Stardew Valley 1.6 Update: Full Breakdown of New Content, Fixes, and Quality of Life Upgrades

Roughly a year after ConcernedApe first hinted at it, and more than three years since the last big drop, Stardew Valley 1.6 finally went live on March 19, 2024. The wait paid off. The patch is huge, touching nearly every system in the game, from festivals and farm types to multiplayer netcode and the way light fades indoors. Below is a structured walkthrough of what changed and why it matters.

A Quick Tour of the Highlights

If you only have time to skim, these are the headline additions:

• Three new festivals: the spring Desert Festival, the Trout Derby, and SquidFest. Plus a quieter seasonal event that pops up in summer.
• Meadowlands Farm: a new starting layout dominated by a chewy blue grass that farm animals adore. You also start with a coop and two chickens, which is a nicer welcome than most farm types offer.
• Mastery system: unlocked through a new area, giving veteran players powerful perks and items once skills are maxed.
• Expanded dialogue: many NPCs received new lines, dynamic reactions to recent events, custom gift responses, and previously cut content that was restored.
• Multiple pets: once you reach max hearts with your first pet, you can adopt more. Turtle pets and two new cat and dog breeds were also added.
• Up to 8 players in multiplayer on PC, alongside packet compression and Steam authentication for cleaner connections.
• Quality of life tweaks across the board, including NPCs that push chests out of the way instead of smashing them, and the ability to strafe while charging the hoe or watering can.

The rest of this article walks through the full patch notes, organized by topic. If you want the developer's original write-up, it lives at stardewvalley.net.

New Content And Features

Festivals And Events

• The Desert Festival runs for three days in spring once the bus is repaired.
• Trout Derby and SquidFest are two compact fishing competitions.
• A new ambient summer event slips into the calendar without much fanfare.
• Festivals now rotate between two map and dialogue variants every other year, with the exception of the night market and the desert festival.
• Pierre sets up shop at the Winter Star booth, selling a few random items at a steep markup. Stay vigilant.

Farms, Animals, And Pets

• Meadowlands Farm joins the lineup, with blue grass that animals love and two starter chickens.
• Pets that adore you will occasionally drop off gifts.
• Once your first pet reaches max hearts, you can adopt additional companions.
• Turtle pets are now an option, and there are new cat and dog breeds.
• You can put hats on cats and dogs.
• Three variants of pet bowls can be built through Robin.
• The farmhouse and pet bowl can be relocated from Robin's menu.
• Butterfly Powder lets you remove pets if your household roster gets too crowded.

Mastery, Quests, And Progression

• The mastery system awards perks and items after you cap your skills.
• A prize machine in Lewis' house dispenses rewards from prize tickets earned through quests, special orders, and repeated egg or ice festival wins.
• A bookseller visits town twice each season.
• Mystery boxes drop unpredictable rewards.
• A new big tree quest line eventually introduces fresh neighbors.
• Perfection waivers offer a Joja-flavored shortcut around certain perfection challenges.
• A golden Joja parrot can be paid to track down every remaining walnut on Ginger Island, which is roughly the laziest archaeologist you'll ever hire.
• Emily has a new rare socialize daily quest once her intro quest is done.
• Eight new achievements were added, with the achievement menu now listing locked entries as `???`.

Crops, Trees, And Gathering

• Four new crops were added: carrots, summer squash, broccoli, and powdermelon. None are sold at Pierre's, so you'll need to forage the seeds.
• Two new giant crops are now possible.
• Moss appears as a new resource that grows on older trees.
• Mixed Flower Seeds offer variety in flower beds.
• Mystic Seeds grow into a unique tappable tree that yields Mystic Syrup.
• The Botanist perk now applies to items dropped from trees, such as coconuts.
• Brown slimes drop wood, while rare yellow slimes drop money.
• Snake vertebrae drop more reliably.
• Wood-carrying train cars can drop hardwood. Santa's car can drop gifts.

