First off, thank you for checking out my guide.

Secondly, this guide is an attempt to ease players into Grimshire's somewhat harder opening and gameplay loop. I am not an expert by any means but this is what I've found success with and I've seen quite a few people having trouble advancing even on easy.

For reference to everything in this guide I play the game on 'normal.'

I will be updating this guide as I can and I'll likely get screenshots at some point.

- Get screenshots to enhance the guide.

- Play with the new update from the start to check out the new bluggy hutch and gurtle stable and see how that affects things. I suspect they'll make it a little slower to build up a stock of food for carnivores or herbivores since gurtleshrooms are now rightly considered herbivore food and you don't just have two buildings to work with and seem to need all 4 to be properly prepared.

- Try out stoat

(I've been quite busy and haven't gotten the time to play Grimshire since the update came out.)

First and foremost, the mentality entering this game. This is not Stardew Valley, Roots of Pacha, Story of Seasons, Harvest Moon, etc. with cute animal characters. This is Grimshire. The game can, and will be rough to start and will punish you for making mistakes. Do not go into this game thinking you can just plant a few seeds, do a tiny bit of fishing and maybe do some ranching for the entire game. You must do everything. Don't expect to have a glut of resources early on, nor should you expect to be ahead of the game's demands until late in the game. This game wants you to struggle a bit to keep up and will constantly throw challenges at you to keep you from growing complacent.

Going into this game with the proper expectation will do wonders. If you're expecting a cozy farm sim that will hold your hand and let you take your time you'll be in for a bad time. If you go into it expecting to need to constantly be doing stuff, constantly be expanding and improving your methods, you'll have a much better time.

On top of this, don't be afraid to lower the difficulty if need be. The main/only change seems to be the weekly 'Ration' you need to give away relatively early on and it becomes a consistent thing throughout the game ramping up later on as well. On Normal you need an extra 5 days worth of food for the army whereas on easy it's an extra 3 days worth of food.

Now we can move on to the creating your character.

There are currently four playable Species.

Rabbit: This is the Herbivore. They receive a 50% bonus to stamina when consuming plants but receive 50% less stamina when consuming meat.

They also start with the Species Skill 'Green Claw' this gives you a 10% increased chance of a crop you planted being a "Bumper Crop." This simply means you'll receive an extra crop when harvesting sometimes.

Fox: This is the Carnivore. They receive a 50% bonus to stamina when consuming meat but receive 50% less stamina when consuming plants.

They start with the skill 'Fox in the Hen House' which gives a 30% chance for Bluggies (the games chicken equivalent) to lay an extra egg.

Bear: The bear is an Omnivore, they can eat anything at it's base value meaning they get no bonus or reduced stamina from eating anything.

Their species skill is Beary Master which gives bushes a 20% chance to drop extra fruit.

Deer: The deer is an Herbivore, so like the Rabbit they gain more stamina from plants and less from meat.

Their species skill is Efficient Grazer. It gives a 50% chance to receive 1 extra hay-grass when harvesting hay-grass.

What you want to play as is pretty much up to you, but I think the Fox's starter skill is the most valuable with the Bear's being a close second. The Rabbit's bumper crop sounds nice but you can achieve the same goal with compost, though the benefits seem to stack. I feel the Deer's skill is better than the Rabbits but not by much. It suffers from random chance and is entirely dependent on how much hay you'll be using, this means it can be really nice or mediocre, but it'll never be bad.

The dietary restrictions don't feel very restrictive to me as it's just what you'll eat and when. I do feel this is the Bear's weakpoint though, as gaining a bonus from something is more beneficial on average.


On character creation you'll also be allowed to choose one skill, I will go into detail about all the skills in a later section but for now know these choices are all Tier 2 Skills. My recommendation would be to take Courier for the 20% movement speed while running. There is no reason not to run in this game as it doesn't take stamina and getting places faster gives you so much more time to do what you need to do. The rest of the skills, at least for a starting skill, feel very lack luster.

Your first day you're given the typical 'meet everyone' quest. Do this ASAP, not just to tick it off but because most of the villagers will give you useful things and tools as well as some general tips. Pay attention to the dialogue in this game as there are only a few tutorial pop-ups and a lot of what you need to know is told to you by the characters themselves and not the game's tutorial.

To if you can't find someone during the day, around 6 or 7 o'clock most of the adult villagers go to the tavern. This can be a great place to meet people you've missed. There are two lynxes that are in the marsh just to the west of your farm, they don't go to the tavern so I would recommend talking to them during the day. Spend a good portion of your first day exploring and talking to people, clearing out your field isn't a top priority on day one but watering the living plants is.

