This game! I'm in love! My husband bought me Stardew last night after raving about it for weeks. I'm addicted. But I have a bit of a problem. I'm not sure how to use my time efficiently? Like, each day goes by so fast and I don't know what I should be doing day by day. Tend to the farm? Work on relationships? Mine? Fish?? What do your schedules look like? Normally it wouldn't matter and I'd just play for hours on end but I can't do that anymore, I have a 1 year old running around and can only play when he goes to bed!
The first year I focused pretty hard on mining and fishing, compressing everything else to an efficient minimum level. Now by spring year two I have so much money and infrastructure I basically don't have to worry about cash at all, so I'm mostly raising relationships and working on completion.
Water crops early morning on sunny days, no one is awake and there isn't much to do, once done with that I run to down center to check calendar/bullinton board (useful until you get the calendar for your home) Then I either forage, do a gift run, or fish. On rainy days I do dungeon mine, since you can devout the entire day and all the energy toward it. If I have some energy when i get back at night I chop wood, wood is always good to have. Same for sap. During winter i spend most of my time in the mines getting all the ore and so on I need. You can't grow crops so you can devout much more time to socializing, mining, and fishing. Maple syrup is a good source of income for winter too, since it is pumped out all year round. So I make sure I have some maple trees planted and tapped for winter.
Watch the tv for rainy days... those are the days you can easily go mine, fish, do relationship stuff... whatever... because you dont have to water crops...
Play it the way you want to play it, you can't play it wrong. I wanted to focus on everything, but you obviously don't have time for everything. every day when I wake up I deal with my crops, and after that tend to my animals. By that time, the shop should be open, so I run and grab new seeds and talk to / gift villagers on the way. After this I can do whatever, fish, mine or both if I want too. I usually fish a bit in the day, and mine when it's getting late. When I get home again I replant my seeds, put new things in my room (If I have bought/gotten any) and then go to bed. Basically, for me everyday from 6 - 9/10 ish is the same, because I ALWAYS tend to my crops and animals before I do anything else, after that I'm free to do whatever I want to do, even though it's Impossible to play the game wrong (Maybe not impossible, but you know). Oh, and I always forage while I'm roaming the woods and town, and I try to manage a trip into the secret woods to get hard wood every day. If I need to work on my farm or somthing I usually spend a whole day doing that, and If I have time by the end of the day I fish or mine. Good luck, and have fun with the game. I'm 50 hours in and I still love it!
A review I read touched on this, saying that as the game is so unusually open it's easy to lose focus early and and worry that you aren't making enough progress and doing the 'right' things. While that may be true of other games I don't think there is a right or wrong way to approach Stardew Valley, once you're comfortable with that then you can set your own agenda. I'm still new so just trying to make money - every morning I water and farm plants (if required), then have a loose rotation of one day of fishing, one of clearing my farm to get stone and wood and one of quests or errands in town/relationship building.
