Disney Dreamlight Valley: How to make the best start in 2025

Disney Dreamlight Valley has everything a cozy gamer could want: designing, crafting, fishing, gardening, and more. It’s been out for over two years now, and with several expansion packs and DLC available, it has plenty of places to explore. You just need to make the move. 

Here are some little tips and tricks that can make the game significantly easier to progress through, letting you get to the true meat of the game faster. It’s everything you need to get started in Disney Dreamlight Valley in 2025.
 

Skills and Friendships

The characters in Disney Dreamlight Valley are some of the most important parts of the game. Their Friendships progress the main story, which makes building these relationships vital. While giving gifts is always an option, there’s a much easier way to get those levels up. 

At Friendship Level Two, players can assign a Role to characters. At the beginning of the game, you can choose from the following Roles: digging, fishing, foraging, gardening, and mining.

Once you’ve assigned a Role to a character, you can hang out with them. They’ll follow you around while you do your tasks, occasionally giving you extra loot for whatever actions you’re taking. For example, your hang out partner may give you extra fish while you’re fishing.

Every action you take when you’re hanging out with a character will increase their Friendship. When you do an action that coincides with the assigned Role of the character you’re hanging out with, then that increase in Friendship doubles. 

This is the ideal way to raise Friendships, especially when you’re just starting out—it’s free, and it nets you bonus items too. 
 

Key characters to befriend

While it’s definitely worth maxing out the Friendship of every character in Disney Dreamlight Valley, some are more important than others. Several characters impact the story or unlock tool upgrades. 

These characters are Goofy, Merlin, Anna, Maui, Elsa, Scar, and Sully. Using the hang out feature and focusing on these characters early on will make progressing through the main story of the game much easier.
 

Making money

Another great way to befriend these characters quickly is by farming. It also serves as one of the best ways (if not the best way) to make money in the beginning. Every biome has a crop that’s best to farm for money-making, which are as follows:

• Peaceful Meadows: Carrots
• Dazzle Beach: Tomatoes
• Forest of Valor: Canola
• Frosted Heights: Asparagus 
• Glade of Trust: Okra
• Sunlit Plateau: Soya
• Forgotten Lands: Pumpkins

Pumpkins are by far the best crop to farm, but it takes a bit of grinding to unlock the Forgotten Lands. So before getting there, many people will focus on just one crop. Canola is arguably one of the best choices for doing so early in the game. 

Because of this, it’s a good idea to first unlock the Forest of Valor over Glade of Trust. From there, speed to the Forgotten Lands for those lucrative pumpkins. While you won’t be able to unlock the story in the Forgotten Lands until you’ve unlocked Frosted Heights, it’s worth it for the money alone. 

Later in the game, characters can have their Roles changed. One easy strategy is to make gardening experts out of the characters you want to level up quickly (like the ones listed above to help upgrade tools). This is great for both making money, which you’ll need quite a bit of, and increasing those key Friendships. 

Selling other things can be a tempting way to make money, but it’s not really worth it. Resources are best to save up, especially ones like Night Shards. Later quests become very resource heavy, and it’s nice to have reserves to tap into for those. Plus you'll burn through resources quickly when you start crafting and customizing the Valley.
 

DLC and the Premium Shop

When it comes to DLC in Disney Dreamlight Valley, these expansions are wonderful to dig into once you’ve completed the main story, opening up more characters, items, and story lines. So far, the DLC packs are A Rift in Time and The Storybook Vale. A Rift In Time is completed, and The Storybook Vale has two parts, the second of which will come out at some point in 2025. 

For other ways to use Moonstones, which are earned by purchasing Founders Pack or opening Chests around the valley, the in-game Premium Shop has lots to buy. There are plenty of wardrobe and furniture items for sale, and the selection rotates weekly. Plus you can buy the Star Path. The Star Path lasts at least two months, sometimes longer, and it’s Disney Dreamlight Valley’s version of a battle pass. There are quests with it that reward you with tokens that unlock cosmetics, other currencies, and even companions. 

That’s everything you need to know to jump into Disney Dreamlight Valley in 2025. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you can find the game here on the Epic Games Store.