Cozy games like Stardew Valley are usually about that simple life, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use tips and tricks, or even full-blown cheats and glitches, to get ahead with your rural escape.
Much of the game’s magic is in the long grind, but if you’re happy to skip much of that fun, there are plenty of ways to speed things up. Below, we’ve got some handy ways to minimize the rigamarole of Stardew Valley, but don’t be surprised if the townsfolk turn their noses up at our methods.
We’re going to use the term “cheat” a bit loosely here since Stardew Valley doesn’t have cheats in the traditional sense, but more exploits and glitches you can use to cause some cheat-like things to happen.
Every action you take in Stardew Valley costs some energy, so wouldn’t it be nice not to have to worry about running out? There’s a simple way to do it by exploiting that small step forward your character takes whenever they swing a weapon or tool. If you go into the Spa and swing your weapon against the wall until you clip through it, you can then go out of bounds over to the pool. Once there, put any post down in the water and touch it. After that, you can return back to the bounds of the game. However, the game will be tricked into thinking your character is swimming, and thus, you won’t spend energy using weapons!
If you did it the long way, you could get the Galaxy Sword by taking a Prismatic Shard and holding it between three pillars in the Calico Desert, but who has time for that? Instead, if you purchase the catalog from Pierre’s General Store and buy the green wallpaper. Take this into the desert, and if you stand in just the right spot, it will inexplicably function like a Prismatic Shard and spawn the Galaxy Sword for you.
This is purely a secret item, but one most players will never find without help. Secret Note #13 holds the clue to it, but all you really need to do is go to the bush on the northwest corner of Pelican Town on the 28th day of any season. If you right-click on it precisely at noon, you will get the rare plush.
Fishing is one of the hardest skills to level up to max in Stardew Valley, only because of how long it takes. You will need to spend days trekking out to an appropriate spot, casting your line, waiting for bites, and then making it home in time for bed. What if there was a way to stop time while you fish to let you grind levels without wasting days on end? All you need is an active quest in your journal to perform this simple exploit. When you reach a fishing spot, open your journal as you cast your line into the water. We already know that time stops when you have your journal open, but for whatever reason, fish will still come and bite your line and let you catch them.
The importance of a full night of sleep can’t be overstated, but sometimes, there are things that just have to be done before you lie down for the night. Once 2 a.m. hits, your character will pass out from exhaustion no matter where you are or what you’re doing, and need to be carried home by a helping hand. Aside from being annoyed to be forced to stop whatever you were doing, you are also charged 10% of your gold, capping out at 1,000. To save time and money, you can glitch your way to stay up late enough to wrap up whatever you’re doing and get back home on your own terms. All you need to do is wait for your character to yawn, indicating they’re about to pass out and open your journal right away. This will delay the trigger and give you some more time, but your character will keep yawning every once in a while so you need to keep on your toes to open your journal to stay awake until you make it back to bed.
Last but not least, we have the most useful and powerful glitch of all: the infinite item spawning glitch. By naming your character with specific codes tied to different items in the game’s code, you can cause them to appear in your inventory whenever your name is displayed in-game. Just name yourself any combination of three item codes within brackets to get them to spawn as often as you want by talking to characters who say your name. The most effective way to use this glitch is to pick the most valuable items on the list and simply sell them for infinite money. Here is a list of every item in the game and its respective code you should use as your name to spawn it:
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The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.