Fall is My Favorite Time of Year in Stardew Valley

My second summer is coming to a close. Soon, it will fall in Stardew Valley, and I’ll get a chance to do a few things differently than I did the previous year. This is my favorite time of year in real life and the game.

There are a bunch of things I want to get done in the game, and I have several quests piling up on me. I haven’t mentioned the quests that much, and that is because I keep forgetting about them. Hopefully, I’ll do better this time than I normally do.

I’m looking forward to the two events in the fall. There is the harvest festival and the Halloween event. It’s called something else, but I keep calling the Spirit Festival, Halloween because that is what it feels like to me.

My Pufferfish Story

Sadly, I didn’t get a pufferfish during the summer. I’m not good at the fishing mini game, and getting as many fish as needed was a struggle. There is always next year.

There are three fish I need to catch to complete the Community Center.

• Pufferfish
• Walleye
• Sturgeon

I don’t like this part of the Community Center. The other parts are somewhat easy, or at least fun. Fishing isn’t all that fun to me.

There is also a mission assigned to you for a pufferfish. I haven’t talked about these quests much. The main reason is that they aren’t all that interesting to me. The only one I found funny has to do with getting Lewis’s underwear back for him.

Next summer, or whenever I find a workaround for it, I have to catch two pufferfish. I know there is a workaround or a way to catch them at a different time. This is the only part of the game I don’t like, and it all has to do with me being bad at something.

Remembering I have a Greenhouse

If you haven’t picked up on it by now, I’m a forgetful and somewhat stupid person, especially when it comes to video games. I’ll always forget stuff like this, even though it will make things easier for me. The Greenhouse in Stardew Valley is one of the many things I occasionally forget about.

I’m going to try to remember it this time! I planted crops, and I’m going to water them! Let’s see how long that will last.

During the last few days of summer, I planted some starfruit and cactus in there. I need a starfruit for one of the quests, so I’ll hopefully water them and remember they exist. Seriously, I struggle with stuff like this. I’m going to cross my fingers and hope it isn’t an early warning sign of Alzheimer’s that runs through my family.

Beginning of Fall

Every time I play this game, I have a plan for each season. Then, I immediately screw it up by planting things I didn’t want to, or changing things at the last minute. I’m all over the place with this game.

I planted a lot of corn, pumpkins, and cranberries. On top of that, I have my flower bed and greenhouse. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing this right, and then I remember it doesn’t matter.

There is no right or wrong way to play Stardew Valley. You can do whatever you want unless you’re going for something specific. I chuckle when I read posts about “the best way to do something.” Some people have overinflated opinions of video games.

One thing that I did get out of the way quickly was catching a walleye. I was a little surprised that it happened so fast, and I’m glad I got it over with. Being from the Midwest, which sounds a little stupid to say, I remember fishing for walleye with my dad and grandfather.

These aren’t all happy memories. The reason I don’t go fishing anymore is because of my grandfather. He was big on negative reinforcement, which is a nice way of saying he was a jerk.

The last time I went fishing was with him. We sat in silence on this boat. This wasn’t out of the norm since I was told that “talking scares the fish away,” but I also had nothing to say to my grandfather. We had nothing in common, and he seemed to take great joy in telling me how dumb all my hobbies were.

Getting off that tangent, I focused on completing the quests I had and making other strange observations. The one thing that stuck in my mind was how much trash was in the lakes and rivers in the town. Being told that littering was bad, and the hours of watching Captain Planet when I was growing up, this bothered me.

What does Lewis do all day?

I’ve seen Stardew Valley’s incompetent and possibly corrupt mayor wandering around the town from time to time. He claims to be collecting taxes, but I find that dubious at best. If the town is collecting taxes, then none of it is going to repairs, as that job seems to have been left to me as some forest spirits.

Can you imagine the uproar if some government official says they can’t repair a road unless you collect a bunch of berries and get a little green blob guy to do the work? Somehow, this scenario makes total sense in a video game. The only thing I can do is laugh about it.

There is a ton of garbage in the lakes, rivers, and ocean. I know this because I keep “catching” it when I go fishing. I also keep finding an alarming number of broken glasses.

I feel like this town has a serious bully problem. Someone, I’m guessing Lewis and his gang of political thugs, keep beating up the doctor and breaking his glasses. This is probably how Lewis remains in power.

I like joking about how awful Lewis is. He is a kindly older man, but doesn’t seem to do much. I can only guess that he is doing a good job, even though I don’t see any evidence of it.

A Thing About Pam

I got a letter from Pam in the game. She is an alcoholic who lives in a trailer with her daughter. For some reason, she’s also the bus driver, despite her being a drunk.

Since there is no police force in Stardew Valley or a fire department, no one has bothered to stop her. She’s allowed to drink most of the night and then drive the bus all day, once you have the bus repaired. Why hasn’t anyone else bothered to fix the bus? Well, that would run counter to Lewis’s policy of not giving a shit.

I bring this up because Pam “found” a beer in a drawer and thought she would send it to me. I have no idea what possessed her to do this, but I’m assuming the beer has gone bad. Why else would a drunk send beer through the mail to some random person? Who else has received alcohol from Pam? Is this a common thing for her to do? I guess we’ll never know, because I don’t care enough to ask the community a question about it.

My Favorite Time of Year

I love this time of year, not only in Stardew Valley, but also in real life. It is cold enough to need warm clothing, but you don’t always need a jacket.

The colors are so beautiful. I know the leaves are dying, but I don’t think about that as I enjoy the oranges, yellows, and reds. These are all present in Stardew Valley, and they remind me of the long drive to my cabin in Northern Michigan.

What I like about this time of year is cooking over a campfire. It feels right to do it this time of year, as you don’t get too hot near the fire. As far as I know, you don’t do this in the game.

This is also when Halloween takes place. I love this holiday, and all of the weird stories around it. In my neighborhood, there was a house that handed out bible verses instead of candy. That house got egged and TPed, or rolled depending on what part of the US you grew up in, a lot.

In Stardew Valley, there is an event at the end of Fall where the town has a Halloween-like celebration. This has always been a mystery to me, as it feels unfinished. You can go through a maze and find a golden pumpkin, but I have no idea how to start or end a special event. I’m sure the answer is somewhere, but I’ve never found it.

The other event is a harvest festival. This is a fun little event where Lewis judges your crops and gives you a reward depending on how well you do. This is where the Silver, Gold, and Purple stars on the crops and milk come into play. It’s an easy event to win, if you care about that sort of thing.

These are the two events I like the most. The crops are also my favorite, even if I don’t always remember to plant all of them. I tend to fall back on planting copious amounts of pumpkins.

Wrap up

It will be fun to see what winter brings. I don’t like winter in games like this. They tend to get very boring as you don’t have as many things to do. I’ll give a short update on what happens during the winter in a while.

If you liked this post, please check out my Dungeon Inn and Fields of Mysteria reviews.