Fishing And Bait

• Bait Maker crafts fish-specific baits.
• Deluxe Bait speeds up bites.
• Challenge Bait lets you catch up to three fish at once, at the cost of losing one for each fish that slips off the bobber bar.
• Deluxe Worm Bin upgrades the regular bin to produce Deluxe Bait.
• Sonar Bobber shows you the fish before you land it.
• Sea Jelly, River Jelly, and Cave Jelly are new catches.
• Goby joins the fish lineup.
• A new bobber machine in Willy's shop carries 39 styles that unlock as you catch new fish.
• Anchors, treasure chests, and pearls can be added to fish tanks.
• Copper pans can be upgraded to steel, gold, and iridium, and enchanted with Archaeologist, Generous, Fisher, or Reaching.

Machines, Crafting, And Storage

• Big Chest is almost twice the size of a standard chest, and can upgrade an existing chest in place.
• Dehydrator dries fruit and mushrooms.
• Mushroom Log produces mushrooms and reacts to nearby trees.
• Heavy Furnace processes more bars at a time and rolls bonuses.
• Fish Smoker doubles the value of a smoked fish. New Riverlands farms ship with one.
• Text Signs can be labeled however you like.
• Anvil rerolls trinkets.
• Mini-Forge mimics the Dwarvish Forge.
• Heavy Tappers were retroactively fixed so the game tracks them correctly.
• Geode Crushers no longer require coal.

Decor, Cosmetics, And Furniture

• 25 new hats, 280 new furniture pieces, 41 floor styles, and 24 wallpaper styles.
• Unique furniture catalogues package themed sets together.
• Mannequins can be dressed.
• Spouse Portraits can be bought after reaching 14 hearts.
• Tent Kits let you camp out for the night. A box of three sits in the Ginger Island jungle.
• Treasure Totems spawn a ring of diggable spots.
• Statue Of Blessings grants a random daily blessing.
• Statue Of The Dwarf King offers a daily choice between two mining buffs.
• Golden Animal Crackers and Stardrop Tea are excellent universal gifts.
• Red, Purple, and Green fireworks add a little color to the night sky.
• Gender-specific clothing variants can now be worn by any gender.
• A few new accessories appear in character creation.

Books, Trinkets, And Powers

• 19 Books Of Power grant special perks.
• Skill Books boost experience in a single skill.
• Book Of Stars spreads experience across all skills.
• 7 trinkets offer combat-flavored powers.
• A new Special Items & Powers tab replaces the wallet, with the wallet section now tracking progress markers instead. A separate animals tab lists all pets and livestock.

Map, Cabins, And World

• A dedicated Ginger Island world map shows up when you're on the island.
• The world map now updates positions in real time for every player.
• The world map itself was redrawn to better match the in-game layout.
• Four new cabin variants are available.
• Cabins are now consolidated into a single entry in Robin's build menu.
• Building cabins no longer requires materials, only the 100g price.
• Home renovations now cost gold, refundable if you undo them. Renovations made before 1.6 cannot be exploited for free money.
• Four new home renovations were added: dining room, attic, expanded corner room, and cubby.

Skills, Recipes, And Item Drops

• Recipe skill requirement changes:
• Charcoal kiln: foraging 4 → 2.
• Cookout kit: foraging 9 → 3.
• Survival burger: foraging 2 → 8.
• Tapper: foraging 3 → 4.
• Worm bin: fishing 8 → 4.
• Mushroom logs and boxes now grant 5 foraging XP on harvest.
• Berry bushes grant 1 foraging XP per berry.
• Wild seed forage gives less foraging XP, but adds some farming XP.
• Farm monsters grant combat XP, capped at one third of normal value. Slime hutch slimes are excluded.
• Fruit trees, when chopped, yield a sapling matching the parent's fruit quality. Higher quality means faster maturation. Tea bushes yield a tea sapling.
• Pans now have a chance to yield bone fragments, and won't drop the same item twice in the same spot on the same day.
• Snake vertebrae drop more often.

Price And Shop Changes

• Fairy dust: 500g → 300g sell price.
• Tea sapling: 500g → 250g.
• Life elixir: 500g → 250g.
• Second house upgrade: 50,000g → 65,000g, but hardwood needed dropped from 150 to 100.
• Worm bin hardwood cost: 25 → 15.
• Warp Totem: Farm in the casino: 500 → 1000.
• Bombs at the dwarf shop and some Hat Mouse hats went up in price.
• Casino stock now has limits on a few items.
• All brazier recipes can be bought at once from Robin instead of unlocking one at a time.

