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andy.chalk@pcgamer.com (Andy Chalk)
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“I have this problem where once I start, I can’t stop,” Eric Barone said in an interview earlier this year, and boy, he wasn’t kidding. Case in point: Stardew Valley, which Barone started in 2012, released in 2016, and has relentlessly hammered away on since, despite having plenty of other things he’s supposed to be doing.
“1.6 ended up being a little larger in scope than originally planned. I’m done adding major new content to it now, though,” Barone said a few months prior to that “can’t stop” comment, and that was at least technically true in the sense that the 1.6 update rolled out for PC in March. But calling it “a little larger” was a bit off the mark: The thing was massive.
Console and mobile players unfortunately had to wait for the update, as Barone said in May that those versions “require extra work,” but the ports are finally out today—and it turns out that Barone was working on even more stuff to pile on top of it in the 1.6.9 patch, which is also now live on all platforms. Guess he didn’t want PC players to feel left out today.
Make no mistake, this is a pretty beefy addition to the 1.6 update, with balance and quality of life changes, a slew of fixes, and—you guessed it—more new content, including new Easter eggs, a mysterious new friend who will appear in the secret woods to help you recover lost items (for a price, of course), and “hidden cheat commands,” although that will only work on platforms that allow save edits, which I would assume excludes consoles.)
The cheats, detailed on the Stardew Valley wiki, are powerful tools: One enables players to instantly grant themselves whatever amount of money they want, while the other enables the use of any debug command through the chat console—something you should do with all appropriate caution, as the wiki warns that debug commands “may crash your game, permanently corrupt or break your save, or cause other problems. Using these in a save you care about is not recommended.” Back up your saves first.
The addition I find more intriguing, though, is the “new friend” who will do you a solid if you lose something important. “If a player has unlocked a unique item and then lost it, a secret shop appears overnight behind the fallen column to buy it back,” the wiki explains. “The shop sells items that can’t be re-obtained any other way. In multiplayer, any player can purchase an item that was lost (not only the player that lost theirs).”
The one downside? Each item costs 10,000 gold. Be careful with your stuff.
Barone said in September that he hasn’t worked on his next game, Haunted Chocolatier, “in a long time” because he’s been focused on the Stardew 1.6 update. That might be disappointing for people eager to explore his new world, but the general consensus reaction is one of excitement and appreciation that Barone is still doing so much for a game he could’ve justifiably washed his hands of years ago. “He better be wearing a chef’s hat the way he cooked with this update,” MaximusJDo wrote on Steam, nicely summarizing the mood.
The big question now is whether Barone will quit horsing around and get back to work on Haunted Chocolatier, or if more Stardew is in the stars. I don’t know, but I will point out that I called a Stardew Valley 1.7 update back in March, and I think I’m going stand by that prediction.
The full Stardew Valley 1.6.9 patch notes are below.
New content & features
- If you lost an item that can’t be found again, a new friend appears in the secret woods who can get it back (for a price).
- You can now put legendary fish in fish ponds. These are limited to one per pond and produce legendary fish roe. Each fish has a unique water color.
- You can now place beds and sleep inside any constructed buildings that allow furniture.
- Items dropped in water now float for a short time, so you can collect them if you’re quick or have a magnet ring.
- Sam and Shane now have work portraits while working at JojaMart.
- Slightly tweaked some dialogues.
- Added new Easter eggs.
- Added hidden cheat commands. (Only on platforms where a save edit is possible)
Balance changes
- Blue grass no longer grows slower than normal grass.
- Fruit tree growth is no longer blocked by grass and seed spots.
- Pine trees now drop one extra wood when chopped down.
- The initiation quest now counts wild slimes killed on the farm.
- Thorns ring damage now stacks if you equip two of them, and monsters killed by a thorns ring now drop loot like regular kills.
- With the Gatherer skill, the chance to double harvested forage now applies when using an iridium scythe too.
- Son of Crimsonfish can now be caught during the night market.
- Robin no longer constructs buildings during green rain in year 1.
- Placing a bomb and then switching to a weapon no longer applies its enchantments to the bomb damage.
- Added some items to shops:
- Adventurer’s Guild: Rusty Sword, Femur, Elf Blade, Steel Smallsword, Crystal Dagger, Obsidian Edge, and Work Boots. These unlock after you reach a certain mine level, regardless of whether you found them in a mine chest.
