Stardew Valley Players Teased with Early Patch Notes for 1.6 Update

The next big Stardew Valley update is coming soon with the 1.6 Update releasing on March 19th. Ahead of that launch, Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone, the creator of Stardew Valley, has been dropping hints here and there about just how big the release will be, and now that the update is less than a week away, we’ve moved into early patch notes territory with Barone releasing snippets of the 1.6 Update patch notes daily. 

So far, we’ve gotten teases about fruit trees, swords, and harvesting fixes that finally confirm some players’ suspicions. We’ll see more of those released at least once per day, too, assuming Barone sticks to the one-a-day lines from the patch notes, but players will see the notes in full by March 19th if not earlier. 

When the full patch notes for the 1.6 Update drop, they’ll give Stardew Valley players plenty to look over, but for now, here’s what we know about in terms of actual notes from the next update based on tweets from Barone:

Early Stardew Valley 1.6 Update Patch Notes

Cutting down a fruit tree now yields the appropriate fruit sapling. If the tree is mature (i.e. the fruit quality is > basic), it will yield a sapling with the same quality as its fruit. The higher the quality, the faster the sapling will mature when replanted.

Fixed bug where it was faster to harvest left-to-right than right-to-left.

Extended the area of effect of downward facing melee attacks

For those interested in the developer commentary regarding some of these decisions, Barone has also been responding to Stardew Valley players to provide more reasoning. Regarding the sword change, for example, Barone said the intent had always been to match the area of effect with the visual, but he decided in the 1.6 Update that the way it felt was more important than how it looked. In a reply to a player who asked if this change had any relation to the combat being worked on in Barone’s new Haunted Chocolatier game, Barone acknowledged that the development of Haunted Chocolatier probably did cause him to rethink this particular change for Stardew Valley.

“For HC I had this in mind from the beginning and drew the player animations in a way that should match with the hit boxes better,” he said. “And I’m being way more deliberate about making sure each direction you face is equally viable. But yeah I think it did cause me to rethink Stardew’s.”

Aside from these more granular changes detailed in the early patch notes for Update 1.6, we know that the next big update will have things like several new festivals as well as more items and recipes to craft. For those who’ve been playing Stardew Valley for a long time, you’ll be happy to hear that new late-game content is planned, too. 

Stardew Valley‘s Update 1.6 releases on March 19th for PCs first with a console and mobile release happening later on.