After you've met everyone, aside from Finn (you'll meet him later, he's the one who brought you to the island.), focus on getting your farm cleaned up and plantable. Don't go overboard early on, you'll need all the stamina you can get to start. Use a sickle on dead plants for some plant debris, and make sure to plant every seed you can that's in season.

Once you're done with that check the villager menu in the escape menu, you should see people with a quest for you. The icon looks like a little exclamation point on the base of the character's portrait. If you don't see a quest, check again the next day. You want to do all quests as you get them as they give you valuable things.

One quest in specific to look out for is 'Carrots for Beatrix' this will give you a water pump, 8 tin pipes and the ability to craft said items. This is your sprinkler. Once you place the pump you'll need to place the pipes around it in it's blue boarder. This isn't a 'Roots of Pacha' style irrigation, it only pumps so far. These are some of the most powerful and important items for your early game, they save you so much stamina in the long run and will allow you to do more daily.

Forage everything you find and if you have extra stamina fish everything you see, you'll need the early influx of food and seeds. Don't be afraid to put fresh/raw food into the root cellar if need be, it'll get eaten before anything preserved. But try to preserve what you can.

Once you have your farm set up a little bit you can, and should, focus on doing stuff in the mine. You can get so much free stuff from the chests in there as well as ores which will be needed for tool upgrades, quests and town projects. Feel free to keep most of the food you get in the first week or so for yourself and use it for stamina for the mines, lumbering or clearing your farmland. You won't be hard for food until after the first rationing.

This section won't be a comprehensive step by step guide and more of guidelines for the first few days.

On your fist actual day
You should focus on meeting everyone as the quest gives you a reward and many of the villagers give you their own quests or items and recipes for farm equipment.

After you meet everyone clear off some of the farmland you've got so you can plant the seeds you have.

Days 2+ but before the guards show up

KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR THE QUEST CARROTS FOR BEATRIX This should be available to you relatively early on. It requires growing some carrots for her and completing it will give you the copper pump, 8 tin pipes and the blueprints to make both. These are essential for expanding your farm and keeping your stamina usage low while maintaining it.

Whenever you find something for the first time, crop/fish/forage/ore/gem, donate it to the museum. You'll get valuable and important upgrades from talking to the curator every 25th item donated.

Water your crops, forage in the woods, talk to some villagers as you see them. Once you've done so hit the mines next to the blacksmith's. Get as far as you can, make sure to open and break every chest. Make sure you have a chest or two at home for you to dump your inventory into, it'll help with organization later. Eat what food you have to keep yourself going and pushing deeper into the mines. When you hit floor 11 feel free to explore a little or leave.

Any day that's rainy, check with any villagers you want to get relationship with (I recommend the hamster as he sometimes gives peanut butter at high friendship and the general store stoats and fisher otters as they give useful items and preserved foods sometimes.) and then hit the mines.

When you go through the mines, feel free to sell the quartz and gemstones you have this will make sure you have the funds you need for upgrades and building.

Important note You can upgrade your fishing rod at the same time as any other tool as it's a different NPC that does so. The Blacksmith handles the Pickax, Ax, Hoe, Watering Can, and Sickle, the Fisherman handles the Fishing Rod. This means if you have enough bars you can have both the rod and another tool upgrading at the same time. This is useful in the event you're upgrading something like your ax or hoe and are intending on delving into the mines, you won't be fishing in them so you can use that time to also upgrade the rod.

When you can, upgrade your pickax. While it's upgrading work on gathering wood and turning at least some of it into planks. You'll want to make sure you have 90 planks and 90 stone so you can have Rowan build you a coop and barn as soon as you can. This way you can start befriending Bluggies, Chickrees, Gurtles and Alpheep. The animals are vital for keeping your carnivores fed passively. Once you have your coop and barn set up, buy a butcher table and don't be afraid to butcher male and almost old female animals once in a while. So long as you have 1 male and coop/barn space they'll be able to reproduce. Females give daily or bi-daily resources (milk, eggs, honey). Coop males give no resources, barn males give wool and gurtshrooms.

Once your pickax is upgraded you should open up and dive into the mine in the marsh. (So long as you have copper bars to upgrade another tool [it takes 20] I'd recommend upgrading your ax for making tree chopping easier or your hoe/watering can to make farm-work easier until you have your pumps set up.) It's on the far right side at the top of the screen, pickax the entrance and it'll break open. This is the mine you'll get nickle and iron from. The walls in here will take 2 hits from your current pickax to break, this is killer on your stamina, once you have enough iron(20 bars) to upgrade your pickax again you should do so.

