Hired Hands

Hired Hands adds a hireling labor system to Stardew Valley (wage-based by default) — a way to automate farming tasks by hiring workers (generic farmhands or recruited villagers) to physically do farm work for you. Hired workers can handle any day-to-day farm chore ranging from crops to machines for a customizable wage and an optional cut of what they produce.

Hands can be hired from the in-game Hiring Board menu (press "L") and they spawn as visible workers by default, each having a randomized appearance from a pool of names, clothes, skin-tones, etc. Villagers can also be recruited (default 2,000 gold + 2 hearts, configurable); a recruited villager borrows their look and name for the workday only, leaving their real schedule, dialogue, and relationship untouched!

While the player is away, or for jobs inside coops, barns, and the greenhouse, the work is resolved in the background (for now at least). Every worker has a daily task budget scaled by skill and morale that caps how much work they can do.

Economy

Pay has 2 parts:

A small daily or weekly retainer — a flat wage charged each morning. Weekly's a little cheaper per day if you'd rather pay in lumps.
A share of what they gather — by default they keep 25% of the value of everything they harvest or collect, taken in goods, not cash. The rest goes to your chest or shipping bin.

Pure labor — watering, fertilizing, refilling machines, clearing land is free, because it doesn't produce anything to share. But a hand working a huge, profitable harvest can costs you, because their cut scales with the take.

Worker's have changing morale based on missed paydays, miss enough and they will quit. There can also be a cap on how many hands you can hire "on credit" to discourage free armies of workers.

What the workers physically do

Toggle any of these on or off per worker, right on the board:

Crops — water, fertilize, and harvest. They move around your crops instead of trampling through them.
Animals — feed from the silo, pet for friendship, and collect produce (eggs, milk, wool).
Machines — empty finished kegs/jars/furnaces/etc. and refill them from your chests.
Farm clean-up (off by default) — pick up forage, clear weeds, twigs and stones, fell wild trees, and break boulders, stumps and logs. Handy for starting a new game at a rapid pace.

Every worker has a daily task budget that scales with their skill and morale, so one hand can only do so much work. Want more done? Hire more hands — which can cost more gold.

They're not just numbers on a menu

Click a worker (or hit the locate pin on the board) to pan the camera over to them — handy when multiple workers are scattered across the farm or a worker's visibility is blocked by an object on screen.
When a hand runs out of work, there's a configurable chance it'll wander off and nap under a nearby tree until it's needed again.
At the end of their shift they walk off the map and head home, instead of standing around like statues.

When you're away from the farm — in town, the mines, asleep — or for work tucked inside coops and barns, the same jobs get done quietly in the background. Either way, anything they were assigned and had budget for is guaranteed finished by the end of the day. No half-watered fields because you wandered off.

Almost every value is customizable — wage rates, output share, work hours, hiring limits, and more — The system can be anything from a light helping hand to a serious late-game gold drain.

Compatibility

Should be compatible with any mod - only sort of conflicts I've found so far are Automate which overlaps with this mod (shares some of the same settings), and Quicksave may not work (needs more testing). If you come across a mod that isn't compatible for some reason let me know and I can try to make it compatible.

Requirements

Stardew Valley 1.6
SMAPI 4.x
Generic Mod Config Menu — optional but strongly recommended (the only way to change settings in-game)

Installation instructions

1. Install SMAPI (4.x) and run the game through it at least once.

2. Install Generic Mod Config Menu - needed if you want custom settings.

3. Download Hired Hands mod from files page and unzip the folder into your Stardew Valley/Mods folder.

4. Launch the game through SMAPI. Once in a save or new game press L (rebindable) to open the Hiring Board.

Current limits & known issues

Single-player only
No Android support (so far)
You may encounter bugs, I can only test this so much on my system - if you encounter a bug post it with a screenshot and description of what went wrong and I will fix it.
Visible walking happens on the farm only — work inside buildings and the greenhouse is missing - might add later
Animations for both worker types (generic and villagers) are approximations and are still being improved - had to be re-done since they are different from how the player's animations work
Scythe-harvested crops (wheat, amaranth, etc.) may land in your inventory rather than the deposit chest, because of how the game spawns them. Other crops deposit normally; nothing's ever lost.

Roadmap

More idle animations for workers
Android support
Animation improvements
??

FAQs

Q: Are all villagers recruitable?

A: No, children and elderly villagers are excluded along with the wizard. If there is enough demand for them I can change this, but currently I feel it makes sense to exclude them as options.

Q: Can I hire a mix of generic workers and villagers?

A: Yes

Q: Can I make the workers cost more or be cheaper/free?

A: Yes, set the output share and/or the daily retainer in settings, for villagers their hearts and gold requirements can be adjusted or disabled as well. It is very customizable from "free help" to "serious gold sink."

Q: Where do harvested crops and produce go?

A: To your chest or shipping bin (configurable), after the worker takes their share (configurable).

One exception: scythe-harvested crops (wheat, amaranth, etc.) land in your inventory instead, due to how the game spawns them, but nothing is lost.

Q: Can I make the workers invisible?

A: Yes, there's an option to run the whole system without visible workers - can be toggled on/off in settings.

Feedback and bug reports welcome — If you encounter a bug or have a suggestion please let me know and I'll see what I can do!