Perhaps you just got your hands on Stardew Valley on PC. Or, like me and many others, you picked up the game because it’s on the Nintendo Switch. Whatever the case may be, it turns out running a farm all on your own is a lot of work! Not only that, much of what you do day-to-day is all on you. The vast sense of freedom might be exciting for many players, but it can also be overwhelming.

To help you make the most out of your days on the farm, we put together a Polygon guide for Stardew Valley. This will cover the basics and allow you to feel comfortable tackling the daily operations at your farm in the valley.

STARDEW VALLEY BASIC TIPS: Things to do everyday

On top of whatever activity you want to handle each day, there are a few things you should do every day in Stardew Valley. Most won’t take up too much time, which is your most precious resource.

Watch some TV

Your home in Stardew Valley already comes with a TV, and you should start each day by at least checking the weather. The major thing you’re looking for are rain days. These showers are helpful because they’ll automatically water all of your crops. This will save you a ton of energy for that day, and energy is your second most precious resource. You’ll also want to use coming rain days to plan when to upgrade tools, which we’ll discuss in a later section.

Get to know your neighbors

Stardew Valley starts you off with a quest to get to know everyone, and while it isn’t a priority, it does help talking to them every day.

If you’re looking to romance a specific character, then talking to them often is essential. Over time, your relationship with them grows, they give you new dialogue lines, and they will eventually drop hints about what gifts they would like. Knowing their preferences will allow you to give them the perfect gift — which gets you one step closer to marriage!

The calendar located on the bulletin board on Pierre’s shop also displays the birthdays of each character. Giving your future beloved a gift on their birthday is a great way to get into their good graces. You can also save a trip to town by buying a calendar from Robin, who sells home upgrades.

Make some chests right away

At the very beginning of the game, it’ll be really compelling to try and sell everything you get that isn’t related to farming. You could do this, but the smarter option is crafting a few chests. They only cost 50 pieces of wood, and they are the perfect place for hoarding items.

Stockpiling random items is helpful for a host of reasons. For instance, you might need a large amount of certain items for crafting later. You might even need a single item for random quests you’ll get in the mail or on the bulletin board. There’s nothing worse than needing something you just sold.

In the beginning while learning the ropes, only sell harvested crops while you’re still figuring out what each item does. There’s no need to amass a ton of money if you aren’t saving toward a specific goal. So save items in chests until you know what they actually do.

Watch out for the Travelling Merchant and Worms

Every Friday and Sunday, a travelling merchant will appear in the northwest side of Cindersnap Forest, which is south of your farm. The merchant sells a random assortment of items each time, usually at a higher cost than you might find elsewhere, and for good reason. The merchant’s stock is usually off-season items, which will be useful for completing bundles in the Community Center (which we’ll discuss later). If she has anything off-season, it’s worth grabbing.

Another thing to keep an eye out for is worms. You’ll occasionally see a group of three of them sticking out in dirt or sand. If you dig out those worms with your hoe, they will usually have an interesting item, most commonly, books that will fill in backstory at the library.

STARDEW VALLEY FARMING GUIDE: Essential things to do

There’s a lot to learn in that first year of farming in Stardew Valley. In time, you’ll learn things that you’ll wish you knew at the outset of the game. To help you get started, here are some essential things to do when starting your first farm.

Beginners should pick the default farm

You might wonder which farm is the best at the outset of the game. Honestly, until your second playthrough, the default farm type will be fine. There is so much you don’t know yet that it isn’t worth it trying to experiment before you even understand the basics. The default farm type will be good enough to teach you everything you need to know about farming. The additional farm types are for players who understand the basics and want a unique challenge in their farm.

Get into the habit of making 3x3 patches

The sprinkler is one of the most important tools you’ll have on your farm. Unfortunately, you won’t have access to the resources to make one until later in the game. Regardless, you should begin your game with farming in a configuration that will benefit having a sprinkler.

A 3x3 patch will be the perfect size for the sprinklers, and it will also be beneficial for one the first tool upgrades, the watering can (which we discuss in the next section). Get into the habit of setting up your farming plots the right way from the beginning, instead of radically reorganizing your farm when you get the right upgrades.

Pay attention to your crops’ seasons

Seasons in Stardew Valley are only 28 days long. This isn’t much of a problem in the early game during spring, where most crops only take six days to harvest. But in some of the other seasons, crops take a long time to grow, from half a season to nearly an entire season.

If you haven’t harvested a crop before the seasons change, they’ll die, costing you time and money. So before planting, be mindful of what day of the season it is and how long it’ll take to harvest. I can tell you from experience that nothing is more crushing than waking up to a new day, only to see your entire farm’s crops dead because you didn’t realize today was the start of a new season.

