Summary

• Stardew Valley's world is fantastical, but there are still a number of occurrences or situations that don't really make sense.
• Mayor Lewis and Marnie keep their romance a secret for no apparent reason, for instance.
• Some aspects of the game, such as prices for items and characters' reactions, raise questions about consistency and in-game logic.

At first, Stardew Valley seems like a relatively standard farming game, but as time goes on, players realize the game’s world is more fantastic than it appears and doesn’t always make total sense. Some elements of the game don’t make sense simply because they are strange or unexplained occurrences that leave the player with questions about the game’s world. Other instances are more mundane but still perplexing.

None of these detract that much from the overall experience of playing Stardew Valley. Instead, they are more the type of questions players may ask after spent enough time in Pelican Town will likely have questioned at least a few of these moments.

10 Marnie & Mayor Lewis’ Secret Relationship Has No Reason To Be Secret

Players Discover Their Tryst While Retrieving The Mayor’s Shorts

One of the earlier quests in Stardew Valley tasks the players with finding Mayor Lewis’ missing purple shorts. Unlike Robin’s missing axe or Linus’ fruit basket, the mayor’s shorts aren’t sitting in the woods somewhere but in Marnie’s bedroom instead. When the player returns the shorts to Lewis, he asks them to keep his and Marnie’s relationship a secret. While the pair can be seen publicly hanging out on several occasions, it seems they want to keep their romance a secret for seemingly no reason.

Neither Marnie nor Lewis are married, nor are they in some sort of committed relationship with another character that would make their relationship scandalous in any way. It isn’t like Caroline’s apparent affair with the Wizard. The only possible explanation is that Lewis feels their relationship is somehow inappropriate because he’s the mayor, but it’s not like there’s an incredible power imbalance between them. After all, Marnie is a seemingly successful independent business owner. There doesn’t seem to be much reason the two can’t date openly.

9 Stardew Valley’s Ghosts Seem Inconsistent

Players Encounter Ghosts In Dungeons & On Their Farm

It isn’t too far into Stardew Valley that players start to encounter some of the more supernatural elements of the game. The town has a wizard, and there is a mine full of strange monsters like slimes or walking skeletons. This means the fact that there are ghosts in the game isn’t too far off base for the type of world established. However, what is a little strange is the game’s inconsistencies between the types of ghosts in the various mines and the one on the player’s farm.

After two in-game years, the ghost of the farmer’s grandfather will return to the farm to evaluate their progress. Grandpa seems completely cognizant of who he used to be and has retained his personality. This raises a question as to why the ghosts in the mines simply float toward the player and attempt to kill them. It just seems strange that Grandpa is the only ghost in the game that seems to be a full person and not just a mindless floating killing machine.

8 Prices For Certain Items Don’t Make Much Sense

Certain Items Cost As Much As Entire Additions To A Home

Most of the prices in Stardew Valley are pretty reasonable. Even when an object is very expensive, it often makes sense why it is. After all, two million gold doesn’t seem unreasonable to buy a Return Scepter that allows a player to teleport to their home from anywhere. However, certain items in the game start to push the boundaries of what would be considered a reasonable asking price when compared to other items in the game.

One example of a price that makes no sense is the Alien Rarecrow which can be bought at the Casino. The item costs 10,000 Qi coins which, converted to the game’s main currency, is the equivalent of 100,000 gold. This is the same amount of money that players pay to have an entire cellar added to their home.

Another good example of a strange price is the town's shortcuts. These cost 300,000 gold from Robin, though all she is seemingly doing is clearing out some existing plants to make a path. This seems like a pretty steep price when considering it is only 200,000 gold less than she charges to build an entire house. Now, this price makes sense from a gameplay standpoint, as the shortcuts are very valuable to the player, but it seems a little inconsistent in of prices of other objects within the game’s internal economy.

7 Abigail’s Reaction To Killing A Monster Raises Questions

Abigail Kills A Monster During Her 14-Heart Event

If players marry Abigail and progress their relationship meter with her to the full 14 hearts, they will get a scene where Abigail saves them from a monster. After killing the monster, Abigail expresses her remorse for having killed it and later puts up a grave for the monster. By this point in the game, the player has likely already traversed the mines and killed dozens if not hundreds of monsters, so it feels a little out of place to see Abigail so affected by killing one, especially when it was going to kill her spouse if she didn’t.

Abigail’s 14-heart event seems somewhat late in the game for players to be confronted with the potential sanctity of a monster’s life. The gravity of the moment doesn’t make a lot of sense when the player has been bathing in monster blood up until that point without batting an eye. This moment seems to retroactively make the player out to be a vicious, uncaring killer if they take Abigail’s concerns for the monster’s life seriously.