Junimo Kart And Combat Adjustments

• Junimo Kart: grace jumps now exist when you run off the track, your endless mode score is saved if the minigame is forced to exit, noxious gas mushrooms no longer spawn in pairs, and the whale level has fewer bubbles.
• Downward melee attacks now hit a wider area, and daggers have a slightly bigger side attack.
• Topaz ring grants +1 defense instead of the unused precision stat.
• Insect head damage: 10-20 → 20-30.
• Kudgel critical attack: +4 → +50.
• Bombs apply to features inside a round explosion radius, no longer a square.
• Skeletons throw bones and cast spells slightly more often.

Skull Cavern And Mining

• The skull cavern statue toggles hard mode after you finish Qi's challenge.
• Levels 200 and 300 have additional chests, and chests on levels 100, 200, and 300 have unique appearances.
• Coal nodes were added to the volcano dungeon.
• Barrels spawn on skull cavern levels divisible by 5.
• Bad luck has a smaller maximum impact on finding prismatic slimes.
• Monster slayer's bug requirement dropped from 125 to 80 kills.
• Wilderness farm gained an iridium golem.

Spouse And Family

• Spouses get a seven-day honeymoon window after marriage during which they won't sulk in bed.
• Kissing your spouse and gifting them the day before each lower the threshold for a bed-ridden day by one heart, stacking to a total of two.
• Spouse friendship gain is reduced by 33% overall.
• If you have 12+ hearts with your spouse, the chance of a neutral afternoon line (which some players read as cold) drops from 25% to 5%.
• Male farmers are no longer locked into wedding clothes on their wedding day.
• NPCs near max hearts stop visiting their rival love interest. This affects Alex visiting Haley, Elliott visiting Leah, and Haley visiting Alex.

Other Mechanical Changes

• Slime Hutches shrank from 11×6 to 7×4.
• Closing the animal door at night gives farm animals a small happiness boost.
• Grass survives winter but stops spreading. Cutting it during winter is much less productive.
• The mushroom cave now ships with a free Dehydrator and produces mushrooms every second day. The daily output in 1.5 was unintentional.
• Spreading weeds can no longer wipe out artifact spots.
• The crop fairy event was rebalanced: chance no longer scales with planted crops, it skips the last day of a season, and it won't pick dead crops.
• The shaving enchantment now affects giant crops more.
• You can no longer plant trees in town or in the beach farm tunnel.
• Tilled dirt on the island farm decays like the regular farm.
• Quarry output increased and grows each year, up to a cap.
• Daily monster quests sometimes ask for more kills. Dust spirits in particular can now demand 10-20.
• A new side-tunnel was added to the quarry mine.
• Knockout penalties now scale with the player's wealth. The cap rose from 5,000g to 15,000g, but you can no longer lose Golden Scythe, Infinity weapons, or any tools, and never more than three items.
• Joja cola grants a short speed buff. Green tea grants +0.5 speed.
• Bundle tweaks: river fish bundle now hands out deluxe bait, and the remixed specialty fish bundle awards five Dish O' The Sea to match the classic version.
• Speed-Gro now needs 5 Moss instead of 1 Clam. Deluxe Speed-Gro needs 5 bone fragments instead of 1 coral. Quality Fertilizer needs 4 sap but yields 2 per craft.
• Reduced prismatic shard drop rate from iridium nodes (4% → 3.5%).
• Reduced void mayonnaise rate in the witch swamp.
• Adjusted gift tastes for several NPCs. Treasure chests are now a universally liked gift, with Linus as the lone exception.

