On the morning of March 19, 2024, Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone released the highly anticipated version 1.6 update for his critically acclaimed 2016 farming simulator Stardew Valley.
This update brought a myriad of positive changes such as being able to have more than one pet at a time, quality of life changes, and even more festivals featuring the town’s cast of characters!
Patch 1.6’s content is really appealing to long-time players of the game as the new content in it mainly focuses on tasks you would do in the late game. Such as adding a new mastery system that allows you to learn new abilities as you finish each skill category.
Other quality-of-life changes included in this update are some UI changes to allow players to keep track of their pet’s affection towards them and to view their progress on rebuilding the town’s community center!
The hype for this patch spread across the internet and social media like wildfire, as players all began to log back in to experience this new patch. So many people are playing in fact, that the game has rocketed past a new peak concurrent player count for the first time since 2021!
At 3:00 PM EST on the patch’s release date, SteamDB reported that the game has reached 107,204 currently playing people on Steam! This is over ten thousand more than the game’s previous peak concurrent player count of 94,879! Within the next half hour, that number would soar even higher to a tremendous 121,882 players!
Here are some of the patch notes:
- Added new festivals and events:
- The Desert Festival is a three-day event in spring which can be accessed after the bus is repaired.
- Two mini fishing festivals: Trout Derby and SquidFest.
- A new environmental “event” in summer.
- Added a “mastery” system, accessed via a new area, which grants powerful perks and items…
- Added a new farm type: Meadowlands Farm. It has a chewy blue grass that animals love. You also start with a coop and 2 chickens.
- You can now get multiple pets (after getting max hearts with your starter pet).
- Added a world map for Ginger Island, visible when visiting the island.
The full patch notes for version 1.6 of Stardew Valley can be read in full on the game’s official website. There are pages upon pages of patch notes, making this one of the biggest update the game has ever received.
Stardew Valley is currently available to purchase on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Android, IOS, and on PC via Steam. However, at this time the version 1.6 patch is only available in the PC release of the game.
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