6 Dating Multiple People Doesn’t Matter After Marriage

Players Can Date Anyone Without Consequences After Marriage

After a player gets married in Stardew Valley, there isn’t anything stopping them from pursuing romantic relationships with other characters. They can give bouquets and reach 10 hearts with the remaining single characters without any of their partners seeming to mind. This wouldn’t be a huge plot hole if it was established that all the single people in Pelican Town were open to forming a polycule, but the game does make it clear that they aren’t.

If the player romances all the eligible characters to 10 hearts before getting married, they will get a cutscene where they are confronted by their many romantic interests. Unless they are carrying a Rabbit's Foot, the characters will get angry with the player, and continue being angry for about a week. This would give the impression that they aren’t open to the player dating around while in a relationship with them. However, this event never triggers after marriage, when it seems like this type of infidelity would be an even bigger deal than before.

5 Players Can’t Romance Pam, Clint, Or Gus

These Characters Are All Single

Stardew Valley allows players to date most of the single people in Pelican Town, but there are a few characters that are left off this list. Pam, Clint, and Gus are all seemingly single, but none are available as potential romance partners. Instead, the game seems to limit romantic options to the younger generation in the game. As the game doesn’t give a specific age for the farmer, this limitation doesn’t really seem to make a lot of sense.

As Christopher Livingston at PC Gamer points out, older players might want the option to date some of the older characters in Pelican Town. Livingston rightfully points out that many of the eligible characters feel too young for an older player. This can be especially true with a character like Abigail who still participates in the egg hunt and mentions doing homework in some dialogue. It isn’t like the older characters are confirmed to not be interested in romance, as Clint expresses interest in Emily. It seems strange that none can be romanced.

4 Pierre Has An Endless Supply Of Money

There Is No Limit On How Much Players Sell To Pierre

One of the main sources of money in Stardew Valley comes from players selling their crops to the local store owner, Pierre. Unlike some games that give merchants only a specific amount of gold, there is no limit on how much Pierre will buy from the player. Later in the game, this means Pierre could be handing out 10,000+ gold daily to the player. This doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense when players think about it in the context of the game’s story.

Pierre is meant to be anxious about JojaMart putting him out of business. However, Pierre’s limitless supply of cash calls this into question. It isn’t like he’s able to flip everything the player sells to him either. Talking to Abigail will often reveal that some of the player’s crops have started to go bad, so Pierre pulled them off the shelf and served them for dinner. The fact that Pierre can always fork over any sum of money, therefore, doesn’t make much sense.

3 Robin Builds Pam A House But Not Linus

Players Can Build Pam A House As An Upgrade

After players fix up Pelican Town’s community center and have fully upgraded their houses, the local carpenter, Robin, will offer Community Upgrades at her store. The first of these upgrades is building a house for Pam and her daughter Penny, who currently live in a trailer. The player brings the supplies and foots the bill for Robin’s time spent building it, so one would assume Robin could also offer this service to other characters in need, like Linus.

Linus lives very near Robin in a small tent. One would think the next logical Community Upgrade would be to build a house for Linus the same way players did for Pam. However, there is never an option to build Linus a house. This is especially puzzling as Pam did have more shelter than Linus, to begin with. Sure, her trailer may not have been as nice as the other houses in town, but it still provided a more stable living situation than Linus’ tent, which he says people have destroyed in the past.

2 Parrots Build A Beach Resort

The Parrots On Ginger Island Construct Several Buildings

After players fix up Willy’s boat, they are able to go to an island off the coast called Ginger Island. While there, players can trade Golden Walnuts to parrots for favors. These start out making sense, like a swarm of birds scaring away a large turtle. However, the parrots start to do some pretty extraordinary things later on, like instantaneously building a new farmhouse or a resort on the beach. This is a pretty dramatic change from the construction players are used to, which usually takes a few in-game days.

It’s also a little strange when players consider the other parrot they may have already encountered in the game. Emily rescues an injured parrot during one of her heart events, and it lives with her from then on. There is no indication that the parrot is anything more than a normal bird, so it isn’t like construction skills are just a normal thing for parrots to have in Stardew Valley. That isn’t to say tropical birds building a beach resort is a bad thing, it’s very whimsical. It just doesn’t make any sense.

1 A Tropical Island & A Desert Are Very Close To A Temperate Climate

Pelican Town Experiences Four Distinct Seasons

Stardew Valley players know that Pelican Town experiences the same four seasons typically found in a temperate zone. The winters are cold and snowy, and the leaves change in Autumn, so it’s clear that Pelican Town isn’t in a tropical or warm climate. That’s why it’s a little strange that there is an arid desert and a tropical island that are both a short ride away from Stardew Valley.

When players hop on the bus to the desert, or take Willy’s boat to Ginger Island, not even an hour of in-game time es. Players spend more time walking from their house to the bus stop than they do getting to the desert. It’s obviously nice from a gameplay standpoint that Stardew Valley lets players get to these distinctly different locations in such a short amount of time, but when considering how long it takes just to walk across town, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Source: PC Gamer