You may have heard that Stardew Valley had had another huge update in December bringing a new farm map and some cool endgame secrets. It’s not the just the main game though, some of Stardew’s biggest mods were updated on the same day, including one of my personal favorites, Stardew Valley Expanded. This giant mod has also gotten its share of new characters, content, and a new farm map too.

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The huge new 1.5 update to beloved farming town simulation Stardew Valley surprise launched this week. I already told you about on Wednesday, but I’ve played a good several hours of it now so I’m going to tell you more about it because gosh it’s so good. The new beach farm is worth starting a new save file for, as are all the other cool new quality of life changes.

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Now hold up just a second, Stardew Valley. I’ve already worked out what I’m playing during RPS’s holiday hibernation and you’re just going to muscle in by dropping that big 1.5 update today? Yup, you sure are. We found out earlier today that the new update would definitely bring a beach farm. Well, now it’s out for all us PC players to download and load up right this minute.

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Beach farm! Beach farm! Beach farm! I might just be overexcited because I’m playing a lot of Stardew Valley at the moment, but developer ConcernedApe has revealed the game’s next update will come with a brand new farmstead – the beach! It might sound like a nice little seaside getaway, but this farm seems like a tough one to get started with – mostly because sprinklers won’t work on that pesky sand.

If you fancy even more of a challenge, ConcernedApe says update 1.5 is bringing some “Advanced Game Options” too, making community centre bundles and mine rewards a little more interesting.

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According to developer ConcernedApe, we’re not too far away from my yearly incentive to start a new farm in Stardew Valley. Update 1.5 for the farm and life simulation game is coming right along and is in the “home stretch” he says. ConcernedApe has been tossing out bits of info about what the update will include for a few months, but we’ll get to see it ourselves before too long.

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Somehow, there is still more work to be done on Stardew Valley before Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone is finished farming. Update 1.5 has been ticking along for some time, and now it appears the next big pastoral patch will add split-screen farming for up to four players. While Stardew’s had co-op for some time now, you’ll soon be able to make sure none of your fellow farmhands are fiddling with the crops while you’re not looking.

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Charming farming game Stardew Valley was great at launch and it just keeps getting better with each of the free updates. With yet another of the kind, Stardew Valley 1.5, currently in the works, I’ve wondered how we can expect continued development. Developer ConcernedApe says that he isn’t ready to commit to any specific next step for Stardew, but he’s also not ready to be done with it yet either. As for what could be coming in the future, neither Stardew Valley 2 nor more updates are out of the question.

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I’m once again hacking my way through the undergrowth on the hunt for mods. This time it’s Stardew Valley, the game where you begin with a run-down farm and simply try and make it work. If you’re not terribly good at farming, don’t worry. I’m here to help.

I’ve been picking games recently where the modders have expanded tools and mechanics in order to craft an ideal version of the game, so a fair few of the mods here focus on quality of life again. Stardew’s modders really have made the farming experience a lot more parsable, meaning your work there can be as automated and as sharply focused as you like. Just a couple of the mods below will make your ground more fertile.

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I am not a very good Stardew Valley farmer. Really experienced players, who take their farming seriously, they know what’s up. They make their own almanacs, they intensively farm pumpkins or sunflowers to get the best yeilds, and they know how to place sprinklers for peak watering efficiency. I do not know any of those things.

My cruel predicament in Stardew is that really I would prefer not to be a farmer at all. Inasmuch as there can ever be a wrong way to play a game, I play Stardew Valley wrong, because I strive not for economic efficiency (thank god you don’t have to do crop rotation) but efficiency of activity. To whit: I cannot be bothered to keep tilling and planting and so on. I haven’t specialised my farm towards anything. You’d think I’d have given up on the farming dream by this point, wouldn’t you? But last night I had an epiphany. A chicken based epiphany.

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I’ll cop to the fact that Peter Chiykowski is only a local man if you, like him, live somewhere in Scotland, and on top of that, I actually suspect Peter may be having a little joke with us. But still, I found this tale of love and loss in Stardew Valley quite heartwarming. It all began back in February, when Chiykowski’s wife discovered the inescapable Sarlacc pit that is Concerned Ape’s lovely farming/life sim, and he documented her first hours of it on Twitter. Chiykowsky grew increasingly desperate, especially after her response to being given a dog, and began to tweet directly to Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone himself. “I want to understand what your game has done to my wife,” he pleaded. Now, months later, it seems the situation has developed. Chiykowski reports that his wife has wooed and married town doctor Harvey, and had two children with him. “Stardew Valley consumed my wife,” he said, in another tweet to Barone. “But I finally figured out what to do.”

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