Stardew Valley Update: Latest Patch, What Are the Changes and What's New?

Published: Mar 09, 2021, 5:02 Updated: Mar 22, 2021, 9:08

Ape, the solo developer of Stardew Valley has really put his all into the title and it's paid off, quickly becoming one of the most popular games around and for good reason. With constant updates and listening to feedback from the community, Stardew is always improving. If you're like us and can't wait to find out what's coming to a game with a new patch, we've got you covered. Here's the most recent update to come to the title.

Latest Stardew Valley Update

Update 1.5

The most recent Stardew Valley update brings lots of stuff players can enjoy further into the game, a lot of the content is based more around the late game. According to Ape its the biggest update so far in terms of content. Below you can find the full official patch notes!

New World Area

1.5 adds an entire new region of the world, Ginger Island (part of the Fern Islands):

Added new locations, dialogue, events, minigames, puzzles, and a quest line involving multiple NPCs.
Added Leo, a new NPC with his own backstory, plot line, events, etc.
Added new secondary NPCs: Birdie, Gourmand Frog, and Professor Snail.
Added a volcano dungeon which changes each time you visit it similar to the mines.
Added Qi challenges which unlock rare or unique items.
Added an unlockable island farm and farmhouse area, where you can plant crops in any season but can’t construct buildings.
Added an unlockable resort you can open to let villagers visit the islands, including new beach attire and schedules.
Added hidden pages of a lost sailor’s journal to uncover his story and learn about the islands.
Added Golden Walnuts hidden throughout the islands, which can be used to unlock new areas and content.
Added Golden Coconuts, which Clint can crack open to find rare island items.
Added gem birds which spawn in a random island area when it rains, and drop gems when approached.
Added secrets and puzzles to discover around the island.
Added new enemies:
- Dwarvish Sentry;
- False Magma Cap;
- Hot Head;
- Lava Lurk;
- Magma Sprite;
- Magma Sparker;
- Magma Duggy;
- Spiker;
- Stick Bug;
- Tiger Slime.
Added new cosmetic critters: crabs, caldera monkeys, overhead parrots, marsupial, and tropical butterflies.
Added new Island Obelisk building.

New Farm Features

Added a new beach farm layout.
Added ostrich as a farm animal.
The immovable dressers found in Farmhands’ cabins have been removed.
Added home renovations, which let you further expand and adjust the farmhouse after it’s fully upgraded.
Beds are now normal furniture you can pick up, move around, and replace.You can even have a house with no bed, but your spouse might have something to say about that.
Once unlocked, the greenhouse can now be moved at Robin’s shop.
The default shipping bin can now be moved or demolished at Robin’s shop.
Added Advanced Game Options, which can be used to customize a new game:
- Set seed value used in randomization;
- Choose default vs randomized community center bundles;
- Choose default vs randomized mine chests;
- Can make Red Cabbage Seeds guaranteed to sell at least once at the travelling cart in year one, so it’s always possible to finish the community center in the first year.
- Can access the profit margins and cabin related options that were previously inaccessible when creating a single player farm.
- Can toggle monsters spawning
You can now apply cosmetic paints to the farmhouse and buildings.
Ducks can now swim in water, and certain coop animals will now follow adults around.
Slimes now drink from slime hutch troughs in random order.

