Eric ‘Concerned Ape’ Barone has given Stardew Valley fans their first glimpse at patch notes for the game's highly anticipated 1.6 update, which is set to release on PC on March 19, with console versions arriving shortly after.
At its heart, Stardew Valley is a game about growth and human connections. After tens of hours of gameplay, watching crops and trees grow as the seasons wax and wane, everything planted takes on a kind of emotional weight.
This can render the act of hacking down trees to make way for new crops or buildings a guilt-inducing experience, particularly if you had planted them yourself and waited many digital days for them to grow to maturity and bear literal fruit. Thankfully, Barone has begun working on patch notes for the 1.6 update, and the first glimpse at them has revealed a new quality of life change that will make reshaping your farm less of an ordeal, arboreally speaking, at least.
started working on the patch notes for 1.6, thought I would share one random line about changes to fruit trees: pic.twitter.com/WoQ5U76Tx1
— ConcernedApe (@ConcernedApe) March 11, 2024
“Cutting doan a fruit tree now yields the appropriate fruit sapling,” reads the patch note. “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.”
In other words, doing away with a fruit tree after 1.6 drops will present you with a sapling of the same type and quality as the original, which will mature faster than a standard tree. Barone also noted in a subsequent post that the sapling will need to grow and “go through all the stages again” before it will produce seeds of the same quality as the parent tree. At the time of writing Barone's post has received over 48,000 likes, with many fans welcoming the new addition.
This is so exciting both for trees you plant before you have greenhouse access and for when you place your tree wrong and waste a whole sapling 😭 I’ve restarted so many days from badly placed trees or bought a whole other sapling to replace it.
— MaddyZaddy (@MadelineTayl0r) March 11, 2024
oh this is a game changer, literally
— seri berry ☾🫧beadjeweled era (@serismidnights) March 11, 2024
This is a much needed feature for when I get to late game and need to move things, thanks!
— TheCrocCrusader (@TheCrocCrusader) March 11, 2024
“It's only intended to help people move their trees, not provide any economic benefit,” said Barone in a separate post. “The best money maker would be to plant your tree and never touch it again. This just makes it less of a tragedy if there comes a time that you have to move a tree.”
Stardew Valley’s 1.6 update adds eight-player multiplayer support on PC, a new farm layout, fresh late game content, over a hundred lines of new dialogue, and a whole lot more.
Anthony is a freelance contributor covering science and video gaming news for IGN. He has over eight years experience of covering breaking developments in multiple scientific fields and absolutely no time for your shenanigans. Follow him on Twitter @BeardConGamer
