Focus on having fun and doing what you're interested in. Money will happen and trying to min max really ruins the experience

Try not to get overwhelmed by the first quest to go introduce yourself to e eryone in the town. It's a common conplaint from first-timers, given thst the game gives you on guidance at all on where to find everyone, and people move around town in a very natural (and thus not easily predictable) fashion. Just let that be something in the background that isn't a priority, and you'll get through it naturally, eventually.

My best bud Abigail loves rocks yim yum

Don't pick the seaside farm if you want to automate your crop watering

You can't put sprinklers in sand

There is no 'game-over' state in Stardew Valley. You can do anything you want, and it is always going to be fine. You can take thirty in-game years to finish everything and that's totally cool.

Just go dig some dirt, meet some people, and grow some plants. And maybe, in the end, discover that you're gay as hell for Abigail. She rocks.

Build everything with the goal of harvesting truffle oil. You will be rich beyond belief.

Don't turn in the dinosaur egg to the museum. Use an incubator to hatch the egg into a dinosaur. Once the dinosaur begins laying eggs, turn one of those eggs to the museum.

Since everyone else gave good advice, here is my bad advice. I dunno, it's not the best advice.

Do a No-Pierre run. Selling to him is ok,just no buying anything from him. You can beat the game without buying anything from his shop. It will take longer, but it's kinda funny becoming best friends with his wife for her tea plants, and then selling the tea leaves at a huge markup.

There are tons of ways to get seeds and fruit trees without Pierre or jojomart.

If you don't like fishing as a concept, wait a season and willy will come to your farm and teach you how to fish. Buy trout soup from him and try again. Your only goal is treasure chests when fishing. I got lucky a couple years ago and got 6 dinosaur eggs from fishing in the first year. I have never been able to get a single dino egg since,so it's hard and rare. Because face it, your gonna have to fish eventually. At least you can get treasure from it.

Give trash to people you don't like, it's funny.

My wife searches the trash cans for stuff, and gave an ice cream cone to a kid for his birthday. So I placed a sound block by the library trash can to catch her in the act.

Gather all the items for Willy asap. Once you have completed the community center, he will ask for help. You need hardwood, batteries, and iridium ingots. Just collect them as you go. If you do well enough your ghost grampa will give you a device that generates iridium ore.

Linus gives a special mission to clean the lakes and rivers. Just find the pond in your farm and fish out of that. Use a low ranked pole like your bamboo rod. You can also collect trash from crab pots.

You have all the tools and equipment you need. It's a fun easy game with a simple gameplay loop. Don't take it seriously, and have fun. Make your own challenges and mistakes. Find a reason why your character gives Pam the perfect ale. Enable her drinking problems. Or don't.

Take your time. Days may seem short, but you don't need to do everything every day. You'll need to do a little bit of everything to complete things, but you don't have to master everything. If you decide you hate fishing, just do the bare minimum to complete the goal and don't touch it passed that.

If you decide to be a big planner, pay attention to weather forecasts. At the very least, rainy days means you don't have to water crops, so go fishing, mining, or whatever else you want to do!

There are ways to get copious amounts of even the rarest resources, so don't hold onto something thinking you'll never see it again. You will. You will get sick of seeing it.

If you're on PC and find yourself having a good time, there's mods. There are so many fucking mods. New machines, new animals, new towns, villagers, and storylines... Don't feel like you need them, the vanilla game is absolutely fantastic, but it's worth keeping in mind if you hit a point of "I want Stardew, but EVEN MORE!" Modding is also stupid easy, drag and drop.

Oh, and just a fun bit of future knowledge, if you decide you don't like your spouse and your children with them, get divorced and then turn those kids into doves. Just let those little fuckers fly free. And make sure to answer the phone when the time comes.

Don't check the wiki for your first play though.

Fishing initially feels like it sucks ass but buy the training rod from Willie and practice, it will eventually just click.

Upgrade your hoe and watering can, it makes the early farming way less tedious.