Next week marks one of the single most important events in Western civilization, and it’s important that you participate. I am, of course, referring to the console and mobile release of Stardew Valley’s latest major content patch.
Eight years after its release, Stardew is still the overall king of cozy gaming, and version 1.6 adds a number of excuses to start up yet another new farm.
This is a good opportunity to jump back into Stardew or pick it up for the first time, as many of the changes in 1.6 are designed to smooth out its early game. This includes a new starting farm layout that lets you get an early start on raising chickens, a few new seasonal crops for easy money in the early game, and optional micro-festivals that provide some useful rewards for a starting player.
At this point, however, Stardew is such a pillar of the genre that it can be mildly intimidating. It’s developed a legion of fans, some of whom are hardcore enough that they’ve gotten the game down to a science, and that’s chased off some newcomers. If you’re looking to start Stardew Valley in 2024, here are some useful things to know beforehand.
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One of the first things you notice when you play Stardew in 2024 is that over the last four years, much of the “cozy” subgenre of gaming was specifically made as a reaction to it. Many more recent games such as Fae Farm or My Time at Sandrock have made decisions that address Stardew’s weak points or focus more heavily on its strengths.
A particular sticking point is the beginning of the game, as Stardew starts you very low on what another game might call its power curve. You initially have little stamina, don’t know any of the good cooking recipes yet, and are usually forced to keep yourself going through the day by eating random things that you found on the ground. Spring 1, Year 1 farming in Stardew is done on a steady diet of dandelions.
As you get more established, you slowly get better options, more stamina, and time-saving machines like sprinklers, but every day in Stardew is still a race to get as much done as possible before you’re forced to go to bed. There’s a reason why long-time fans all have strategies that revolve around pure efficiency.
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Despite that, however, Stardew is built in such a way that you might have inconveniences, but not setbacks. There aren’t many problems that you can’t fix, solve, or recover from.
The worst-case scenario in Stardew tends to be missing out on seasonal opportunities. For example, it’s possible to lose your initial shot at growing one of the most valuable crops, strawberries, as you can only buy the seeds from Pierre during the Egg Festival on Spring 13. If you don’t know that, you’ll have to either wait until the next year or hope a Strawberry shows up on the traveling cart.
That’s no great trial, however, and there’s no way to do Stardew “wrong.” It’s a game that’s meant to wrap itself around you, and anything you don’t want to do will usually patiently wait until you’re ready. Despite its occasionally hectic daily schedule, you’re meant to take this at your own pace.
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To “win” Stardew Valley, you have to get 100% Perfection, which involves mastering most of the game’s individual mechanics, minigames, and exploration challenges, as well as becoming every single villager’s best friend. It can take quite a while to get anywhere close to Perfection, especially if there are parts of the game that you simply don’t care to engage with.
One of the biggest hurdles, however, is just earning straight cash. You’ll be fine for everyday expenses if you’re smart about which crops you focus on (potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, melons, pumpkins), but many of the endgame challenges in Stardew involve making fat stacks. If you want that elusive 100%, you need 14 million gold to build all four Obelisks and the Gold Clock.
The time-tested way to become a cash-money millionaire in Stardew usually involves turning your farm and/or beach house into a production facility for high-quality starfruit wine. As you’re going about your business in the mid-to-late game, it’s worth having Robin build you a storage shed, and then filling it with kegs and preserve jars. When you’re ready to cash out, install a bunch of casks in your farmhouse basement, age all your stockpiled starfruit wine in them, and practice using terms like “mouthfeel” and “oaky” like you know what they mean.
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If you’re coming back to Stardew after a while or you’re a new player, it’s worth pointing out one of the biggest new additions to the game in patch 1.6.
Once you’re updated to 1.6, a new cave appears in the forest south of your farm, about halfway down the cliffside to the east. If you try to enter it early on, it tells you that “only a master of the five ways may enter.”
This is a new endgame system in the latest patch. The five ways refer to your five skills: farming, mining, combat, foraging, and fishing. When you reach level 10 in all five, you can now enter the cave. This sets you up to unlock a number of new tools and passive buffs that grant you several solid quality-of-life bonuses for Stardew’s endgame. This includes the new “trinket” equipment slot, some high-end blueprints like the Treasure Totem, a new iridium-quality fishing rod and scythe, and the ability to find valuable Golden Mystery Boxes.
There are quite a few other things to see and do in patch 1.6, but the skill mastery system should be your first stop. It makes you better at all the things you were already doing and really smooths out Stardew’s endgame. If you’ve been neglecting combat or fishing, it’s worth grinding them up to level 10 to gain access to the mastery cave.
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Many long-time players will tell you that once you’ve played Stardew with mods, it’s hard to go back. I didn’t believe them until I tried it, but I have to agree.
At this point, there are thousands of PC mods for Stardew, which range from the practical to the outre to the intensely specific. If you absolutely need, for whatever reason, to replace some villagers with the cast of Baldur’s Gate 3 or turn Pelican Town into an R-rated soap opera, the mod scene’s got your back.
More importantly, mod authors have had eight full years to file down the rough spots on Stardew Valley. If there’s any single thing about Stardew that annoys you, such as having to slowly make items one at a time, the rapid passage of time in-game, the lack of in-game reference materials, or a lack of new characters, somebody has made a mod to address it.
As a result, if you’re looking to get into Stardew in 2024, your best available option is to play on PC. This lets you customize the game to an even greater degree, so you can emphasize its cozier aspects, turn up its difficulty, or simply give everyone sillier hats.
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