Stardew Valley Year 1 Fall Guide: Restore the Community Center Fast

Welcome back to another Gametheory guide! If you have been following our Spring and Summer walkthroughs, your Community Center is already looking much better. It is now time to tackle Fall. The leaves are changing, but our focus remains locked on completing those bundles.

Fall is a critical season for building upgrades, harvesting high-value crops, and catching some elusive fish. If you need to keep track of your overall progress, make sure to check out our printable checklist.

Fall is the season we almost complete the Community Center. Here is everything you need to focus on to conquer your first Fall in Stardew Valley!

TL;DR - Fall Priorities

• Money, money, money: Required for the animals and Bus repair bundle.

• Get the Walleye: Catch during rainy afternoons, only available in Fall.

• Harvest Apples: If you’ve planted an Apple Sappling before Summer 25, you have the last 3 days of Fall to harvest 3 Apples.

• Complete the Greenhouse, Bus line and Glistering Boulder.

Current Farm State: Entering Fall

Before we dig into the Fall dirt, lets take a quick look at where your farm and Community Center should stand at the end of Summer. If you missed a few things, do not worry - you still have time to catch up!

• The Boiler Room is Complete: Thanks to your hard work in the mines gathering copper, iron, gold, and gems, the Minecarts should be fully operational. This makes zooming around Pelican Town much faster.

• Spring and Summer Bundles are Done: You should have already submitted your Spring and Summer crops, as well as the seasonal forageables. Quality Crops could be completed as well.

• A Growing Animal Farm: You should have a Deluxe Coop and Big Barn set up, with chickens, ducks, rabbits and cows that you have been petting daily.

• Automation is Beginning: Your farm layout should be taking shape, ideally supported by a grid of Quality Sprinklers crafted from your summer mining runs.

• Trees are Planted: If you followed our Summer guide, your Apple (and Pomegranate) saplings are planted and safely growing on your farm.

• Artisan Goods are produced: You should have a few Preserve Jars and/or Kegs to turn those cheap blueberries into money making jelly and wine.

With this solid foundation, you are perfectly set up to breeze through the Fall season.

Event Checklist

Fall only has 2 events. Both of these are worth visiting.

1. Tuesday Fall 16: You don’t need to participate at the Stardew Valley Fair, but it’s still worth visiting. For 3.000 points (gained by winning games on the fair) you can buy a Prize Ticket and a Stardrop. Enter the town between 9am and 3pm to visit the festival.

2. Saturday Fall 27: The shop doesn’t sell anything useful during the Spirit’s Eve festival, but the prize for finishing the Haunted Maze is a Golden Pumpkin. That sells for 2.500g, which is always nice. Enter the town between 10pm and 11:50 pm to visit the event.

Especially the Spirit’s Eve Festival is a nice event, as it only starts at 10pm. Which leaves you with a full day to do all the important stuff.

Farming & Foraging

Fall brings a fresh batch of seeds to plant for the pantry. You will also find new items to forage around the map.

• The Fall Crops bundle:

  • Corn

  • Eggplant

  • Pumpkin

  • Yam.

• The Quality Crops bundle:

  • 5 gold star Corn (you might already have them from Summer)

  • 5 gold star Pumpkins (you might not need them if you already have parsnips, melons and corn)

• Additional Specific Crops:

  • 1 Sunflower: you need it for the Dye Bundle

  • 10 Wheat: Fodder Bundle

  • 10 Hay (byproduct of Wheat): Fodder Bundle

• Forageables:

  • Common Mushroom

  • Wild Plum

  • Hazelnut

  • Blackberry

And while you’re at it, in Fall you can also find some other interesting items around.

In the Secret Woods, mushrooms often spawn in Fall. Grab 2x Red Mushroom (Exotic Foraging, Dye bundle), 2x Purple Mushroom (Exotic Foraging, Field Research bundle) and a Morel (Exotic Foraging).

Once you finish the Fall Crops bundle, you will get a Bee House as a reward. Place it on your farm to get Honey, used for the Artisan bundle.

Animal Upgrades: Deluxe Barn, Mill

Over the last 2 seasons, Robin has been using her tools around your farm a few times. She has built and upgraded you a Deluxe Coop and a Big Barn.

In Fall, you will continue buildling on your farm.

1. Deluxe Barn (25.000g, 550 wood, 300 stone):

   1. Once complete, buy a Pig from Marnie (16.000g) and let it start sniffing out truffles.

   2. Pigs don’t find truffles every day, so don’t wait too long with buying a pig! Aim to have it by Fall 7 to leave you plenty of time to dig it up.