- Marnie’s shop: Cow Decal.
- Hat mouse: Sports Cap.
- Willy’s shop: Advanced Iridium Rod.
- Passing trains are now more likely to happen multiple times in the same session, but can no longer appear on consecutive days.
- Willy’s shop now opens on spring 2 in the first year even if you didn’t read his letter.
- Fixed Queen of Sauce reruns being affected by the recipes needed by unclaimed farmhands in empty cabins.
- Fixed being able to receive monster damage while jumping down a mine shaft before the screen fades to black.
- Fixed spa not fully recovering energy when a max-energy buff is active.
- Fixed sleeping late while exhausted not reducing stamina as intended.
- Fixed the catalogue and Furniture Catalogue selling items from themed catalogues like Retro Catalogue.
- Fixed exploit where a fish pond with a golden cracker could produce unlimited output. Fish pond output bonuses are now applied once when the output is created.
- Fixed exploit where you could cancel cow milking and still get the friendship boost.
- Fixed unintended extra chance of spontaneous green rain trees when loading a save in fall.
- Fixed skill buffs affecting shop item requirements in 1.6.
- Fixed sturdy ring no longer halving debuff times in 1.6.
- Fixed lower chance of catching lava eels in caldera after 1.6.
- Fixed forage crops harvested from garden pots always being low-quality and providing no XP.
- Fixed iridium scythe with forage crops not giving XP or applying the forage level quality boost.
- Fixed some weapons never dropping from crates when legacy randomization is enabled.
Quality of life changes
- The game now recovers most saves automatically if they’re broken, corrupted, or missing the SaveGameInfo file.
- The game now resends most achievements, recipes, and important mail if you somehow missed them. For PlayStation/Xbox players, missed trophies are readded when perform a specific action instead.
- Fish ponds now show the number of roe or other output items to collect.
- The wedding event now replays if you exit & reload the day.
- The tailoring UI is now a bit more intuitive: slots that can’t accept the held item are now disabled, and you can no longer pick up some items that can’t be tailored.
- Colored items like flowers now also sort by color. That avoids items being reordered randomly each time you sort your inventory.
- You can now only sell books to the bookseller via the book purchase menu, not the trade-in menu. This reduces the chance of accidentally selling a book when trying to trade it in.
- The collections tab now shows artifacts, gems, and minerals once they’re donated to the museum (not as soon as you find it).
- Clint now refills your watering can when upgrading it.
- Tweaked save process to reduce the chance of corruption.
- Anvils no longer accept parrot eggs if you can’t re-roll their level yet.
- Improved chatbox commands:
- Chat commands are now case-insensitive.
- Changed /help format to make room for more commands.
- Added /help descriptions for /emote, /mapScreenshot, and /unbanAll.
- Added consistent messages when you can’t use a multiplayer-only or host-only command.
- Performance optimizations.
Technical changes
- Migrated from FAudio to OpenAL, which should improve performance when playing audio.
- Updated SDL from 2.0.x to 2.30.4 (used for input and windowing).
- Fixed compatibility with newer Windows systems when using some older GPUs.
Gameplay fixes
- You can no longer swap a chest’s type if the new type is too small to store its current items.
- Fixed NPC issues:
- NPCs no longer avoid passable terrain features like flooring and grass when pathfinding.
- Fixed kicking Krobus out of the house triggering divorce dialogues.
- Fixed Leo following his island schedule after moving to the mainland.
- Fixed a Lewis schedule where he would overlap Marnie.
- Fixed a Penny resort dialogue when married that was never shown.
- Fixed Pierre sometimes showing a closed-on-Wednesday dialogue after his shop hours are extended.
- Fixed mom or dad sending duplicate mail if you change gender later.
- Fixed some dialogue based on location + heart level only being shown if you have 10 or more hearts with the NPC.
- Fixed special NPC gift reaction dialogue sometimes not matching their gift taste (e.g. Willy giving a positive dialogue for triple shot espresso).
- Fixed unable to talk to Robin after accepting a house upgrade.
- Fixed incorrectly split dialogue in Linus’ first heart event.
- Fixed NPCs unable to pathfind through tiles that had a tent at the start of the day.
- Fixed NPCs not loading their green rain dialogue if you started the day on the island.
