fruit: For the bat fans out there (or the mushroom fans who also want fruit). Comes with different configuration options, in case you feel that you're getting too much of a good thing.

Pet, Animal, or Fish Mods

Goodbye Cat and Dog and Welcome Pufferchick: Obviously a tiny bit of a joke, but it is very cute. I named mine Puffie. Note that it will make all the cats in the game (if you have any mods that add other cats) also make pufferchick noises instead of meowing!

Custom Critters: Lets you add a variety of small flying creatures all around. I recommend: Bees, Ladybugs, Hummingbirds, and Fireflies. Uses an older content pack style where files are manually added to a folder inside the mod.

Rabbit Floof: In case you'd prefer your rabbits kept all their feet firmly attached, you can have them instead produce floofs!

Adopt 'n' Skin: This mod is letting me live out my cat lady dreams. I don't use it in multiplayer, but I install it every time in single player games. I have used a variety of mods as content packs for it, notably Elle's Cat Replacements. One little-known feature is that XNB mods that edit animal skins can be used as content packs for this mod.

Shell Collection: Adds a variety of new shells as beach forage or crab pot fish. Needs some tweaking on the spawn rates if you aren't extremely patient, but it's not too hard to edit.

Wild Animals: This mod makes the valley come alive in a way that's really quite surprising how transformative it is. Also, the otters are the cutest things ever.

Domestic Animals: Now the villagers can have pets too! Many cute animals wander the town.

Forest Junimos: Meep! Meep! The Junimos have an affinity with the forest, so I love that with this mod they get to hang out there. Even though I sometimes almost stab them by accident in the Secret Woods.

Cat Gifts: Look what the cat dragged in! Can sometimes give you items that are a bit too nice, but on the other hand, frequently your cat gives you trash, which seems accurate.

Not You Again: Adds several new fish to the game, based on Animal Crossing fish. I have never played Animal Crossing, but I like the compact size of the mod and the fish have been fun to catch so far (haven't gotten to the island yet in that game).

Ruska's Pygmy Goats: Some cute goats! I enjoy the shagginess of the goats.

Hair or Clothing Mods

Shardust's Animated Hairstyles for Fashion Sense: Never before has my hair looked so good. Plus, it's easy to switch them up with the Fashion Sense mirror.

Colorful Braids with Flowers: A wide array of different colorings of a long braid, including rainbow hair with flowers in it. I use the CP version, and if you use the colored hairs make sure to set your hair color close to white.

Ace's and Lumisteria's Hairstyle Bundle: Uses the nonreplacing hair option through CP.

Flowery Straw Hat: Takes the plain old straw hat you win by crushing the competition at the Egg Festival and turns in into the envy of the whole town.

FS Kisakae Skirts: Adds a bunch of really pretty new skirts, very swishy and fancy.

FS Cozy Scarves: The coziest, the fluffiest, the flappiest of scarves. Perfect for a snowy winter day.

FS Simple Farmer Dresses: Some dress options for Fashion Sense.

Rural Outfitters: Some cute accessories and clothing for Fashion Sense.

Backpacks and Baubles: Outfit your adventuring with the proper gear, including a variety of backpacks.

Kyuya's Accessories: Live out your sparkly, butterfly-adorned dreams with this mod.

Paisley's Bridal Boutique: Extremely pretty clothing for sale.

Aesthetic Mods

Better Artisan Good Icons:: I really like when the products show the colors of the item used to make them. It both helps with visually telling what's going on in your chests, and also with game immersion. You'll want to get some of the associated content packs in order for the framework to do things.

PondPainter: I love when the vanilla fish make the ponds turn colors, so more of that is cool too! At some point I might make a content pack for better colors than the roe colors, since a lot of fish have brown/orange roe which is pretty sad for the pond color.

Animated Tools and Weapons: I love the Forest Sword and the rainbow Galaxy Sword. I haven't tried all the weapons out, obviously, but the ones I have used have been great. Also, this doesn't seem to add noticeable lag to the game, which is nice.

Gold to Titanium: Gold is a very soft metal, so it's never made any sense that gold tools are better than iron tools in the game. This mod fixes that, and the titanium recoloring is also a very pretty shade of blue.

Harvey No Those Are Poisonous: Does the poisonous windowbox mushroom matter at all? No. Is it very funny? Yes.

Lumisteria House and Building Customization: A recolor of the farm buildings in a classic red barn style with lots of seasonal flowers. I especially love the detail where the snow in the winter varies depending on whether it's a clear day or a snowy day.

Elle's Seasonal Buildings: I like the purple house with the stained glass window. Note that this mod and Lumisteria's mod do the same thing, so you need to pick one or the other to use for each building.

Orange Salmonberries: Salmonberries are orange! I'm glad someone else agrees with me.

Owl Scarecrows: The owls are drawn with a lot of care and attention to detail, and the idea of owls as scarecrows makes tons of sense!

Wan Shi Tong Deluxe Scarecrow: A matching Deluxe Scarecrow to go with the other owls.

Pufferchick Scarecrow: A spiky fish-chick to scare off all the crows. Edits the same things as the owl scarecrows, so pick one or the other.

Seasonal Tub O'Flowers: A small tweak to make the Tub O'Flowers seasonal. More flowers more better.

Turn Sprinklers Into Mushrooms: A little fantasy aesthetic for your crop watering needs. A cute little change.

Vanilla Tweaks: A comprehensive respriting of the vanilla objects. I really enjoy the art style, and the fact that it fits in with the rest of vanilla for the most part. The blueberries are gorgeous!

Stardew Foliage Redone -- Foliage Only: The mushroom trees are so pretty, and in my opinion the fruit trees look much better than vanilla because they aren't so square. I use the configuration to turn on these two mostly.

Gold Stardrop Hero Trophy: The Stardew Hero trophy has admittedly always looked a bit clunky to me, and I really like how this mod redoes it.

Give Maru Scrubs: This mod gives Maru scrubs, because she deserves them. They come in a variety of lovely colors and patterns, even.

Seasonal Haystacks Silo Reskin: I enjoy a variety of silo textures (including the vanilla one!) but I also think it's neat to retexture it to something functional.

Water Flow: A really subtle change, but a neat concept!

Mods I Made and Play With

I don't actually use every mod that I've made when I play. Some of them I made just because someone mentioned it and I couldn't believe the mod didn't exist. Obviously, I'm super biased about these mods because I made them, but here's the ones I have actually played with:

Artifact Spot Duggy: I have trouble spotting the artifact spots sometimes, so I like playing with this since it makes them a bit more obvious. Also, hitting the duggy is very satisfying.

NPC Hair Dye: I really enjoy seeing the NPCs with a rainbow of colorful hair.

Auburn Leah: Let's face it: there are too many people in Pelican Town with the same color redhead hair.

Brown-Haired Jodi: Jodi's hair color mismatch between sprite and portrait has always kinda bothered me.

Bonsai Trees for DGA: I like flowers, I like trees, I like furniture.

Magic Furniture: I like teleporting, and I like furniture. I might personally tweak some of the sell prices to be 50% lower, to be honest.

Lunar New Year Foods: JA mods are always a little more difficult to install mid-save, but I made these foods because I love eating them.