Stardew Valley is a giant as is, but you can’t deny every game gets infinitely better with a few mods installed. In Stardew Valley’s case specifically, you’ll find hundreds of quality-of-life, NPC, UI, and quest mods available on Nexus Mods.
If you aren’t clued in on the process and are wondering how to mod Stardew Valley in 2024, then this complete guide is the key for you.
How To Mod Stardew Valley
Modding Stardew Valley is quite straightforward and it’ll hardly take about 5 minutes for you to complete the entire process.
Follow the steps ahead to mod your game on PC.
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1. Install Stardew Valley and Start A New Playthrough


In case you’ve already started a playthrough, skip this step. Otherwise, follow the instructions below.
If you haven’t already, please install Stardew Valley and then open the game. Start a New Game and after the cutscene, your game will automatically save. Exit the game a few seconds after the save notification disappears.
2. Download And Install SMAPI From Nexus Mods
Head over here to download the Stardew Modding API (SMAPI). Unzip the file using WinRAR or a program of your choosing, then open up the unzipped folder. If you’re on Windows, click the windows.exe file, whereas for Linux and other operating systems, you’ll see separate .exe files that will need to be used.
The installer will open. Either the installer will automatically find where Stardew Valley is installed on your PC or it will ask for you to paste the path of the installation folder (see the reference image above to find your path of the game).
Once you paste your pathway, the installer asks you to press “1” to install SMAPI, so press and enter 1. Congrats, SMAPI is installed.
3. Change Your Client’s Settings


When you’re done installing SMAPI, go to your Stardew Valley game folder and you’ll notice there will be a new .exe file called “StardewValleySMAPI.exe”. From now on, you’ll have to run the game by clicking this if you want to play with mods.
If you have installed Stardew Valley via Steam, you’ll need to update the client’s settings to run the new .exe file. For this, you can refer to the steps ahead.
However, if you haven’t installed the game using Steam, skip this step entirely and after installing mods, use the new .exe file to run the game.
Steam Client Settings
- When you install SMAPI, the installer will tell you to copy and paste the following text in your Steam client: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Stardew Valley\StardewModdingAPI.exe” %command%”. (shown in the images above).
- Open Steam’s library, right-click on Stardew Valley, and head to Properties.
- Under General go to the Launch Options section, and then paste the copied text in the box.
4. Install Mods And Run Stardew Valley
Next, you have to download the mods you want from Nexus Mods. For example, I downloaded the “NPC Map Locations” mod.
To install the mod, download and unzip it first. Then copy the unzipped mod you downloaded and paste it into the “Mods” folder that is located where Stardew Valley is installed on your PC. Refer to the image above in case you need help.
Once that’s done, simply run the game using the StardewValleySMAPI.exe file or Steam with updated settings from the step before, load your saved game and you’ll see the mod you downloaded was working. In my case, when I pressed “M”, the map opened and i could see the locations of all NPCs in the region.
For more Game Master HQ, check out our picks for the best Fall crops in Stardew Valley.