Visual Improvements Around The Valley

• Waterfalls, more pathstones across maps, and more winter holiday decorations.
• Jack-o-lanterns appear after the Stardew Valley Fair in fall.
• A redesigned, more detailed world map with seasonal variants.
• Boat journey textures now go seasonal.
• A wider bus stop layout that keeps black bars off the screen.
• Rare ambient critter, rare summer butterfly variants, and an uncommon brown bird variant.
• Jelly, pickles, wines, and juices are now colored by their ingredient.
• Many town trees became real tree objects, although they cannot be chopped.
• Trees occasionally lose their leaves in fall.
• Riverbanks and lakeshores in the mountain, town, and forest areas have softer, less jagged edges.
• Updated volcano gold ore sprite.
• Building interiors received art improvements, and George and Evelyn's roof was repainted.
• Smashing a mines chest now creates debris.
• Fortune teller TV gains special backplates on perfectly lucky or perfectly unlucky days.
• Submerged fishing bobbers automatically recolor to match the water.

Lighting Overhaul

• Dusk falls an hour earlier in winter.
• Town lamps and other night tiles activate an hour earlier in every season.
• Indoor daytime light now eases into night light across two hours instead of snapping.
• Indoor night lighting outside the farmhouse is slightly darker.
• The farmhouse keeps a moodier, always-on light on rainy days.
• TVs and Winter Star trees give off light at night.
• Window light sources are now real, no more dark but lit windows.
• Hats display their night color in menu portraits during the night.
• The intro bus drive cutscene got small lighting improvements.
• The lighting quality option was removed. It's permanently locked to ultra.

Multiplayer Changes

• PC supports up to 8 players per server.
• Steam multiplayer authentication should cut down on connection problems.
• Large multiplayer packets are now compressed.
• Internal data syncing was tightened up.
• Joining a server now requires the same build number as well as version, which prevents crashes from mismatched builds.
• Accepting a Qi challenge that bumps mine difficulty only kicks players out of the affected mine type, not every mine.
• Tossing purple shorts into the Luau soup no longer broadcasts a chat message.
• The mineshaft jump-down sound plays for everyone in the level, not only the jumper.

Quality Of Life Changes

• General performance improvements.
• NPCs shove chests aside instead of obliterating them.
• If Pam isn't going to drive the bus, she leaves a sign so you can drive yourself.
• You can strafe while charging a watering can or hoe, which means no more chewing through your own crops by accident.
• Right-clicking a slingshot with the same ammo refills it instead of swapping stacks.
• Planting cactus seeds on the farm fails politely with a message instead of letting them die overnight.
• Holding a tea sapling over a garden pot shows the placement tile.
• Rugs with something on top can't be picked up.
• Checking a pet bowl shows the pet's name.
• A sparkling text appears the first time you catch a particular fish.
• Torches can be placed on sprinklers.
• Chairs are usable during festivals.
• Filled chests can be moved with a heavy tool, shifting one tile at a time.
• Flooring can be placed beneath most buildings.
• Crystalariums require you to remove and replace them before swapping the gem, to stop accidental swaps.
• Billboard quests show clearer progress notifications.
• Special orders you've previously completed are marked with a small checkmark.
• You can skip the pet adoption scene, which now also adopts the pet.
• The window to push past a pet was cut from 1.5 seconds to 0.75.
• Mini-obelisk warps are 750ms faster.
• Emptying a fish pond with fish in it shows them flopping out.

Slime Hutch

• Custom flooring is allowed.
• The starter incubator can be removed.
• Slime balls no longer appear on crafted flooring.

UI Improvements

• An hourglass cursor appears while the title screen loads.
• Notifications in the bottom-left corner last 50% longer.
• Sound in the night events show an icon to flag that audio is playing.
• Dialogue question selectors deselect when you move away from them.
• Robin's building menu lists construction time in days.
• Marnie's animal shop centers the camera on the right building when you buy an animal and now shows prices in tooltips.
• Closing an item menu while holding an item always returns the item to your inventory.
• The achievement menu lists hidden achievements as `???`.
• The museum reward menu blocks rewards that won't fit, and lets you exit while holding one. If your inventory is full, the reward drops at your feet.
• The save creation farm selector now uses two columns and stays clear of the back button on small screens.
• Shipping menu category pages stop hogging the entire screen above a minimum size.
• Buff durations appear in food tooltips.
• The map closes when you press the map button again.
• Exiting the Junimo Note menu from within the pause menu drops you back into the pause menu.
• Shop items with long names get truncated.
• Shops introduce a small click delay to stop double-purchases.
• Save deletion on PC is significantly faster.
• Save loading is much faster when many custom locations are present.
• A removed default building, like the greenhouse, will be rebuilt the next time you load.
• The menu background is now a dropdown: Standard, Graphical, or None.
• Trying and failing to load something into a machine no longer fires off the held item.
• Kent's intro event and Robin's flute block event are skippable.
• On PC, shift + right-click on the toolbar throws an item out of your inventory.
• On PC, Y and N confirm or cancel the leave-festival dialog.
• On PC, shift + ctrl + 1 while buying tries to grab a stack of 999.

