Stardew Valley

Pay attention to the rotating stock in the different shops - Oasis, Desert Trader, Krobus. I was too lazy to check regularly on my first runs and thought it was mainly decorations and all the useful stuff is available permanently.

Krobus sells one IRIDIUM SPRINKLER on Fridays! Amazing when you don't have enough iridium yet. He also sells mixed seeds on Thursday (always running low on those to make tea bushes) and buff food on Saturdays.

Oasis has Speed-Gro for 80g on Thursdays instead of Pierre's 150g and 3 Omnigeodes on Wednesday.

Desert Trader has stairs for jade on Sundays.

You can place museum rewards in to the left of Pam's house door and again in the middle of the path near the bus station to get her there faster than 10am.

Just watch out:

This works on any villager getting blocked in their normal pathing, I just found it helped me when doing skull cave dives in the early game.

On Fridays around 7pm, there's 17 people in the saloon. Perfect to get your friendship levels up. I have a chest in the saloon with favourite gifts and just pass them around. The bar also sells coffee (universally liked by all adults) and some loved gifts: Salad (Leah), pizza (Sam & Shane), spaghetti (Robin) and beer (Pam & Shane).

Build a silo before building any coop or barn. Otherwise you'll need to buy hay for your animals at the start, and Murphy's Law says that you'll reach Marnie when she's busier staring the microwaves oven.

If the silo is full, you can pull out hay from the manual feeders and dump it into a chest. You can use this to build a single silo ever.

Don't cut every single bit of grass on your way, once you have a silo. Leave some spots here and there, so it regrows. A good way to do so is to use the scythe on a full column or row of grass, then leave a small gap before the next column/row.

If your animals graze outdoors (I recommend it), you can protect bits of grass here and there with fences or lightning rods. It helps to regrow the grass faster this way.

If you're a complete newbie: save money for the first Egg Festival, in 13th/Spring. Buy as many strawberry seeds as you can there. Strawberry is a cash crop, and if you plant them fast enough you'll get multiple harvests.

Also, don't ship every single strawberry that you harvest, leave some normal quality (cheaper) to make seeds later on. If you're able to unlock the greenhouse early enough, you can fill your field with as many strawberries as you want right off 1st/Spring of the year 2.

The best season to mess with your farm layout is winter, as you'll have less crops to deal with. "Less" doesn't mean "none" though - be sure to use winter seeds, they're highly profitable.

You can build sheds for your machinery if you want, but I find the best place to put them is inside the coops/barns with the animals producing the raw materials. For example, the mayo maker goes inside the coop with the chicken, the cheese maker with the cows, etc. It economises time this way.

Early game mining is about energy management. The odds of a rock spawning a ladder go up the fewer enemies are on the floor. Combat doesn't use energy like mining does. So kill as many enemies as possible before mining rocks without ore. This decreases the energy cost per floor by a lot.

A lot of the early game is limited by your energy.

Spring onions in the forest to the south of the farm are a great source of energy early game. They grow in the area near the gated sewer pipe.

If you don't hate the fishing game it's a good way to recharge energy by eating the catch.

If you are eating for energy silver and gold crops give more energy per coin value. So I eat gold then silver then regular for a given crop.

A big cash boost for the start. Not recommended for your first playthrough.

Plant 2 cauliflower on the first day. The extra is for crow insurance. That plus a potato, parsnip, and green bean gets you the spring crops bundle.

Planting cauliflower on day 1 means it's ready on day 13 the egg festival. Plant two seeds for each of the other 3 plants as soon as you can.

For the first 12 days Do the spring foraging bundle (to unlock the crops bundle) and earn as close to 2500 as you can. On day 13 till and water a tile for every 100 gold you have up to 25 tiles.

Make sure you have one of each of the 4 veg in inventory when you head to the festival. Buy 25 strawberry seeds or whatever you can afford.

As soon as you leave the festival head to the community center and finish the spring crops bundle. You get 25 speed grow.

Head back to the farm and plant the strawberries and use the speed grow on them before bed. Time is tight but for every one you plant and fertilize on the 13th you get 3 harvests instead of two that season. It's worth passing out to get them all planted.

I founded this pretty late in game. That you can shake trees for seed. No need to chop.

Don't bomb your mayonnaise machines like my wife did

I've been meaning to try this game for years. Thanks for all these tips!

The coffee speed buff works while horse riding! I just figured this out and it's such a difference.