Tap a couple oak trees as soon as you can and hold onto the oak resin. You’ll need a lot in the not so distant future.
Hoe the little wiggly worms you can sometimes find in the ground.
Watch tv every day, you get good tips and often learn cooking recipes. Though you can’t use the recipes until you upgrade your house later in the game.
Fishing can give a lot of money!
Use your sickle to cut the little bushes for a chance to get seeds to plant (free money)!
Enjoy the game! I have too many hours in this game. Playing it for the first time again would be such a joy!
ETA: Also go to the south and collect the spring onions to eat for energy before salmon berry season hits. Then go salmon berry hunting each possible day for a basically endless energy supply.
I think it's worth adding that while some decisions affect the future, you don't miss out on stuff just from not doing things in time. E.g. you forgot to grow pumpkins in the right season so can't get them for the community center, that doesn't matter, it will still be there next year so don't stress.
Your comment is 5 months old, but I just wanna leave a little comment.
I agree on not stressing. Stardew is a cozy game. Some ate food to maximize their days in year 1. But I thought that time isn't a limited resource. Whichever I couldn't do this day due to lack of energy, I could do the next day. So there were days when I had little energy at about 6 pm and I 💤. Idk if it was efficient but I'm :) with my progress. I'm not going for an efficient run.
I must be doing something wrong then. It's one of the most stressful games I've ever played.
The constant grind on the field, the need to explore and find resources to upgrade your tools, while the villagers passively-aggressively force you to interact with them and give them gifts. Then, there's a lore to uncover, but after a long day of work and responsibilities, you don't have any time or power to discover anything.
But wait, you now have the resources to largely automate the plant watering, so you might have some time to experiment with livestock. It eats grass, which there is plenty of. It'll be easy. However, just when as think you have things figured out, the winter hits, and you slowly start to realize your hay reserves will not last til spring. Shit! What would Marnie say about how I treat my animals? This is just too much...
There are lots of challenges people do because they enjoy it. Things like trying to complete the community centre in year 1, which requires using each day to its fullest. But it's all self imposed.
There are probably only two things that could kind of be considered, which I will try to keep spoilers to a minimum for any readers but it's still a little spoilery. One is what happens at the end of year 2, but if you don't stack up then you can retrigger this on demand. And the other is the randomised quests that come late game with time limits, but this is a short term time limit (do X in X days) and you don't have to do them they are just random challenges.
I'm in year 5. Idk what was in the end of year 2 so I googled. You're talking re >!Grandpa's evaluation!< right? I went to stardewvalleywiki.com. >!I counted how many points I am now. About 11. 1 more and I can have those sweet, sweet daily iridium ores.!<
Yes that's what I'm talking about. It's automatically triggered at the end of year 2 but you can trigger the assessment at any time after that point at the shrine with a diamond.