At long last, the 1.5 update for the popular indie 2016 title Stardew Valley has been released. This is the largest update so far, containing a plethora of new content, bug fixes, and even an entire new area called Ginger Island, which is part of the Fern Islands.
The sole creator of Stardew Valley, Eric Barone (A.K.A. ConcernedApe), has been diligently keeping fans updated all year, teasing the new features that are finally available for PC users. As much anticipation as these sneak-peaks built up over the last few months, fans probably didn't expect the immense level of new Stardew Valley content the 1.5 update brings. Other consoles should be receiving the update in early 2021.
The farming simulator is certainly a game that keeps on giving. The previous 1.4 update also added a ton of new features and fixed a variety of issues. Four years after its initial release, the game is still going strong, with so much more to look forward to. In addition to the 1.5 announcement, Stardew Valley creator ConcernedApe added more fuel to the hype by informing fans on Twitter that the game is currently 33% off on Steam right now. Here's everything new the 1.5 update adds to Stardew Valley:
Stardew Valley's New World Area: Ginger Island
- New locations, dialogue, events, minigames, puzzles, and quest lines for multiple NPCs
- NPC Leo with his own backstory, plot, events, etc.
- Secondary NPCs (Birdie, Gourmand Frog, and Professor Snail)
- Volcano dungeon that changes each visit similar to the mines
- Qi challenges that unlock rare or unique items
- An unlockable island farmhouse area where players can plant crops of any season but can't construct buildings
- An unlockable resort where villagers can visit the islands (includes new beach attire and schedules for Stardew Valley NPCs)
- Hidden pages of a lost sailor's journal to uncover his story and learn about the islands
- Golden walnuts hidden throughout the islands that can unlock new areas and content
- Golden Coconuts that Clint can crack open to find rare island items
- Gem birds that spawn in a random island area when it rains; drops gems when approached
- Secrets and puzzles to discover around the island
- 10 new enemies
- Cosmetic critters (crabs, caldera monkeys, overhead parrots, marsupial, and tropical butterflies)
- Island Obelisk building
Stardew Valley's New Farm Features
- New beach farm layout
- Ostrich as farm animal
- Removed immovable dressers previously found in Farmhands' cabins
- Home renovations that allow players to further expand and adjust the farmhouse after it's fully upgraded
- Beds in Stardew Valley can now be picked up, moved, and replaced (can even have no bed, but the spouse might comment on that)
- Unlocked greenhouses can be moved at Robin's shop
- Default shipping bin can be moved/demolished at Robin's shop
- Advanced Game options that can customize a new game by:
Setting Seed value used in randomization
Choosing default vs randomized Community Center bundles and mine chests
Option to make Red Cabbage Seeds guaranteed to sell at least once during year one's travelling cart visits so it's always possible to finish Community Center in the first year.
Access to profit margins and cabin-related options that were previously inaccessible when creating a single-player farm
Toggle monsters spawning
- Apply cosmetic paints to farmhouse and buildings
- Ducks can swim in water
- Some coop animals will follow adults around
- Slimes drink from slime hutch troughs in random order
Stardew Valley's Other New Content & Features
- Dwarvish forge and weapon enchanting
- Second Stardew Valley Community Upgrade added to Robin's shop
- Can combine two rings into one
- Special Orders (more dynamic late-game quests to assist villagers with personal projects through a special orders board in town)
- Higher difficulty version of mines/Skull caves that can be accessed late-game; can be optionally toggled permanently using the Shrine of Challenge
- Fishing TV channel (available once certain conditions are met)
- 9 crops and trees including Mahogany Trees that drop hardwood
- Festival changes
Year 2 dialogues for Egg Festival
Shops added to Dance of the Moonlight Jellies, Feast of the Winter Star, Festival of Ice, and Luau
New items added to various festival shops
- Wizard's basement shrine allows name and gender changes
- Perfection rating tracks the percentage of completed game content; a full completion allows players to:
Buy Golden Chickens
Adds a random Golden Witch event
Unlocks access to The Summit with a new event
Adds new bird critters
Unlocks various items
