Stardew Valley 1.6 Update - Stardew Valley Guide - IGN (2024)

Stardew Valley's 1.6 content update was released on March 19, 2024 and featured a slew of new features, including new items, a farm layout, and tons of fixes and adjustments. Use this guide as a hub to catch up on all the new things added with the update.

Just want to see the patch notes? Head over to 1.6 Update Patch Notes to see the big overview of everything added, fixed, and changed.

New Content in Stardew Valley 1.6

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New Farm: Meadowlands Farm

The 1.6 Update introduced a brand-new farm layout. The new Meadowlands Farm is perfect for animal lovers, featuring a river and two ponds, allowing you to catch multiple varieties of fish from the comfort of your farm. It also grows a new type of grass called Chewy Blue Grass, which your animals will love. The best part, however, is you’ll start with a free coop and two chickens. Building a coop of your own costs 4000g, 300x wood, and 100x stone, so starting with one makes this farm layout one of the best.

Mastery System

If you felt like you had achieved enough in Stardew Valley, your work is not over yet. The Mastery System introduces a whole new set of skill points to earn beyond the ones you already have.

Mastery Cave; the hub of this new skill system, can be found near the bottom of Cindersap Forest. Once your skills are maxed to level 10, you will be able to enter the cave and find five skill shrines. Tap to Reveal

The Mastery System introduces a unique gauge that you can find on your Skills page. Fill the gauge by doing anything that provides you with experience points to get one Mastery Point. You can then redeem these mastery points at any of the shrines in the Mastery Cave to reap new and exciting rewards.

New Festivals and Events

The 1.6 Update also introduced four new festivals and events to help keep your experience fresh. These festivals give you an opportunity to catch up with the villagers and win some prizes as well as exploring some of the new resources introduced in the update.

Trout Derby

The Trout Derby takes place at the Cindersap Forest River on Summer 20-21. The main attraction of the Trout Derby is a fishing competition where your aim is to fish up enough Trout to find some Golden Tags. These Golden Tags are relatively hard to come by, and not all Trout will have one!

Make sure you bring plenty of bait and patience because it can take a while to collect enough tags to exchange for prizes. If you're struggling to hook Trout, the Bait Maker, also introduced in the 1.6 update, can create targeted bait, allowing you to only hook Trout instead of the other fish available in the river.

Squidfest

The Squidfest is a Winter event taking place on the 12th and 13th at the Beach. The aim of the Squidfest is similar to the Trout Derby, catch as many Squid as you can! There are different rewards available depending on how many Squid you catch, so make sure you turn up to the Beach early and consider using the Bait Maker to ensure you have enough time to catch the Squid you need.

The Desert Festival

The Desert Festival is the biggest the update introduced and takes place on the 15th, 16th, and 17th of Spring in the Desert.

The Desert Festival is brimming with activities, stalls, and challenges to partake in. Some of the highlights of the Desert Festival are the Race, Willy's fishing challenges, the Free Cactus stall, and the Skull Cavern challenges held by Gil and Marlin of the Adventurer's Guild.

Green Rain

Green Rain is a random weather event that can occur on rainy days in the Summer. Green Rain falls all over the Valley, causing all of the trees to spawn Moss. Moss is a new resource introduced in the update that is used for several handy crafting recipes, so make sure you take advantage of the Green Rain and collect as much Moss as possible when it occurs!

Multiple Pets

If you have full hearts with your starter pet, you’ll get additional ones to grow your Stardew family. But don’t get too excited, because that's not even the best part. Not only can you get more varieties of cats and dogs, but there’s an entirely new type of pet, turtles. These turtles come in two colors. Green, and if you really want to flex your money-making skills, there is a very expensive purple turtle as well.

World Map Update

The map now shows your position! In the past, the map would only show what area of the map you were in, but not exactly where you were in that area. Now if you pause to open your map, you'll accurately see your location. This update may seem small, but it could be a game-changer when playing multiplayer with your friends!

Golden Joja Parrot

The past Stardew Valley update introduced a whole new area to explore calledGinger Island. Ginger Island featured countless new things to do and places to explore, one of those being a new collectible called Golden Walnuts. There are 130 Golden Walnuts to collect on Ginger Island, which is enough to keep you entertained for the long haul. If you’re stuck on your last few Golden Walnuts, however, and can’t seem to track them down, there is a new Golden Joja Parrot that you can pay to find the rest of them for you.

You can find the Golden Joja Parrot on the left side of the Volcano. But make sure you bring your life savings with you because finding your lost Golden Walnuts doesn't come cheap. It will cost 10,000g per Walnut, so unless your pockets are bursting with G's, you might be better off checking out our Golden Walnut guide and finding them all yourself for free.

New Crops, Fish, and Resources

The 1.6 update also introduced even more crops to grow, fish to catch, and resources to collect. These new crops are:

• Carrots
• Summer Squash
• Broccoli
• Powdermelon

There is a new Goby fish swimming around in the waters of Pelican Town, along with other fishable resources, like Sea Jelly, River Jelly, and Cave Jelly, which can be used to craft the new Fish Smoker.

The Raccoon Family Quests

One of the cutest and most exciting updates to Stardew Valley is the Raccoon Family Questline. This questline results in some new neighbors moving into town, who act almost like miniCommunity Centerbundles. Completing this quest is the best way to find and explore some of the new resources in Stardew Valley and is the only way to purchase seeds for the new crops introduced in the update.

There are other ways to get your hands on seeds for the new crops, but the Raccoon Family Store is the easiest way to get large numbers of them, so it's well worth checking out. Take a look at ourRaccoon Family Quest guideto learn exactly how to open this new store!

The Bookseller Comes to Town

The Bookseller comes to town twice per season with a selection of books you can purchase. These books contain secrets to help you run faster, gain more experience in a certain skill, and even allow you to make more profit when selling things like artifacts, and more.

See the Bookseller's exact location and stock here.

Mystery Boxes

Mystery Boxes are exciting new care packages kindly left all over the Valley by Mr. Qi. These mysterious crates of goodies act like Geodes that can only be opened by the Blacksmith and contain all sorts of things, from high-value items, meals, equipment, books, and a number of other handy resources.

You can find these mystery boxes by digging up artifact spots, mining, fishing, and even as rewards for doing particularly well during events like the new Trout Derby and SquidFest.

New NPC Outfits and Interactions

The residents of Pelican Town will no longer be shivering in the cold with the new winter outfits they are rugged up in since the 1.6 update. Every villager has a new wardrobe for the season, but not only that, many also have new interactions. There are many new conversations to have with your neighbours, like more dynamic responses to general conversation and Flower Dance acceptance dialogue.

Small Changes

In addition to all the major new additions, some other small but nice changes were made to Stardew Valley.

• Mayonnaise is drinkable! While it's better off sold or as a gift, drinking it is an option if you find yourself in a pinch.
• As noted in the patch notes, [and bottled goods] now have colors to match what's inside them.
• You can put your spare hats on pets.
• There's a bobber machine in Willy's shop that allows you to change the style of your bobber. These are earned by catching fish.
• You'll can find Mixed Flower Seeds
• A Big Chest was added and has double the size of regular chests.