Stardew Valley 1.6 patch notes and all of the subsequent patches

• The latest patch, Stardew Valley 1.6.8 fixes a crash that previously appeared in 1.6.7.

In one of the biggest Starfew Valley Patch, the Stardew Valley 1.6 Patch, ConcernedApe has released a myriad of new features and improvements, catering not only to the dedicated solo player, but also to the ones that like to build a farm with their friends in multiplayer.

Not only do we have new festivals and items, but we also have a new possible interaction with the infamous Purple Shorts. It's quite a long update, so if you want the short version of it, let me break it down for you! Underneath each category I've summarised all the content that has been released, so if you don't feel like reading the entire patch notes, I've shortened it up for you a bit.

Patch 1.6.1  |  Patch 1.6.2  |  Patch 1.6.3  |  Patch 1.6.4  |  Patch 1.6.5  |  Patch 1.6.6  |  Patch 1.6.7  |  Patch 1.6.8

New content and features in Stardew Valley 1.6

Among the new features added is a brand-new event called the Desert Festival, which quite obviously takes place in the Desert. For the fishing enthusiasts, there are also 2 new events that revolve around fishing, the Trout Derby and the SquidFest. 

A bunch of new items and fashion items (yes, basically hats) have also been added, so for those looking to expand their collection, you've got it! 

In addition to all the new events, plenty of new items have also been introduced to the game, which open the doors to new recipes, gifts, and new interactions with the NPCs.

