Challenge ideas?

Benhimself

Rancher
A few casual runs I've done:

The Blackjack Run: get all 21 points on Grandpa's evaluation at the dawn of year 3. This was admittedly a lot easier before 1.6 adding mastery endgame recipes to the requirements of the "craft everything" point, let me tell you. 20 points would still be a flex.
Dry Run: Finish the community center without ever using the watering can. Because at the time I never set up sprinklers early enough, so this run I forced myself to do otherwise! For harder challenge, do it without Meadowlands for easy farming XP. (I originally did it in 1.5)
I Must Obey The Inscrutable Exhortations Of My Soul: Start with a random appearance. By the end of spring, decorate your house to match. On the last day of spring, pick up the decorative item or furniture from the traveling cart. By the end of summer, upgrade your house and decorate the new room to match the item purchased. On the last day of summer, etc. A fun little thing that makes you actually check out Pierre's wallpaper and flooring and Robin's furniture items.
Rip Van Winkle Run: speedrun completing the trash bear. Named for the two year nap you start the game with. Highly random: will the cooked gift requirements be locked behind an NPC at seven hearts, or available in the tavern? Play to find out!
The Corazon Run: Speedrun getting both the "Popular" achievement and the "Beloved Farmer" achievement. Nightmare mode: don't consult the wiki for NPC favorite gifts or schedules.
 

MogBeoulve

Farmer
The only acceptable challenge is to speedrun filling the entire farm with rabbits. They must be provided with fresh grass to eat every sunny day outside of winter and must arrive in batches of four, one a day for four consecutive days. I must also pet all rabbits a minimum of every other day.
 
I gave one farm a 'local economy' challenge:
  • All fish have to be sold to Willy.
  • All produce, artisan goods, and cooked dishes have to be sold to Pierre's.
  • All animal products have to be sold to Marnie or Pierre's.
  • All gems (and ore & coal but I never sell those) have to be sold to Clint.
  • All slime eggs and the like have to be sold to the Adventurer's Guild.
  • All building resource items (wood, stone, etc.) have to be sold to Robin.
  • Only artifacts and community board request items (like the 'ship 100 blueberries' one) are allowed in the shipping bin.
  • All community requests must be accepted and a genuine effort made to complete them. e.g. no skipping that fishing quest (or whatever) for the mines because it was a good luck day.
It made me have to pay more attention to days and times, that's for sure. It was also the challenge that made me finally remember Jodi's and Emily's names. ^_^

I had fun with it. I should do it again after 1.6 comes to PS4 to kick things off.
 

LRangerR

Local Legend
I gave one farm a 'local economy' challenge:
  • All fish have to be sold to Willy.
  • All produce, artisan goods, and cooked dishes have to be sold to Pierre's.
  • All animal products have to be sold to Marnie or Pierre's.
  • All gems (and ore & coal but I never sell those) have to be sold to Clint.
  • All slime eggs and the like have to be sold to the Adventurer's Guild.
  • All building resource items (wood, stone, etc.) have to be sold to Robin.
  • Only artifacts and community board request items (like the 'ship 100 blueberries' one) are allowed in the shipping bin.
  • All community requests must be accepted and a genuine effort made to complete them. e.g. no skipping that fishing quest (or whatever) for the mines because it was a good luck day.
It made me have to pay more attention to days and times, that's for sure. It was also the challenge that made me finally remember Jodi's and Emily's names. ^_^

I had fun with it. I should do it again after 1.6 comes to PS4 to kick things off.
I've done this before as well. There was one group of items that couldn't be sold, but I don't remember what the were
 
I've done this before as well. There was one group of items that couldn't be sold, but I don't remember what the were
Any item that couldn't be sold locally went into the shipping bin in my challenge, so I didn't have anything I normally could sell that I could not. I was just limited to where and when I could sell things. And also forced to complete community requests (I included Sandy as part of the community but not Mr Qi).
 
My progression thread used those rules. Mining you only get from rocks I think. Fishing is extremely hard, and you only get it from crab pots, so community center or whatevs. Fighting is primarily gotten in secret woods, as I barred entry to the mines completely until then.
So did you have to chop down a ton of trees and pick up all the foragbles to first get your foraging up to ten in order to upgrade your axe and enter the secret woods, then kill an unimaginable number of slimes to raise your combat so you could enter the mines?
Or was the axe exempt from the challenge?
Did you earn the slime charmer ring before you'd even entered the mines? ^_^
 

LRangerR

Local Legend
So did you have to chop down a ton of trees and pick up all the foragbles to first get your foraging up to ten in order to upgrade your axe and enter the secret woods, then kill an unimaginable number of slimes to raise your combat so you could enter the mines?
Or was the axe exempt from the challenge?
Did you earn the slime charmer ring before you'd even entered the mines? ^_^
It was a farm/forage run, so I didn't make a barrier to that, but if you wanted you could make it pick up able forage and scything until L10 I suppose. But the slimes in the forest were mostly cool, until it became winter, then they were icy and lethal. Gold axe vs ice slimes was a rough fight at times, I'll tell ya what
 

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
I've done a fair few challenges (or had a singular challenge 'goal' I had to meet):