At this point you're probably at least a week into the game so the guards will have shown up

From when the guards show up onwards

The guards declare their intent to take a defender's ration in a weeks time. This is scary at first, but you'll notice if you've been donating to the root cellar at all you're already above or around the quota they're requesting. This is when we'll shift some focus from the mines to more farming/ranching/fishing.

While your pickax is upgrading again, focus on farm, fishing, lumbering, pretty much anything that requires your attention. Once it's done upgrading feel free to hit the mines (floor 11+ of the forest mine or any level in the marsh mine) when you've got free time/stamina. They really are powerful and important.

The quota just needs to stay above 1 day for the entire time you're playing or the villagers will start to be able to die from starvation. The only day that matters for the full quota is the final day that the guards are there to collect. Do what you need to do to reduce the stress on yourself, leave everything in a chest at home and donate all at once so that the quota is instantly met? Sure, as long as no one is starving. Donate as soon as you can so the quota bar is far surpassed? Sure, as long as the food is still being eaten and isn't rotting away.

From here you'll be out of the 'first few days' and part-way into spring and on your way into summer. You should be able to slowly and constantly expand so long as you keep taking trips to the mines for copper, iron and tin for pipes and pumps. Other sections of the guide will give tips and such for general gameplay in the early game but I want to reiterate what is said in the rest of the guide, the museum is key. Donate everything you can to it, it's just one sample and should be the first of any item you get that they want. Once you've cleared milestones (every 25 items donated) you get a reward from the curator. The first few are invaluable for stamina preservation and production.

The first and most important thing I can say is get water pumps up and running as fast as possible. I've stated elsewhere the power of water pumps, but it can't be understated. Once you have them and can reliably craft them and their pipes (which is rather easy) you can free yourself to do more than just water your farm.

By doing this you also allow yourself to comfortably expand your farm to meet the needs of the herbivores. You'll notice, quite quickly, how it is far easier to provide for Carnivores than it is for Herbivores unless you have a massive farm.

As the game progresses, you are intended to expand your growing area. This should be done nearly every other week, or sooner should you be capable of watering and planting the whole field. If you have a glut of seeds, you should expand your field. If you have more pumps than you need, expand. If you upgraded your watering can and can now efficiently water a large field, you should expand. The name of the game is 'expand' when it comes to your farm.

Try to get fruit trees up and running soon as you can as well. While they won't solve all problems they can be a game changer. Every tree in the game provides a seed or fruit that can be used as Herbivore food. I cover trees in their own section.

Something of note: Crops cannot be planted outside their growing season but they survive up to a week after it has ended should you have planted them before the season was out. The crop seems to have a chance to whither and die each day it exists outside of it's intended season with a hard 'death date' of a week or so after the season is up. This means that crops that continually grand a yield are even more valuable as they can provide a bit of an assurance or buffer while you're waiting for your new season's crops to grow.

Critters and ranching is vital to supplying your carnivores with food, be it from butchering or simply the passive food generation of the critters.

When you have the resources, get a coop first and get it early. It only costs 400 coins, 40 planks and 40 stone. All of which you can get pretty swiftly just by clearing out your farm and doing a little mining.

The reason I recommend the coop first is Bluggies and Chikorees seem to be more common than Alpheeps and Girtles. Soon as you can get a barn, I'd advice you to do so as well.

While the coop or barn is being built, enclose the whole thing in fences, make sure there's enough room for your little ones to walk around and stuff. This is to stop them from wandering off and/or getting stuck outside at night since that'll make them upset. You don't need to segregate the barn and coop so it could be space effective to keep both building in the same fenced in enclosure.

Once you do, go find yourself a critter and tame it. To tame a critter you give it the item it likes. You can find guides on this for each critter but know that most of the time the critter wants something from the area it's in. You can tell what it wants because when you hold it it should run over to you. If you give it something it doesn't want it'll say it's "not interested in x" and it won't take the item so feel free to try everything you'v got on you. If you give it something related to what it wants you'll get a message saying "try a different x." For example, Bluggies like root vegetables, if you try to give the blue one a carrot it'll say "try a different root" because it wants a radish instead.

Make a big field and put as much hay-grass as you can on it. It doesn't require watering to grow and every few days you'll end up with some hay. You can use hay to make the kibbles to feed your critters and if you have it in their enclosure they'll eat from it when you let them outside so long as the grass is full grown.