- Further customizable Stardew Valley sprinklers with the following attachments:
Enricher automatically applies loaded fertilizer while planting nearby seeds
Pressure Nozzle increases watering range
- 18 Craftable items and machines including a Coffee Maker that brews a fresh cup every morning and Mini-Obelisks for easy warping when placed on the farm
- 3 Fertilizers
- 26 more items including a Horse Flute that summons the horse when outside and an Auto-Petter (a late-game Joja-route item that can also be rarely obtainable by other means)
- 3 Fishing tackles
- 10 Quest items
- 7 Rings
- 15 Hats
- 6 Clothing Items
- 4 Shoes
- 11 Weapons and accessibility to some previously inaccessible items
- 3 Fish and 5 legendary fish
- 11 Food items including Squid Ravioli in Stardew Valley which temporarily prevents debuffs
- New furniture
35 paintings (many found in festival shops or while fishing certain locations)
14 bed variants
10 rugs
8 "floor divider" rugs that can be placed between rooms to join visually different floor types
5 fish tanks for putting fish in
7 other miscellaneous furniture items
- "Sconce" furniture type with seven options
- 2 Floorings
- Debuffs from enemies
Darkness (impairs vision)
Nauseated (prevents player from eating)
Weakness (-20 Attack)
- 15 Hairstyles
- Mail from Krobus with his own stationary
- Easter egg on title screen
- Easter egg added when changing name at The Shrine of Illusions to include item spawn codes
- Emily visits Sandy on her birthday
- Decorations and tweaks to many Stardew Valley maps
Stardew Valley's Quality Of Life Changes
- Lost & Found box at Mayor Lewis' house can be used to retrieve items like those left behind at the Grange display
- Improved game menus and HUD:
Social tab shows if player talked to an NPC that day
Cooking tab shows an item's recipe when hovering over it and fades icons for recipes a player knows but hasn't made yet
Cooking/Crafting tooltips show the number produced
Inventory menu's Organize button combines partial item stacks
Inventory menu for a chest shows the Community Center button
Shipment screen shows unit price of shipped items
Quest log shows an arrow in the morning when completed quests are pending
Buff icons subtly pulse if close to expiring
When entering farm buildings, a notification will show if an incubator is ready but the building's at max capacity
The "Infestation" indicator in the mines is drawn alongside the floor number instead of replacing it
- The minigame in Stardew Valley "Journey of the Prairie King" progress can be saved and resumed to complete in multiple sessions; can also replay the original difficulty if already completed
- Can sit on chairs
- Can place most furniture outside
- Can talk to people while on horse
- Can donate items of different qualities for the same community bundle ingredient
- Can no longer plant fruit trees on tiles
- Improved shop menus
Players can press "ESC/B" to move the held item to the inventory (or drop it if there's no room)
When holding a purchase, the inventory highlights items that can be stacked with it
- Improved sprinklers water Slime Hutch troughs and hoes no longer remove sprinklers
- Improved game options:
choose between multiple fish-bite chime sounds
can mute farm animals/pets
can scale the UI independently of the view zoom
increased maximum zoom from 120% to 200%
Clicking an item grabs one instead of entire stack
Pressing back while placing an item returns to the inventory instead of closing the whole UI
Other minor improvements
- Improved various items:
Jukebox has a "Random" setting
Removing a Crystalarium that's not ready for harvest will drop the gem that was placed in it
Can push chests containing items by holding the interact button on them with no tool equipped
- Inventory sorting no longer changes tool order; option to sort by quality; sorts alphabetically
Stardew Valley's Balance Changes
- Combat changes:
Immunity reduces chance of status debuffs
Changed special move cooldowns on daggers (six to three seconds) and clubs (four to six seconds)
The dagger special attack pins the target in place until the last stab (knocks enemies back) so dagger hits are less likely to miss
Desperado profession's damage bonus reduced from 3x to 2x
Slightly improved dagger critical hit chance
- A couple Stardew Valley Crafting changes:
Skull Brazier recipe needs 10 Bone Fragments to make
Repairing a fence restores full fence health
- Farming changes:
Lowered cost of ducks from 2000g to 600g
Doubled duck feather value
Slight increase to duck feather spawn rate
- Fishing changes:
Fishing rod tackle doesn't lose endurance when catching junk
