(OOC) let's play a game of "are they yoban". The game where I write down Stardew characters and my reasons why I think they might/might not follow the religion of Yoba and you read it.
Haley: Culturally Yoban. She was raised Yoban by her parents and she still takes the silly little ceremonies like the spring Flower Dance ritual very seriously, but she's doesn't like, practice Yoba in her daily life beyond how it formed her core value system. If pressed, she'd probably tell you she thinks Yoba exists but she doesn't seem too convinced either way.
Hat Mouse: Atheist. Discovered capitalism and realised that buying power has more power than Yoba ever offered him.
Emily: Totally Yoban. Raised Yoban alongside her little sister Haley but while Haley grew up to be less religious than her parents, Emily is far more. She practises Yoba in her daily life and incorporates it into her spirituality too. We don't see her at the shrine on Sundays but that's only because she believes that Yoba's presence is all around us, not in a gilded shrine in the town capitalists basement.
Alex: Big time Yoban. Raised by his religious grandparents he believes in Yoba as a creator being who gave him a second chance at life. He definitely prays semi regularly and kisses his sign of the vessel necklace before every game.
Wizard: Not Yoban. Yoba is a faith, and Magnus has met Yoba personally and beat him at Mahjong. Therefore, is denied faith because he has knowledge.
I played Fields of Mistria a bit and the thing I liked the most about it were the artifacts :P I liked how they were categorized according to the historical period they originated from since you can follow the whole history of the kingdom through them. And this is something I really want Stardew to have too because there's basically no lore about the Republic at all.
I tried to gather all information about Ferngill's history in another post but there was only so much I could do with four lines of dialogue. So I decided to make a similar categorization with Stardew artifacts like the one in FoM. I knew I'd never get much extra lore out of this but at least I'd get a prettier museum.
So lets take a look at look at all the artifacts rearranged according to their rough age.
I. Pre-humans artifacts: The Primordial Sea (Dried Starfish and Trilobite), Dinosaur Era (Dino Egg and Amphibian Fossil), The First Plants (Ancient Seed and Palm Fossil) and the Petrified Slime
II. Prehistoric artifacts: Mega Fauna (the Prehistoric Bones) and The Stone Age (Arrowhead, Chewing Stick, Prehistoric Tool, Bone Flute, Prehistoric Handaxe and Ancient Drum)
Nothing unusual here, it all basically means this world formed and developed just like ours did. With one exception: the Petrified Slime (considered a mineral in the game but important later), which shows that at least some monsters have been around since before humans evolved.
III. Dwarvish artifacts: Dwarf Scrolls, Rusty Cog, Dwarvish Helm and Dwarf Gadget
These were tricky to place in the timeline since we don't know when dwarves crashed on earth or when they lost the knowledge about their own much more advanced technology. We just know it happened A Very Long Time Ago from what we're told and since any memories of the tech were lost from both species while dwarves had time to adapt to their new cave lives. But where to place them? During the stone age or later when humans started to melt their own metals too? I put them in between but I personally lean towards them appearing on this planet during the ancient era and not the prehistoric one.
IV. Ancient artifacts: Stardew Valley (Chipped Amphora, Ancient Doll, Chicken Statue, Glass Shards and Ancient Sword) and Calico Desert (Golden Mask and Golden Relic)
Again, average stuff. We even have examples from two different cultures!
V. Middle Ages artifacts: Ornamental Fan and Anchor
Now this is where things get interesting. Middle ages stands here mostly for a 'not ancient but not modern' category rather than anything resembling a medieval period. Suddenly the number of artifacts dropped to just two, and they might not even be from the same period of time.
(Meta reason is probably that ancient societies are cooler and more mysterious so CA preferred adding artifacts from there rather than something more modern like gas lamps, but I can't build headcanons off meta explanations).
VI. Modern artifacts: Rusty Spur and Rusty Spoon
Last real category and again very few artifacts - as in only one this time. Naturally it's also a farming artifact.
(The spoon doesn't count).
VII. Unknown: Rare Disk, Strange Dolls and Elvish Jewlery
Also stealing Mistria's 'junk' category idea. These don't fit anywhere else so I'll mostly ignore them. In vanilla we're not even sure if elves actually existed, but they are an ancient species in SVE that either existed alongside dwarves at the peak of their society or were an even older civilization. So we go from vague timeline to an even vaguer timeline.
This is only marginally important anyway because both dwarves and elves had their own reasons for their decline unrelated to humans so I won't mention them too often in the next posts.
During the time I wrote the entire post (not just this part) I had a power outrage, an internet outrage and I accidentally closed my browser once so I partially rewrote this shit three times already 🥲
I think the stardew valley lore feels so dark sometimes because it always catches you off guard, and it doesn’t outright tell you things, you have to come to the realisation yourself
Like you’ll just be talking to Jas and she’ll mention having a nightmare about her house being on fire, and you’re like “why is this kid telling me this stuff… oh, oh no”
HIIIII TUMBLR. SINCE IM NOTICING PEOPLE TAKING AN INTEREST IN DOBSON (and a certain mutual reblogging one of my posts mentioning wanting to know his lore :3), I'M GONNA GIVE YOU THE RUNDOWN OF IT. THAT WAY, YOU TOO CAN UNDERSTAND THIS ENIGMA OF A MAN.
Here's all I know from bits and pieces I've gotten from ConcernedApe comments I've seen + the original cutscene
Here's the cutscene dialogue I was referring to for your viewing pleasure.
