Nexus Mods App: Stardew Valley Preview

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Here’s one for all our Stardew Valley fans! We’re excited to bring you the preview release of the Nexus Mods app, our next-generation mod manager. Currently in beta, the app is at an exciting phase of development where users can get involved and provide valuable feedback, to help further shape it. 

The Stardew Valley preview is an opportunity for you to get involved, test it, and let us know what you think. It currently has all the features needed to help you easily mod Stardew Valley, such as mod updates and installing collections.

There are many features we are still developing and hope to introduce you to them soon, along with support for additional games in the future. To see this take a look at our roadmap. We’d like to remind you that the app is still in development, and with anything in development, you may encounter bugs. If you come across anything in your testing, please report it to us on our Discord, GitHub, or forums



Now, I know what you might be thinking…


How does it make modding easier?

  • Easy and Reliable Mod Installation – The app ensures a smoother installation process for most mods.
  • Collections – Easily turn them on and off, allowing you to experiment with using mods in conjunction with collections so that you can configure your perfect setup. Premium users will also have the extra benefit of super-fast collection installs.
  • Loadout Management – It offers loadouts and loadout switching, with separate configs per loadout, and fast loadout creation and cloning. This means you can easily swap between different sets of mods, perfect for switching between single-player and multiplayer setups.
  • Health Check – This feature will give you guidance on possible issues in your setup and how to fix them.
  • Workspace System – View and use every feature side by side with panels, with the ability to open 4 panels side-by-side for seamless multitasking, on demand. So you can cross-reference with ease and quickly compare information across pages, manage mods, and check details without losing your flow.
  • Faster Than Vortex – Experience up to 10x faster collection installation compared to Vortex.





How to try the app

If you’d like to try it, you can download the app here.

Important: Pre-existing Mods Will Be Removed If You Uninstall

For the best experience, we recommend starting with a clean game installation. If you already have mods installed before setting up the app, they will be detected and listed as "External Changes".

However, if you uninstall the app or stop managing the game, any pre-existing mods will be automatically removed from your game folder. This is to keep your game folder clean and prevent potential issues.

To avoid losing any mods you want to keep, we strongly recommend backing up your files before installing or uninstalling the app.

If you would like to import your mods from another mod manager, you can find all the information you need about transferring existing Stardew Valley mods to the App here.


What’s next?

The app is still in active development, and we’re continuing to improve it based on community feedback, so please keep sending us that feedback on our Discord, GitHub, and forums. Some features, like full collection support, are still in progress, and we’ll keep you updated on future releases on the app mod page.


Get involved

The app is proudly open source, meaning anyone interested can contribute to its development. If you’d like to help out or just follow its progress, check out our Documentation.

We encourage Stardew Valley modders to download the app, explore its features, and share their feedback. Your input is invaluable as we continue improving the app. Download the app here.

As an extra incentive for you to give it a go, we’ll also be giving away 10 copies of Stardew Valley for people who don’t own the game but would like to play it and help test the app. Simply fill out the Google form linked below and you’ll be in with the chance of winning 1 of 10 copies of the game on your choice of Steam or GOG.

Enter to win a copy of Stardew Valley

70 comments

  1. Pickysaurus
    Pickysaurus
    • Community Manager
    • 746 kudos
    Locked
    Sticky
    Comment Section Moderation
    We appreciate your feedback and want to keep the discussion on this page focused on the new Nexus Mods app. Please make sure your comments are relevant to this news post - off-topic posts will be removed.

    We understand that many of you are still getting used to the new search and game home page updates. It's clear to us that passionate members of the community have a lot to say about it and we welcome your feedback, but to help us gather feedback in the right place please keep posts about the Mod Browsing Overhaul changes in this forum thread.

    Thanks for being part of our community!
  2. SlugGirl
    SlugGirl
    • Content Manager
    • 70 kudos
    Thank you to everyone who entered to win a copy of Stardew Valley! The giveaway is now closed, and the winners have been randomly selected and contacted.
  3. h19979974310
    h19979974310
    • member
    • 0 kudos
    我希望软件里添加中文选项
  4. ZeroSignalDX
    ZeroSignalDX
    • premium
    • 0 kudos
    Way too similar to Vortex, hard pass. Y'all need to learn why communities use their own mod managers and tools and learn from them instead of sticking your heads in the sand and going gung-ho on a concept that's been proven to be s#*! time and time again.
    1. halgari
      halgari
      • App Developer
      • 673 kudos
      Can you elaborate as to what you find too similar? The app was developed by people with a lot of experience with MO2, Wabbajack, and the like. I'd love to hear what you find too similar between the app and Vortex
    2. Watrmelons
      Watrmelons
      • premium
      • 1 kudos
      I prefer a VFS like Mo2 becuase if I want to make a different modlist I would have to go to my skyrim or whatever game files and manually delete them, and their left overs or uninstall the game and then delete the game folder to get those mods out. Wabbajack uses Mo2 as well. This is like Vortex where it installs mods into your game. Sure you can make it to use a group of mods for one profile and another group of mods for another. Its just a reskinned vortex launcher. I have three Mo2 launchers 2 from Wabbajack, and My personal Mo2 non of them interfere with each other cause its VFS. and the Mods are not in Data folder, mods folder. I just have the Launcher do I wanna play a medieval skyrim boom do I want to play a souls skyrim boom.
    3. halgari
      halgari
      • App Developer
      • 673 kudos
      Most wabbajack lists copy the game files into a separate folder and the various MO2 installs don't even talk to the same folder. So that's where you're getting that non-conflicting features. If you actually did have 3 wabbajack installs pointing to the same game folders, they would clobber eachother, that's the main reason why I implemented the stock game feature in Wabbajack back in the day. 