Other Adjustments

• Adventure Guild stays open until 2am, but the music goes quiet after midnight.
• The Organize button is smarter about sorting.
• The inventory tab uses the current date instead of pet icons.
• You can drink mayonnaise and jelly, and eat pickles. Whether you should is a separate question.
• Some colored objects count toward their base color for Qi quests and dye menus.
• Clam is now categorized as a fish like the other shellfish.
• Daily quests have more descriptive titles.
• Cyrillic sprite text and some translated world pixel art text were added.
• The Chinese date and money box was retuned.
• The about page shows the build number, and no longer hides the version behind a tip message.
• Skull caves occasionally play music from the upper mines.
• Parrot flap sound was changed so it no longer sounds like a bat.
• Character randomization was tuned back and now pulls from the newer hairstyles and accessories.
• The Ginger Island shrine pedestals are normal items, which is mostly useful for modders.
• The map no longer closes if you click an area of interest.
• Forge enchantment order is unique per player rather than per farm.
• Several NPC schedules that had been silently broken are back: Lewis at the library on winter Sundays, Maru and Penny on summer Sundays, Maru tinkering on summer Mondays.

Gameplay Fixes

Fishing

• If a pirate cave shifts modes mid-cast, you still land the fish.
• Artifacts in fishing chests count toward the collection.
• A crash tied to treasure chests showing up while stacked fishing buffs are active is fixed.

Buffs

• Various attribute drift and double-debuff issues were squashed.
• Buffs with a balanced positive/negative total are no longer discarded.
• Negative custom buffs no longer display with a double-negative.
• Squid Ink Ravioli now respects subsequent buffs, refreshes its own duration when restacked, and lost its extra blank line in the description.
• Burnt finally shows its -3 Attack effect.

Festivals

• The Festival of Ice no longer traps you until it ends.
• The two-second pause when entering the Stardew Valley Fair is gone.

Items

• Dropped tools inside a constructed building are recovered.
• Potted tea bushes planted in town are harvestable again.
• Breaking a bee house drops the flavored honey it was producing, not a generic Honey item.
• The farm computer no longer flags fiber crops as unwatered.
• Geode and lost book messages display even if the first one comes from a fishing chest.
• Magic bait no longer bypasses fish area checks, so river fish stay out of the forest pond.
• Heavy tappers are tracked correctly, which means heavy-tapped trees are properly ignored when creating fall mushroom trees.
• Rain totems used during a storm now produce a rainy next day instead of a stormy one.
• Secret note #2 reveals Kent's gift taste even before he comes back.
• Wedding rings cannot be gifted to NPCs.
• Right-clicking a watering can into a chest no longer wipes its water or capacity.
• A wilted bouquet cancels the wedding properly if it hasn't happened yet.
• Item-received logic is applied consistently in more cases.

Combat And Movement

• Any slime counts toward the Initiation quest, not only green slimes.
• Collapsing while in a swimsuit no longer leaves you stuck in it.
• A player whose name contains a slash no longer breaks the post-mine defeat event.
• Forest-themed mine levels always include a ladder.
• Magma Sparker's debuff respects Squid Ink Ravioli's protection.

Controller

• Junimo bundle menu now snaps the cursor to ingredient slots when you tap the triggers.
• Junimo Kart no longer breaks for controller players who rebound certain keys.

UI Fixes

• Clicking an attached item in a letter no longer dismisses the letter when your inventory is full.
• Items granted from dialogue with a full inventory now show a collection menu when the dialogue closes.

