Next week one of the most important events in Western civilization will be celebrated and it is important that you participate. I am referring, of course, to the console and mobile release of Stardew Valley. latest major content patch.

Eight years after its release, Stardew remains the general king of cozy gamesand version 1.6 adds a series of excuses to start another new farm.

This is a good opportunity to return to Stardew or pick it up for the first time, as many of the changes in 1.6 are designed to smooth out your initial gameplay. This includes a new starting farm layout that lets you start raising chickens early, some new seasonal crops for easy money early in the game, and optional micro-festivals that provide some useful rewards for an early player.

At this point, however, Stardew is such a mainstay of the genre that it can be a little intimidating. It has developed a legion of fans, some of whom are hardcore enough to have the game down to a science, and that has scared away some newcomers. If you’re thinking about starting Stardew Valley in 2024, here are some useful things you should know beforehand.

It’s actually not that cozy… at first

One of the first things you notice when playing Stardew in 2024 is that over the past four years, much of the “cozy” subgenre of games was created specifically as a reaction to it. Many more recent games, like Fae Farm or My Time at Sandrock, have made decisions that address Stardew’s weaknesses or focus more on its strengths.

A particular sticking point is the beginning of the game, as Stardew starts very low on what another game might call its power curve. You initially have low stamina, don’t know any of the good cooking recipes yet, and are generally forced to push through the day eating random things you find on the floor. Spring 1, Year 1 farming in Stardew is done with a steady diet of dandelions.

As you establish yourself, you slowly gain better options, more stamina, and time-saving machines like sprinklers, but every day in Stardew is still a race to get as much done as you can before you’re forced to go to bed. There’s a reason why all the lifelong fans have strategies that revolve around pure efficiency.

No real bugs

However, despite that, Stardew is built in such a way that you may have hiccups, but not setbacks. There aren’t many problems that you can’t fix, resolve or recover from.

The worst case scenario in Stardew tends to be missing out on seasonal opportunities. For example, it is possible to miss your initial chance to grow one of the most valuable crops, strawberries, since you can only buy the seeds from Pierre during the Egg Festival on the 13th of Spring. If you don’t know, you will have to wait until next year or wait for a strawberry to appear on the market. travel cart.

However, that’s not much of a test and there’s no way to do Stardew “wrong.” It’s a game that’s meant to envelop you, and anything you don’t want to do will usually wait patiently until you’re ready. Despite his occasionally hectic daily schedule, you should take this at your own pace.

Cash rules everything around me

To “win” Stardew Valley, you must achieve 100% perfection, which means mastering most of the game’s individual mechanics, minigames, and exploration challenges, as well as becoming best friends with each villager. It can take quite a while to get close to perfection, especially if there are parts of the game that you simply don’t care to get involved with.

However, one of the biggest obstacles is earning cash. You’ll be fine for everyday expenses if you’re smart about which crops you focus on (potatoes, strawberries, blueberries, melons, pumpkins), but many of the final challenges in Stardew involve making fat piles. If you want that elusive 100%, you need 14 million gold to build the four Obelisks and the Gold Clock.

The time-tested way to become a cash millionaire in Stardew usually involves turning your farm and/or beach house into a high-quality star fruit production facility. While you’re minding your business in the mid- to late-game, it’s worth having Robin build you a storage shed and then fill it with barrels and canning jars. When you’re ready to cash out, set up a bunch of barrels in your farm basement, age all your stored star fruit wine in them, and practice using terms like “mouthfeel” and “oak” like you know what they mean. .

Master of the five paths

If you’re returning to Stardew after a while or are a new player, it’s worth noting one of the biggest new additions to the game in Patch 1.6.

Once you are upgraded to 1.6, a new cave will appear in the forest south of your farm, about halfway up the cliff to the east. If you try to enter from the beginning, it will tell you that “only a master of the five paths can enter.”

This is a new ending system in the latest patch. The five ways refer to your five skills: farming, mining, combat, foraging, and fishing. When you reach level 10 in all five, you will now be able to enter the cave. This sets you up to unlock a number of new tools and passive upgrades that grant you several solid quality of life bonuses by the end of Stardew. This includes the new “trinket” gear slot, some high-end blueprints like the Treasure Totem, a new fishing rod and quality iridium scythe, and the ability to find valuable Golden Mystery Boxes.

There are quite a few other things to see and do in Patch 1.6, but the skill mastery system should be your first stop. It makes you better at all the things you were already doing and really softens the end of Stardew. If you’ve been neglecting combat or fishing, it’s worth leveling them up to level 10 to access the Mastery Cave.

The modification scene

Many veteran players will tell you that once you’ve played Stardew with mods, it’s hard to go back. I didn’t believe them until I tried it, but I have to agree.

At this point, there are thousands of PC mods for Stardew, ranging from practical to extravagant to the intensely specific. If absolutely necessary, for any reason, replace some villagers with Baldur’s Gate 3 cast or convert Pelican Town into an R-rated soap operathe mod scene has your back.

More importantly, mod authors have had eight full years to fix Stardew Valley’s tough spots. If there’s something in Stardew that bothers you, like having to slowly do items one at a timehe fast passage of time in the gamehe lack of reference materials in the gameeither lack of new charactersSomeone has created a mod to fix it.

As a result, if you’re looking to get into Stardew in 2024, your best available option is to play on PC. This allows you to customize the game to an even greater degree, so you can emphasize its cozier aspects, increase its difficulty, or simply give everyone sillier hats.

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