Recommendations by LemurKat

As a mod-maker myself, I thought I would compile a list of my mods, plus the mods that complement them.

LemurKat's Mods

East Scarpe: A custom area east of town (follow the path above the Blacksmith, across the bridge if you are running Stardew Valley Expanded). Contains fishing spots, forage, several NPCs (including Jacob the vet and his precocious daughter, Eloise), and several secret locations. Also, pelicans.

Professor Jasper Thomas: Brings the canonic M. Jasper into the game as a scruffy geologist. After being scorned by his peers for his 'outrageous' theories regarding the origin of the near-mythical dwarves, he has returned to Pelican Town to seek the truth. Or perhaps find so much more.

Juliet and Jessie, the Joja Clerks: Jessie is an older woman, a herbalist with a compassionate nature. Juliet is one of her boarders. Both work rotating shifts at the JojaMart (with Juliet fulfilling the same role as Claire, but yes it is compatible with SVE). Juliet is hot-headed, sharp-tongued and irrepressible.

A Cleaner Sewer: Changes the sewer so it resembles a sea cave. Contains a short-cut to East Scarpe if both mods are installed.

Mr. Ginger: Jas's cat friend and guardian who keeps her company when the human adults in her life leave her by herself. Also has multiple heart events. Probably my most popular mod.

The Ranch Expansion: Expansions for Marnie and Jas (guest starring Mr. Ginger). Giving both story arcs, heart events, and the opportunity to bring an end to Marnie's fling with Lewis (disabled if you have any of the mods that get them together installed).

Community Center Reimagined: Utilises the Community Center (when completed) as a classroom and place for rainy day activities with multiple randomly selected options available so you never know who might attend (or what they might say!).

Tell Everyone (Town Gossip): A fun mod made on a whim. Gives you the opportunity to tell everyone about Marnie and Lewis (only if you selected that response in their shared heart event). Also has villagers actually acknowledge the existence of Leo.

(And a couple more insignificant ones that you can see here: LemurKat's Profile)

Complementary Mods (and other stuff I like)

Character Expansions

I love extra stuff for characters: More events, more dialogue, you name it! I want to really get to know these people. Obviously, not all dialogue and character expansions can 'play nice' together. Lore sometimes contradicts and different writers interpret characters in different ways. Here are a few that I enjoy:

Immersive Shane: The best mod if you enjoy Shane's story arc and want to see his development continue past the barebones of vanilla. Contains numerous heart events, many heart-warming (and occasionally heart-breaking) moments, and enough dialogue that you will never tire of talking to him. The Ranch Expansion is mostly compatible with this lore-wise, excepting of one line in one of the post-marriage events (regarding Jas's parents).

Slightly Cuter Seasonal Outfits and Diverse Stardew Valley: Both of these will change the outfits the characters wear. Slightly cuter takes the regular ones and makes them, well, cuter, whereas Diverse adds some much needed diversity - and is entirely configurable so you can pick and choose from a wide array of variants. My favourites? Elliott, Harvey, and biracial Penny. Also gives Linus an adorable support dog, whom you can befriend (but try not to distract her too much - she's working!). Marigold will soon have compatibility with my Community Center mod. Note that these mods can cause a brief lag when you exit and re-enter buildings as they contain clothing for both indoor and outdoor wear for the NPCs.

Improved Leo: Makes Leo cuter (and look younger)

Evelyn and George: Pelican Town's oldest couple are often overlooked. This gives them more personality and gives you cookies! Use with Ace's Evelyn if you want her to look a little more sophisticated and a little less... melted.

Immersive Spouses: Makes the canon spouses more interactive and interesting, with more varied dialogue. Even adds a bit for custom spouses.

Flower Dance Fix: Mixes up the dancing pairs (and can sometimes choose custom NPCs to dance too!).

New Challenges

Special Orders:Heaps of new special orders and requests to fulfil! All come with rewards both monetary and item wise. No additional events, alas, but still a lot of fun.