Misc

• Gates stop popping off when you open or close them while standing on the tile.
• Ginger Island seeds no longer reuse the valley's season.
• The Pierre buyback exploit for temporary items like Qi Fruit is closed.
• Fruit trees can no longer be planted on stone tiles outside the greenhouse.
• Tree stumps no longer drop seeds as if they were mature trees.
• Riding an orphaned horse no longer locks you out of owning other horses.
• Some mail is no longer skipped if you don't leave the farmhouse that day.
• Harvesting speed is now symmetrical left-to-right and right-to-left.
• A few spots where forage could appear out of bounds were fixed.
• A run-into-the-water spot on the beach farm is patched.
• Minecarts stay locked until you've seen the unlocking cutscene.
• You can no longer slip objects under the traveling merchant's cart or pig.
• A handful of undiggable tiles on the Ginger Island dig site are now diggable.
• The geode crusher off-by-one bug is fixed.
• Taro growth respects negative phase durations when combined with agriculturist and hyper speed gro.
• The invisible-menu lock after closing the Bulletin Board Junimo Note with an active object in hand is fixed.

NPC Fixes

• Non-English players see custom dialogue when accepting movie invites.
• Abigail no longer doubles up default and custom item delivery dialogue.
• Lewis stops skipping his final Festival of Ice dialogue on repeat wins.
• The fortune teller pulls from your highest skill rather than always defaulting to combat.
• NPCs who buy your iridium-quality items will not pop in with low-quality-item dialogue.
• Dialogue won't leak gift tastes for invalid items.
• Monster grave text appears in all languages.
• Placing indoors-only furniture outside shows the correct message.
• The Krobus vs Dwarf event no longer fires on Fridays.
• Giving a gift correctly counts toward socialization quests.
• Invisible spouses cannot ask for children.
• Leo cannot be invited to the movies before he moves to the valley.
• NPCs are no longer interactable during the ice fishing event.
• Spouse chores trigger on the intended day, including the pet water bowl.
• Spouses stop watering crops that don't need watering, and the already watered dialogue actually plays when appropriate.
• NPCs react to dumpster diving even with the horse nearby.
• Penny no longer loses items when redecorating on stone slabs or custom non-table tables.

Multiplayer Fixes

• A potential remote code execution issue was mitigated. That alone is worth running 1.6.
• Frequent disconnects may be resolved for affected players.
• Outdated Steam display names no longer appear.
• Invite code copy and paste works on more Linux and macOS setups.
• Mine luck checks read from players in the mines, not the host's location.
• The phantom action cursor over the backwoods gravestone is gone for players who haven't seen the event.
• Global chat info messages display in the receiver's language.
• The egg festival requires twelve eggs only with five or more players, with four-player rules applied otherwise.
• Farmhands can't walk out of bounds at festivals.
• Disconnecting while fishing, in the building placement view, or during Journey of the Prairie King has cleaner reconnect behavior.
• Farmhands on beach farms see their spouse's outdoor area in the right place.
• Latency exploits that let farmhands warp out of bounds after clicking a horse are closed.
• Multiple statues of perfection can no longer be hoarded by farmhands.
• Farmhands can enter movies without every player tagging along.
• Local effects, prismatic shard spawns, and ring lights are tied to the correct player.
• Several rare farmhand crashes (fishing, train approach during a warp, certain warps near pet sounds) are fixed.
• A farmhand donating the 60th museum artifact correctly receives the rusty key.
• Reading another player's secret notes or journal scraps no longer threatens perfection.
• The frozen rain visual glitch when the host pauses during rainfall is fixed.
• Sleeping-disconnect exploits that left farmhands with full energy are closed.
• Many synchronization edge cases (watering can capacity, watered dirt edges, step and fishing stats, daily quests, crop fairy events) are tightened.

Display Text And Localization Fixes

• Spanish prices display as `15o` (oro) instead of `15g`.
• Numerous unlocalized strings were translated, including paint menu region names, NPC names in movie theater dialogue, the spouse pregnancy question, Professor Snail's name, Leo's intro for some languages, certain fish names, and the Miss text when an attack whiffs.
• Lewis' Feast of the Winter Star letter says 9am instead of 10am, matching the festival start time.
• Dust sprites are no longer called dust spirits in Clint's special order and the summit cutscene.
• NPC name translations stop bleeding onto horses or pets that share a name.
• The random name generator no longer produces words too close to certain slurs.
• Pierre's world map tooltip updates to reflect his extended hours.
• Recipes that didn't match their output were corrected.
• A long list of language-specific bugs was fixed across French, German, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Turkish.

