Automate is a Stardew Valley mod which lets you place a chest next to machines (like a furnace, cheese press, bee house, etc), and the machines will automatically pull raw items from the chest and push processed items into it.
- Install the latest version of SMAPI.
- Install this mod from Nexus mods.
- Run the game using SMAPI.
Place a chest next to a crafting machine (in any direction including diagonal) to connect it. Machines connected to a chest will push their output into it, and pull ingredients to process out of it.
This can be used to automate...
- auto-grabbers;
- bee houses;
- bone mills;
- bushes (including blackberry, salmonberry, and tea bushes);
- casks (even outside the cellar);
- charcoal kilns;
- cheese presses;
- coffee makers;
- crab pots;
- crystalariums (once started with the gem/mineral you want);
- deconstructors;
- fish ponds (for output only);
- trees;
- fruit trees;
- furnaces (don't forget they also need coal);
- garbage cans;
- geode crushers (don't forget they also need coal);
- hay hoppers;
- hoppers (these act just like chests, except they're output-only);
- Junimo huts;
- incubators (for eggs);
- kegs;
- lightning rods;
- looms;
- mayonnaise machines;
- mills;
- mini-shipping bins;
- mushroom boxes;
- oil makers;
- preserves jars;
- recycling machines;
- seed makers;
- shipping bins (can be disabled in
config.json); - silos;
- slime egg-presses;
- slime incubators;
- soda machines;
- solar panels;
- statues of endless fortune;
- statues of perfection;
- statues of true perfection;
- tappers;
- wood chippers;
- and worm bins.
Automated machines will give you the same XP, achievements, and items you'd get for using them directly. If multiple chests are part of a group, they'll all be used in the automation. Input will be taken from all the chests, and output will be saved to chests in this order:
- chests marked as output chests (see _Configure);
- chests which already contain an item of the same type;
- any chest.
You can combine any number of chests and machines by placing them adjacent to each other, and you
can press U (configurable) to highlight connected machines.
Here are some example machine group setups. You can increase production by just adding more machines.
-
Automatic crab pots
A worm bin produces bait, which is fed into the crab pots, which harvest fish and recycle trash. The final products are stored in the chest.
-
Automatic refined quartz factory
A crystalarium produces quartz, which is smelted into refined quartz, which is stored in the chest.
-
Automatic iridium mead factory
A bee house produces honey, which is turned into mead, which is aged to iridium quality, which is stored in the chest.
-
Automatic iridium bar factory
A statue of perfection produces iridium ore, which is smelted into bars, which are stored in the chest.
-
Semi-automatic iridium cheese factory
Put your milk in the chest and it'll be turned into cheese, then aged to iridium quality, then put back in the chest.
You can optionally configure specific furniture/objects/paths as connectors, which link machines together. For example, here are wooden paths used as connectors:
Workbenches are the only connectors by default. You can edit the config.json to add connectors
(see configure below).
A pipeline is the directional flow of items along a set of machines. For example, milk in the chest gets processed in the cheese presses, then aged in the casks, then shipped:
milk cheese aged
----------> ----------> ---------->
┌──────────┐┌──────────┐┌──────────┐┌──────────┐
│ input ││ cheese ││ cask ││ shipping │
│ chest ││ press ││ ││ bin │
└──────────┘└──────────┘└──────────┘└──────────┘
┌──────────┐┌──────────┐
│ cheese ││ cask │
│ press ││ │
└──────────┘└──────────┘
┌──────────┐
│ cask │
│ │
└──────────┘
Automate doesn't directly support pipelines: every machine (including the shipping bin) always has access to every connected chest.
You can still have pipelines using machine priorities though. The shipping bin has the lowest priority by default, so milk in the chest will go into the cheese press first automatically. The caveat is that priority only matters when different machines are ready to take items. For example, the shipping bin will happily take any remaining items if your other machines are all busy. There are two common solutions:
- Add enough machines to handle all your input, so you never have unused items for the shipping bin.
- Leave a space between the shipping bin and other machines, so it's not connected. When you're ready to ship all the output, put down a path connector temporarily so it pulls all the available items.
The default order that machines are processed is unpredictable and subject to change, except that shipping bins are processed last by default.
For example, let's say you have this machine setup and you place two tomatoes in the chest:
┌──────────┐┌──────────┐┌──────────┐┌──────────┐┌──────────┐
│ chest ││ keg ││ keg ││ shipping ││ preserves│
│ ││ ││ ││ bin ││ jar │
└──────────┘└──────────┘└──────────┘└──────────┘└──────────┘
By default, all of the tomatoes will go into the kegs or preserves jar (since the shipping bin has a lower priority), but you won't know which ones will get them first. You can change per-machine settings to set the priority for individual machine types and make them predictable.