• The Desert Festival is a three-day event in spring which can be accessed after the bus is repaired.
• Two mini fishing festivals: Trout Derby and SquidFest.
• A new environmental “event” in summer.
• Added a “mastery” system, accessed via a new area, which grants powerful perks and items…
• Added a new farm type: Meadowlands Farm. It has a chewy blue grass that animals love. You also start with a coop and 2 chickens.
• Added many new NPC dialogues. That includes…
• custom gift reactions;
• dynamic dialogues that react to things that happened;
• custom flower dance acceptance dialogue;
• restored missing dialogue (like Emily and Shane’s flower dance custom accept-dance dialogues when married to the player, Shane’s dialogue when browsing the Saloon vending machine, Lewis congratulating female farmers after their wedding, a line in Maru’s 14-heart event, three dialogues from Sam related to Kent, two randomized dialogues when an NPC buys an item you sold to a shop, two speech bubbles from Marnie and Robin when you enter their shop building, and a fortune teller dialogue for your potential spouse);
• and more.
• You can now get multiple pets (after getting max hearts with your starter pet).
• Added a world map for Ginger Island, visible when visiting the island.
• The world map now shows your actual position within the world in real-time (instead of showing you at a fixed point for each location). In multiplayer, you’ll see other players’ positions in real-time too.
• Pets that love you will sometimes give you gifts.
• NPCs now have winter outfits.
• Festivals now have map and dialogue changes every second year (except the night market and desert festival).
• Added a golden Joja parrot, which you can pay to find all remaining golden walnuts on ginger island.
• Added perfection waivers, a new Joja way to bypass perfection challenges.
• Added a prize machine in Lewis’ house. You can collect prize tickets as a reward for completing quests and special orders, and from repeated egg/ice festival wins.
• A bookseller now comes to town twice a season.
• Added mystery boxes.
• Added a big tree, with a quest line which ultimately gives you some new neighbors.
• Added four new crops (carrots, summer squash, broccoli, and powdermelon) which can’t be purchased at the store, and two new giant crops.
• Added four new home renovations: dining room, attic, expanded corner room, and cubby.
• Added new items:
• Big Chest, which has almost double the size of a regular chest. It can also be placed “onto” a regular chest to upgrade it.
• Dehydrator, which turns fruit into dried fruit and mushroom into dried mushrooms.
• Mushroom Log, which produces mushrooms and interacts with nearby trees.
• Bait Maker, which can produce fish-specific baits.
• Heavy Furnace, which can process more bars at a time, and yield bonus bars.
• Fish Smoker, which produces smoked fish, doubling the value of the fish. You get one by default when starting a new Riverlands farm.
• Text Signs, which can be written on.
• Anvil, which allows you to re-roll trinkets.
• Mini-Forge, which acts as a Dwarvish Forge.
• Statue Of Blessings, which grants a random blessing each day.
• Statue Of The Dwarf King, which allows you to select one of two mining buffs for the day.
• Tent Kits, which allow you to build a tent which can be slept in for one night.
• Treasure Totems, which spawn a ring of diggable spots.
• Mystic Seeds, which grow a unique tree which can be tapped.
• Mystic Syrup, a valuable tapper product.
• Deluxe Bait, gets fish biting faster than regular bait.
• Challenge Bait, which allows for up to 3 fish to be caught at once, but loses 1 each time a fish leaves the bobber bar.
• Deluxe Worm Bin, which upgrades the regular worm bin to produce deluxe bait.
• 19 unique Books Of Power, which grant special perks.
• Skill Books, which grant experience in a skill.
• Book Of Stars, which grants experience in all skills.
• Moss, a new resource type which grows on old trees.
• Mixed Flower Seeds.
• Sonar Bobber, which shows the fish on your line before you catch it.
• Raisins, which have a special use.
• Sea Jelly, River Jelly, and Cave Jelly, a new item that you can fish.
• 7 Trinkets, which grant powers related to combat.
• Red, Purple, and Green fireworks.
• Stardrop Tea, which makes an excellent gift for anyone.
• 25 new hats.
• 280 new furnitures.
• New unique furniture catalogues, which contain themed furniture sets.
• 41 new floor styles.
• 24 new wallpaper styles.
• Golden Animal Crackers.
• Mannequins, which can be dressed.
• Spouse Portraits which can be purchased after reaching 14 hearts.
• Butterfly Powder, which allows you to remove pets…
• Blue Grass Starter.
• Moss Soup.
• Secret items.
• Added Goby fish.
• Added some new remix bundles.
• You can now place hats on cats and dogs.
• You can now upgrade the copper pan into steel, gold, and iridium pans.
• You can now enchant pans with Archaeologist, Generous, Fisher, and Reaching.
• Added a “Special Items & Powers” tab to replace the wallet. The wallet area now tracks a selection of progress markers.
• Added an animals tab that shows all your pets & animals.
• You can now build pet bowls in Robin’s shop, with three variants.
• The farmhouse and pet bowl can now be moved through Robin’s menu.
• The farm computer can now be used anywhere to see a summary of that location, instead of only the farm.
• The mini-jukebox can now be used on the Ginger Island farm.
• Added a new interaction with your horse.
• Added a new side-tunnel to the quarry mine.
• The community center fish tank now becomes an actual fish tank when you complete it.
• Added more secrets & easter eggs.
• Added two new cat and dog breeds.
• Added turtle pets.
• Added 8 new achievements.
• Added 4 new cabin variants.
• Added a few more accessory options in character creation.
• Added a new bobber machine in Willy’s shop, with 39 bobber styles to choose from. New styles unlock by catching new kinds of fish.
• Added a cameo appearance to Maru’s 14-heart event.
• Emily has a new rare “socialize” daily quest if you’ve completed the introduction quest.
• You can now add anchors, treasure chests, and pearls to fish tanks.
• Pierre now sells a few random items at the winter star booth (at a markup!).
• Added a jingling sound when running with the cinderclown shoes on.
• Baby toss now has a chance to crit.
• Added a skull cavern statue that can be used to toggle hard mode in the skull cave (after completing Qi’s challenge).
• Added additional chests to Skull Cavern levels 200 and 300.
• Added unique skull cavern chest appearance for level 100, 200, and 300 chests.
• Added a high note (C5) to flute block.
• Added iridium golem to wilderness farm.
• See changes for mod authors.