Cosmetic Fixes

• The perfection tracker paginates better and no longer breaks the typing skip.
• Toolbar drawing under the time and money box, flashing tooltips between menus, and various window-resize alignment glitches were addressed.
• Crab pots no longer appear during the moonlight jellies.
• Tub o' Flowers shows the right sprite the day it is placed, and blooms reliably indoors.
• Beds or chests hidden by an event reappear afterwards.
• Furniture without a front texture no longer covers seated players.
• Bombs are visible on the summit and cannot remove stick bug sticks.
• Colored objects render correctly on tables or while being eaten.
• Prismatic hats display properly on alien rarecrows.
• Lanterns and tabletop furniture lights restore correctly across save and load.
• Many smaller seasonal and weather glitches on Ginger Island, including fiber seeds, seasonal decor, tea bushes, and tubs o' flowers, no longer inherit valley weather.
• Elliott no longer appears twice during the egg hunt.
• Lewis' saloon drinking animation has its missing frame back.
• Speech bubbles no longer hover over invisible NPCs.
• The you received X message displays the correct item even if you switch held items as it triggers.
• Town festivals show the right version of Pam's house and the community center.
• Ginger no longer pretends it needs to be watered.

Fixes For Modded Players

• Custom festivals only adjust weather in their own location context.
• Custom farm types stop spawning monsters at night by default.
• Non-binary NPCs can pathfind through any gendered route instead of defaulting to female ones.
• Many crashes were fixed: unknown locations and farm types, NPCs without sprite textures, null world objects, missing data, painting a building whose sprite shrunk, audio files that don't exist (the game now plays a quiet click and logs an error), missing local locations for warping farmhands, broken NPC dialogue (defaults to `...`), and several others.
• Calendar entries on the same day no longer collide, so you can have multiple weddings or birthdays sharing a slot.
• Horses in indoor or mine locations can return home.
• Event scripts allow more than 9 players, log errors when they crash, and exit cleanly when they fail before the first command.
• Saves with broken outdoor locations load much faster.
• Items that previously could not be removed when spawned (incubators, mushroom boxes, slime balls, and a few unused items like locked doors) can now be removed.
• Sandy can no longer give daily quests before the bus is fixed if you warp early via mods.
• Sleeping in a location with a same-day event no longer soft-locks the game.
• Any day past 28 is treated as the last day of the season, fixing mods that pushed the day counter too high.

Other Bug Fixes

• macOS screenshot crash when `~/.local` doesn't exist is fixed.
• Removing light glows in rare cases no longer crashes.
• Resizing the window during character creation no longer resets profit margins, starting cabins, or the skip intro checkbox.
• The staircase-as-pants exploit for trimmed lucky purple shorts is closed.
• You can no longer place a yellow couch inside a loom.
• Wilderness farm no longer spawns a stone in the water.
• Hill-top farm no longer grows grass inside stumps.
• Trash Bear stops being treated as a villager.
• Save folder collisions when names and seeds match an existing save are handled.
• Selecting small buildings in the construction menu is more reliable, including the area above the shipping bin.
• The build number is now set on Linux and macOS.
• Vanilla error logs are writable even for players with special characters in their name.

Modding Notes

If you're a mod author, the developer's guide to migrating mods lives at the Stardew Valley modding wiki. Expect breaking changes across data formats, content packs, and several internal APIs.

Running A Stardew Valley Server With HolyHosting

Stardew Valley 1.6 lifts the multiplayer cap to 8 players on PC and ships with packet compression and Steam authentication. That makes long campaigns with a larger group genuinely workable, especially for farms that already lean on multiplayer events like fishing festivals and skull cavern runs. A HolyHosting Stardew Valley server keeps the world online when nobody's logged in, handles backups, and saves you from the who has the host save shuffle every time someone wants to play. Pair the new mastery system with a permanent server and you have a co-op farm that actually progresses.