The act of choosing a mod to play with Stardew Valley was the hardest part of this assignment. Going onto nexusmods and simply perusing the vast array of options was like looking into another whole new world, an even more defined and abundant world than Stardew Valley. I chose to look up walkthroughs on Youtube even though I had downloaded the mods. I was already having some trouble opening Steam, so I thought it best to not risk my computer crashing. So I ended up finding mods that interested me on nexus and then looking up a video. I ended up looking up a mod where you have the ability to sleep anywhere, whenever you need. The utilitarian aspect is what drew me to it ultimately. Instinctively and initially, I wanted to download a mod that changed, or at least added aesthetic differences to the appearance of Pelican Town. However, I thought about my actual experience playing, and thought back to all the times I felt way too lazy to go back home to put myself to bed, especially when my energy is reaching zero and my avatar starts to walk extremely slowly. Then again, there are times I just use the exit game button to go to sleep when I am too lazy to walk back home. However, this takes away an essential aspect of Stardew Valley – the cozy aspect, the feeling of making your home a comfortable place to live, and features of that vein. The act of putting my avatar to bed, I realized, is one of my favorite parts of playing Stardew Valley; yet, I just don’t feel like lazily making it back to my house every time I am low on energy and have no leftover bread or pizza or daffodils in my inventory.
I watched a user who calls himself “Seanie Dew” play with this mod where you can sleep anywhere on the map. I wondered to myself how people would use this to their advantage and if my reasons for wanting to use it were similar to others. The answer, briefly, is no. I am not sure if my reason was too elementary, but given the short amount of time I have been playing Stardew, it made sense on a practical level to me. However, Seanie Dew intended to use this mod to romance and marry Abigail in the shortest amount of time possible. The means of achieving intended result and the intended result seemed disparate to me at first, but he explained his plan to harvest hundreds of pumpkins, giving half of them to Abigail as a gift and using the other half to upgrade his farm in order to be eligible for marriage. I am actually glad that Seanie Dew’s ultimate goal was romance, rather than using this mod just to be more productive (like I was intending). If I had more experience under my belt and actually knew how to make more progress romantically, I would hope I would have this outlook and way of approaching the game. It was truly crazy to watch as his plans would either unfold perfectly or get usurped by something as petty as the weather forecast. Some days he would just wake up and put his avatar right back to sleep, waiting for rain to water his crops. The portable bed made every action much easier, with less strain put on location and time, two difficult aspects of the game. I hope to try out the mod myself one day, hopefully when I have a more nuanced goal than simple productive harvesting.