Stardew Valley - Festivals

Festivals fill a day in each season, and the valley gathers for them. There are contests to enter, stalls selling things found nowhere else, dances and games. The farm stands still on a festival day, so the time costs nothing but the morning.

Overview

Twelve days a year the valley shuts the shops and gathers somewhere. Mayor Lewis posts a letter in advance saying when and where, a notice slides onto the screen when the gates open, and the farmer walks into whichever corner of the map is hosting. Attending is entirely optional, and skipping one costs nothing but the stall goods and the contest.

Most of these days are free. Time stops the moment the festival area is entered, the farmer is carried home late in the evening, and the animals are counted as fed whether or not anybody filled a trough. That makes a festival the cheapest day in the calendar: a whole morning's worth of friendship, shopping and prizes while the chores wait.

Four of the twelve behave like ordinary days instead. The desert's three-day fair, the summer fishing derby, the winter squid festival and the Night Market all leave the clock running, leave the valley's shops and homes open, and leave the animals hungry. They are the ones that have to be planned around rather than simply attended.

The other nine lock the town. Every home and shop stays bolted for the whole day on a festival that starts before the evening, even for a farmer who stays at home and even for one carrying the Key To The Town. The sewers, the Community Center, the cinema and the bathhouse are the exceptions, which makes a festival day a surprisingly good day to visit any of those.

Groups

Four kinds of event sit under this heading. The contests are the ones worth preparing for: an egg hunt in Spring, a produce display in Fall and an ice fishing race in Winter all pay out, and the governor's potluck at the summer beach party pays in goodwill rather than goods.

The social days ask for nothing but presence. The dance in the forest clearing raises a heart with whoever accepts, the midsummer jellyfish procession is simply watched from the pier, and the midwinter feast turns the whole town into a secret gift exchange.

The fishing events are the newest shape. Two of them run for two days each and reward volume: catch enough of one species and the booth hands over tiered prizes, with a tent, a hat, a mounted trophy, a book and a decoy among them. The Night Market runs for three evenings and is really a floating shop with a submarine attached.

Order

Spring opens with the egg hunt in the town square. Nine coloured eggs gathered inside the time limit beats Abigail to the prize, and the Straw Hat for a first win becomes a Prize Ticket in later years. The booth beside the hunt matters far more than the hunt does, because it sells Strawberry Seeds, and strawberries planted before the middle of Spring are picked twice before the season ends. Saving a few thousand gold for that one stall is the best-known piece of preparation in the game.

The desert fair follows two days later and runs for three, and the first two of its days can be reached before the bus has been repaired. It has rotating shops, a race to bet on, challenges that pay a festival currency, and a daily outfit from Emily, and the currency buys weapons from the farmer's own neighbours' stalls.

The Flower Dance closes Spring in a forest clearing reachable only on that day. Inviting a bachelor or bachelorette to dance needs four hearts of friendship with them, and the dance itself pays a full heart back, which makes the four hearts the only piece of homework in the branch with a deadline.

Summer brings the potluck on the beach, where what the farmer drops into the soup pot decides whether the whole town's opinion rises or falls, then the Trout Derby on the forest river, then the jellyfish on the pier. Fall brings the fair and then the hedge maze on the night of the spirits, which hides a Golden Pumpkin at its far end in alternate years. Winter brings the ice fishing contest, the squid festival, the Night Market and the feast, which is the busiest season of the four.

Best

The Fall fair is the most valuable day in the year, and the reason is a single purchase. Star tokens earned at the fair buy a stardrop that raises maximum energy for the rest of the save, and it can be bought there only once per file. Everything else on the day is in service of affording it.

The display is where the tokens come from. Nine items are judged, and the score rewards filling every slot, spreading them across the categories of fish, vegetable, fruit, forage, animal produce, artisan good, cooked dish and mineral, and making each one as high a grade as the farm can manage. A good display clears first place and a thousand tokens on its own, with the booth games and the token seller making up the rest. There is also a joke route worth knowing: the mayor's missing purple shorts placed in the display disqualify the farm and still pay out handsomely.

After the fair, the Egg Festival stall is the best value in the branch, because strawberries bought in the first Spring are the crop that carries a new farm into Summer. The Night Market is third, selling rare seeds, paintings and an Artifact Trove, and running a submarine that fishes three species found nowhere else. It also hides the branch's one puzzle: playing the right five notes during the mermaid show awards a pearl, once per save.

The feast in late Winter is the best friendship day. Lewis's letter a week beforehand names the villager the farmer is buying for, which gives seven days to find something that person loves, and a well-chosen gift at the feast is worth far more than the same gift handed over at a doorstep.

Strategy

Prepare on the day before, not the morning of. The shops are shut on nine of these days, so a festival that needs gold, a gift or a fishing rod needs them bought the evening before. A farm that remembers this gets the stall goods it wanted; a farm that does not spends the day window shopping.

Keep a festival chest. Through Fall, every gold and iridium item worth displaying goes into it rather than into the shipping bin, and by the morning of the fair the display fills itself from one container. The same habit covers the soup pot in Summer, which judges quality as well as type.

Treat the four real-time events as working days. The derby and the squid festival both reward one species caught over and over, so the sensible plan is to spend the whole day fishing the named spot rather than touring the booths, and both of them leave the rest of the valley open for errands in between casts.

Win the contests once and then relax. A first win at the egg hunt earns a Straw Hat and a first win at the ice fishing race earns two tackles, a magnet and a sailor's cap, while later wins and the chest at the end of the Fall maze pay prize tickets instead. Those tickets buy seeds, saplings, sprinklers and oddments from the prize machine in the Mayor's Manor, so a repeat win is never wasted.

Notes

Talking to a villager at a festival raises friendship exactly as it would on any other day, which means a lap of the crowd is worth a dozen doorstep visits packed into one stopped clock.

Items left in the Fall display are not returned automatically. Anything forgotten there ends up in the lost and found box at the Mayor's Manor, where it waits indefinitely.

Gus cooks survival burgers beside the Community Center during the fair and hands them out free of charge, and the foraging bonus they carry runs down in real time while the festival clock is stopped, so the last bite is best taken on the way out.

Children of toddler age come along to the nine festivals where time stops, and in a shared save every player has to walk into the festival area before anything begins.

Even-numbered years change the dialogue and the layouts, so a farm that has seen a festival twice has not seen everything in it.

All Festivals

Every entry in this group, with its key details.

Name	Image
Dance of the Moonlight Jellies	-
Desert Festival
Egg Festival
Feast of the Winter Star	-
Festival of Ice
Flower Dance	-
Luau
Night Market	-
Spirit's Eve	-
SquidFest
Stardew Valley Fair	-
Trout Derby