Stardew Aquarium: Showcase your fish and help out the curator of this amazing aquarium, with animated sprites of almost every fish ever added to Stardew Valley. The maps are glorious, the animations beautiful, and some of my characters have events here.*

Farm Maps

Oasis Greenhouse: DaisyNiko makes beautiful mods, and although I've largely abandoned her farm maps because I prefer to decorate my own, this truly is a gorgeous greenhouse! **

Standard Farm Reimagined: It's bigger and you can build behind your house. **

Custom Characters

New characters to the valley. There are a lot of characters I really like, too many to list here, so I will limit this list to ones that interact with my characters in some way or another.

Blanche: Pelican Town's adorable librarian. She's super sweet and a little shy. She has an event with Jasper, and will join him for breakfast on Saturdays. *

Jade: Jade is a lively and spirited young woman who loves all things six-legged! She moves in with Juliet and Jessie if you have both mods installed. Otherwise she either lives in the boarding house or the forest.

Juna: She's quirky and crazy and so very delightful!

Lucikiel: Sure, he's a character from an anime game, but he's excellent in his own right with cinematic events, and a story arc that will improve your outlook on Clint. Plus he's overall a wicked character.

Lunna-Astray: Partly an NPC mod, partly a new map mod, Lunna-Astray is an enigmatic young woman with a link to a strange realm. A realm that, incidentally, also contains some new fish. Four new friendable NPCs, five fish, crops, and some somewhat OP recipes.*

Loot

I love stuff. But not too much stuff. Not PPJA levels of crops etc. So, here's a few that I really enjoy playing with.

Adopt n Skin: Probably one of my favourite mods, I love my animals to have variety but am less interested in 10,000 different types of loot, so changing the skins rather than the species/output, makes me very happy. You can basically load every animal skin that interests you into these folders and switch them around to your heart's content. Please note that older duck sprites will bug when they swim and horses are buggy in general. Also there's a not slim chance you'll end up with far too many cats and dogs!

Ancient Crops: Gorgeous sprites, these crops may take a while to unlock, but they very rewarding. Aideen also loves Ancient Flowers, so what other reason do you need to install this mod? I enlarged my Greenhouse especially for them!

Magical Crops: These are wicked fun! Ever been surprised by a crop? No? Well now's your chance!

More New Fish: Fishing is awesome (Although I am sure there are many that would argue with me). Plus if you've got the Aquarium mod, this is basically an essential mod for completing it properly (I'm *almost* there).

Owl Scarecrows and Waterland Bird Scarecrows: I love birds and I love collecting and crafting scarecrows! These two mods have the added advantage that you can make them yourself, so you don't have to replace the regular ones.

Shell Collection: Shells to collect, jewellery to create, recipes to cook. Oh, and scarecrows too! Even a new fence. Includes several special requests.

Secret Statues Retextured: The originals are not aesthetically pleasing but these are creepy cute!

Quality of Life (yes, some of these are cheaty)

Automatic Gates: Seriously, I love this mod. All it does is open the gates for me but... it's great.

Automate: For when you don't want to spend all day loading machines. Works great to automate your your crab pots.

Chests Everywhere: Because I'm always forgetting the things that I need...

Starfruit Regrow: Yes, very cheaty. I've got myself a lovely starfruit farm. Enough to bribe all the jumino to work on my farm!

Better Junimos: The best little indentured forest spirits that ever there were. They use leaves as umbrellas in the rain!

East Scarpe Residents

Nagito: Nagito will move into East Scarpe if both mods are installed. He is an interesting character, with a well designed story arc and lovely sprites. Unfortunately, he has not been fully updated since East Scarpe's February update and 1.5's release, so some tweaking is required (included a DIY map patch to fix issues with his house and East Scarpe's moved entrance).

Beatrice: East Scarpe's Lighthouse keeper. Also not updated for 1.5, but a lovely character, none-the-less. Sadly, no heart events, and her creator appears to be on a hiatus.

* DISCLAIMER: I have helped on these mods either by advising, maintaining, or in the case of Blanche, translating (With the help of Kaya since I don't speak/read Korean). So you could say I am a little biast.

** I have edited my versions of these for personal use, but the original ones are worthwhile on their own.