Dobson would've been the original Joja-Based rival for Stardew Valley. Meaning, if he was present in the game there's a chance we wouldn't have Morris instead. Imagine that
I imagine if Dobson were added there would've been more planned in terms of the ending of the Joja Route. During his beginning cutscene, he mentions getting enough signatures to instate a Joja Hypermarket. I imagine this would've introduced something similar to the end-game Joja Route Supermarket SVE introduces.
Adding onto the Dobson Asshat mention, Dobson would've been significantly more confrontational as opposed to Morris. There's a reply to a comment on youtube where ConcernedApe mentions that Dobson would've done more to inconvenience you throughout the year. He was also bolder, and overall less afraid of masking his actual feelings about those around him/his goals. Again, in order to make who to support less clear, keeping this would've muddied the narrative.
Based on the timeline, I want to assume his development was around the time that Stardew Valley was going to have a completion requirement of around an in game year. It would've been easier to complete the community center I assume, so he would've been there to balance out the lack of difficulty. This was removed due to the fact that ConcernedApe didn't want players to feel rushed, and instead wanted them to go at their own pace in their gameplay.
Given he would've inconvenienced the farmer through the year, I like imagining he would've pulled extremely underhanded things in order to temporarily halt your progression. Like... ripping cables from the mine elevator to keep you from getting geodes and other things, putting something in the rivers to keep you from fishing that day, destroying crops, things of that matter. I said this in my first HC post but he was literally built to cause chaos and mayhem.
There genuinely isn't much about him online, but I do love the fact that he would've genuinely been an absolute little shit regardless. Man has many enemies and not a care in the world.
I'm planning on making a few HC posts about him later, but here's what I know about the existing information revolving on him and why it's so so so so so hard to get a grasp of his potential character. (And why its so fun seeing different, yet oddly similar portrayals of the guy)
let's talk about my favorite stardew thing maybe ever :
GREEN RAIN!!!! (spoilers)
i only recently got a computer, and had heard very little about it up until this point, bc for the first time today i got it!!! here are some photos and thoughts C:
what u woke up to!!!! very spooky, i had no clue what was going on
AWOOGA!!!!! i didn't get pics of a lot of stuff but he asks you to tell Robin he's safe. if he go to sebs room, the rest of the family is together and robin is pacing and frustrated. it's kinda sad
then, the part that literally ripped up my insides
i'm not someone who cries over game dialogue too often, but i teared up the second i finished reading evelyn's dialogue. it was so sweet seeing george comfort her
lastly, the merchant wasn't in her spot.
other notes:
- Gus invites everyone to the saloon, and it's open all day
- you can't give gifts on this day, or buy anything
- clint has more cringey dialogue about emily
- pam asks if this is 'a sign from the almighty' (yoba) and asks if this is the end . devastating
- sam asks if it's acid rain, and then says he has to protect his brother
- the wizard says this is 'doing wonders' for the local wildlife/junimos (maybe, idk i'm just guessing)
Ok so i started playing Stardew Valley over the weekend and I'm loving it so far but a random comment got me thinking.
It's winter and i passed by Abigail and i checked to see if she had any dialogue and she said, “Another year is almost over. It goes by so fast, doesn't it?”
And im just like, well yeah, your years are the bare minimum of 4 months
Now im trying to figure out how they quantify their ages.
If their years are 4 months consisting of 28 days each while ours is 12 with roughly 30 days then, if we equalize it, do they age 3x faster than we do with a life span 3x shorter than ours? Or do they age at the same rate but quantify it 3x what we do? Like is a Stardew Valley 3 year old the same physically to our 1 year olds?
Like i tell you I've seen 20 springs and you know im 20 years old but a Stardew character says they've seen 20 springs and physically they are almost 7.
However, you can have kids in the game. It takes 14 days for the them to be born, they then spend 14 days as infants sleeping in a crib, 14 days as babies standing in a crib, 28 days as babies crawling around, and finally they spend the rest of eternity as toddlers running around the house.
So im leaning towards them aging faster than us, at least in the beginning of life, but that still leaves their lifespans up in the air. Especially since they stop aging at the toddler stage and remain stagnant no matter how many years go by just like everyone else.(slightly sad about that since it would have been cool to see them as kids going to school with Jas and Vincent.)
(This is questioned with the consideration that the other time change is just a simplification, their days are still 24 hours and the time counts faster as a game mechanic and not a lore feature. Even if it only shows us every 10 min I'll take the fact that it says 10:30 and 10:40 as apposed to 10:3 and 10:4 or even just the hour to mean that the time passes the same. Meanwhile a year is legit just 28 days for each season.)
so the bus that brought the farmer to pelican town – the same bus that brought everyone to sam’s debut concert in zuzu city and (presumably) the same bus that brought elliott here only a few months before the farmer arrived – has canonically been dormant for decades.
lewis has been mayor for twenty years (as he proudly tells the farmer multiple times, unprompted), meaning most likely he’s been mayor for the majority of the time that the bus has been out of service. he’s let the entire town fall into disarray, let pam go without a job for decades, and (semi-unrelated to lewis but still worth noting) this also means that sandy has been without customers for decades (unless mr. qi and his casino npcs count as customers, but i doubt they’ve been buying beet seeds and random shirts).
but with all of that said, i just have to ask...how long has the farmer actually been in stardew valley? in winter year one, pierre stops by and tells the farmer about the new seed varieties he’ll start carrying in each season from now on, and congratulates the farmer on making it almost a year in pelican town. but even though pierre says it’s been only a year - meaning people know to some degree, how much time is passing, there’s still the question of how long is a year in the valley compared to everywhere else?