- Fixed NPCs saying “…” in 1.6 if they bought an item you sold to a shop but they don’t have a relevant dialogue for it.
- Fixed your spouse sometimes saying “…” instead of the intended neutral dialogue.
- Fixed your fiancée/spouse reacting to a mermaid’s pendant as if you’re engaged/married to someone else.
- Fixed UI issues:
- Fixed world map not always showing players at the right spot when they’re inside a constructed building.
- Fixed links in credits no longer opening a browser page.
- Fixed able to interact with HUD elements like the toolbar when they’re hidden (e.g. when the game is paused).
- Fixed issues when resizing the game window:
- advanced game options layout being messed up;
- collections page losing its selected tab and page;
- social page losing its scroll position.
- Fixed themed catalogues not having category tabs.
- Fixed forge UI destroying any item held by the cursor after unforging.
- Fixed museum menu clicks on the OK button sometimes grabbing the artifact behind it instead.
- Fixed tailoring menu letting you trash some non-trashable items.
- Fixed organize button in inventory UIs letting you put any item in special chests like enrichers.
- Fixed issue where phoning Robin to get building prices and then resizing the window would enable the build/demolish/etc options as if you’d visited the shop directly.
- Fixed specific items and machines:
- Fixed chest color getting reset when you swap chest type.
- Fixed crab pots not producing double catches correctly with wild bait.
- Fixed crab pots duplicating bait when loaded by a hopper.
- Fixed crab pots not applying deluxe bait and wild bait bonuses in some cases.
- Fixed fences destroyed on click when surrounded by impassable objects on three sides (above + left + right) instead of four as intended.
- Fixed geode crushers incrementing the ‘geodes crushed’ stat when hovering, which allowed unintended RNG manipulation.
- Fixed magic quiver trinket sometimes doing nothing if both a valid and invalid target are in range.
- Fixed mannequins losing their clothes if they’re moved into storage to make space (e.g. for an event). They now re-equip their previous clothes when they’re put back down.
- Fixed tents not blocking item placement.
- Fixed watering cans with bottomless enchantment sometimes shown with a half-empty meter. Bottomless watering cans are now always full.
- Fixed building upgrades not placing interior items (like the coop incubator) if…
- furniture is in the way. The furniture is now moved just like other objects.
- an item blocking placement can’t be moved. It’s now moved into the lost & found in that case.
- Fixed cases where the Pirate’s Wife quest chain could lock you out:
- If you have the quest but lost the required item, you now get a new War Memento overnight.
- If the quest was cancelled, you can now talk to Birdie to restart it.
- NPCs can no longer mistakenly accept the quest items as gifts or refuse to accept their quest item.
- Fixed location/map issues:
- Fixed screen viewport at wrong position right after warping on horseback in some cases.
- Fixed wilderness farm not pre-building the first cabin in separate-cabins mode.
- Fixed grass in Marnie’s cow field never regrowing.
- Fixed Willy’s bait barrel missing during night market.
- Fixed some missing map tiles which let you walk off-screen.
- Fixed able to leave Stardew Valley Fair’s festival area in odd years.
- Fixed weed/stone debris spawning on top of placed paths in some cases.
- Fixed able to dig up buried treasure from non-diggable tiles in some cases.
- Fixed forest fish no longer catchable on the four corners farm.
- Fixed bug where using the standard farm’s wallpaper/flooring in farmhouses of another farm type would reset them to that farm’s themed defaults.
- Fixed pre-1.6 saves sometimes losing the Dwarvish Translation Guide. The fix is retroactive for affected players.
- Fixed pre-1.6 farmhand stats not migrated correctly. The fix is retroactive for affected farmhands.
- Fixed pre-1.6 tubs o’ flowers never blooming again if their first day in 1.6 was in fall or winter.
- Fixed raccoon bundle accepting anything for preserve items.
- Fixed level requirement for farmer titles lowered by one in 1.6.
- Fixed fish ponds accepting multiple golden crackers before the first one lands in the water. They now register the first golden cracker immediately (but still delay the visual change until it lands).
- Fixed two Desert Festival makeover outfits that applied male shirts to female players.
- Fixed strange behavior of shop items with both a stock limit and stack size (e.g. items in several desert festival shops).
- Fixed edge cases where viewing a previous year’s secret santa letter in the collections tab would show the current year’s secret santa in the game menu during the Feast of the Winter Star week.
