I beat Stardew Valley [lvl 1]

Make alcohol. Seriously a wine farm will have you rolling in cash in no time.

Look up how the skill trees are in the game, and plan accordingly. For example I loved the idea of creating artisan goods, and turns out they also have a really high % bonus on it with one of the skills. Like you can just go around, make / buy barrels, farm each season's most expensive vegetable / fruit and then make wine / juice en masse and only care about most of the farm every few days only.
Farming and crafting makes a LOT of money, just be careful not to overstretch yourself (like watering your farm with basic can that takes up your whole day is everything but fun). And kind of important: the game doesn't have a fixed end, so you can just take your time with everything :)

I agree with everyone elses answer. It took me a couple seasons to even start farming because everything was so expensive and difficult. I'm also a hoarder, but crafting a lot of chests can help with the hoarding. When I first started I pretty much sold all my crops as is. When you are able to craft kegs then you'll have a lot of money in whine and juice :)
If you can't afford crops, then fishing is another good way to make money at the beginning of the game!
Just take your time because the game is endless so you don't have to rush your farming :)

I have not tried any mods yet. I'm thinking about downloading some now that I've completed what I wanted to in the game. Do you have any recommendations?

Same here. Since the game runs on a day/night cycle, it's easy for me to play one or two days and then get off. The game saves after you go to bed for the day. A normal day in Stardew Valley is 17 minutes in real time. You can go to bed earlier though if you don't have 17 minutes to play. That's just how long before your character passes out. Hope that helps :)

I know how you feel. Reading guides helped me, but I understand you wanting to go in blind. The first thing you should do is stop worrying about the clock. The game is endless, so it's okay to take your time. The seasons will always loop around again in the next year :)

To start, I think you should chop down some trees and then craft some chests. It's easy to find wood and you can stock items that you'll need for quests or crafting later.

After that, I just explored the area and talked to NPCs. It's good to know where everything is. If you want to start farming, you can buy crops from the shop. You can sell items or fish to get some money for seeds. Make sure that you read how long it takes for the crops to grow and that you are planting them in the right season!

You can also explore the mines. There are a lot of crafting materials down there to help get you started. I think I spent most of my time down there when I started instead of farming, because it was more fun.

Oh, also it's very important that you watch the television every morning. It will tell you what the weather will be like tomorrow, if the spirits are in a good mood (thats for mining) , and you might get tips about the game or cooking recipes. It's definitely helpful.

If you have any specific problems/questions then I'd love to help! As far as what to do in your first days, I say just explore and discover that for yourself. You can't fail or run out of time, so explore the world and try new things.

It's very late here so sorry if none of that made since. If you do decide to read a guide, I found a really good one here that will probably explain things much better then I did :P

I'm a horror game newbie. I just started playing them. Is it just as stealthy as the first game? I didn't get far in Outlast because a lot of it involved stealth and hiding. I'm terrible at stealth so I just died a lot lol.

Grandpa's evalutation is based off a point system dependent on things you accomplished in the game. The more points you get, the better the evaluation. It will take a while to get a perfect evaluation because you have to do a lot in the game. It's not hard at all, just time consuming.

After his first evaluation, you can get another one anytime, so you aren't timed or anything :)