      Again, as in the other thread, instead approaching this in a somewhat dogmatic way, think of it by breaking the problem down (a bit like you did here): putting files in the game folder is bad...why? Because you can't easily undo the changes. But what if you could?
  5. shane1039
    shane1039
    • member
    • 4 kudos
    It looks nice but does (or will) it have a Virtual File System like what MO2 has? I like that a lot more than having to store a bunch of zip files which takes up storage space.
    1. halgari
      halgari
      • App Developer
      • 673 kudos
      I'm not sure I understand the distinction here, MO2 has a VFS and stores files in zips (in the download folder). To simplify it, MO2 stores files in two locations: downloads (compressed) and the staged mod folders. The App stores files in the archives folder (compressed) and in the game folders. We use content hashing and 3-way diffing to be able to roll back game folders to any previous state while still offering native performance (we don't have to intercept application API calls). A full overview of the various approaches and their tradeoffs can be found in one of our design docs.
    2. Watrmelons
      Watrmelons
      • premium
      • 1 kudos
      the difference is the actual mod never goes into the game copy to run.
    3. halgari
      halgari
      • App Developer
      • 673 kudos
      Except it does, for SKSE, ENB, or any other OS loaded DLLs like those found in CET, red4ext, etc. Every tutorial for Skyrim, Cyberpunk and the like start with "you have to treat these files differently and copy them into the game folder, or use Root Builder which copies them for you. There's a lot of reasons why VFS are pretty nice, but they aren't a clear win at all times, that link above goes into many of the drawbacks. In the end a VFS system was a pretty large development risk especially coupled with our desire to make the app cross platform. Making sure OS API hooks work across 3 platforms and every single game is a pretty big technical risk. 

      Thankfully we don't have to take on that risk, there's a better way that doesn't involve API hooks and reverse engineering games, we use content hashing and change tracking. A lot of people hear "files in the game folder are bad" but never really question why that's bad. The reason is that you lose change tracking and the ability to undo mistakes. Those are both things we offer in the app without having to use a VFS. 
  6. Watrmelons
    Watrmelons
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    • 1 kudos
    Might as well call it Vortex 2.0
  7. TyrianW
    TyrianW
    • member
    • 7 kudos
    I'm curious how this app will work with different games in a Linux with Steam Proton environment. I checked the FAQ in the Wiki, but didn't see anything on that. Will it be a single app that accommodates multiple games, or will each game need it's own instance of the mod manager ... in each game's prefix for example (like EA/Uplay launchers)? 
    1. Pickysaurus
      Pickysaurus
      • Community Manager
      • 746 kudos
      The app is intended to be a single instance for all your games. You can manage multiple copies of the same game (from different stores) and can use loadouts to have different, independent mod lists for the same game.
    2. TyrianW
      TyrianW
      • member
      • 7 kudos
      Excellent and thanks for the quick response, I'll be following development and looking forward to Bethesda games support.
    3. Watrmelons
      Watrmelons
      • premium
      • 1 kudos
      so its like Vortex.
  8. hobgoblinette
    hobgoblinette
    • supporter
    • 0 kudos
    i would love the ability to "nest" my mods under others simply for dependencies. ideally you could quickly and easily tell which mods rely upon others for replacements or add-ons.
    1. halgari
      halgari
      • App Developer
      • 673 kudos
      Interesting idea, we've discussed allowing mod grouping, this is somewhat different but in the same general idea. I'll keep it in mind
  9. LilietBorodina
    LilietBorodina
    • premium
    • 49 kudos
    Do what Stardrop does and make it possible to run the game with all mod manager installed mods by running the regular SMAPI launcher. Learn from the reason why everyone in the SDV community hates Vortex and don't do all that runtime shit.
    1. halgari
      halgari
      • App Developer
      • 673 kudos
      Can you clarify a bit here as to what the App does differently from Stardrop? Because we do run SMPI directly. For that matter I'm pretty sure Vortex does as well. But perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you're refering to.
    2. Pickysaurus
      Pickysaurus
      • Community Manager
      • 746 kudos
      In my experience Stardrop does the opposite of what you say. It doesn't use the "Mods" folder directly like other mod managers and maps mods to its own folder, then tells SMAPI to only load mods from that folder on startup using a command line argument. I think it's safe to say we need a little more info on what you mean, perhaps with an example? 
  10. Ches707
    Ches707
    • member
    • 0 kudos
    Looking forward to the future, when I can install this and it will register all the mods I already spent time installing 
  11. YYY111LLLCCC
    YYY111LLLCCC
    • member
    • 0 kudos
    为什么我不能添加翻译包 MOD,我可以用原来的方式添加翻译包 MOD 吗?