Have you seen the Stardew Valley update?

Here’s everything you need to know about it either way!

The long-awaited Stardew Valley 1.6 update was released on March 19 with a whole slew of new features and exciting upgrades.

If you’ve never played it, Stardew Valley is a cozy game where you can farm, fish, mine, adventure, make friends, get married, and explore. The premise is simple: your grandfather died and left you his farm. You head down to Pelican Town with some old tools and a little bit of cash, and now you have to make something out of this new life. The game was initially released in 2016 and it’s available on most, if not all, gaming platforms for under $20.

But, the new update, 1.6, is only available on PC as of March 30.

One of the things that excited me the most was that it was developed alongside FlashShifter, the creator and developer of Stardew Valley Expanded, a mod for Stardew Valley that, as the name suggests, expands the game. It’s probably my favorite mod, and a lot of people agree. It’s a must-have mod for me and I couldn’t imagine my game without it, which is why it’s so exciting that the two brilliant minds of FlashShifter and ConcernedApe worked together for 1.6.

A huge piece of the update was a brand new farm type: the Meadowlands farm. You start with 15 hay instead of 15 parsnips, but that’s because you start with a coop and two baby chickens.

There are several new events, including a three-day festival in the desert if you have the bus repair, Trout Derby and SquidFest, which are fishing festivals, and one in the summer that I haven’t found yet.

You can have more than one pet because of the new friendship system with your pet. If you get max hearts, you can get another, and they might give you gifts.

The villagers now have new outfits for the winter so they aren’t freezing in their summer clothes.

There’s a bookseller that’ll show up twice a season with books from a new book system to help you improve your skills. 

If you complete enough special orders, you’ll get a prize ticket that you can use in a new prize machine in Mayor Lewis’ house.

There are four new crops – carrots, summer squash, broccoli, and powdermelon – that you can find by hoeing up the ground.

Robin can now offer you four new additions to your home: a dining room, an attic, a larger corner room, and a little cubby room.

There are tons of new items too. A big one is, well, the big chest. It has double the storage space as a regular chest. There’s also a dehydrator for your fruits and mushrooms, so you can dehydrate things for more money no matter what cave type you choose from Demetrius.

There’s a bait maker for fish-specific bait to help you catch that annoying sturgeon by Robin’s house. Speaking of fish, there’s a fish smoker that doubles the value of your fish. And speaking of double, the new heavy furnace can process more than one bar at a time.

Old trees can now grow moss that you can pick up, and you can find jelly when you fish. There’s even a brand new fish, the Goby, and a brand new pet, a turtle.

I know that there’s a lot of new stuff, but the best way to explore it is by playing the game yourself, or with friends, because 1.6 allows you to play with up to eight friends instead of the original four.

Happy farming!