Dinosaurs are easily the weirdest animal to keep on your farm.
Lava Eels in the Fishing Pond, Dusk Chickens in the Coop, and an entire building dedicated to breeding Slimes don’t compare with the bizarre feeling of watching a small Pepper Rex walking around my barn.
And who the hell is buying these dinosaur eggs from my shipping bin? Is this even ethical?
As things stand in vanilla Stardew Valley, dinosaurs just don’t seem worth the trouble – but it’s nothing a few mods can’t fix.
Easily the weirdest thing about dinos in Stardew Valley is their mysterious silence.
It almost makes them feel like an unfinished mod, even though they’re a vanilla feature of the game.
Creator Sickhouse addresses this issue with their Talkative Dinosaurs mod, which fixes your Jurassic friends’ vocal cords to sound precisely like the Pepper Rex in the Skull Cavern.
It does sound like a frog croaking – but who are we to know what dinosaurs are supposed to sound like?
It takes a lot of effort to fill up Pelican Town’s museum.
Over 90 different minerals, gems, and artifacts are waiting to be discovered for Gunther’s exhibition.
Now, there’s one more.
This mod by Zilchaz will trigger a fun little event the next time you walk into the museum holding a dinosaur egg. After a few days, you’ll find a new friend in this house of knowledge.
It’s an adorable mod that makes the museum a lot livelier.
If you want to grow closer to your scaly friends, you need to think like them, live like them, and – even more importantly – you need to look like them.
The Dinosaur Costume by MouseyPounds is the perfect dinosaur onesie you always wanted.
It adds two styles of dinosaur-themed shirts and boots matching the dinosaur hat and pants you can craft in the base game. Wear both, and you’ll be indistinguishable from a malnourished Pepper Rex walking on its hind legs.
This might be the single cutest outfit you can wear in Stardew Valley, so check it out!
Stardew Valley is a game with wizards, monsters, and forest sprites, but it still feels a little weird to watch baby dinosaurs walking around your barn.
My favorite realistic dinosaur replacement has to be these turtles created by HohenHeizen.
Not only are they painfully cute, but turtles look a bit prehistoric themselves. That’s doubly true in this mod since the sprites are modified dinosaurs with an added shell.
Side by side, these look a lot more “vanilla” than the dinosaurs. If I didn’t know better, I might think the dinosaurs were the mod rather than the turtles.
If chicks can grow into full-fledged hens, why can’t the dinosaurs do the same?
They’re both born from eggs, and birds are technically the latest step in dinosaur evolution.
The Dinosaur Ranching Overhaul by SuperSucc makes raising dinosaurs worthwhile by letting them grow into full-fledged prehistoric beasts and increasing dinosaur product prices.
It also adds a grunting sound effect for the dinos and optional new dino sprites for those looking to shake things up.
Parasaurolophus is a genus of herbivores that walked the plains of North America and Asia during the late Cretaceous, some 75 million years ago.
They’re famous for the oddly-shaped skull that makes them look like the dinosaur equivalent of a gazelle – except these cuties can walk on their hind legs.
This mod by Sketchanie brings these adorable dinos to your farm to replace the Pepper Rex babies you were keeping until now.
My favorite part about this mod is that the Parasaurolophus are herbivores – while the Pepper Rex is most likely a carnivore. Finally, your cows, pigs, and chickens will be truly safe.
Suppose you couldn’t care less about the safety of your animals.
Maybe you’re planning to keep dinos exclusively!
In that case, check out the absolutely gorgeous Velociraptors brought to you by creator Zynonia.
Originating in the late Cretaceous, around 71 million years ago, the Velociraptor exhibits many of the traits we’d later see in birds. For that reason, this mod makes them fluffy with feathers all over their bodies.
You get to choose between eight gorgeous color palettes for these attractive dinos. Alternatively, check out the fantastic Adopt n’ Skin mod to keep different-colored raptors simultaneously.
I love the undeniably video-gamey dinosaur eggs in Stardew Valley.
Their characteristic shape and colorful dots remind me of eggs in Pokémon and Yoshi games.
Still, they’re also undeniably unrealistic. Dinosaur eggs just don’t look like that!
Creator Aviform injects a shot of realism into Stardew Valley by replacing the cartoonish polka-dot effs for realistic dinosaur eggs based on fossil evidence and modern reptilian examples.
You can choose a rounder egg based on herbivores or an elongated oval egg based on carnivores.
When I’m playing a relaxing game like Stardew Valley, I want everything to be cute and comfy.
The vanilla dinosaurs aren’t as ugly as the pigs, but they’re still less-than-ideal.
To achieve the cutest batch of dinos you’ll ever see in SV, you need IdentityPollution’s Cuter Fatter Dinosaurs mod.
With it, your dinos will melt your heart with rosy cheeks and small but chunky bodies.
Watching them wobble around your property and mingling with the rest of your animal family is the most heartwarming fun you can have with dinos in Stardew.
Nelson Chitty is a Venezuelan expat living in Argentina. He’s a writer and translator passionate about history and foreign cultures. His ideal weekend is spent between leisurely playing games of Civilization VI and looking for the next seinen anime to marathon.