You'll want to get a little variety of critters if you can, and make sure to have at least one male and one female if possible so you can breed them and have a steady supply of new critters should you choose to butcher them.

Bluggies(Females only): Eggs. Daily.
Chikorees(Females only): Honey. Daily.
Girtle: Girtshrooms. It seems random, but might be every few days.
Alpheep: Male and Female both can be sheered for wool every few days. Females produce milk. Daily.

All Critters can generate double items in the event that they are at maximum happiness. But even at max happiness it's a random chance.

All the bushes and trees in Grimshire can give you valuable food for your herbivore villagers. Here I'll put what trees provide what and when they do so. One of the reasons to do so, aside from giving you knowledge on the fruits obtained, is so you can know what you can cut down and when. Trees in the wilderness and town grow back in their spots after a while (20 days) so you can safely cut them down if they aren't going to bear fruit for another 21(or more) days.

Spring:
Plum Trees fruit between the 5th and the 18th.

Cherry Trees fruit between the 15th and 28th.

Maple Trees fruit between the 22nd and summer 8th.

Summer:
Birch Trees fruit between the 8th and the 23rd

Pear Trees fruit between the 16th and Fall 2nd

Apple Trees fruit between the 28th and Fall 13th

Fall:
Oak Trees fruit between the 8th and the 21st

Hawthorn Trees fruit between the 17th and the 27th

Pine Trees fruit between the 12th and the 26th

Winter
Juniper Trees fruit between the 1st and the 5th

There are multiple processing stations in the game, all of them except the drying racks come from the museum donations. They are needed to finish quests as well as prolong the shelf-life of food.

You'll also get non-food related processors. The saw and the smelter/furnace. These are vital to town projects as well as upgrading your own tools.

They are rather self explanatory as you get them but something I've seen people doing and complaining about is having one forge and then complaining it takes a week to smelt their stack of copper. The solution to this is to craft more forges. It really is that simple, the more things you have that can produce you stuff the faster that stuff gets produced. This is most noticeable on some of the later processors and the woefully inefficient drying racks.

Smelting ore
You'll need to smelt your ore before you can use it, each piece of ore makes one ingot. In order to smelt a single piece of ore you need either 2 coal, 3 hard wood, 4 medium wood or 5 softwood. You can also use sticks, but they're a 10 to 1 ratio and will see you run out fast. And you want to keep about a stack of sticks on hand for a future event.

Saw
The saw is a set and forget station, you just put in wood and get out planks. The type of wood doesn't matter, each piece of wood (hard, medium or soft) turns into one plank in 60 in game minutes.

Drying Rack
Oh the drying rack, it could be so good. And when it works it's a God-send. But the problem is they take upwards of a day and a half to dry a product and more often than not you'll be stuck with rain interrupting the process. The good news is it only pauses the drying process and doesn't revert it. The bad news? Stuff still spoils when on the drying rack. So if you have a good 2 days of rain in a row you'll likely have just a bunch of mush instead of dried product. Even still, make a good number of these (5~10) and use them. If it rains for more than one day in a row just take everything off even if it's more than half dry and throw it in the root cellar. It's better to have something than to have rot.

Smoker
The drying rack's big brother. Better in every way, except it can't smoke herbs, fruits or veggies. It requires fuel to smoke an item but only takes 6 hours to do so and each smoker can hold 8 items at once. Each fuel has it's own amount of time it provides.
Plant Debris: 5 minutes each. 72 required.
Sticks: 20 minutes each. 18 required.
Soft Wood: 40 minutes each. 9 required.
Medium Wood: 50 minutes each. 8 required.
Hard Wood: 1 hour each. 6 required.
Coal: 1 hour 20 minutes each. 5 required.

This guide focuses on the earlyish game so I won't get into the other processors unless people want me to but they get better or require a chain of actions to make proper use of but are relatively well explained in game. They are also far more powerful than the smoker or drying rack.

In this section I'll go over the skills in the game as well as what I think of them and which ones are important or not. The skills are broken up into three tiers, each tier costing an amount of skill points equal to their tier. The max level is 30, so you will have a total of 29 skill points to use. At the end I'll put my recommendations for skills in a neater format.

Cardio
Increases Maximum Stamina by 20%.

This is the only way in the game currently to increase your max stamina. This will bring you from 100 to 120. Every action in the game that uses stamina only uses 1, this gains you 20 extra actions. This feels almost mandetory.

Careful Fisher
Fish are less likely to be scared away from wiggling the rod too much.

When you fish you'll have to 'wiggle' the line to get a fish's attention. This skill is rendered moot if you only wiggle until the fish stops showing ?'s and instead shows an !. So long as you don't over wiggle, this is a wasted skill point.

