Very good question my friend.
I love the vanilla, original Stardew Valley – but it has been 8 years since it’s original release, while it has received free updates with more content, some of us are on our 1000th hour of gameplay and we’re itching for new secrets to find. Or you’re on hour 3 and the original levels of content don’t feel enough for you but you’re enjoying the world.
LOOK NO FURTHER!
There are so many mods that can help make the game accessible, bigger with more to do and people to meet. The issue then is, there are SO MANY MODS where do you begin?
Nexus Mods is the best place in my opinion to find good mods and download them safely. The community on Nexus is so supportive and all love Stardew and create mods that honour ConcernedApe’s intentions and vision for the game.

I am going to break these mods down into Cosmetic, Gameplay and Quality of Life. But first, there are some modification frameworks you need to have downloaded for many of these mods to run. It’s important to note these as well, I found many other tutorials that leave out that you need all of these other pieces to download the one mod you want. Or throw-in at the end “Remember to have this and this downloaded first” which is fine, unless you’re a first time modder who just wants to dive in like I was and I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t working. You need the frameworks and the required utilities for the fun mods to run. Here are a few that are required for majority of the mods I have listed below. It’s a good place to start.

Quality of Life Mods

These mods are to help you enjoy the vanilla experience of Stardew Valley, little things that just make your day on the farm a tad easier.

NPC Map Locations

NPC Map Locations mod, does what it says on the tin. You can see where the NPCs are on your map. No more scourring town to find Pierre on his day off from running the shop, or looking for Robin on a Tuesday. You can now see them wherever they are hiding.
This is an easy mod and is compatible with 1.6 updates and works with Gameplay mods that expand the world.
Check out NPC Map Locations mod HERE

UI Info Suite 2

UI Info Suite 2 brings up a small set of icons below the date and time that tell you what your daily luck is, birthdays and whether the travelling cart is around. It also can add a ‘experience bar’ for different skills like mining and farming to help you see how much more you need to go before leveling up and unlocking mastery in that skill. The UI Info mod also adds a menu screen where you can control how much of this help you have pop up so you can change it to your liking if you’re worried about it feeling like cheating.
Check out UI Info Suite mod HERE

Skull Cavern Elevator

I cannot express how helpful I find this mod. I have made it to the bottom of Skull Caverns once in all my Stardew playthroughs. This mod adds an elevator like the mines in Pelican Town has.
That’s it. Just allows you to pop back down to where you were. It’s so simple but stops me losing my mind.
Check out Skull Cavern Elevator mod HERE

Gameplay Mods

Adding new mechanics, characters and areas growing the Stardew Valley that you love.

Stardew Expanded

The big boy. The one you’ve seen online. If you are a Stardew veteran with hundreds of hours to your name. Dive into Pelican Town once again but with over 50 new NPCs, 6 new marriage candidates, more quests, more magic and crops. Expanded does what it says on the tin, it expands what you love about Stardew Valley. With new romance candidates of all ages including Lance, an adventurer. New plot lines with the Wizard named in this mod as Magnus and more about his backstory and past coming to light. Apples is my personal favorite edition – he’s a junimo who wants to be your friend. There are 11 new crops, 5 new bushes that create produce as well, not to mention the foragables and other resources that are new for you to find throughout the world.

There is new combat encounters and environments such as the Crimson Badlands and the Highlands where you will find more adventurers and secrets of the Valley. It also brings with it a lot of new community centre bundles, new recipes and achievements for the completionists. There is tones of new stuff to explore and it’s really hard to talk about without spoiling anything – going in blind was really exciting. It’s very much the expansion regular players can need to keep things interesting. Along with the main mod there are three new farm types that you can download to go with Expanded, ‘Grandpa’s Farm’ is the classic one you may have seen in playthroughs online but there is also the Frontiers Farm and the Immersive Farm. Basically this is the all inclusive mod if you’re needing something new to find in Stardew Valley.

Check out the SVE farm types and download the Stardew Valley Expanded mod HERE.

Ridgeside Village

Ridgeside is another expansion to the core Stardew Game – they do work together but also this is playable separately if you are worried about being overwhelmed. Ridgeside Village is a new huge area, just up the hill that surrounds Pelican Town is Ridgeside Village, their Mayor Lennie who is Lewis’s Sister welcomes you and encourages you to get to know the people of Ridgeside. THIS IS A LOT OF PEOPLE – this is over 50 new NPCs, 22 of those are marriage candidates. You may also meet some fae and magical creatures we haven’t encountered before in Stardew Valley. Ridgeside is a beautiful village with lots of new shops that offer seeds and saplings offering new crops and new tree fruits. There are of course new foragables, enemies and combat areas for you explore. There are new mysteries to solve such as abandoned houses and the Spirit Realm.

Check out and download Ridgeside Village mod HERE

The Love of Cooking

This mod adds Cooking as a skill similar to mining, foraging and farming. You can unlock recipes as you cook. The balancing of this is really good, it encourages you to cook regularly, the more you cook in one day the less experience you gain. You’re better off cooking 2 meals a day then spending the whole day cooking. I love this one as an added mechanic, it’s a fun little extra you can add to add something new to your Stardew playstyle.

Check out and download The Love of Cooking Mod HERE

Cosmetic Mods

This is the decorating and gaming aesthetic portion of modding. Just as valid as the rest but also entirely subjective as to whether or not you need it. Some large Gameplay Mods such as SVE does include some new things in these areas too.

Re-Color mods

You’re easy on the eyes. YES! NOW THAT I HAVE THESE MODS.

There are HUNDREDs of re-color mods available for Stardew, they exist to meet every aesthetic, in every season. Both gameplay and the UI interface. My go-to recolour mod is an earthy tone recolour for the world, it’s a little bit easier on my eyes as someone who spends a lot of their time on one screen or another, it adds a little more relaxation into my time with Stardew. For UI mods I went for a Spring time recolour, adds some pinks and florals to the UI interface and that just makes me happy. This is very much a mod recommendation and one that matches to your personal taste than a cool gameplay recommendation.

Check out the Earthy Recolour mod HERE
For the Interface recolor, you can take a look at Lowkey Spring mod HERE

Furniture Expansions

Decorating my house in Stardew always comes at the bottom of my priorities when playing vanilla, unmodded Stardew. I decorate and organise my farm but not the house. The Stardew modding community have changed this for me. There are so many mods of furniture, floors, walls and even house layouts that you can add into the game. Allow me to list a couple that I use or you can take a look at the furniture list HERE.

When downloading mods please remember to use safe sites, I use Nexus Mods. Check the requirements are some mods may need others like the few I listed at the beginning and check back in as people do update and patch their mods especially when new vanilla game updates appear. Stardew is a great place to start with modding or just to expand on a game you love. This is to get you started.

Happy Modding.