Quality Of Life Changes

Added lost & found box in Mayor Lewis’ house. This can be used to retrieve items donated to failed special orders, lost quest items and tools, items from offline players, hats from children that have been turned into doves, and items left behind in the Stardew Valley Fair grange display.
You can now sit on chairs (both placed furniture and chairs that are part of the map).
You can now place most furniture outside.
You can now talk to people while mounted on a horse.
You can now donate items of different qualities for the same community bundle ingredient.
You can no longer plant fruit trees on tiles they won’t be able to grow on.
Improved game menus and HUD:
- The social tab now shows whether you talked to an NPC today.
- The cooking tab now shows the recipe for an item when you hover over it.
- The cooking tab now fades icons for recipes you know but haven’t made yet.
- The cooking/crafting tooltips now show the number produced.
- The inventory menu’s organize button now combines partial item stacks.
- The inventory menu for a chest chest now shows the Community Center button.
- The shipment screen now shows the unit price of shipped items instead of displaying the shipped quantity twice.
- The quest log now shows an arrow in the morning when you have pending completed quests.
- Buff icons now subtly pulse when they’re close to expiring.
- Added a notification when you enter a farm building if an incubator is ready but the building is at max capacity.
- The “infestation” indicator in the mines is now drawn alongside the floor number, rather than replacing it.
Improved shop menus:
- You can now press ESC or controller B to move the held item to your inventory (or drop it if you have no more inventory room).
- While holding a purchase, the inventory now highlights items you can stack it with.
Improved sprinklers:
- Sprinklers can now water Slime Hutch troughs.
- Hoes no longer remove sprinklers.
Improved Journey of the Prairie King:
- Progress can now be saved and resumed, so it can be completed in multiple sessions.
- You now also replay the original difficulty even if you’ve already completed it. (Previously it would increase difficulty automatically, which is now a New Game+ mode.)
Improved game options:
- Added option to choose between multiple fish-bite chime sounds;
- Added option to mute farm animals and pets;
- You can now scale the UI independently of the view zoom;
- Increased maximum zoom from 120% to 200%.
Improved various items:
- The jukebox now has a “Random” setting.
- Removing a crystalarium that isn’t ready for harvest will now drop the gem that was placed in it.
- You can now push chests containing items by holding the interact button on them with no tool equipped (the same way you could previously remove empty chests without using a tool).
Improved inventory sorting:
- No longer changes tool order;
- Now sorts by quality too;
- Now sorts names in alphabetical instead of reverse alphabetical order.
Improved museum donation interactions:
- Clicking an item now grabs one instead of the whole stack.
- Pressing back while placing an item now returns to the inventory instead of closing the whole UI.
- Other minor improvements.

Balance Changes

Combat changes:
- Immunity now reduces the chance of status debuffs.
- Changed special move cooldowns on daggers (6→3 seconds) and clubs (4→6 seconds).
- The dagger special attack now pins the target in place until the last stab (which then knocks them back), so dagger hits are less likely to miss.
- Reduced desperado profession’s damage bonus from 3x to 2x.
- Slightly improved dagger critical hit chance.
Crafting changes:
- Changed Skull Brazier recipe (was 10 Hardwood + Solar Essence + Coal; now 10 Bone Fragments).
- Repairing a fence now restores full fence health, instead of half the health of a new fence.
Farming changes:
- Lowered the cost of ducks (2000→600g).
- Doubled the value of duck feathers.
- Slightly increased the duck feather spawn rate.
Fishing changes:
- Fishing rod tackle no longer loses endurance when catching junk.
- Catching a non-fish item no longer triggers the minigame.
- Reaching an effective fishing level of 15+ now increases the rod casting range by one tile.
Mining changes:
- Gem nodes now provide mining XP and can drop diamonds.
- Gem node drops are no longer limited by mine level.
Item drop changes:
- Stumps and hollow logs now have a 10% chance of dropping Mahogany Seed.
- Any monster in the Secret Woods now has a 10% chance of dropping Mahogany Seed.
- Skeletons now have 4% chance of dropping a Bone Sword.
- Wilderness Golems now drop rice shoots more often.
- Some Skull Cavern monsters now have a small chance of dropping Red Cabbage Seeds.
- Pure-white slimes now drop diamonds and refined quartz.
- Some containers now drop better items after reaching the bottom of the mines at least once.
- Different drops now unlock on mine levels 60/80/100 and the first level of the Skull Cavern.
- Reduced chance of Lead Rod drops on mine levels 60–79 (or Skull Cavern level 40+ before the previous fix), and added chance for Shadow Dagger and Wood Mallet.
- Mine wood barrels can now drop Basic Retaining Soil instead of Sap.
- Mine frost barrels can now drop Quality Retaining Soil instead of Sap.
- Reduced chance of frost barrels dropping Aquamarine, Frozen Geode, Hardwood, Jade, or equipment from 35% to 26%.
Shop changes:
- Pierre will now sell his seasonal items year-round once you complete a certain new quest.
- Added two more items to the Stardew Valley Fair star token shop.
- Reduced Workbench price (3000→2000g).
- Coconuts can be purchased from Sandy on Monday. This is now limited to ten per day.
Machine changes:
- Some machines’ processing time was previously affected by the time of day. These have been standardized so they’re always ready when the morning starts: Bee House (every 4 days), Mushroom Box (2 days), Strange Capsule (3 days), Tapper (depends on input), and Worm Bin (every morning).
Doubled star token rewards for the slingshot and fishing minigames at the Stardew Valley Fair.
Fertilizer in the greenhouse no longer disappears on season change in some cases.
The random Stone Owl and Strange Capsule night events are now much less rare.