Credit: Stardew Valley dev blog

New visual improvements and decorations

Since there weren't nearly enough decorations to satisfy all of us set on making the best farm that ever existed, we've now got a lot more of them, including winter decorations. In addition to that, some of the maps have been slightly revamped, and the entire environment has got a slight new visual update. 

There are now waterfalls, new butterflies, critters, and even the lighting at night has received an update. 

• Added waterfalls.
• Added more holiday decorations in winter.
• Added more pathstones to various maps.
• Added jack-o-lanterns after the Stardew Valley Fair in fall.
• Added seasonal world map variants.
• Added a new rare ambient critter.
• Added some rare summer butterfly variants.
• Added an uncommon little brown bird variant.
• Redrew the world map to better match the in-game locations and be more detailed.
• Boat journey textures are now seasonal and reflect the latest valley map.
• The bus stop now has a wider map, though the distance to traverse it is the same. (This is to prevent black bars from appearing at the sides of the screen.)
• Jelly, pickles, wines, and juices are now colored based on the ingredient item.
• Many town trees are now actual tree objects, though you can’t cut them down.
• Slight adjustment to the way items pop out when dug from the ground.
• Updated volcano gold ore node sprite.
• Some trees have a chance to lose their leaves in the fall.
• Riverbanks and lakeshores in the mountain, town, and forest areas are now less jagged in some places.
• Graphical improvements to building interiors.
• Improved the art of George & Evelyn’s roof.
• If you destroy a mines chest, it now shows some graphics debris.
• Added special backplates to fortune teller TV show if you get a perfectly good or perfectly bad luck day.
• Lighting changes:
• It now gets dark an hour earlier in winter.
• Night tiles (e.g. town lamps) now activate an hour earlier in all seasons.
• Indoor daytime lighting now smoothly transitions to night lighting over the course of two hours.
• Night lighting in non-farmhouse indoor locations is now slightly darker.
• Farmhouse lighting on rainy days is now slightly moody, and lights stay on all day.
• TVs and trees of the Winter Star now give off light at night.
• Added light sources to window light glows so there are no more “dark but lit” windows.
• Made some improvements to the intro bus drive cutscene.
• At night, hats are now drawn at the night-time color in the game menu portraits.
• Removed lighting quality option. It’s now permanently set to ultra quality.
• The submerged fishing bobber is now recolored automatically to match the water.

Credit: Stardew Valley dev blog

Changes and fixes for Multiplayer Mode

Before the update, the multiplayer mode would sometimes crash for one of the players in the lobby. That has since been fixed, and the number of people that can join in a multiplayer game has gone up to 8. More buddies, more goodies - and more fun, too!