- I've done a farm where I could only leave the farm once a month (and not on the first spring at all), really fun optimizing time outside without it feeling like a full on minmax run, I only had to optimize one day a month as opposed to every day
- "Skill" focused farms such as only fishing or only mining/combat oriented. Decently fun with the use of slime ranching or fish ponds
- 100mil in year 1 (just used the casino so it was more of a time grind than any proper planning/skill)
- Mastery cave in spring year one (still working on this passively)
- Perfection as early as possible (another that I haven't yet finished)
- Regular minmax money runs, trying to get 10, 20, etc. million g in the first year (notably not using any money exploits)
- Only making money through x good/type of good. This could be a subset of artisan goods like alcohol, a subset or processable goods like fruits (I did a peach farm before), or really anything
- More passive challenges I have active on endgame files such as a chest of crystalariums, a chest of every buyable item, etc.
- the stack challenge, trying to get a stack of every item, this is a super long-term one I have my farm on mobile aimed towards. While I'm not entirely set on finishing it, I would like to get as far as I can, at least through stacks I find fun

Those are generally the runs or type of run I've done or am doing, when you play for a long while it's more enjoyable to play with a particular focus
 

riklaunim

Sodbuster
- "Natural farm" where you don't use normal seeds, just wild seeds/crops and process that, even silly things like salmonberry jam, iridium quality salmonberry wine etc ;)
- A play-through without Artisan
 
My favorite ones I've done:

"Self Sufficient" - No purchasing any items which will then go into your inventory. So upgrades are fair game as are animals and buildings, but no purchasing food, wood, stone, seeds, or anything else which will go into your inventory as a result. Not even heaters or a milk pail. It's entirely possible to get the community center done this way for what it's worth, and it can be fun to figure out how.

I also have done and recommend going with things that are not the typical crop route, here's some examples:
"Flower Power" - The only goods you can sell or gift to others are flowers and flower byproducts. This includes the flowers themselves, honey, mead, and oil from sunflower seeds. I did the Joja route on this one but if you want to do the normal community center you would just need to make sure you're not selling or gifting other crops etc and only throwing away any excess beyond those needed for the bundles. Would personally recommend going Joja though so you can go more "pure" flowers.
I also did a Maple Syrup farm which was less a strict challenge and more just a theme, I think these days you could do even better with a "forage farm", foregoing traditional crops and focusing on only things that grant forage XP or no XP. There's the syrups, wild seeds, truffles, and more.
Currently I'm doing a "cropless" run as I try out the meadowlands - not planting any crops at all, going pure rancher. So far it's been fun.

I also think it can be fun to focus on collection based challenges -
"Ultimate Fashionista" - Collect in a shed 1 of every clothing item which exists in the game. Easier said than done!
"Ultimate Fisherman" - I made an aquarium with an iridium quality fish of every variety. Quite the challenge with legendary fish, next time I do it I'll be going for 3 iridium quality legendaries since the challenge bait allows that to occur, as well as at least 1 of everything else.

Just a few ideas for you, the most important thing of course is to do something you find to be fun! Good luck and enjoy!
 

stardew_luv

Farmer
Hi, all!

Have you played the game with any interesting challenges, like not farming or only going to town once a year? I
I did an only make money through mining and foraging. That was fun. I also have done plenty of don’t do anything but walk around, enjoy the scenery, decorate, make friends and socialize runs. I used item ID to fudge in a full stack of Magic Rock Candy and made everyone so happy and got dialogue I usually missed when worrying about making money.

When I get 1.6 mobile I really want to do a get that dreaded but pretty riverland farm and survive off of foraging, catching fish and dehydrating/smoking them accordingly. Maybe I’ll add some fruit trees to dehydrate too. My luck all the fruit would fall in the water 😂. Might have to stick them in the greenhouse and have trees too where crops would normally be. Then mushroom for farm cave to dehydrate. I won’t be rich but it should be fun! 🤩
 

FilthyGorilla

Local Legend
I did an only make money through mining and foraging. That was fun. I also have done plenty of don’t do anything but walk around, enjoy the scenery, decorate, make friends and socialize runs. I used item ID to fudge in a full stack of Magic Rock Candy and made everyone so happy and got dialogue I usually missed when worrying about making money.

When I get 1.6 mobile I really want to do a get that dreaded but pretty riverland farm and survive off of foraging, catching fish and dehydrating/smoking them accordingly. Maybe I’ll add some fruit trees to dehydrate too. My luck all the fruit would fall in the water 😂. Might have to stick them in the greenhouse and have trees too where crops would normally be. Then mushroom for farm cave to dehydrate. I won’t be rich but it should be fun! 🤩
In the 1.6.9 update items will bounce on the water before sinking, preventing anything from being lost so long as you're close enough or have some magnetism
 

stardew_luv

Farmer
In the 1.6.9 update items will bounce on the water before sinking, preventing anything from being lost so long as you're close enough or have some magnetism
How do you know this? Are you secretly an insider and have news you haven’t been sharing with us all along here? 😂. No I realize it’s likely been posted somewhere out there on some Stardew gossip column somewhere, though I haven’t seen a thing.
 
My current farm's challenge is to have no mods. It is so hard for me not to, considering I've always had like 30 mods. And to grow every crop in every season. Getting a bit tired of harvesting all the time though can't wait to get Junimo huts.
 
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