Multiplayer Changes

Added local split-screen multiplayer mode.
The join co-op screen now remembers the last IP you entered.
Farmhands can now move buildings through Robin’s menu. The host can configure how this works (disabled, enabled, or only for a player’s own cabin).
Using the return scepter now returns farmhands to their cabin’s front door instead of the host’s farmhouse.
Added various new chat messages when a player does something.
When viewing a shared event in multiplayer (such as the Community Center event, or Morris’ introduction), you are no longer forcibly warped to the event location.
When the host player sees the year 3 event, Grandpa’s Theme is now added to all players’ jukeboxes even if they didn’t weren’t in-game at the time.

Interaction Changes

Reworked slingshot controls: it now aims at the cursor position, and is fired by holding and releasing the mouse/gamepad fire button. The previous mode (where you’d hold the button and pull back on the cursor to aim) can be re-enabled in the options menu if desired.
To simplify bulk actions like harvesting, holding down a button while moving will no longer repeat weapon special attacks, open/close barn/coop doors, or interact with boulders, chests, furniture, hollow logs, meteorites, shipping bins, or scarecrows.
Constructed shipping bins now have a click-to-ship hitbox that better matches the original map-based shipping bin’s hitbox.
Flooring can now be applied by clicking on the tile the farmer is standing on. Previously, flooring had to be applied to a tile next to the farmer.
Purchasing recipes with a full inventory no longer shows a message that the inventory is full.
Clicking an empty tile right above an interactive element (like a machine or chest) now activates the element, similar to clicking below it in previous versions.
Trees chopped from above or below will now take into consideration the player’s horizontal position when falling to the left or right.
Clicking near the bottom-left corner of the screen no longer brings up the chat box.
You can no longer open the quest log by pressing the on-screen journal button if you’re currently doing something.
You can now use the “Y” key to answer dialogue boxes for holes and exit ladders in the mines.
Controller improvements:
- When buying/betting tokens in the Stardew Valley Festival with a controller, holding the number selection button now causes the amount to increase faster.
- Events can now be skipped on the controller even if a dialogue box is on-screen.
- Pressing B on a controller while on a specific quest page now returns to the quest list instead of closing the menu.
- Pressing B on a controller while an item is held on the crafting menu now snaps to the trash can (similar to the inventory screen).

Other Changes

Save names are now based on the farm name instead of the player name. (Saves originally created before 1.5 will continue using the player name.)Penny and the Dwarf now like artifacts.Improved dinosaur sleep sprites.Characters now face you when you talk to them instead of when the dialogue box closes (in singleplayer).On the final day of a tracked quest, the timer now says “final day” instead of “1 day” for clarity.Added many changes for modders.Cosmetic tweaks to various sprites.

Fixes For Multiplayer

Fixed an issue where fences would degrade faster in Multiplayer.
Fixed issue where a farmhand crashing while completing the final bundle could permanently prevent the unlock from properly triggering. It is now unlocked the next time a character enters the area.
Farmhands are now properly positioned under the elevator instead of the ladder when using it to navigate the mines.
Fixed an issue where other farmers’ emotes would not playback properly if you were watching an event.
Fixed a minor issue where multiple players getting the free coffee gift at the Night Market at the same time could prevent anyone from receiving it.
Fixed the note from Grandpa reappearing for farmhands.
Fixed issue where cows in Haley’s photoshoot event could be seen sliding around for farmhands. (Non-actor characters in events are now controlled by the host.)

Fixes For Player Interaction

Fixed rare controller and mouse input drops.
Fixed being unable to remount a horse after dismounting it behind a shipping bin.
Fixed issue where it would sometimes be impossible to name an animal with a controller because the onscreen keyboard would appear and disappear in the same frame.
Fixed character customization screen’s hair color slider not properly updating when hair color is randomized.
Fixed some farm tiles incorrectly preventing buildings from being placed on them.

