Slightly Better Panning

Description

Better Panning is a tiny quality-of-life mod for Stardew Valley 1.6+ that makes panning feel less awkward without changing the game’s balance too much.
It does two things:

• Simple HUD hint – when you’re holding a pan and walk near a panning spot, a message appears:
  <figure class="quote col-3-3">

  “Found a pan spot nearby!”

  </figure>
• Optional extra loot – if you want a little boost, you can enable an option to drop one extra copy of the vanilla panning treasure every time you pan. No custom loot tables, no crazy rewards – just a duplicate of whatever the game was already going to give you.
  
  

That’s it. No new items, no map edits, no extra pan spot spawns.

Features

• ✅ HUD indicator
  
  • Only shows when:
    
    • you’re holding a Pan, and
    • there’s a vanilla panning shimmer on the current map, and
    • you’re within a reasonable tile distance of it.
  • The indicator is just a subtle text message at the top of the screen:
    <figure class="quote col-3-3">

    “Found a pan spot nearby!”

    </figure>
• ✅ Extra treasure (optional)
  
  • When enabled, the mod:
    
    • lets the game spawn its normal panning debris/loot,
    • finds one of the new debris items created by that pan,
    • clones the underlying item (getOne()) and drops it at the player’s feet.
  • You keep the original vanilla loot plus one extra identical item.
• ✅ Safe & lightweight
  
  • No changes to where pan spots spawn.
  • No custom items or balance-breaking loot tables.
  • Works entirely on top of vanilla logic using Harmony and SMAPI events.

Configuration (Generic Mod Config Menu)

If you have Generic Mod Config Menu installed, you can configure the mod from the title screen or in-game pause menu.

Current options:

• Add extra treasure (default: ON)
  <figure class="quote col-3-3">

  If enabled, panning drops one extra copy of the vanilla treasure on top of the normal loot.

  </figure>
• Show HUD indicator (default: ON)
  <figure class="quote col-3-3">

  If enabled, shows a HUD message when a pan spot is nearby while holding a pan.

  </figure>

If you don’t use GMCM, you can edit BetterPanning/config.json manually after running the game once.

Compatibility

• Built for Stardew Valley 1.6+ and SMAPI 4.x.
• Should be compatible with most other mods, including other panning or loot mods, since it:
  
  • only reads the vanilla orePanPoint, and
  • only duplicates the debris items spawned by the game or other mods.