Stardew Valley gets free Lord of the Rings-inspired side quest

Stardew Valley players can now pick up a free player-made side quest inspired by a memorable chapter from J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit.

For players who are very familiar with The Lord of the Rings and related texts, one of the most memorable chapters across the franchise is 'Riddles in the Dark'in The Hobbit.

This passage details Bilbo Baggins finding the One Ring in a cave and introduces the creature Gollum. Bilbo plays a game of riddles with him in exchange for help finding the cave’s exit.

If you’re also a fan of riddles and love Stardew Valley, one Nexus Mods user has now created a mod which replicates the same experience as Bilbo’s within a dark well that resides underneath Pelican Town.

Also titled Riddles in the Dark, the mod adds a new well in an underground area in Pelican Town which holds a dark secret.

“Hidden beneath an old passage near Pelican Town is a strange cave containing a well that does not appear in any town record. Nobody knows who built it. Nobody knows where its water comes from. And, according to the stories, sometimes it talks,” reads the mod description.

Riddles in the Dark for Stardew Valley is a must-have for Lord of the Rings fans

The mod adds a daily bargain for players to participate in: offer up a little blood, and in exchange you’ll have a chance to solve a riddle and receive rewards.

There are 120 unique riddles available with the mod, with one per day for you to tackle, giving you a full in-game year of new content for you to do. In addition to that, you’ll also have one unique event with Willy related to this well.

The spirit inside the well also has its own interactions with you, which will gradually change over time as you continue to go back to the well. The mod tracks your history with the well, including your bargains and performance. The more you go back to it, the more its dialogue evolves.

Once you hit certain milestones, the well begins to treat you less like a stranger and more like an “increasingly familiar source of entertainment.” It’ll also reveal bits about its own history; whether or not they are true remains to be seen, though.

Given the very nature of how this mod is structured, we’d say this is the closest you can get to recreating your very own Bilbo/Gollum exchange without triggering the lawyers for Tolkien’s estate.

With all the randomised dialogue, as well as the fact it’d take you a full year to experience every riddle in the game, we’d say this is a good mod to use if you’re after a new Stardew Valley experience that is also quite long as well. It should certainly keep you going until 1.7 releases at some point in the future.