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I am slowly winding down on Stardew Valley, checking in every now and then to play for a few days (15 minutes long, but you can end them early) to try and finish up the few things I want to finish but mostly done. I'm at like 150 hours played and will probably play a whole new character through at some point.

Cam installed Paralells on my Mac so i can play Windows games, and then was like "Uh...should I not have done that..." when he saw how much I was playing. He also pointed out that, for example, chopping trees sounds like popping bubble wrap and is such a satisfying sound it made him want to play and chop trees himself. There's a nice mix of things to do, with enough structure that you're not aimless but enough flexibility that if you feel like spending the whole day doing something you can.

Right now my character is wearing the hat she received for winning the town fishing contest, something I am super proud of given how much I hated and avoided fishing for the first, like 100 hours of the game. Until I figured out how to grind for fishing XP without doing any actual fishing :D

Cinna Monroll married the lovely Maru, a cheerful, pragmatic robotics nerd, and they have two adorable adopted children named Cameron (a girl) and Kit (a boy). They also have animals named Soy, Almond, Rice, Coconut, Hemp and Hazelnut (I started out with Almond the cow and kept up the theme, I'm especially proud of Hemp the Sheep), a cat named Peaches and a horse named Cow. This all brings me more joy than it probably should. I was a bit annoyed that their first child was pale given they're both brown, but the second child is brown so it must be random which is fair enough for adoption. I don't know what happens with biological children. Maru still has her own life, visiting her parents and working as a nurse, which I like even if I do wonder at the two toddlers left to wander the house alone. The kids have no personality asides from randomly crawling the around the house and being happy if you click on them but are still cute, and it's funny seeing them playing next to Maru's half built robots like they're copying their mum.

The other love interests don't seem to notice I'm married, which can mostly be put down to them having secret crushes but gets a bit awkward when Leah is all "It must get lonely on your big farm all by yourself, you should come to my cabin and snuggle under the blankets with me ;)". I'M A MARRIED WOMAN LEAH. They're all pretty endearing, and I was tempted by Abigail, Sebastian and Leah, but Maru is definitely my favourite. One issue I had is that I'm not sure all of them would be happy as a farmer's spouse. Maru is happy as long as she has a workshop and time to herself, and Leah the artist and Elliot the writer would just enjoy having someone to pay the bills, but Abigail, Sebastian, Sam and Penny all seem like they're kind of sick of the little town they grew up in and want to see the world. Penny's home life is awful enough that marrying the PC would be a step up but I think she would be happiest elsewhere entirely. Haley, Alex, and Harvey seem like they'd be happy enough. I kind of ship Sebastian/Abigail/Sam, with the three of them moving out together and finding fame and fortune with their band, or at least making enough to get by.

Speaking of shipping omg why can't Marnie and Lewis just get married, come on.

Overall I got pretty attached to most of the characters, though some of them were disappointingly lacking in new dialogue once I befriended them. Especially the Wizard, Krobus and the Dwarf: They just appear with minimal explanation, despite being VERY WEIRD, and then nothing else much happens. Not a fan of the way George's disability was handled, either, though I'm sure the writer meant well.

I'm using Good Old Games not Steam so only see the in game achievements, but looking at the full list currently I have:

Shipped all items
Shipped 15 of each crop
Shipped 300 of one crop (did this without even trying hooray for the greenhouse and my rows and rows of strawberries(*))
Finished the community centre
All the money, helping, and friendship achievements
Cooking all the recipes. So many Sundays checking for that one final recipe.
All the upgrades (and also 2 kids)
Got 4 candles from Grandpa
Lowest level of the mines

Yet to do:

All museum donations. Still have some fishing ones left, keep fishing full of lucky lunch and am slowly picking them off.
Craft everything. I ticked them all off but must have missed one. I guess I have to do them all AGAIN to be sure /o\
Catch every fish lol no. I am much better at it than I was, but still not good.
Prairie King lol no
All monster achievements. I think the only one I've done is bats. So many bats.
Stardrops. Dependent on some of these others, so. No dice!
Joja. I have a soul.
Level 10 in everything. Am at level 9 for combat and have no interesting reasons to keep fighting but guess I might grind to 10 at some point.

I'd also like to get to max friendship with everyone, currently I have Haley, Krobus and the Dwarf left. And have a dinosaur since I stupidly donated my one egg to the museum instead of hatching it and waiting to get another one ;_;

Right now I have nothing in my quests box which is very satisfying. Also I bought the 1 million gold statue that gives me something shiny every morning.

My schedule to make sure I see everyone and maximise fish buying opportunities, with the addition of just popping by Elliot's cabin whenever I'm on the beach:
Mon:
Tues: doctor's surgery (Maru and Harvey), 12:00 exercise in shop loungeroom (Pierre, Marnie, Caroline, Jodi, Emily) Visit Jodi in her house if it's raining.
Wed: Krobus (buy fish), the dwarf, linus, mine quarry
Thurs: Oasis (Sandy)
Fri: caravan, museum (Penny, Jas, Vincent), Haley at her house (not reliable but I never cared much about her), George and Evelyn in their house, Tavern at night (Abigail, Sebastian, Sam, Shane, Clint, Pam, Lewis, Marnie, Leah, Willie, Gus, Emily, Kent, Demetrius, Robin), Alex outside his house at night
Sat:
Sun: caravan, wizard

With some flexibility for using high luck days for fishing/mining etc, and talking to people on other days from time to time to catch different dialogue. I'm not following it super closely at this point but it was very useful for a chunk of the game.

Something I didn't realise until I'd been doing this for years is that the Oasis sells omni geodes on Wednesdays. So in future I might swap that with the dwarf and linus. Instead I just bought like 150 of them at once and got the last of my minerals in one go :D

This is definitely one of those games where you struggle for ages then suddenly everything is super easy, especially making money. Once you get the greenhouse and seed maker you can just turn ancient seeds into a large number of infinitely productive money makers, especially if you then chuck the fruit into preserve jars/kegs.

(*)They offer a good profit and are one of Maru's favourite things. I still give her one every Tuesday like I used to while wooing her at work because I am a sap. Same reason I hug all the animals every morning and make sure they're fed despite have zero use for them any more.