• You can now have up to 8 players on PC.
• Many improvements for multiplayer performance and stability. That includes:
• Steam players will now use Steam multiplayer authentication, potentially improving connection issues significantly.
• Large multiplayer packets are now compressed, reducing bandwidth usage and latency.
• Internal optimizations to data syncing.
• You now need the same build number (in addition to version) to join a multiplayer server. This prevents crashes due to game changes between builds.
• Accepting a Qi challenge that increases mine difficulty now only kicks other players out of the affected mine type, not all mines.
• Purple shorts no longer show a chat message when placed into the Luau soup.
• Jump down mineshaft sound now plays for all players in the level rather than just the jumper.
• Mitigated potential remote code execution issue.
• Possibly fixed frequent disconnections for some players.
• Fixed old/incorrect Steam display names being shown in some cases.
• Fixed copy & paste for invite codes on some Linux/macOS platforms.
• Fixed issue where the mines were checking for the luck level of players in the host’s current location, rather than players in the mines.
• Fixed phantom action cursor over backwoods gravestone if the current player hasn’t seen the related event yet.
• Fixed global chat info messages (like “Abigail caught PlayerName digging through the trash“) sometimes showing text in the sender’s language instead of yours.
• Fixed egg festival requiring 12 eggs to win if there are 5+ players. It now applies the four-player requirement to any player count beyond that.
• Fixed farmhands sometimes able to walk out of bounds at festivals.
• Fixed farmhands who disconnected while fishing sometimes stuck frozen on reconnect.
• Fixed farmhands who disconnected while playing a minigame (like Journey of the Prairie King) still hearing the music on the title screen.
• Fixed farmhands who disconnected while in the building placement view being invisible on rejoin.
• Fixed farmhands seeing spouse’s outdoor area in the wrong spot on the beach farm.
• Fixed farmhands experiencing latency able to click a horse, walk to a different location, then get teleported out of bounds.
• Fixed farmhands able to collect multiple statues of perfection.
• Fixed farmhands unable to enter a movie without all players.
• Fixed farmhands’ local effects sometimes based on host data (e.g. the host’s equipped rings).
• Fixed farmhands’ prismatic shards sometimes spawning at the host’s location instead.
• Fixed farmhands’ rings leaving lights behind when they disconnect.
• Fixed farmhand crash while fishing in rare cases.
• Fixed farmhand crash when they warp just as certain things happen (e.g. pet sounds).
• Fixed farmhand crash if train approaches while they’re mid-warp.
• Fixed other players seeing a farmhand’s old spouse room if they divorced and remarried in the same session.
• Fixed dinos being able to hurt the host when they aren’t in the same location.
• Fixed monster drops for farmhands sometimes applying the host’s ring effects and secret note.
• Fixed various visual glitches with other players’ tool/fishing animations.
• Fixed crash when displaying a player status list which is missing a connected player.
• Fixed dialogue being interrupted if another player starts a broadcast event; the event will now start for you when you finish the current dialogue instead.
• Fixed enemy projectiles targeted at farmhands able to hit the host player in a different location.
• Fixed monsters not taking damage from some hits if multiple players are attacking them at once.
• Fixed projectiles causing damage multiple times in multiplayer.
• Fixed various cases where values weren’t correctly synced between players.
• Fixed watered dirt edges not updated for farmhands when they change overnight.
• Fixed ‘caught snooping’ chat message not triggered when Marnie sees the player searching her trash bin.
• Fixed cleared-landslide mail only sent to the main player.
• Fixed watering can‘s water left and capacity not synced in multiplayer.
• Fixed the local player’s step/fishing stats being incremented by other players walking or fishing.
• Fixed players sometimes seeing slightly different daily quests or crop fairy event.
• Fixed issue where a farmhand donating the 60th museum artifact wouldn’t grant the rusty key.
• Fixed issue where reading another player’s secret notes or journal scraps could lock them out of perfection.
• Fixed issue where the host pausing the game while it’s raining and a farmhand is moving would cause the frozen rain to slide across the screen.
• Fixed exploit where a farmhand would have full energy after passing out if they disconnected while sleeping earlier in the day.

Credit: Stardew Valley dev blog

Balance and price adjustments

Among the new items added to the game we also have a tent, which allows the player to sleep for one night. That's especially useful for those who haven't yet had a chance to set camp in Ginger Island, and still have to make their way back to the Valley. 

The tent kits are going to come in handy, and so are the new drops that you can find here. These balance changes seek to make playing on Ginger Island, and the game overall, a lot more fun and accessible.

