Stardew Valley players surprised with 2024's final free update

What a delightful Christmas surprise this is. Well, at least for some.

A surprise new free update has landed for Stardew Valley, rounding off what has been an excellent year for the beloved indie title - mainly down to the success of the 1.6 update.

Unexpectedly, solo dev Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone has released one final little treat for players but there is a catch.

Stardew Valley’s latest update, numbered 1.6.15, is currently only available on PC, Android, and iOS with a console rollout likely to come in 2025.

As crushing as this may be for console players, it’s somewhat expected news.

This pattern follows with what’s happened for many of Stardew Valley’s previous update rollouts.

As for what Update 1.6.15 entails, let’s dive in.

Stardew Valley is a top tier cosy title that’s very difficult to dethrone.

You can find the full patch notes below.

Balance changes:

• Legendary fish ponds now produce roe much more often and have a higher average daily value.

Quality of life changes:

• Performance optimisations.
• Added the Junimo bundle button to fridge and mini-fridge UTs.
• Fixed debris able to spread under giant crops.
• Fixed bad-word filtering added to some extra text boxes in 1.6. Those are now only filtered on platforms that require it, as originally intended.

Gameplay fixes:

• Fixed Krobus’ shop not accessible on Fridays for Japanese players.
• Fixed some achievements not unlocked retroactively in some cases.
• Fixed some things being less random than intended.
• Fixed new-game data corruption issue, where viewing the load screen before creating a new save in rare cases would incorrectly copy data from one of the load slots into the new save.
• Fixed some older items in the lost and found not correctly retrievable.
• Fixed crash when collecting empty crab pots.
• Fixed crash when farm animals somehow end up in multiple locations.
• Fixed crash when failing to play/resume/pause/stop sound effects.
• Fixed crash in raccoon menu if you have a base flavoured item in your inventory.
• Fixed crash if a shop somehow has a null item from a player to sell.
• Fixed rare crash in Calico Jack mini game.
• Fixed error loading pre-1.6 saves with case-sensitive stat key conflicts; conflicting stats are now merged.
• Fixed selected tool lost in some cases when obtaining a stardrop.

Multiplayer fixes:

• Fixed some mail getting re-sent to farmhands every day.
• Fixed unable to join a server whose invite code contains a bad word.
• Fixed issue where the host’s mine levels could be frozen in time.
• Fixed crash in WeGame version.
• Fixed crash when a farmhand passes out while warping between locations.
• Fixed /unlinkPlayer’ and other multiplayer chat commands sometimes using the first player instead of the intended one.
• Fixed co-op menu scroll not reset when switching tab.

Display text and localisation fixes:

• Improved Hungarian, Japanese, and Russian translations.
• Fixed a missing period in the shears description.
• Fixed some item tooltips on the collection tab in some languages showing a raw “{1}” token.
• Fixed grey box behind Russian railroad sign.
• Fixed Robin’s start-construction message showing the general building name inconsistently.
• Fixed a few translated dialogues with broken dialogue commands.

Cosmetic fixes:

• Fixed Alex’s hand in one of his portraits.
• Fixed butterflies spawned by statue of blessings glitching out in summer.

Changes for modded players:

• Fixed support for fridges with a larger capacity.
• Fixed buildings visually matching the calendar season even if their location has a different season.
• Fixed interior doors not working if you wake up in their location.
• Fixed crash on powers tab hover if a mod added an entry with no display name.
• Added logs to track game load timing.

When the update does eventually roll out on console, additional console specific fixes will be included, with ConcernedApe referencing “the raccoon shop bug” and “the divorce crash” as two examples.

In the meantime, PC and mobile users can hop into the update now.