Stardew Valley is an extremely open-ended game. This means that while there are certain goals you need to reach, it’s up to you how you will do it. We’re aware by now that we can craft, build, explore, and interact with various NPCs. We can also consume various food items that we prepare ourselves our find throughout the world. Having said that, while eating is one of the options, how do you do it? In today’s guide, we’re going to cover how to eat in Stardew Valley and what are the benefits of it?

You can eat in Stardew Valley by placing a specific food item on your hotbar. Once you’ve selected a specific food item, you will have to hold that item in your hand by navigating to that item in your hotbar. Right-click anywhere on the screen while you’re holding food, and the prompt will appear asking you whether you want to consume the food. Click yes, and your energy should be refiled, or certain buffs should appear depending on what you’ve eaten.

Now that we’ve covered eating in Stardew Valley, it’s time to analyze the pros and cons. If you’re interested, stay with us and keep reading!

Do you need to eat in Stardew Valley?

Eating in Stardew Valley is optional, and you don’t really have to do it at all. However, if you decide to skip meals, you will be losing on some benefits. Eating provides you with numerous buffs, depending on what you’ve eaten, and restores energy. Energy is required to do tasks and undergo various jobs in Stardew Valley. It’s always a good idea to bring food if you plan a mining expedition or you’re planning to work on your farm the whole day.

While no food meter is implemented in the game, an energy meter affects everything you do, from using various tools to interacting with the world. The main way to restore energy is to simply go to sleep, and this is not always an option since we want to utilize the day to the fullest. Having said that, we’ve got another option at our disposal, eating.

Not all food items will have beneficial effects, some like, for example, sap, will cause us to lose energy. Eating sap is like eating poison, and it will make us weaker. The same goes for void mayonnaise.
Most food items will simply replenish our energy and health by a certain % and some will give us powerful buffs. Luck lunch, for example, provides us with +100 energy, +45 health, and a +3 boost to luck. Beat Hotpot restores +125 energy and +56 health, boosts our maximum energy for 30 points, and gives +32 points boost to magnetism.

The amount of energy and health that will be restored, as well as any buff provided, depends on the ingredients required to cook the meal and the overall difficulty of the recipe.

A fried egg is relatively easy to make, and it requires only a single egg to prepare. Thus it’s not surprising that it restores only a small portion of health and energy. Tropical Curry, on the other hand, requires 1x coconut, 1x pineapple, and 1x hot pepper, but it also gives you a foraging buff and significantly more energy and health than a mere fried egg. As you can see, more effort and ingredients result in better rewards when it comes to cooking.

How do you cook and eat in Stardew Valley?

Now that we’ve covered why beneficial is eating in Stardew Valley, it’s time to cover how to do it.
You can eat in Stardew Valley by following these steps:

1. Start by placing food items in your hotbar.
2. Once you’ve done that, you need to select them or rather “hold them in your hand.”
3. While holding the food item, right-click anywhere on the screen, and a prompt will appear asking you whether you want to consume the food item.
4. Click yes. You can observe your energy and health recharging.

You can eat most crops, fruits, animal products, foraged goods, fish, etc., without cooking them first. However, in that case, you will not enjoy the full benefits as you would if you used the ingredients in a full recipe. You can unlock the full potential of an ingredient by cooking it.
You can start cooking in Stardew Valley as soon as you unlock the first upgrade for the farmhouse.

Upgrading your farmhouse will unlock the kitchen, which will provide you with a stove and fridge. A stove is used to prepare the food, and a fridge is used to store prepared food. The fridge acts like an extension of your inventory, so it means that you don’t need to place the ingredients from the fridge directly in your inventory to use them in cooking.

Similarly, you can unlock a “cookout kit” as soon as you reach level 9 foraging, to cook anywhere, even while you’re on the go. To prepare food, you need both equipment and recipes. Recipes are unlocked as you progress through the game. So far, there are 80 recipes implemented in the game.

Prepared meals can serve as both nourishment and gifts for other NPCs. Certain prepared meals can significantly raise your relationship with other NPCs, depending on the quality of the meal and whether the NPC in question simply “likes” the meal or “loves” it. The quality of the meal depends on the quality of the ingredients used to prepare the meal.

