Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone shares some handy tips to help you get through the early-game community center hassles.

If you're like me, you probably have a small country's worth of farms saved in various save files. Experimenting with different farm layouts, playstyles, spouses, and challenges creates a fair amount of replayability in this game. Also, the first few hours of each save file can be a bit tedious, especially when donating items to the community center.

Now, Barone gave us a nifty way to quickly know if the items in our bags are needed for the community center. In a tweet, he revealed that when you hover over an item in need of donation, the community center icon in your inventory will gently pulse.

Apparently, this has been in the game since at least the 1.4 update, but the effect is so subtle that quite a few people were surprised. Many people are probably looking at the screen thinking, "How did nobody know about this?" but somehow even I missed this hint, despite hundreds of hours of immersion in the game.

The community center plays an important role in the early stages of "Stardew Valley" play. By completing the various rooms, you can restore many areas throughout the map, including the incredibly useful greenhouse. Usually a top priority in the first year on the farm, but if your memory is as bad as mine, you can clear the center dozens of times and still forget what you need to donate.

Last year's 1.5 update also introduced the option to "remix" community center bundles. This makes this subtle effect even more useful and will certainly be used in future play. This is not the first time a small feature has passed under the noses of Stardew Valley players, like the excited Redditors who discovered months later that ducks can swim in the pond.