Scarecrows are your friends

Once you start growing crops, you’ll eventually level up and can craft scarecrows. Naturally, they scare aware crows that can eat your crops, which will save you money. Scarecrows cover a range of 8x8 with their bodies in the center. So if you’re making your crops in 3x3 patterns, just place them in the middle and you’ll be fine.

STARDEW VALLEY MINES: How to get through the mines

As much as Stardew Valley is about farming and finding the perfect person to kiss, there’s an avoidable part of the game that some will love or begrudgingly endure: the mines. Though they feel more like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past than Harvest Moon, mines are an essential part of the game.

The mines involve some very basic dungeon crawling and combat, which you might not expect from a game about living the simple life. But, the mines are essential for critical resources you’ll need to build the most advanced stuff on your farm, like sprinklers.

Get your ore and get out

The common denominator for everyone entering the mines is getting ore. Copper, iron and gold ore will be critical resources you’ll need to mine with your trusty pickaxe. Thankfully as you travel through the depths of the mine, you’ll find an elevator every five floors, with bonus items every 10 floors.

If you notice you’re running low on health or energy, you should head back, even if you’re close to an elevator floor. Heading back to the ladder you came from automatically makes you exit the cave. Keep that in mind! Your priority should be getting ore, since you’ll need it for early game upgrades. Later quests will involve getting deeper into the mines or killing tons of enemies, but you can prioritize that separately after you’ve crafted critical early game upgrades.

Don’t die or run out of energy

The mines are probably the only time when Stardew Valley ever feels tense. The deeper you go into the mines, the less energy and health you’ll have. Not only that, going deeper into a mine means having gathered more resources. If you happen to die in the mines or run out of energy, you’ll leave the mine and lose some or all of your resources, essentially wasting a day.

It’s critical to manage your health and energy. You can replenish both resources with food or crops. Even the smallest bit will help you get closer to a room with an elevator.

To help manage your energy, be sure to focus on rocks that have ore first (they’re the ones with colored spikes coming out of them). The ladder that appears generally happens at random. Sometimes it appears after killing most of the enemies in the room. Sometimes you find it randomly under a rock. While swinging your sword doesn’t take energy, using your pickaxe does. So prioritize clearing rocks with ore first, then try to take out enemies, then randomly use your pickaxe until you find the exit.

Crafting stairs in the mine

Did you know you can actually craft a flight of stairs that will bring you down to the next floor, no matter what? For the cost of 100 stones, you’ll eventually get the ability to craft stairs at any time in the mine. Crafting stairs is the perfect way to get to an elevator floor in a pinch, and we love using them right before the bonus floors. Since you end up collecting so many stones while traversing the mines, stairs are a great use for the massive resource you’re forced to collect.

Upgrade path: Watering can, pickaxe, axe, hoe

After spending enough time in the mine, you’ll have enough copper and iron to upgrade your tools. With so many options, you might wonder what’s the best upgrade path. While its up for debate, we believe that the watering can and pickaxe should be your first priorities.

Once you upgrade the watering can to the copper version, you can water your crops in a 1x3 pattern for no additional water or energy cost. This is a massive time and energy saver while you wait until you have enough iron to craft sprinklers. The pickaxe is an obvious choice for all the mining you need to do. The axe upgrade is essential for chopping down the big trunks on your farm, and the hoe is good for later in the game.

These upgrades take two days to complete, so keep that in mind. This is where watching TV and knowing when rain days are coming will be handy. When you upgrade the watering can, do it on a day when the TV tells you rain is coming tomorrow. You can water your plants that day and then let rain handle it the next day. The day after the rain, your watering can should be complete and you can head back to the farm and handle your business.

STARDEW VALLEY COMMUNITY CENTER GUIDE: All those bundles

Hanging over your entire time with Stardew Valley will be the Community Center. Within will be an ever-growing list of challenges to complete in the form of bringing items to the Center. Each of these items exist in theme bundles, requiring certain types of items or seasonal resources. Completing a bundle will unlock a small reward and new bundles to complete. Completing an entire area’s group of bundles will unlock changes in town, giving you access to new areas. This will take time.

Do it for the upgrades, and don’t sellout to Joja

While it’ll take a long time, especially if you miss seasonal items, it’s worthwhile to do it the hard way. At the very beginning the game, Morris from Joja, a big supermarket, offers Lewis, the town’s mayor, the option to sell the Community Center. Don’t be a sellout!

You could pay the astronomic price to have Joja buy out the Community Center. That would help complete all the bundle quests. But in doing so, you’ll miss out on some story bits and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from completing each bundle the hard way.