Careful Miner
50% chance not to collapse the mine when destroyed a weak spot

In the caves while mining you'll occasionally hit a wall that causes the whole screen to shake and give you a text pop up that says "The wall is unstable." If you keep digging in the area you risk hitting a 'weak point' and collapsing the mine. This resets that mine's progress back to floor 1. This can be very detrimental as on floor 10 and later in each mine you reach a new material layer, also the deeper you go the more ore, chests and gems you find. So this skill sounds great, right? No, it's terrible. If you simply stop digging in the area that you hit an unstable wall in and go around you don't risk hitting a weak point. This is another skill I'd consider a waste of a skill point if you can play carefully.

Chef
Learn 10 new cooking recipes.

This is a trap skill. Nothing it teaches you is unique and can instead be learned through normal gameplay. There are items called Surprise Bottles that very often teach you a new recipe and they are commonly fished up, drop from trees when shaken, dug up in the mines or purchased from Finn when he comes every Saturday. This is a total waste of a skill point on all counts.

Crafter
Learn 10 new Crafting Recipes.

For the same reasons as Chef, this is a waste of a skill point.

Critter Cuddler
Critters gain +1 happiness each time they're pet.

This skill is a 'nice to have' kind of skill as if an animal is too unhappy it'll run away. This is far from necessary though and I'd only get it once you've gotten some of the other skills on this list.

Hot Compost
Compost piles take one less day to process.

This skill borders between 'nice to have' and 'useful' as compost is very powerful and this skill literally speeds it up by 1/5. It will take 4 days as opposed to 5 to create compost.

Seed Finder
Weeds have a small chance to drop an in season seed when picked.

This should be the first or second skill you pick up. Getting the extra seeds is incredibly useful for saving not only money but also time and giving you a head start on filling the Root Cellar.

Courier

20% faster run speed.

I covered this in the start of the guide, but it's just an overall great skill for getting around. Time is everything and this saves you so much of it. If you didn't pick this as your starter pick you should get this relatively early.

Gourmet

Gain 30% more stamina from cooked dishes.

This can be good, if you cook your food. But cooking is rather time consuming and provides a small benefit over the raw ingredients. This is a 'nice to have' but doesn't do as much as it feels like it should.

It has been mentioned that this may be more beneficial for herbivores due to raw herbivore food providing relatively low stamina, cooked foods for Herbivores may make it worth it. I'd still consider it kind of weak compared to the other skills.

Merchant
+5% sell prices and -5% buy prices.

The prices of things in this game are kept low, nothing you can sell is worth more than 100 coins and most things you buy are worth less than 100 coins with a few exceptions. This skill looks nice but is not helpful in the long run.

Musician
+10% bonus relationship points.

This is another 'nice to have,' it speeds up relationship gains but doesn't feel overall impactful enough. I'd skip it in favor of other, more useful skills.

Naturalist
Harvestable forage is highlighted.

This is terrible for the price of two skill points. It does exactly what it says on the tin. Forage items that are ready to be harvested now have a little highlighting hue on them. It'd be good if you could unlock another way or passable at a single skill point but for two it's absurd.

Noble
Gain +500 coins.

This is just downright terrible, it's not good to start with or spend two levels on. It's a skill that gives no benefit beyond the initial injection of cash. 500 coins is the exact price of one tool upgrade or one building. It could theoretically be good for a quick start, if you didn't also need materials as well for those upgrades. Gathering the materials needed in the mine will also net you gems to sell which means you'll likely get the money required to upgrade as you're gathering the materials to upgrade. This is a pure waste of 2 skill points.

Prospector
Highlight ore in the mines.

For the same reason as Naturalist, this is bad. But it's worse, the ore in the mines outside of coal isn't hard to see. Where Naturalist might be able to help someone see something in the marsh or behind some weeds the mines are black space with the ore sitting in it. Prospector is a complete waste of 2 skill points.

Rancher
Critters have a higher chance to birth twins.

This can be a great skill to have. I wouldn't start with it as you need at least a male and female critter that are both adults and ready to breed to have this have a chance at paying off. it's good to pick up once you have those conditions met.

Student
+5% experience gain.

5% is an incredibly small number for what it costs. It costs the equivalent of 2 levels to speed up your leveling process by a 1/20th. You have a cap of 30, so you are trading away 1/15th of your levels for a minor boost. Even if you pick this as your starting trait you're paying the opportunity cost of 2 skill points that could have been spent on a better skill. Avoid this one like the plague.