Catching a non-fish item won't trigger minigame
Reaching an effective fishing level of 15+ increases the rod casting range by one tile
- Mining changes:
Gem nodes provide mining XP and can drop Diamonds
Gem node drops aren't limited by mine level
- Item drop changes:
Stumps, hollow logs, and monsters in the Secret Woods have a 10% chance of dropping Mahogany Seed
Skeletons have a 4% chance of dropping a Bone Sword
Wilderness Golems drop rice shoots more often
Some Skull Cavern monsters have a small chance of dropping Red Cabbage Seeds
Pure-white slimes drop Diamonds and Refined Quartz in Stardew Valley
Some containers drop better items after reaching the bottom of the mines at least once
Different drops unlock on mine levels 60/80/100 and the Skull Cavern's first level
Reduced chance of Lead Rod drops on mine levels 60-79 and an added chance for Shadow Dagger and Wood Mallet
Mine wood barrels and frost barrels drop Basic Retaining Soil and Quality Retaining Soil respectively, instead of Sap
Reduced chance of frost barrels dropping Aquamarine, Frozen Goede, Hardwood, Jade, or equipment from 35% to 26%
- Shop changes:
Pierre sells seasonal items year-round once players complete a certain new quest
Two more items added to the Stardew Valley Fair Star Token shop
Workbench costs 2000g
Coconuts can be purchased from Sandy on Mondays (limited ten per day) at Stardew Valley's Calico Desert
- Standardized machine processing time so they're always ready when morning starts
Bee House (every 4 days)
Mushroom Box (2 days)
Strange Capsule (3 days)
Tapper (depends on input)
- Doubled Star Token rewards for slingshot and fishing minigames at the Stardew Valley Fair
- Fertilizer in the greenhouse no longer disappears on season change in some cases
- Random Stone Owl and Strange Capsule night events are less rare
Stardew Valley's Multiplayer Changes
- Join co-op screen remembers last IP entered
- Farmhands can move buildings through Robin's menu; the host can configure how this works (disabled, enabled, or only for a player's own cabin)
- Using the Return Scepter returns Farmhands to their cabin's front door instead of the host's farmhouse
- Various new chat messages when a player does something
- No longer forcibly warped to an event location when viewing a shared event
- Added local split-screen to Stardew Valley's multiplayer mode
- When the host sees the third year event, Grandpa's Theme is now added to all players' jukebox regardless if they weren't in-game at the time
Stardew Valley's Interaction Changes
- Reworked slingshot controls to aim at cursor position; it's fired by holding and releasing the mouse/gamepad fire button, but the previous mode can be re-enabled in the Options menu
- Constructed shipping bins have a click-to-ship hitbox
- Flooring can be applied by clicking on the tile the player's standing on
- Purchasing recipes with a full inventory no longer shows a message that inventory is full
- Clicking an empty tile right above an interactive element (like a machine) now activates it
- Trees chopped from above or below takes a player's horizontal position into consideration when falling
- Clicking near the bottom-left corner of the screen won't bring up the chat box
- Can no longer open the quest log by pressing the on-screen journal button if currently doing something
- Can use the "Y" key to answer dialogue boxes for holes and exit ladders in mines
- Simplified bulk actions such as harvesting to streamline Stardew Valley's farming mechanics
- Controller improvements:
When buying/betting tokens at the Stardew Valley Festival with a controller, holding the number selection button increases the amount faster
Events can be skipped on the controller even if a dialogue box is on-screen
Pressing B on a controller while on a specific quest page returns to the quest list instead of closing the menu
Pressing B on a controller while an item is held on the crafting menu snaps to the trash can
Stardew Valley's Other Changes
- Save names are now based on the farm name instead of the player name
- Penny and the Dwarf now like artifacts
- Improved dinosaur sleep sprites
- In single mode, characters now face the player when talking to them instead of when the dialogue box closes
- On the final day of a tracked quest, the timer now says "final day"
- Many changes added for Stardew Valley modders
- Cosmetic tweaks to various sprites
- Fixed a huge variety of Multiplayer, Player Interaction, Visual/Cosmetic, and miscellaneous bugs and issues for a more efficient Stardew Valley experience
Source: ConcernedApe/Twitter