Stardew Valley creator shares a game-changing tip hardly anyone noticed

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Hundreds of hours and I had no idea.

Stardew Valley's incomplete community centre
(Image credit: ConcernedApe)

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone has shared a handy tip to get through the early-game community centre slog.

If you're anything like me, you have a small country's worth of farms across different save files. Experimenting with different farm layouts, playstyles, spouses and challenges gives the game a pretty decent level of replayability. It also means the first few hours of each save can become a bit of a chore, especially when it comes to donating items to the community centre. 

Well, Barone has shared a nifty way to quickly know if an item in your bag is one that's needed for the community centre. In a tweet, he revealed that the community centre icon in your inventory will gently pulsate if you're hovering over an item that needs to be donated.

Apparently, it's been in the game since at least the 1.4 update, but it's such a subtle effect that it's taken a fair few people by surprise. I know many of you will probably be looking at your screen right now thinking "how the hell did nobody know this?" but it's a tip that even I somehow missed, despite sinking hundreds of hours into the game.

The community centre plays an important part in the early hours of your Stardew Valley playthrough. Completing different rooms helps restore a bunch of areas across the map, including the incredibly handy greenhouse. It's usually the main priority for your first year on the farm, but if your memory is as shoddy as mine you'll still end up forgetting what needs to be donated, even after completing the centre dozens of times.

Last year's 1.5 update also introduced the option to "remix" the community centre bundles, randomising which items you need to find. That makes the subtle effect even more useful, and one I'll definitely be using in future playthroughs. It's not the first time small features have flown straight under the nose of Stardew Valley players, like excitable redditors discovering months later that their ducks could actually swim in a pond.

Mollie Taylor
Mollie Taylor
Features Producer

Mollie spent her early childhood deeply invested in games like Killer Instinct, Toontown and Audition Online, which continue to form the pillars of her personality today. She joined PC Gamer in 2020 as a news writer and now lends her expertise to write a wealth of features, guides and reviews with a dash of chaos. She can often be found causing mischief in Final Fantasy 14, using those experiences to write neat things about her favourite MMO. When she's not staring at her bunny girl she can be found sweating out rhythm games, pretending to be good at fighting games or spending far too much money at her local arcade.