Angler
20% chacne to gain +1 fish when catching fish.

This is an excellent skill if you're a carnivore and still a great one if you're not. It helps tremendously keeping the root cellar stocked up on fish so long as you take the time to pop your rod in the water every now and then. 1 out of every 5 casts should get you a double catch. This also works on Surprise Bottles.

Arborist
Gain +2 wood when cutting down trees.

+2 wood sounds lame, and for 3 skill points it can feel that way. But with the amount of wood you need for everything and the fact you get less than 10 wood per tree makes this skill actually valuable. You go from getting 8 wood to 10 which is functionally a 1/4 increase in wood.

Body Builder
5% to not consume stamina for every action.

This is just bad. You have a 1/20 chance to not spend 1 stamina. If this was a cheaper skill it'd be good but on average you'd save 5(or 6 with cardio) stamina per full stamina bar. Being unlucky means it doesn't do much for you and being lucky is a nice bonus but the skill points could be used on something far less luck dependant.

Butcher
Gain +30% meat from butchering critters.

This skill can be a major game changer. It can make it so that if you're raising critters that you can fully stock the carnivore's needs with one or two critters a week alone. You shouldn't be butchering every single critter as they all provide useful things but if you have your barn/coop full then it's time to get choppin'.

Efficient Crafter
Use 20% less resources when crafting.

This is extremely useful later on when material amounts required are high. Some recipes require 100 or so of a single item. This saves you 20 of that. But more than that it saves you time. If a recipe costs refined materials, such as bars or planks, this skill saves you the opportunity cost of fuel, time and raw ores.

Forage
Foraged plants have a +20% chance to drop an extra item.

This is another great skill, it's a bit pricey at 3 skill points but increasing your foraging output by 1/5 is nothing to scoff at. This includes seeds gained which translates into more crops increasing this skill's usefulness further. Foraging is also something you're likely to be doing every day or so at least in passing so this skill gets a lot of passive use.

Mole
+10% chance to mine an extra ore.

For 3 skill points this isn't great. Forage is tough enough to justify at that price but for even less of a chance. On top of this, not every day will be a day you can justify going to the mines. It feels great when it procs but instances of that are far fewer and farther between than I'd like.

Seed Saver
Crops have a 10% chance to drop a seed when harvested.

This is quite the valuable skill. This works on all crops, including ones that regrow over and over such as corn, beans and pumpkins. It's less desirable than some of the other tier 3 skills but it's still well worth it in the long run.

Social Sleuth
Reveal everyone's liked and disliked items.

This is a trap skill. It's a total waste of 3 skill points. Even if you don't want to look things up (which I assume you're not against considering you're on this guide), some trial and error isn't hard. On top of that villagers comment on things they like, dislike and that other's like or dislike so you can very easily and naturally learn their likes and dislikes. When you give someone a gift they like or dislike it's also marked on their page, making this skill lose value as you play the game.

Overall, most of the skills seem underwhelming with a few that are just leagues above the rest. My recommendations are as follows:

Get these skills:

Tier 1:
Cardio, get this one ASAP. The extra stamina is extremely useful throughout the entire game and since this is the only way to increase your max, this is a must have.
Seed Finder, this could be argued to be the first skill you get but I could go with either this or Cardio first. There are so many weeds on your farm to start with and they grow back so fast and virulently that you'll always be reaping the benefits of this skill.

Tier 2:
Courier, this should be your starting choice as the rest are dud-skills by comparison.
Rancher, you should absolutely get this skill at some point. But after you've gotten yourself a breeding pair of critters.

Tier 3:
Angler, this'll help keep your carnivores fed. It's a chance, but it's a high one and very often having 20% more food is too hard to ignore.
Forage, this is angler, but for herbivores. What was said for that goes for this too. But even a little better given it works on seeds.
Butcher, one of the more situational skills but it's not chance based. If and when you butcher animals this is a must have. It is far more noticeable on barn animals than coop animals though so keep that in mind.
Efficient Crafter 20% saved resources is amazing, but it loses some value once you have everything you need crafted. It does work on kibble,baits and the like so it always has a purpose.

Avoid these skills:

Tier 1:
Careful Miner and Careful Fisher: Both of these skills are just for when you're not paying attention and spamming your buttons. If you can keep yourself from spamming 'wiggle' or can understand not to keep digging in the direction of an unstable wall you'll not need these skills.

Tier 2:
Naturalist and Prospector: Both of these cost 2 levels each and simply light up plants and ore. Naturalist has a minor argument for when you're in the marsh but even then it's not super useful. Prospector has almost no benefit though as the ore stands out enough in the mines.

