Stardew Valley/Controls

This page covers game controls and other basic features of the game.

Display

While you're playing, you can find the following helpful information on the screen:

Upper right corner

There is a box with the day and date on the top row.
Beneath this are windows with the current weather (left) and season (right).
The third level shows the current time. A dial to the left gives you the time as well.
Underneath this box you can see how much cash you have. The currency is displayed as "g".
Finally there is a small box with an exclamation point below. Click on this to open your farm journal; if flashes when there is a new quest or an update on an existing quest.

Lower right corner

There is a bar showing you energy level. You use up energy be doing work such as farming. You can restore energy by eating food and by sleeping in bed. If your energy reaches zero, you will become exhausted. Using tools is slower and continuing to do stamina-reducing actions will make you pass out. This is similar to what happens if you don't get to bed by 2 AM; a villager will put you to bed, but will charge a fee.
Under certain conditions there is a bar showing your health. You lose health if you are attacked by hostile creatures. Again, you can restore health by eating food and by sleeping in bed. As with energy, if your health reaches zero you will pass out.
You must go to bed before midnight to fully rest or heal. Otherwise the amount of rest or healing depends on how late you went to bed.

Top or bottom of screen

Here you can see the contents of your backpack, your current inventory.

As in many games, your inventory is divided into slots. At the start of the game you get 12 slots, but you can eventually upgrade this to 24 and then 36 slots. Some items, such as tools and furniture, use up an entire inventory slot. Smaller items can be stacked, meaning several can be put into a single slot, though different items can't be combined.

Basic Controls

Keyboard and mouse (PC)

A, W, S, D: Use these to move left (west), up (north), down (south), and right (east) respectively. If you have the auto-run feature switched off, then you can hold down the left Shift key to run. You change these, along with several other user interface keys, in the options tab of the main menu.
Left click: Pick up an item (and place it in your backpack). Put down an items you're currently holding.
Right click: Interact with something in the game. For example open a door, light or put out the fire in a fireplace, or check your mailbox.
Esc: This opens the main menu.

Main menu

This has eight tabs:

Inventory

This shows the current contents of your backpack. Below this is your portrait and name along with slots for clothing. There are two slots for rings, and a slot each for shoes, hat, shirt, and pants/skirt. At the start of the game you start you have only shirt and pants/skirt. You can take these items off and put them in your backpack, or even throw them out. If you want to walk around in your underwear, the game won't judge you.

To the right of your portrait you'll see the name of your farm. your current cash, and your total earnings so far in the game.

To the right of the inventory screen there is a button with a square white symbol. Press this to organize the items in a specific order; this will also combine multiple stacks of the same item. Below this is a trash can; drag items into them to permanently throw them away.

Skill

The game tracks your skill level in five areas: Farming, Mining, Foraging, Fishing and Combat. With each skill level you may learn to craft new items related to that skill. At levels 5 and 10 (the top level) you can choose specialties which give you perks related to the skill. And increasing your skill level will decrease the amount of energy used by doing work related to the skill.

To the left, you'll see your portrait and your current title. The title is based on the combined total of of your skill levels, with Newcomer being your title at the start of the game.

Below skill you can see the contents of you wallet. This contains special items related to your progress in the game.

Social

This shows the start of your relationships with your neighbors. One of the goals of the game is to become friends with your neighbors, and this screen shows your progress in this area. There are 28 "villagers" and your first quest is to meet all of them. You'll also see additional characters, such as Wizard, who appear on the social tab but are not villagers. There are also a few characters you can interact with, but which don't appear on this tab.

You "friendship level" with each character is shown in hearts, with the number of hearts ranging from 0 to 10. (The level can increase beyond 10 for your spouse.) The hearts actually represent friendship points which aren't directly visible in the game; it takes many friendship points to increase the level by one heart. Friendship is affected by several things.

Talking to the person will increase friendship slightly. You don't need to talk to a person more than once per day, though most characters have additional dialog if you talk to them a second time. Conversely, the person's friendship will decrease each day you don't talk to them.
Completing quests - most characters will send you mail asking for a favor. Doing this will increase their friendship. In addition, performing tasks found on the "Help Wanted" board will increase the friendship of the person to posted the request. Certain other quests and events also affect friendship.
Giving the person a gift may either increase or decrease their friendship depending on how well they like the gift. The game contains many clues about each person's favorite gifts are. You can give a person only one gift per day, and at most two gifts each week.

There are many cutscenes and other events which can't be triggered unless you reach a certain friendship level with a certain character. Characters who are friendly with you may also send you gifts in the mail. Many share their cooking recipes with you when your friendship with you reaches a certain level. When your friendship level reaches 8 hearts, which is the maximum for single, marriageable characters, you can start dating, which may eventually lead to marriage. Note that the game does not restrict you to dating or marrying characters with a specific gender.

Map

This shows a map of Stardew Valley and your position in it. Hover the mouse over buildings and certain other areas for more information, though at the beginning of the game some areas just show "???" until you enter them for the first time.

Crafting

This allows you to craft new items from existing raw materials. You start the game with 10 crafting recipes, and learn more as you progress in the game, mostly by increasing your skill levels. The most useful item to start with is a Chest, which give you a place to store items which don't fit in your backpack. Just click on an item to craft an item, assuming you have the required materials with you. But be sure you have room to keep it, otherwise you will have to throw something out.

Collections

This has seven sub-tabs which keep track of the various items you have encountered in the game.

