As promised, on March 19, a major update 1.6 was released for the PC version of the farming life simulator Stardew Valley from developer Eric Barone. The patch helped the game reach a new level of popularity on Steam.
Version 1.6 will include three festivals (one large, two smaller), a new type of farm, items, recipes, replicas (over a hundred) and support for multiplayer for eight people (PC only).
In anticipation of the release, Baron revealed several more features of the patch: a fix for a bug that players had suspected for years, the ability to use mayonnaise, a week-long honeymoon for newlyweds, and so on.
As it turned out, the output is a complete list of changes (contains spoilers) in update 1.6 stretched by 400 points. Here are the main ones:
a three-day desert festival in the spring and two smaller fish festivals; summer event dedicated to ecology; a new type of farm – with blue grass, a chicken coop and two chickens at the start; many new dialogues for NPCs with reactions to gifts and surrounding events, as well as restored lines; the ability to have more than one pet and put hats on cats and dogs; The world map will now show the player's current position in real time; a mastery system that unlocks powerful bonuses and items; a parrot has appeared on ginger island, which you can pay to find the remaining golden walnuts; a large tree with a unique line of quests; new crops and giant plants, home expansions and 40 types of items, including secret ones; more secrets, Easter eggs, dog and cat breeds, house options; eight new achievements; improving the visual component of locations; productivity increase; support for eight players (PC) and numerous multiplayer improvements; dozens of balance adjustments, gameplay improvements and bug fixes; reduction of loading time with a large number of custom locations.
Update 1.6 also makes fundamental changes to the way Stardew Valley works, which should make life easier for modders in the future, but has so far broken many existing mods. How to deal with this was discussed in a separate article.
Following the release of the patch, Stardew Valley updated the peak online record on Steam, which had held since the release of version 1.5 in December 2020 (94.8 thousand people). New benchmark – 140 thousand concurrent players (the figure continues to grow)
The Stardew Valley update is currently only available on PC, but will come to consoles and mobile devices in the future. Sales in 8 years since the original release have already exceeded 30 million copies.
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