- Fixed the throw-item-into-shipping-bin animation drawing the base uncolored sprite for colored items like roe.
- Fixed error loading mobile saves on other platforms.
- Fixed crash when loading a save file in some rare cases.
- Fixed crash when using a tent on Ginger Island during a night event.
- Fixed some cat gifts applying fishing bonuses from the main player’s equipped fishing rod.
- Fixed movie theater scene failing in some cases when players have previously unequipped trinkets.
- Fixed Junimo harvesters losing the item color when dropping a crop on the ground due to their hut being full.
- Fixed rare edge case where a Junimo hut output chest has too many item slots.
Multiplayer fixes
- Added an /unlinkPlayer [name] chat command, which lets the host player release a farmhand so it can be reclaimed by the next person who connects.
- Fixed being able to steal another player’s roommate.
- Fixed farmhands able to claim multiple Desert Festival fishing quests per day.
- Fixed crash when reconnecting later in the day after leaving a festival.
- Fixed host crash if a farmhand disconnects while they’re between locations.
- Fixed NPC duplication in multiplayer fish derbies.
- Fixed crab pots & farm animals owned by an offline farmhand checking the main player’s professions instead.
- Fixed crab pots with no owner checking professions from the main player instead of the player adding bait.
- Fixed farmhands sometimes not seing the message when they can’t enter an NPC’s bedroom.
- Fixed Marlon’s desert festival quests not displaying the Calico Egg reward to farmhands.
- Fixed some multiplayer logic not handling an offline/invalid player correctly.
- Fixed some potential ‘null reference exception’ crashes in multiplayer code.
- Fixed crab pots with no owner checking the Mariner profession instead of Luremaster for the bait requirement in some cases.
- Fixed Willy not sending fishing rod mail to farmhands who join after spring 2.
- Fixed ‘waiting for players’ check including disconnecting players.
- Fixed trains not playing chugga chugga sounds for farmhands.
Display text and localization fixes
- In the credits, replaced the Reddit/Twitter links with a “News & Community” link.
- Fixed a huge number of translation issues for non-English players, and added automated tests to keep translations more in sync going forward. For example, this fixes…
- dialogue/event changes in 1.6 which weren’t applied in some languages;
- missing dialogues and event actions;
- missing, outdated, or incorrect translations;
- missing event preconditions (e.g. Leah’s 10-heart event could play on a rainy day in some languages);
- events playing the wrong music, not being skippable, or placing players or NPCs at the wrong spot;
- translations having different dialogue portraits/breaks/etc;
- conversation topics not started when something happens;
- text being shown with one word per dialogue box;
- improved grammar (e.g. gender conjugation);
- various errors and typos;
- and many other issues.
- Many improvements and fixes to translations and sprites, including some re-translated item names.
- Renamed “cranberries jelly/juice/wine” to “cranberry jelly/juice/wine”.
- Fixed some bad words being produced by the random name generator.
- Fixed NPC text signs and some chat/UI messages in multiplayer not always shown in your language.
- Fixed flavored items in some chat/UI messages not shown correctly (like “Player put ‘Smoked’ into the potluck soup“).
- Fixed various typos in English text.
- Fixed special order objectives not re-translated when the language changes. (This fix only applies to new special orders going forward.)
- Fixed Robin showing the wrong number of hardwood required for a house upgrade in some languages.
- Fixed some languages showing Willy’s back room invite mail as “???” in the collections tab.
- Fixed some languages having inconsistent hat hair behavior.
- Fixed some languages producing items with a different internal name.
- Fixed French players not seeing prismatic effect for Magic Cowboy Hat and Magic Turban.
- Fixed French and Japanese showing a ‘needs 5 coal’ message for the dehydrator.
- Fixed Russian club coin and slots offset issues.
- Fixed Russian Joja movie theater tilesheet not showing up.
- Fixed Russian tool tooltips having overlapped names.
- Fixed Spanish jukebox showing blank name for ‘Ginger Island’ song.
- Fixed buy-ticket messages showing an unformatted price (like 1000g instead of 1,000g).
Cosmetic fixes
- Added lights to Marcello’s book stand.
- Sam now changes uniform when he enters JojaMart, instead of only when he reaches his work tile.
