Solo Variant Ideas / Solo Homebrew Rules

[faerirose]

I got the boardgame from a local game shop in Cologne, Germany last month and have played it a bunch both by myself and with my wife since then.
Playing solo can be pretty brutal so I've been coming up with some fun solo variant ideas that you can mix and match to get the solo game experience you want. You can even use these for non-solo games. You can also change the variant names to be meaningful to you. You know, do what you feel
Reply with your own homebrew rules; this game has a lot of ways to modify and personalize it and I'm curious what kinds of changes you all have done.

Keep Our Waters Clean
Pelican Town wants to win the Cleanest Waterways in the Fern Islands contest but keeps losing to Ginger Island. That doesn't stop them from trying every year!

When you would collect trash from fishing because you did not successfully catch fish, take all trash from the fishing track.​

Happy Holidays
Take time off to celebrate the holidays.

Remove the holiday cards from each season. Randomly choose 4 season cards for each season. Randomly choose one holiday for each season and mix the corresponding season in with the with the 4 season cards for each season. Seasons last 5 turns instead of 4.​

F*ck You, Joja! / Pelican Town Ordinance 5.11
(The first name is what my wife says while playing the video game and she walks by the JojaMart or there's a cutscene with Morris . The second is a kid-friendly variant name that is a relevant Leverage tv show reference.)
Due to an incident that happened with the JojaMart a few years before you took over your grandpa's farm, Pelican Town no longer allows big-box chain stores. Pelican Town Ordinance 5.11 prevents chain stores in the Pelican Town city limits or within 20 miles of Pelican Town.

Remove all season cards with the Joja symbol. Choose your season deck from the remaining season cards.​

Go-Getter
Before you moved to Stardew Valley, you took some community college classes on weekends to be better prepared for farmlife.

Take the top card of your profession deck at the beginning of the game.​

Honeymoon Valley / New Kid in Town / BFF: Best Farmin' Friend / A Helping Hand
Before moving to your grandpa's farm, you

• were already married/ had a partnered or
• had a child or
• had a friend who is also sick of city life or....

Whatever you call this, basically you start a solo game with the purple player token and the mermaid's pendant. The purple player works the same way as when you marry in the game (follow the mermaid's pendant rules). Make up your own flavor text for why you have an extra action every round


Solo Mine Variants / Additional Mine Variants
I thought of a few options, but I only use the first one. For solo play, it provides enough of a challenge that you can still fail to get to the bottom of the mine, but it is possible to do it when you have luck with cards and/or luck with rolls.

1. 6 Mine Levels: Use mine level cards 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 10.
2. 5 Mine Levels: Use mine level cards 1, 3, 6, 5 or 7, 9 or 10.
3. 4 Mine Levels: Use mine level cards 1, 3, 6, 8 or 10.
4. Randomized mine level cards: Decide how many levels you want. Decide how many of each mine level type you want. Randomly choose the mine level cards and order them numerically. E.g., you want 6 mine levels. You decide on 2 mine level type cards per level (2 dirt level, 2 ice level, 2 magma level). Each mine group has 4 cards per group; randomly choose 2 cards from each group.
5. Mining scaled for number of players: Start with 6 mine levels and add 2 mine levels for each additional player.

When I play solo, I use Keep Our Waters Clean, Happy Holidays, Go-Getter and 6 Mine Levels. When I have a group of difficult Grandpa Goals I'll sometimes also add F*ck You, Joja!. I certainly don't win every time, so at least for my play style, this group of variants provides a challenge while still allowing me to win sometimes.

 

[Odin]

These are great! I definitely find the game more difficult when playing without others, I might try the " Happy Holidays" one the next time I play.

 

[kailomonkey]

I have just played my first game. I played solo. I got 9 out of 10 objectives complete but I love that it is so tight. Yet I didn't have the mines goal so I had a lucky start.

• Logically the mine level to reach should scale with the number of players a little like all the other goals. I'd also suggest 6, 8, 10, 12 but level 12 is okay for 2 players so it's hard to say.
• A spouse could have really helped too as I needed wood but had no other goals in that corner, other players could have been helpful there. Though I'm not sure spouse can move/forage so maybe it wouldn't have helped. My biggest problem was having farmer upgrades by the time winter hit plus Joja crippled my farming business.
• Joja was really mean to me too, what if the gold cost to remove those tiles totalled the number of bundles left to finish, so the cost reduces until you have completed the community centre, defeating Joja like in the videogame. In solo play at least.

I should make clear I like your ideas especially having story context! It may have been better if the grandpas goals were instead these storylines or some combination. Making it more about village community instead of self.

 

[dorto]

Would you still allow yourself to gain an epic item once completing the mine even though you don't have 12 levels or the level 12 card?

 

[FilthyGorilla]

Custom house rules rule (pun intended)