2. Windmill (2500g, 150 wood, 50 stone, 4 cloth)

   1. This building is optional, as it relies on you having planted Rice Shoots in Spring. You need rice for Maki Rolls (Chef bundle) but can buy the rice from Pierre.

   2. The mill is a nice addition to the farm though and not even that expensive to build. Get the cloth Robin needs by putting the wool dropped by rabbits in a Loom.

Also, the Bunnies in the coop should be so happy by now, that one day in Fall, they’ll leave you one of their feet! A Rabbit’s Foot is required for the Enchanter bundle.

The Duck Feather dropped by one of your Ducks is used for the Dye bundle.

Also, keep caring for your chickens and cows every day so they start giving Large Eggs and Large Milk for the Animal bundle if they haven’t already.

Fall Fishing Schedule

If you followed our previous guides, you should only have three specific fish left to catch to complete the Glittering Boulder. Walleye is the most important one, because it can only be caught in Fall!

Fishing for the Bundles

In fall, you can catch these fish that are needed for the bundles:

The Spring/Summer Leftovers

Still missing some fish from earlier seasons? You can catch these in Fall:

• Catfish: Rivers, 6am - midnight, rain

• Shad: Rivers, 9am - 2am, rain

• Largemouth Bass: Mountain Lake, 6am - 7pm, any weather

• Bullhead: Mountain Lake, any time or weather

• Red Snapper: Ocean, 6am - 7pm, rain

• Tilapia: Ocean, 6am - 2pm, any weather 

• Bream: Rivers, 6pm - 2am, any weather

• Eel: Ocean, 4am - 2pm, rain

Aside from the Walleye, make sure you catch Eel, Bream, Tilapia, Red Snapper, Shad and Catfish. Fall is the last season these fish will bite your bait.  

The Greenhouse Backup Plan

Did you forget to plant your Apple sapling in the Summer? Or are the fruit bats in your cave stubbornly refusing to drop a Pomegranate for the Enchanter bundle? Do not panic, you have an alternative route: the Greenhouse.

By finishing your Crop, Animal and Artisan bundles this season, you will complete the Pantry and unlock the Greenhouse on your farm. The beauty of the Greenhouse is that fruit trees planted inside will grow regardless of the current season.

Simply rush those Pantry bundles and plant your Apple and Pomegranate saplings inside the Greenhouse before Fall 24. They take 28 days to grow, meaning they will be fully mature and producing the required fruit just in time to finish your Community Center before the end of Winter!

Note: Also great for if you did manage to get Red Cabbage Seeds, but haven’t been able to plant them yet.

Funding the Bus Repair

One of the biggest hurdles in Fall is completing the Vault bundles, which require a total cash investment of 42,500g (2,500g, 5,000g, 10,000g, and 25,000g). Repairing the bus is mandatory to reach the Calico Desert. To fund this, I highly recommend planting extra Cranberries on Fall 1.

Cranberries are incredibly profitable. You get 5 harvests of a plant, each yielding a minimum of 2 cranberries each. You can sell them straight up and make a decent profit (over 5,000g for a plot of 8 Cranberry Seeds around a Quality Sprinkler). Or, why not invest in a bunch of Preserve Jars? With 4 preserve jars per 8 plants, you are able to turn all of the harvested cranberries into Cranberry Jelly, selling for 200g each. By the end of fall, those 8 plants will have netted you over 14,000g in profit!

So, get 32 Cranberry Seeds on Fall 1, plant them around a Quality Sprinkler and they will easily generate the gold you need to get the bus running!

End-of-Fall Community Center Inventory Audit

By the end of Fall, your Community Center should be nearly complete. Your Boiler Room and Vault are fully restored, giving you access to Minecarts and the Bus line to the Desert.

Your Pantry should be finished, which gave you access to the Greenhouse. Maybe you planted an Apple and/or Pomegranate sappling tree there?

You have also been able to catch every fish, removing the Glittering Boulder.

Only 5 items are left to forage in Winter:

• Winter Root

• Crystal Fruit

• Snow Yam

• Crocus

• Nautilus Shell

With a bit of luck, you will finish the Community Center on Winter 1!

Don't forget to download our printable Stardew Valley Year 1 Bundle Checklist to track your progress live as you play! 👇 And we’ll see you in the final part of this series. Don’t forget your snowboots!