- Fixed many bugs related to light sources (e.g. lights stuck on screen, shown in the wrong location, removed before they should be, etc).
- Fixed issues with the golden walnut & Qi gem drop-down display:
- Added support for showing both at once (e.g. another player finds a golden walnut while you’re in the Qi gem shop).
- Fixed display sometimes stuck on screen permanently.
- Fixed display showing the wrong type in some cases.
- Fixed display sometimes appearing in multiplayer when the value didn’t change.
- Fixed line wrapping for movie concession description tooltips.
- Fixed visual glitch during the even-year Spirit’s Eve if you have the Joja movie theater.
- Fixed issue with padding on the edge of maximized game windows on Windows.
- Fixed a shirt that looked weird.
- Fixed tooltip display issues, like an empty space for edible items that don’t recover any stamina/health (like sweet pea and crocus) or an unintended double space in tooltip buff names.
- Fixed missing shadows behind some colored items (like wine) in menus.
- Fixed texture wrapping issue with Joja door.
- Fixed glitched hidden emote animations in NPC profile menu in some cases. NPCs now use always their default sprite in the profile view.
- Fixed red slime item sprite drawn one pixel lower than other colors.
- Fixed missing pixels in anvil sprite’s outline.
- Fixed stray pixel in dried mushroom color mask.
- Fixed Krobus showing a gift icon for the void ghost pendant when he can’t accept it.
- Fixed the item-received message cutting off part of the item name if it contains a # character (like ‘Tropical Fish #173’).
- Fixed the item-received message sometimes showing no count or a wrong count.
- Fixed some farm animals having double shadows.
- Fixed stardrop tooltips showing incorrect health/energy recovery amounts.
- Fixed timing of Easter egg in summit event.
Gamepad fixes
- Fixed various issues/crashes with gamepad support.
- When buying animals or buildings with a gamepad, you can now use the D-pad to move the cursor.
- In the community center bundle UI, using gamepad triggers to move to donation slots and back now returns you to the same spot.
- Added a small delay before you can cancel a waiting-for-players dialogue using a gamepad, to prevent accidentally closing it immediately after pressing the OK button.
- Fixed gamepad issues on the new game screen.
- Fixed dresser tabs not selectable with a gamepad.
Changes for modded players
- Added a Content/ContentHashes.json file containing the MD5 hash for every vanilla content asset. This can be used by SMAPI and other tools to detect corrupted or modified game files.
- Improved debug console commands.
- When you leave a horse/mount in a temporary location, it now returns home when that location is removed.
- Fixed ‘Jewels Of The Sea’ book producing roe for custom fishing catches that normally don’t have roe.
- Fixed forage crops outside the farm being removed each week.
- Fixed meteorite, strange capsule, and stone owl only appearing in the top-left 64×64 tile area on large custom farm maps.
- Fixed pagination in powers tab when mods add more powers.
- Fixed edge cases throughout the game code related to items whose stacks can’t be reduced to zero (e.g. tools).
- Fixed various errors when custom items have no name.
- Fixed error when mods apply audio changes if there’s no audio device available.
- Fixed error if there are no movies available due to a mod bug. The game will now log a warning and choose from the full list of movies instead.
- Fixed crash if a farm animal is in a broken building or location.
- Fixed crash if a smoked fish’s original fish data no longer exists. You now get a delicious smoked Error Item instead.
- Fixed crash when custom sounds loaded from a mod’s .ogg files are paused/resumed many times.
- Fixed map tilesheet crash in some cases when playing split-screen mode with mods.
- Fixed issues when the game’s whichFarm and whichModFarm fields are out of sync.
- Fixed ‘light source already exists’ and ‘changing net field parent’ warnings in some cases.
- Fixed mod data getting reset on chest type swap.
- Fixed berry bushes showing wrong sprite in locations where seeds can be planted in any season.
- Fixed stardrop gift reaction dialogue for custom NPCs defaulting to some raw data instead of their loved dialogue.
- Fixed able to enter the Adventurer’s Guild back room without meeting the requirement if the door is open after a custom event.
- Fixed triggered actions being logged twice.
Changes for mod authors
- See the 1.6.9 mod author migration guide for new APIs, dialogue keys, game state queries, debug commands, map properties, C# constants/fields/methods, data fields, and many other technical changes.
I told you it’s a lot.
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