Stardew Valley fans have been waiting to bask in the seed-sowing sunshine again and patch 1.6 comes with some massive additions to the acclaimed farming simulator.
As we reported last month, Eric Barone, the game’s creator announced the release date for the patch as part of Stardew Valley’s 8th anniversary.
Now that day has come and the update eclipses any other patch that has been previously released. With over 500 individual changes across a packed list of notes, there is a lot to get through.
Stardew’s biggest patch
Barone would post to X about the anticipated patch:
Stardew Valley 1.6 is now available on PC pic.twitter.com/HwIE4aYI0Y
— ConcernedApe (@ConcernedApe) March 19, 2024
The patch can already be grabbed on PC, but console players will have to wait a little longer to get the improvements. Barone says that the patch is currently “available on Steam & GOG, Gamepass is incoming soon, sorry about that. Waiting for a new build to go through.”
The patch would also set a new record for the title on Steam as the concurrent player count reached 146,159 according to SteamDB. For an eight-year-old indie title, this is quite a feat, as the previous player count recorded way back in 2021 for patch 1.5 was one-third less than this impressive figure.
Some of the key elements of the patch have improved the quality of life issues that players have been facing and also some key bug and error fixes.
The content of the game has seen a massive injection of new items, quests, and even a new farm type for players to enjoy, with two complimentary chickens and “chewy blue grass that animals love.”
Three new events have been added and they “now have map and dialogue changes every second year (except the Night Market and Desert Festival).”
These events include the new Desert Festival, a three-day event in spring that can be accessed after the bus is repaired. Two mini fishing festivals: Trout Derby and SquidFest and a new environmental event in summer.
Multiplayer also sees an impressive eight players take to the farms and the mines of the Ferngill Republic and those players using Steam will “now use Steam multiplayer authentication, potentially improving connection issues significantly.”
One of the big talking points for Stardew’s hardcore fans was mod support and Barnone has actioned a long list of requests titled “fixes for modded players” in the patch notes.
So the 1.6 patch and this burst of concurrent players on Steam show that the sun has not yet set on Stardew Valley after eight years of existence.