Items shipped: This tracks 145 different items; hover over a picture to see the name and how many you've shipped to sell. Things you can grow, gather, mine, and some which you can obtain through other activities, are tracked here.
Fish: This tracks all the fish you've caught so far. There are 67 kinds of fish in total.
Artifacts: This tracks the artifacts you've found. These are often found in the ground with your hoe. There are 42 different artifacts.
Minerals: This tracks the minerals you've found. These are semi-precious to precious stones you may find minding. There are 53 different minerals.
Recipes: These are cooking recipes you have learned. Some you can learn by watching "The Queen of Sauce" on your television, some are sent to you by friendly neighbors, and some you learn other ways. There are 80 different recipes.
Achievements: This tracks the achievements you earning in the current playthrough. They covers such areas as earning money, making friends, and filling in the other collections.
Letters: This tracks all the letters you have received so far.

Options

This allow you to set gameplay options. For most, the default setting is fine for normal gameplay, but there are a few you may want so consider changing:

Always Show Tool Hit Location: This shows where your hoe or water from you watering can will land. This can be hard to tell otherwise and hitting the wrong spot with your hoe may damage a precious plant.
Show Advanced Crafting Information: This shows how many of the item you've crafted so far, and how much of each of the required materials you have with you.
UI Scale: Use the + and - buttons to increase the size of menus and information displays.
Lock Toolbar: If checked then your inventory will always appear at the bottom of the screen. If unchecked then the inventory will be at the top or bottom, depending on where you are on the screen.
Zoom Level: Use the + and - buttons to zoom in and out in the game screen. Zooming in allows you to see more detail, but zooming out allows you to see a wider area.
Controls: Use these to configure which keyboard keys perform which actions. You might use this, for example, to use arrow keys instead of AWSD for movement.

Exit Game

This has two options:

Exit to Title - If you want to return to the title screen. Useful if you want to restart the day or switch to a different character.
Exit to Desktop - If you want to exist the game completely.

Using either option will cause your progress for the day to be lost, so you'd normally only use this at the start of a new day.

Using tools

There are a number of tools available in the game, from watering cans to weapons. To use a tool, first make sure it's selected in your inventory. After getting a backpack upgrade, your backpack will have multiple rows of items, but only the top row will be visible when not in the inventory tab, and only items in the top row can be selected. Stand in the general neighborhood of the thing of piece of ground you want to use the tool on, then click on it to use the tool. You can also press C to use the tool, but aiming is more difficult. (This, along with other keyboard shortcuts, can be changed in the Options tab.) The "Always Show Tool Hit Location" option in the Options tabs can be helpful for aiming. Most tools can be used on any of the eight squares immediately surrounding you, and the watering can be used on the square you're standing on as well. The range of some tools can be extended by pressing and holding down the mouse button (or C). See the Tools section for details on individual tools.

Time

Time in the game is divided into days, with each day starting at 6 AM and continuing to 2 AM. If time is left to run normally then an entire game day (20 hours) would take about 15 min. of real time. But game time stops when you're in a menu screen and in certain other circumstance. Also, time does not continue normally when you attend a community festival.

There are seven days in a week, and four weeks in a game season. (There are no individual months in the game.) The four seasons are Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. making 112 days in ta game year. Most crops only grow during a certain season, items you can obtain by foraging change from season to season, and the season also affects when many fish will appear. The game keeps track of years starting from when you arrive, so the game starts on the first day of Spring, Year 1. You can see the current day, date and season in the upper right corner of the screen.

Since being able to locate villagers is often important, and it helps to know where they will be on a given day. But there are a number of factors which can determine this:

Day of the week
Weather
Season
The specific date.
For some characters, you friendship level may affect their schedule.

Chests

Managing you inventory is important in the game, so you'll want to create at least one chest at the start of the game to hold items you don't need to carry around with you; use the Crafting tab to do this. You'll probably want to create more chests as you obtain more wood. When the chest in your inventory, click on it hold it, then place on any nearby unoccupied square; these appear green when you hover the chair over them. The same mechanic applies when you place any piece of furniture.

Once the chest is in place, right click to open it. Two inventories appear on the screen, the chest contents on top and your backpack on the bottom. Click on a square to move its contents to the other container. For stackable items, right click to move a single items to the other container. Shift+right click divides the stack in two as evenly as possible, have moves half to the other container. Items moved will be combined with an existing stack if possible, and place in the first available empty slot otherwise. If there are no available slots then you just pick up the item. You can then put it back or decide which item you want to replace.

There are three buttons next to the chest inventory:

Toggle Color Picker - This toggles a color picker control above the chest inventory. Click on a color to change the chest to that color. This may be useful for keeping track of the contents of chests when you have a lot of them. (A sign can be used for this as well.)
Add to Existing Stacks - This is a useful shortcut which allows you to rapidly move items. If you have the some of the same stackable item in both chests, then the button will combine the stacks and put the combined stacks in the chest. It does this for all applicable items at once.
Organize - This works the same way as the Organize button in the main inventory tab.

In addition there is a trash can, as in your the Inventory tab, which can also be used to permanently toss certain items. Press OK or press Escape when you're done.

Shopping

You'll interact with many merchants over the course of the game. To start trading, click the counter in front of the merchant. In most cases you can also talk to the merchant to say hello by walking around the counter and clicking on the person directly. When the trade screen opens, click on an item one or more times to hold as many of the item as you want to buy. Then place them in an open inventory slot. (Make sure you actually have an open slot before you buy, otherwise you may have to throw away some items.) To speed things up, Shift+click on an item to buy 5 at a time. To sell, left click (or a on controllers) to sell an entire stack, and right click (y on controllers) to sell one at time.