Stardew Valley just turned six last month, and the game is only growing in popularity. It's also a huge game, with frequent updates and new features to discover even after (in-game) years of play. However, the Stardew Valley Modding community is also ever-growing, and Ridgeside Village is one of the game’s biggest mods to date.

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With a brand new village location, new marriage candidates, and much more, Ridgeside has become a must-play for any Stardew Valley fan. As great as Ridgeside is, it definitely can be overwhelming to start; so, here's a list of everything you need to know about Ridgeside Village.

We'll try and keep things vague where we can, but this article will contain spoilers such as shop and character names, allusions to specific story beats, and cut scenes.

10 Required Mods and Installation

The Ridgeside Wiki houses a detailed installation guide, but Ridgeside Village requires a decent number of mods to be installed in addition to the Ridgeside Village mod folder. Stardew Valley Expanded players will be familiar with most of the mods on this list, and the general installation process is similar for both mods.

You'll need these mods installed for Ridgeside Village to work properly:

• Anti-Social NPCs
• Content Patcher
• Custom Companions
• Custom NPC Exclusions
• Custom NPC Fixes
• Extra Map Layers
• Farm Type Manager (FTM)
• Json Assets
• Mail Framework Mod
• Quest Framework
• SAAT - Audio API and Toolkit
• Shop Tile Framework

9 Discovering Ridgeside

The first time you open the game with Ridgeside Village installed, entering the Bus Stop will prompt a cutscene introducing Lenny, Ridgeside’s Chief Administrative Officer. But, you won’t actually meet her formally until you enter Ridgeside for the first time. ​​​​​​​

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You'll also notice a wide staircase to the right of the Bus; follow that to reach the Cable Car to Ridgeside. Once you get there, Lenny will give you a village tour. This is a pretty long cutscene, but it's also a great way to get acquainted with the brand-new area while time is conveniently frozen.

8 New NPCs (And Romanceables)

Ridgeside Village adds more than 40 new characters, with six bachelors and bachelorettes to marry. Like vanilla NPCs, each one has their own schedule, and you can find many of them in Pelican Town during the week. They won't appear at the Saloon every weekend like the Pelican Town's NPCs do, but luckily, most are fairly easy to find.

Ridgeside villagers can also post Help Wanted quests on the Quest Board, ask for Special Orders, or make requests via snail mail. There are also Story Quests that unlock new lore, areas, and even characters to meet.

7 Public Buildings

Ridgeside brings new amenities that aren't available in Pelican Town. One notable addition is the Log Cabin Hotel, where you can pay 500g per night to stay the night in Ridgeside instead of trekking back to your farm before 2 am.

There are also two new greenhouses, an open-air restaurant, a clinic, a stage, and even a research facility. Many of these buildings are unlocked via special quests, gaining enough hearts with certain villagers, or earning specific amounts of gold. Some buildings may even require you to craft the necessary items to repair the dilapidated buildings.

6 Merchants

Many Ridgeside residents are also merchants who run small shops or offer services out of their homes. You can buy clothing, farm supplies, food, weapons, and even orchard trees. Some merchants will give you discounts if you're friendly enough with them, so make sure to put effort into building relationships.

For example, the Heaps Convenience store (run by Lorenzo and Shanice) offers many of the same goods as Pierre's General Store, but for a better price; that price gets even better when you have more than eight hearts with them.

5 Festivals

Ridgeside Village brings two new festivals to Stardew Valley: Ridgeside Gathering on Fall 20 and Ember of Resolution on Winter 28.

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Ridgeside Gathering brings the village together for a concert, while the Ember of Resolution is Ridgeside's version of a New Year's Eve party, complete with a bonfire. Both festivals also have the usual booths with novelty items and a chance to build friendships by speaking to all the villagers in attendance.

4 Fish, Fruits, Foragables

Ridgeside adds 16 new fish, three legendary fish, and 20 new foragables. These items can be found in specific seasons and specific places in Ridgeside Village. Many of the forageables on offer provide awesome buffs, like increased luck, magnetism, or speed - even max energy - for a limited time.

In that sense, they're a lot like the cooked food in the Vanilla game, except these are things that you can find anywhere. You can find different foreagables all over Ridgeside Village, but for best results, definitely check out the Hike Trail.

3 Quests

Ridgeside Village quests work much like the ones in Pelican Town. There's a Help Wanted board outside of Lenny's Ridgeside Village Admin office and a Special Orders board erected in the Fall of Year 1. Help Wanted and Special Orders quests will expire eventually, but Special Orders requests tend to last longer and be more item-intensive.

RELATED: Stardew Valley: A Guide To The Mysterious Qi Quest​​​​​​​Ridgeside also has Story Quests that alter the village of Ridgeside permanently. These quests are comparable to the Community Center bundles in Pelican Town in that many of these quests unlock new buildings or areas and are helpful for learning about Ridgeside's lore.

2 Relics

Relics are completely new to Ridgeside Village, tied to the Spirit Realm questline. Relics fall into two categories: Cursed Artifacts and Blessed Artifacts. You'll likely come across many of these artifacts randomly during gameplay.

For Cursed Artifacts, some do spawn completely randomly, while others have detailed and complicated spawn rates and times - for example, only being available to find on dates divisible by three. Weather, time of day, and friendship level can also affect what you're able to find.

Blessed Artifacts are much more specific and usually require using a specific tool in a very specific place on the map.

1 New Save or Existing Save?

The Ridgeside Wiki strongly suggests starting a new save when installing Ridgeside. You can probably get away with installing Ridgeside with an existing vanilla save, but updating a save with an older (pre-2.0) version of Ridgeside installed to the 2.0+ version of Ridgeside is absolutely not recommended.

It should still be playable if you're totally attached to your existing pre-2.0 save. However, make sure you consult the Ridgeside Village Wiki to know what to expect and how to fix any issues you run into.

NEXT: Things We Wish We Knew Before We Started Stardew Valley