Student: As stated in it's section, the opportunity cost is 2 levels for a minor bump in exp gained. When the level cap is 30 there's no reason to sacrifice 2 levels for this. This includes choosing it as a starter skill because it means if you want a better skill you'll have to spend points on it.

Tier 3:
Social Sleuth: Just listen to the dialogue of the characters and experiment a bit if you feel like gifting them, it'll save you the 3 points you'd waste if you took this skill.

Get when you want them
Everything else, the other skills I've not mentioned here are either worth it after you've gotten the ones from the recommended section or are just 'nice to have.'

First and foremost, and I need to emphasize this: Do not be afraid to donate the first of everything you find to the museum!!! This is extremely important. It is only one of each item and every 25 new items you've donated you complete a quest for Adeline, that quest reward is one of the preservation methods or an upgraded water pump. Both of which make the game far more manageable. It can be tempting to ignore the museum because you notice you're not at the quota for the week but don't worry about that you'll make it up. Some of the stations you unlock through the donation process are required for quests later on and if you've not donated enough fish or crops you might have locked yourself out of getting the later stations. Each crop and fish only has a certain window in which it can be caught/grown.

Think ahead. Not days, not weeks but seasons ahead. Chop down a tree and get an acorn? read the acorn and see it takes 20 days to grow and in fall produces more acorns? Plant it on your farm. When fall rolls around you'll have a steady supply of acorns.

Remember, you're feeding animals. They may walk upright and talk, but they're still animals. Acorns, Maple Seeds, Pine Cones, Flowers, all the stuff that in other farming games are gifts, filler and trash are food for herbivores. Tree seeds never spoil and can be used in a pinch if you need some herbivore food quickly.

Don't hesitate to cut down trees in the forest/town if you need wood. They grow back in the exact same spot over time. Be careful you aren't cutting a tree that bears fruit in your current season though, as that'll be more valuable once it fruits. The section on trees/bushes in this guide will tell you what fruits when.

Shake trees as you pass them, even if they don't have fruit on them they can drop Surprise Bottles which can give you money, recipes and special ones that can give you items.

Do not be afraid to go into the mine. You'll need to at some point to upgrade your tools and buildings and the earlier the better. Your rusty stuff will only work so long. You also need the minerals to craft more water pumps and piping. It can be scary thinking that you're ignoring foraging and fishing to go mine but don't worry, there are chests in the mines that will give you some pretty good stuff such as Kibble, smelted bars, ores, gems and most importantly already preserved food. Chests become more common the deeper you get. The food they can give isn't enough to sustain the village but it's a way to make mining feel less 'punishing.'

Speaking of upgrading tools, the first one you upgrade should be your ax. By upgrading the ax you make chopping trees take 5 swings instead of 10 and allow yourself to chop harder trees (these will take 10 swings until you upgrade the ax again.). After that the pickax to unlock the other mines. You'll need to pick the entrance of the mine in the marsh in order to gain access to higher tier ores.

Talk to everyone you can as you pass every day. Becoming friends with villagers, like other farm sims, has the benefit of them giving you gifts. Many of these gifts are great time savers, from preserved foods to chunks of ore they all help. It's not an every day occurrence but when they give you something it is genuinely impactful.

Once you've got your barn/coop up and running talking to one of the lynxes twice(once again after his daily dialogue) will allow you to ask him if he's seen any critters. This'll tell you the location and type of critter that is there that day. This can cut down time searching dramatically.

The way food is consumed from the Root Cellar is as follows:

Cooked Food > Fresh Food > Dried/Smoked Food > Preserved Foods

This is, in theory, in order to consume the foods that spoil fastest first. In practice it can lead to dried/smoked food spoiling before it's eaten. Keep this in mind when donating fresh food to the cellar.

Early on, don't be afraid to donate fresh food to the cellar. Everyone tells you it's better to preserve it, but because of how rainy it is in spring drying racks can almost never dry things at a reasonable pace. Once you have other means of preservation, feel free to take fresh food from the cellar and preserve it before putting it back.

When a town project comes up, focus on that ASAP. They have an 'expiry date' but you aren't told what date that is. Taking too long results in failing the project. Villagers will donate to it,but they do so very slowly so you will be shouldering the bulk of that burden.

Speaking of town projects, try to pick the one that seems like it'll give a trickle of resources. So long as it doesn't damage your ability to gather or farm a resource a trickle will alleviate some pressure on you. And a little bit continuously is always better than a bulk injection.

