I’d like to believe that developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone is having a blast tweeting out daily lines of Stardew Valley’s forthcoming 1.6 update. It all started with a stray patch note about fruit trees and has very quickly become a ritual for the most devout Stardew Valley players. Every time ConcernedApe has fired off one of these patch note posts, hundreds, if not thousands, of players sound off about how minor a change it is, and how grand it is in the scheme of things. To them, the miniscule changes being introduced have seemingly been points of frustration (as well as inquiry) for years. 1.6’s promise to address these tiny issues when it drops on March 19 feels like a full-circle moment for the developer and the community that’s formed around Stardew Valley.
The latest of these updates suggests that ConcernedApe is now doing pet owners a solid. Pets in Stardew Valley tend to be adorable and loving, to the point of impediment. They will often stand or run directly in your path, making for the cutest roadblocks. After the arrival of the 1.6 update, they will be ever so slightly easier to shove to the side, where they will remain as lovely as ever.
Accordingly, the time that players spend pushing against the pet before they relent and let them through is being cut from 1.5 seconds to .75 seconds. If you couldn’t stand to do that for a literal second, ConcernedApe has made it so that you don’t have to now. If they annoy you beyond that, I don’t know, maybe just don’t get a pet! Install a mod that removes pet collision entirely, if you feel so inclined.
Speaking of mods, Stardew’s 1.6 update was initially intended to be a mod-centric update—one that’d specifically make modders’ lives easier—but we’ve heard very little about how exactly it’ll accomplish that. Instead, ConcernedApe has spent most of the year since the update’s announcement adding entirely new content, like a festival and new dialogue. There are other “secrets” they’ve refused to share, and now there’s apparently a host of tweaks that players have been begging for. If 1.6 is the last significant patch that Stardew gets for a while, it’s going out with a bang.
Once Stardew’s 1.6 update releases next week, ConcernedApe will likely turn their full attention back to its spiritual successor, the more combat-focused Haunted Chocolatier, as well as eventually porting the update to Stardew’s mobile and console versions. Maybe then, I’ll sit down with the game and learn to love it like the folks in ConcernedApe’s replies.
