We Played ‘Stardew Valley’s’ New Weed & Tobacco Crop DLC

In order to appeal to more “mature” gamers, game publisher Chucklefish is providing a special Weed & Tobacco Crop DLC for its hit farming simulator Stardew Valley. We got a chance to play it and, man, things were fun at first when we started planting marijuana crops. But it got really dark when tobacco was introduced.

Adding marijuana to your regular crops was both fun and challenging. You don’t end up getting the best dank from it, but it’s a start. Unlike your other produce, Mayor Lewis won’t take it from the box next to your home (while he knows marijuana is legal, he still frowns upon it) and you can’t sell it at regular shops.

However, you can sell your dirt weed to residents hanging around the Pelican Town Community Center. Over time, you can fund the construction of a hydroponic greenhouse and your own marijuana shop in the town square, making better strains and bigger gains. You’ll even meet new townspeople that love your product, like Marcie, Trey, and Sunglow, who will pay good money or exchange new in-game items such as Vinyl, Knife Throwing Lessons, and Pizza Bagels.

But Things Got Weird When We Started Growing Tobacco

The townsfolk hesitate to buy your tobacco and cigarettes at first, but then it gets hard to keep up with the demand. Eventually, it became so out of hand that we had to convert everything into a tobacco-only farm. Have you ever read a text box that says, “No one wants your goddamn parsnips. Give us those cigarettes!”? That quote came from Clint! The shy blacksmith!

Sure, it was profitable. Townsfolk would even rush to our homes to ask for smokes if the Stardrop Saloon was sold out, but it really impacted the community. Many of the NPCs who were usually friendly became irritated and snippy if they were low on smokes. The crisp digital coughing and hacking was a downer, too.

Seeing that it was a profitable crop, other farmers near Pelican Town started growing tobacco and hired child labor to harvest it. Based on the pixel art, those kids looked really malnourished. And this was within the first year. Within the second year of the DLC, Lewis died of emphysema. Marnie wept and threw herself onto his grave as Leah blamed us for his premature death and the addiction that swept through the town. That felt like an unnecessary cutscene.

We eventually met a non-giftable NPC named Boss Marlo. We were given the choice of selling our tobacco farm to him or not. We chose not. The following day, the left thumbstick and direction pad on our controllers were disabled because Boss Marlo’s men broke our legs.

It was the only time playing Stardew Valley wasn’t fun.

Images: Pexels, Pixabay, Pixabay, Chucklefish Limited