Check in the mayors office daily, there's a chest in the center. This is the lost and found chest. The main purpose of it is if you've got a full inventory and an item drops it'll end up here when you leave the screen. But the other benefit is that random stuff will end up in it every day or so. This can be anything. Food, Furnishings, Ore, Bars, Etc. all of it can be found here for free. It can help you in a pinch or as some good start-up capital for your coop/barn/tools.

A bit of a late game bonus tip: Once you have access to cheese, pop the cheese in the smoker to make it have an infinite shelf life. It's also an omnivorous food so it'll count for both Herbivores and Carnivores.

Thank you to everyone who has, and who may in the future, submit little tips like this.
My commentary, if I have any to add, will be in parenthesis (like so.)

Tip from Manor603:
If it's late and you don't think you'll make it home in time, you can just save and exit. When ever you reenter the game it automatically spawns you inside your house.

(The one thing I'd add to this tip is that it may be something seen as an exploit and patched out at some point. It's great while it lasts though.)

From Rybogif:
- (especially as a Stardew Valley immigrant) loot each mine floor thoroughly. Progress to the deeper floors is important, but a fat stash of ore and coal will make the upgrades and town projects much easier, plus you can find a lot of useful ingredients in the crates.

(This is a good tip, just be careful of collapsing walls. There are times you may have to give up on an ore vein because part of it, or something close to it, is too weak to dig through without collapsing your mine.)

- If You're a fox or a bear, it's a good idea to smoke a bigger fish and fry a smaller one for yourself. Fried fish always has the same stamina value regardless of its original size, and it gives more stamina than small or medium size smoked fish.

(This is a wonderful tip, I didn't realize the value of fried fish. This seems like it'd be good in a pinch to meet the quota if need be.)

From NotPickingTechies:
- Early Game, its highly recommend to have an extra chest to store all your excess foods in order to micromanage which foods are to be donated.

(This is a bit more work than I'm willing to put in but it's a very good tip. The way the game currently checks food spoilage values averages out the days before it spoils. Placing 'too few' fresh of something to a stack of spoiling something will result in the fresh stuff becoming more spoiled)

- If you have any troubles catching fish with the base rod, there is a trick to guarantee to catch at any size. You simply need to press F right the moment it towards the rod. If you're doing it correctly, It will move the line back if it didn't trigger. Its fine, since the fish will follow it regardless, just give enough space away from the shore. Fish will only tap the rod 4 times max.

- Radish have 9 days of expiry as opposed to the normal 4 days. As such, you must dry the Radish last if you're lacking dry rack space.

(This is a good tip to keep in mind. Some vegetables have very long spoilage time and can/should be processed last or placed in the root cellar as is.)

From Chef Nalfeshnee:

- Another useful tip is when combining 2 stacks of food with different spoilage dates they average out meaning if you continuously put more of a given item in the root cellar you will keep it fresh longer. This works best with items with long shelf lives. This is also useful if you stagger out your crops harvest dates you can extend their already short spoilage dates.

(This is a great tip. Just be sure you can keep things organized and don't accidentally end up stacking more spoiling food with the fresh. If you put more spoiling food with fresh food [as in actually a larger stack] it can end up making the stack spoil faster.)

From Fright456:
In the mines, there is a chance to dig up seeds at the dig spots. The seeds you dig up will depend on the level of the mine/which mine that you are in by season: earlier levels provide early spring seeds, and the furthest levels provide seeds for late fall.

(This is a good thing to remember, but as a clarification the seeds themselves seem to be locked to different mines as opposed to the level of a specific mine. The forest mine seems to give spring and summer seeds, Marsh summer and fall and the mountain mine fall seeds.)

I hope this guide helped and I'll continue to update it in the future as needed when I can. If you see a mistake in the guide, please let me know and I'll try to fix it when I confirm it is indeed a mistake. If you have any advice you think would be beneficial to be added let me know and I'll look into it, then add it should it be valid with credit to you.

Remember, this can be a rough game. Just keep at it and persevere. This isn't a game about becoming rich or finding a new life away from the city, this is a game about helping an isolated village be self-sufficient and it doesn't pull punches.

As the game is in Early Access, this guide may not be valid in future updates. If things change I'll try to keep this guide updated, if I can't I'll mark it as outdated until such a time when I can.

If this guide helped, please leave a rating on it so that others can find it as well.


Content Creation note: If anyone wants to use this guide in or to create their content, feel free to do so. Just link to the guide in your description and credit me in the video, please. I've had a guide and seen a friends guides used in the past almost word for word with no credit given and it stings.