Fixes For Visual Or Cosmetic Issues

Adjusted the sorting of item ready indicators for tappers.
Unified when night tiles get applied to fix inconsistencies when windows change from light to dark.
The critters list is now cleared out overnight. This fixes an issue where having a Butterfly Hutch in your house and repeatedly sleeping without leaving would spawn endless butterflies in the house.
Improved various text:
- Fixed some localizations using inches for fish measurements to reference centimeters.
- Fixed mill description not mentioning rice.
- Fixed typos in dialogue and events.
- Fixed missing characters in Chinese and Korean fonts.
- Fixed credits not showing localizer names correctly if the current language’s font doesn’t have the needed characters.
- Improved many translations.
Fixed various cosmetic/layering issues with character shadows.
Fixed characters in events snapping to strange animation frames when skipping an event.
Fixed various instances where the camera would pan unnecessarily after changing locations.
Fixed greenhouse trees taking on seasonal appearances.
Fixed tooltip for purchasing edible but non-health-restoring items (like crocus) showing price outside of the tooltip.
Fixed a single-frame flicker in Haley’s 10-heart event.
Fixed a single frame flicker of the farm when starting a new game.
Fixed stamina bar showing sweat particles when fishing during the fishing competition.
Fixed the scythe showing the weapon ability cooldown effects.
Fixed the erroneous door tile visible on the south end of the standard farm during winter.
Fixed issue where unlocking multiple community center bundles at once would make the screen pan to the same room multiple times.
Fixed various issues related to the Festival of Ice map, like being able to escape the festival bounds or prematurely end the festival from certain tiles, and minor visual fixes.
Fixed terrain features showing an “interact” cursor when mousing over their tiles during festivals.
Fixed options page scrollbar sometimes going past the end of the scrollbar region.
Fixed various text overflow issues on the options page.
Fixed chests spawned on certain Skull Cavern floors being shifted down by 4 tiles.
Fixed tiling of…
- Floor tiles in the farmhouse so applied flooring in adjacent rooms appear contiguous instead of having hard edges;
- Wall tiles in the farmhouse to fix sorting of certain objects that extend outside normal tile boundaries (e.g. grass starter).
- The fountain so that it has a more consistent appearance throughout the seasons;
- Pierre’s stand at the Egg Festival to fix layering issues.

Other Bug Fixes

Fixed crash when resizing game window in some cases.
Fixed rare crash on launch due to invalid game window size options.
Fixed Iridium Bat kills not counting towards Adventurer’s Guild bat eradication goal.
Fixed an issue where the Mermaid Show reward was delayed incorrectly.
Fixed some events showing a dark blue screen after fading out when viewed during rainy days.
Fixed museum-related rarecrows not sold at the Night Market after being unlocked.
Fixed issue where non-wooden gates would revert to wooden gates after saving & loading a game.
Fixed being able to add staircases to the Luau.
Fixed an item duplication exploit related to chest organization.
Fixed a minor desync in character pathfinding that could happen when characters pathed to the JojaMart on modded games.
Fixed Penny walking through walls on rainy days if you’ve completed the community upgrade.
Fixed Penny’s 4-heart event not accessible once you finish the community upgrade.
Fixed fences not collected correctly after a divorce or Penny’s 14-heart event.
Fixed characters greeting you when you enter a location when they’re not present.
Fixed characters you divorced still greeting you when you enter a location.
Fixed issue where an NPC spouse fails to pathfind when a player/NPC is blocking the front door when they check, causing them to stand in place instead.
Fixed crops sometimes growing a day slower than they should.
Fixed applying flooring for the first time in an upgraded house sometimes causing the flooring in the kitchen to switch to the default wooden flooring.
Fixed issue where riding a horse while travelling from one location to another diagonally would repeatedly warp back and forth between the two locations.
Fixed watered slime hutch troughs emptied when you load a save. (This mainly affects loading a mid-day save on mobile.)
Fixed the community center not properly loading the refurbished map variant on game load. This caused characters like Maru to path incorrectly in them if the player had not visited the Community Center during that playthrough.
Fixed the weekly friendship boost for giving an NPC two gifts not applied if you also gave them a third gift for their birthday.
Fixed overnight lightning not randomized correctly, so either every overnight lightning would strike or none of them would.
Fixed issue where stones, wood, and weeds could spawn on top of terrain features when a new year begins.

That's everything you need to know about the latest update in Stardew Valley! If you're interested to find out more about the title why not learn where the Secret Notes are using our guide?

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