Summary

As you can see, eating and preparing food in Stardew Valley is easy, but if you plan on unlocking powerful buffs, you’re going to have to spend time and rare ingredients on it. Cooking is also used to raise relationships with NPCs, as most of them have certain meals that they like to receive as gifts. However you look at it, while it’s not obligatory, cooking and eating can only make your game easier, and besides, it adds extra realism and immersion to the game.

Foraging skill in Stardew Valley help you find useful materials and resources in the world. Either by picking plants on the ground or chopping down trees. What makes foraging such a great skill is the fact that you can raise it as you’re exploring the world. As soon as you reach level 5, you will have at your disposal two professions to specialize in, forester and gatherer. Both professions are great choices, but one is ultimately better than the other. Let’s see, between forester and gatherer, which profession is better?

Gatherer is a better profession in Stardew Valley. It allows you to forage more items, and thus you have more items at your disposal for cooking, selling, and gifts. As soon as you reach level 10, you can pair the gatherer with a botanist, which will make your foraged items iridium quality. Due to that, you will earn more money in the long run, especially if you have an artisan profession as well.

Now that you know which profession is better, it’s time to analyze it in a bit more detail. If you want to know how exactly gatherer leads to more money, stay with us and keep reading!

What is the forester profession in Stardew Valley?

Forester is one of the two choices you get as soon as you reach level 5 in foraging skill. Forester allows you to gain 25% more wood when chopping, and it applies to trees, stumps, and logs as well. It’s a good choice since it allows you to gather a lot of wood early game, and you know how much wood resources upgrading and improving your farm takes. It’s especially useful when you reach level 10 as then you can choose the lumberjack profession, which makes it more likely that chopping trees will result in hardwood dropping.

Hardwood is not difficult to get, but it’s time-consuming, and you will need to make trips constantly in order to acquire it. With this profession, you will have a bigger chance to acquire hardwood in your backyard, fast. So, if you require vast amounts of hardwood for whatever reasons, you might invest in forester early on so you can take advantage of lumberjack later. Or you can use the dog statute in the sewers to change professions later when your hardwood needs rise. With everything said, forester is the first choice of level 5 profession only if you have truly specific needs when it comes to hardwood.

What is the gatherer profession in Stardew Valley?

Gatherer is the other choice you get as soon as you reach level 5 in the foraging profession. It offers a nice 20% bonus chance at a double harvest of foraged items. This essentially means that you will have more items at your disposal for cooking, selling, and gifts. Although early-game, the yield from this profession will be somewhat small, expect an increase if you choose a botanist at level 10, this will make all your foraged items iridium quality. If you’re breeding pigs for truffles, this is a great investment, especially if you plan on choosing artisan as well as soon as you reach level 10.

This will result in overall huge amounts of money. The gatherer profession gives you a bonus even if you grow the foraged items yourself. This means that you can grow foraged goods in vast quantities and reap the benefits of being a gatherer, as everything will have a significant chance to yield a double drop. Gatherer also applies to the items you would have found at the beach and at the mines as well. It simply affects more stuff in the game than forester.

Gatherer vs. forester, which profession is better in Stardew Valley?

Gatherer is objectively better, but there are some things to take into consideration.
If you need wood in large quantities early in the game and hardwood later in the game, you can choose forester as that’s the only thing the profession is basically good for. You won’t generate as much money with it since it’s always a bad idea to sell wood since you never know when you’ll need it. So when it comes to monetary value, the profession is good for making money but indirectly. The takeaway is to invest in this only if you need wood.
If you’re oriented more toward making money, gatherer is a clear choice through and through.

More items mean more money and better relationships with the residents of Stardew Valley since foraged items can, in some cases, be used as gifts, or to prepare gifts. At level 10, if you choose a botanist, your items will be of the highest quality, which means even more money. If you have an artisan level 10 profession, you will need truffles to make truffle oil. If you’re keeping pigs to gather truffles regularly, the gatherer is a perfect choice since it yields more truffles as well. You can’t go wrong with gatherer professions since it affects a lot more items in the game than forester. There’s no doubt that gatherer is a better and more balanced choice between the two.

As we’ve mentioned before, If you don’t think that gatherer suits your needs the best, and you suddenly find yourself needing lots of wood, hardwood especially. YOu can always make a trip to the sewers and activate the Statue Of Uncertainty. This will allow you to change your profession for a hefty sum of 10 000 gold. It’s not ideal, but at least you get a choice, as in you’re not locked into a profession that you consider useless. Your needs might change when compared to the early game, and it’s nice to have a choice to change your profession to reflect that.