something new to be discovered in the game, and developer ConceredApe is still ing the game with occasional updates that add even more new content and hidden features. For many fans, playing the game over and over will never get boring, since there's a certain zen quality to the gameplay loop of the cute farming game.

But if you're looking for a new way to keep things fresh and spice up your next playthrough, you might want to try a Stardew Valley challenge run. These playthroughs have players set self-enforced rules on their game for an added challenge, similar to the Nuzlocke challenge in Pokémon. Challenge runs are a fun way to make the game feel new again and add a difficulty spike—which you can make even more intense by stacking challenges.

10 No Farming Allowed

Find Creative New Ways To Make A Profit

Stardew Valley is, by definition, a farming game. Farming is a core gameplay element in the game, and everything from making money to completing bundles for the Community Center relies heavily on the farming feature. Which is why, if you're looking for a challenge, eliminating farming is the way to go.

The no farming SDV challenge is exactly what it sounds like: a playthrough that has no farming at all. This means players aren't allowed to plant anything at all, not even the turnips they start the game with. Setting specific goals can make this challenge even more fun, like making a certain amount of money or completing the Community Center without planting a single seed.

9 Farm Fresh Restaurant

Turn Your Farm Into A Farm-To-Table Service

In this challenge, your farm is no longer a regular farm, but instead is a farm-fresh restaurant. This means that players are only allowed to sell cooked meals from recipes, making the process of turning a profit a lot more challenging but also more rewarding.

For an even more fun twist to this run, you can decorate your home or a shed on the farm to look like a restaurant. The rest of the farm can also be designed to be inviting to visitors, with a petting zoo, corn maze, and anything else that you'd find on a farm that's open to the public. This themed challenge is a great one for creative players looking for decor inspiration.

8 The No Energy Run

Complete The Community Center Without Using A Point Of Energy

This challenge was created by YouTuber Salmence and it really pushes the gameplay to its limit. In this run, you're forbidden to do any task that uses up energy, which includes breaking rocks, chopping down trees, mining, and many other crucial elements of the game.

In his video of the run, Salmence uses mods to ensure that he doesn't accidentally do a task that requires energy, but this challenge can also be done without any mods. If you do accidentally use energy, you have to restart the day, undoing any progress you've made, so be careful not to let that energy bar decrease even a bit.

7 No Leaving The Farm

Limit Your Ventures Away From Home To Once A Season

The farm is just a small part of the Stardew Valley world, a place to raise your animals, grow your crops, lay your head down for the night, and, eventually, have a family. But there are so many other locations to visit in the SDV world, from the nearby village to the treacherous mines. This challenge requires players to ignore all those awesome locations and never leave the farm at all, except once day per season.

This challenge was popularized by Call Me Kevin on YouTube, and it hinges on making every bit of your profit and progress using only items that you can find on your farm. Players are allowed one single excursion outside of the confines of their farm grounds every season, and the difficulty of the run can be augmented by the restrictions you place on what you can or can't do on your days outside of the farm (like buying seeds).

6 No Animals Allowed

Complete A Playthrough Without Raising Any Animals

Growing crops might be a great way to set up a steady income, but the real money is in processed animal byproducts. Plus, the animals in Stardew Valley are adorable, especially the ducks when they actually go for a little swim in the farm pond. This challenge run asks players to get through the game without any animals at all (with the exception of the pet and horse, since those are given to the player).

Having no animals makes it much harder to make a profit, and even more difficult (but not impossible) to complete the Community Center bundles. On the bright side, instead of having barn animals and chickens in the barn and coop, respectively, you can repurpose the two buildings for storage!

5 The One Item Rule

Finish The Game By Selling Only One Single Item

What if you could only sell one item for the duration of your Stardew Valley playthrough? This is the question that YouTuber Seanie Dew asked. The answer is, unsurprisingly, that it would take a very long time and many copies of that item to make any progress in the game. Still, this is a fun twist on a Joja Mart run since it focuses on making money, not gathering items and materials.

Seanie Dew broke down how many of a certain item it would take to complete all the development projects using a single type of item, like Sweet Gem Berries or trash. If you're doing a Joja Mart playthrough and want a challenge to make it more interesting, the One Item run might be a fun one to try, if you have the patience for it.

4 The Homeless Challenge

Survive By Foraging And Roughing It

The Homeless challenge tells an alternate story about the Stardew Valley farmer, in which he doesn't inherit the farm and instead is forced to live off the land. Although a variation of this challenge has existed for a while, Reddit BOWSER67334 breaks down the steps for completing this challenge run.

In this run, you have to make do with only things that you can find, and are not allowed to buy anything until you reach five hearts with Pierre or Caroline. Joja Mart is forbidden, and you're only allowed to plant the parsnips you start with and anything that you find while foraging. For a more immersive version of this challenge, you can

3 The Imperfection Run

Unlock The Walnut Room With The Lowest Completion % Possible

Reaching 100% completion is a coveted achievement in Stardew Valley, and not an easy one to get. A perfect run requires Getting 100% can take hundreds of hours and a heaping pile of luck, so it's usually celebrated as the ultimate goal in the game.

"I think we all strain ourselves too much trying to aim for perfection."

But what if you turned this around and aimed for the lowest level of completion, instead? That's what YouTuber Salmence did in his Imperfect Run, where the challenge was to reach the Walnut Room on Ginger Island with the in-game perfection percentage as low as possible. "I think we all strain ourselves too much trying to aim for perfection," says the video's description plainly, "so I'm going to strain myself even more to do the opposite!"

2 Make 10 Million In Year 1

How High Can Your Profits Go?

At the end of the day, the main goal for any farmer, real or pixellated, is to turn a profit. Stardew Valley has many ways to earn gold, and this challenge encourages players to dip into all of them with the ultimate goal of earning 10 million gold by the end of the first year. It's not an easy task, making this challenge one for the more experienced players.

The challenge dips into min-maxing, since there are certainly some specific and optimized ways that can help you complete this self-imposed quest. But it can also be fun to try and figure out for yourself the best way to earn as much cash as quickly as possible. If 10 million seems out of reach, you can lower the goal or make it a competition against yourself, trying to outperform yourself with every subsequent attempt.

1 The Stardew Valley Cup Checklist

Compete Against Yourself Or Friends To Get The Most Points

In 2021, ConcernedApe and YouTuber UnsurableZ held a tournament that challenged a set of players to compete against each other in finishing as many tasks on a checklist. Although the $40,000 reward to the winner is no longer an incentive, the checklist and each task's associated points value can still be found in a YouTube video by UnsurableZ announcing the event.

This is a fun challenge to complete with friends. Set a time limit—either in-game or in real life—and see who can rack up the most points using the checklist from this event. This challenge and others like it gives Stardew Valley fans a new way to look at the game, giving it an unexpected twist. It's like you're playing a whole new game!

Source: UnsurableZ/YouTube, Salmence/YouTube (1, 2), Seanie Dew/YouTube, BOWSER67334/Reddit, Call Me Kevin/YouTube