Note that if all higher-priority machines are busy, any remaining items may go into lower-priority machines.
Every machine and chest connected to a Junimo chest is part of a global machine group. This global group behaves just like a regular machine group (including for machine priority), even if it's spread across many locations.
For example, you can use this to distribute automation across the world:
- Junimo huts on your farm collect crops;
- kegs in a shed turn them into juice/wine;
- cellar casks age the juice/wine;
- the shipping bin collects the final output.
Caveats:
-
Due to their special behaviour, you can't change input/output options for a Junimo chest. Junimo chests are always automated if at least one is connected to a machine.
They have the highest priority for machine input, and the lowest priority for machine output. (That is, items are only pushed into a Junimo chest if no other chest is available. Items are still available to all machines in the global group either way.)
The mod creates a config.json file in its mod folder the first time you run it. You can open that
file in a text editor to configure the mod.
These are the available settings:
| setting | what it affects | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Controls |
The configured controller, keyboard, and mouse buttons (see key bindings).
The default value is You can separate bindings with commas (like |
||||||||
PullGemstonesFromJunimoHuts |
Whether to pull gemstones out of Junimo huts. If true, you won't be able to change Junimo colors by
placing gemstones in their hut. Default |
||||||||
AutomationInterval |
The number of update ticks between each automation cycle (one second is ≈60 ticks). Default |
||||||||
ConnectorNames |
A list of placed item names to treat as connectors which connect adjacent machines together. You must specify the exact English names for any in-game items to use. For example: "ConnectorNames": [
"Wood Path",
"Crystal Path"
]Contains |
||||||||
MachineOverrides |
The configuration to override for specific machine IDs. See per-machine settings for more info. |
||||||||
ModCompatibility |
Enables compatibility with other mods. All values are enabled by default.
|
Installing Chests Anywhere lets you set per-chest options directly in-game:
This adds two dropdowns for Automate:
- Put items:
- Put items in this chest (default).
- Put items in this chest first: Automate will push machine output into this chest first, and only try other chests if it's full.
- Never put items in this chest.
- Take items:
- Take items from this chest (default).
- Take items from this chest first: Automate will take machine input from this chest first, and only try other chests if it doesn't have any input for a machine.
- Never take items from this chest.
(To configure chest automation from another mod, see the technical documentation.)
This is advanced; most players won't need to configure Automate to this extent.
You can set some options for individual machine types by editing the config.json,
and adding an entry to the MachineOverrides field. If a machine isn't listed in that field, it'll
use the default values defined in assets/data.json. This works for all automated machines,
including those added by other mods.
Each entry in MachineOverrides is identified by the internal machine type ID (not the machine
name you see in-game). You can run the automate summary command to see a list
of machines being automated; the names shown in the list are the machine type IDs.
For example:
"MachineOverrides": {
"ShippingBin": {
"Enabled": true,
"Priority": -1
},
"Tapper": {
"Enabled": true,
"Priority": 0
},
}Available options for each machine:
| field | purpose |
|---|---|
Enabled |
Whether the machine type should be automated (default true). |
Priority |
The order in which this machine should be processed relative to other machines (default 0). Higher values are processed first for both input and output. |
Automate is compatible with Stardew Valley 1.5+ on Linux/Mac/Windows, both single-player and multiplayer. In multiplayer mode, only the main player can automate machines; other players can keep it installed and use the overlay, their mod just won't automate anything.
Automate is compatible with...
- Auto-Grabber Mod (seeds/fertilizer in auto-grabbers will be ignored).
- Better Junimos (seeds/fertilizer in Junimo huts will be ignored).
- Custom Farming Redux (see its optional 'CFAutomate' download to enable automation).
- Producer Framework Mod (with the PFMAutomate addon).
Press U in-game (configurable) to toggle the automation overlay. This highlights
machines, containers, and connectors which are automated (green) or automateable but not currently
automated (red):
Enter automate summary directly in the SMAPI console to view a summary of your machine groups:
There's no strict limit, since Automate optimises machine connections internally. I've officially tested with up to 630 machines in one group (which didn't cause any issues), and some players have thousands of automated machines.
Yep; see in-game settings.
Some common reasons:
- NPCs destroy items placed in their path. You can use Non Destructive NPCs to prevent that, or use path connectors to connect machines away from NPC paths.
- Festivals and the Night Market use temporary maps, so items placed there may disappear when the map is switched back to normal.
Automate doesn't remove placed objects, so it's never at fault for disappearing chests or machines.
When storing items, Automate prefers chests which either have the "Put items in this chest first" option (see in-game settings in the README) or already have an item of the same type. The order when taking items is a bit more complicated. For more info, see the technical documentation.
For machines, see machine priority.
Yep. Automate provides APIs that let other mods add custom machines/containers/connectors or make other changes. For more info, see the technical documentation.