What is a Stardew Valley farmer without their tools?
Back when our ancestors figured out they could plant seeds and grow plants from food, they did all their digging and watering with their hands and whatever coconut husk they found lying around.
With the development of tools, each person could grow more food until, finally, everyone produced enough food to feed themselves and hundreds more people.
You’ll need only the best tools if you want to take your Stardew Valley farm to the next level & feed the world from your little ranch in Pelican Town.
Here are some mods to revolutionize your farming gear.
Stardew Valley is a game about hard work for your player character.
The best thing a farmer can do to lighten the load and get more done daily is to upgrade their tools. This means spending some days without them while Clint tunes them up.
If you’re an airhead like me, you may even forget to pick up your finished tools until it’s too late – and that’s another day your poor little plants didn’t get watered.
That’s where Instant Tool Upgrades comes in.
Once installed, you can take your tools to Clint, who will upgrade them right then and there! You still need to pay him though.
There are many tools in a farmer’s toolbox, and it can be difficult to sort through them.
Even the toolbar isn’t particularly comfortable if you’re not good at keeping track of hotkeys.
I love Animal Crossing’s approach: a nice and simple selection wheel with everything you need from moment to moment.
The Toolbelt mod introduces a similar custom tool selection wheel to Stardew Valley so you can pick the tool you need in the fastest and most intuitive way possible.
Iridium is the highest-quality material you can use to forge tools in Stardew Valley.
With these iridescent tools, you’ll have the strength of a demigod. You’ll till 18 tiles of dirt in one swing of your Iridium Hoe and water them just as easily with the Iridium Watering Can.
You can even make a Trash Can out of Iridium, though it seems like a waste.
Such powerful tools should look fittingly badass! The iridescent purple color of Iridium is already attractive, but this mod offers some superb fantasy-styled replacements you can’t overlook.
For something a little bit more gentle and soft, consider getting yourself some Pink Tools.
This mod turns your farmer’s instruments a hot, bright pink that would make Barbie want to leave Ken and pursue a life in connection to nature.
At first, only the wooden part of your everyday tools will turn pink – but once you get them to Iridium-level, they look like they belong in a magical girl anime.
Some tools, like the Watering Can and the Trash Can, are 100% pink from the get-go. It looks like you just bought a farm-themed Polly Pocket compact, and I’m living for it.
Suppose you were a goth before you came to Pelican Town.
Maybe you coped with a corporate employee’s square and boring life by expressing your individuality through somber clothing and make-up.
You can bring some of your urban individuality into Stardew Valley with the Elegant Tools set, which not only recolors every tool to black and white but wraps cute ribbons around them.
Fans of Gothitelle in Pokémon might find these Elegant Tools eerily familiar.
As a hardcore fan of the Harvest Moon series, I can’t help but love this retro tool retexture.
Harvest Moon Tools changes the icons of every tool in Stardew Valley to match their counterpart from the original 1997 Harvest Moon on the SNES.
It only changes the icons on the toolbar: but that should be plenty to please most Harvest Moon fans. Think of it as a little Easter Egg to help you connect with your first farm sim.
After you’ve spent 25k and Stardew Valley’s entire natural Iridium reserves on upgrading your tools to the max, you’d hope your character would be satisfied.
Nothing farther from the truth.
Once an upgrader, always an upgrader. Becoming stronger and more productive with each visit to Clint’s to upgrade a tool is a lifestyle. We’re not about to let it go.
Prismatic Tools lets Clint forge the rainbow-colored tools of the gods – if you’ve got the cash and enough Prismatic Shards.
These tools have ridiculous power and range.
You’ll fell trees in one swing, crush rocks after smashing them just once, and just wait until you see the range of the Prismatic Watering Can…
Rainbow-colored tools and weapons are incredibly cool, but you know what’s cooler?
Animated rainbow tools and weapons.
This mod installs some RGB lights on your prismatic weapons so they’ll look like your Razer gamer keyboard during a particularly intense League of Legends match.
You’ll also notice the animated effect spreading to several non-prismatic items, such as the Lava Katana, the Obsidian Edge, and the Templar’s Sword.
I grew up playing Harvest Moon on portable consoles.
Games like Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town (2003) and Harvest Moon DS (2005) are why I love Stardew Valley so much in my adult life.
One thing that sets these games apart from Stardew Valley is how the tools are used. While specific tools can be charged up in both games, Harvest Moon’s charging is just miles better.
With the Tooth and Nail mod, you’ll be able to charge up most of your tools to increase their power and range. A fully-upgraded pickaxe swing might just smash every rock on screen!
It’s a bit overpowered, but it doesn’t make the game feel unbalanced. It streamlines a bit of the farming experience so you can spend more brain power navigating your human relationships.
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.
