Now that Stardew Valley's foundations-shaking 1.5 update has been out for a bit, let me point out to you that a bunch of the game's most popular mods are already updated and fit for purpose with it.
Specifically, the sprawling Stardew Valley Expanded mod is chugging along as usual, and got a nice new farm map to suit the big update to boot. Grandpa's Farm is a huge new farm map with all manner of niceties on it, like a mysterious-looking shed. Some nice shady-looking groves. A lovely river. It also includes new secrets and quests to go along with a new look. The old farm map for SVE, Immersive Farm 2, is still available, but Grandpa's Farm supercedes it as the primary map for SVE.
Nice. Installing SVE is perhaps the best solution if you revisited Stardew for the big update, but your advance save burned through it quickly—or you just felt burned out by all the familiar stuff on arrival. Either way, Stardew Valley Expanded is a mod our Lauren Morton said feels like "a proper expansion." That's a lot of stuff on top of the expansion-sized update to the game that 1.5 gave us all, complete with a new region to explore and a pile of end-game (post-game?) goals to achieve.
I've found the 1.5 update a superb time to come back to the game after years away. I especially noted that its split-screen local co-op, on a widescreen monitor or TV, is the best resolution I've ever played Stardew Valley in. Now I'm excited to wrap that playthrough up so I can take a month break and jump into Stardew Valley Expanded. You can find Stardew Valley Expanded on NexusMods.