• Added a box with three tent kits to the Ginger Island jungle.
• Weapons found in the wild now have a chance to come with a basic “innate enchantment”. You can re-roll “innate enchantments” (if the weapon could have one) at the forge using a dragon tooth.
• Slime Hutches are now significantly smaller (11×6 → 7×4).
• Farm animals now gain a little happiness if you close the animal door behind them at night.
• Grass now survives in the winter, though it won’t spread. However, cutting grass during winter is much less effective.
• The mushroom cave now comes with a free Dehydrator.
• Changed recipe skill requirements for charcoal kiln (foraging 4→2), cookout kit (foraging 9→3), survival burger (foraging level 2→8), tapper (foraging 3→4), and worm bin (fishing level 8→4).
• Most home renovations now cost money, which is refunded if you undo the renovation. (The game knows whether you bought it though, so refunding a pre-1.6 renovation won’t give you free money.)
• Reduced fairy dust sell price (500g → 300g).
• Reduced tea sapling sell price (500g → 250g).
• Reduced life elixir sell price (500g → 250g).
• Building cabins no longer requires materials, only the 100g price.
• Raised price of second house upgrade (50,000g → 65,000g), but reduced number of hardwood needed (150 → 100).
• Reduced worm bin’s hardwood needed (25 → 15).
• Increased cost of Warp Totem: Farm in casino (500 → 1000)
• Raised price of bombs in dwarf shop.
• Raised some hat prices from Hat Mouse.
• Put limits on some casino stock.
• You can now buy all brazier recipes in Robin’s shop at once instead of in sequence.
• Chopping down a fruit tree now yields the appropriate fruit sapling. If the tree is mature (i.e. the fruit quality is > basic), it will yield a sapling with the same quality as its fruit. The higher the quality, the faster the sapling will mature.
• Chopping down a tea bush now gives back a tea sapling.
• There’s now a small chance to find cosmetic items and other goodies while doing random tasks.
• Snake vertebrae are now easier to get.
• Train cars which carry wood can now drop hardwood.
• Santa’s train car can now drop gifts.
• Reduced prismatic shard drop rate from iridium nodes (4% → 3.5%).
• Rare yellow slimes now drop money.
• Brown slimes now drop wood (doesn’t affect the copper slimes in the quarry mine).
• Botanist perk now applies to items dropped from trees (e.g. coconuts).
• Reduced chance of fishing void mayonnaise at the witch swamp.
• Adjusted gift tastes for several NPCs.
• Treasure chests are now a universally liked gift… except by Linus.
• Mushroom Logs and Mushroom Boxes now grant 5 foraging XP on harvest.
• Harvesting berry bushes now grants 1 foraging XP per berry.
• Harvesting forage crops from wild seeds now give much less foraging experience, but grant some farming experience.
• Monsters on the farm now give combat experience, but it’s 1/3 of normal value. This excludes slime hutch slimes.
• Extended the area of effect of downward facing melee attacks (and slightly extended the side attack of daggers).
• Topaz ring now gives +1 defense, rather than the unused precision stat.
• Raised insect head’s damage (10-20 → 20-30).
• Raised kudgel’s critical attack power (+4 → +50).
• Bombs now affect terrain features (like trees and crops) within the round explosion radius rather than a square area.
• Slightly increased rate at which skeletons throw bones or shoot spells.
• Adjusted Junimo Kart:
• Added grace jumps in Junimo Kart: when you run off the track, you can still jump for a short time to recover.
• Your score is now saved if the minigame forcibly exits while playing endless mode.
• Noxious gas emitting mushrooms no longer appear in pairs.
• Reduced bubble spawn rate on whale level.
• Worm bins now need a lower fishing level (level 8→4) and produce more bait (2–5 → 4–5).
• Loom now has a higher chance of double cloth when processing quality wool.
• Fish ponds now have a chance to produce extra roe whenever they produce roe.
• Geode Crushers no longer require coal to operate.
• Adjusted penalties when knocked unconscious:
• You can no longer lose the Golden Scythe, Infinity weapons, or tools.
• You can no longer lose more than three items.
• The amount of money lost now scales to how much you have. It’s now less punishing if you don’t have much money, but more punishing if you have a lot. This also raises the maximum lost from 5000g to 15000g.
• Joja cola now gives a very short speed buff.
• Green tea now gives +0.5 speed.
• Added coal nodes to the volcano dungeon.
• Barrels now spawn on skull cavern levels divisible by 5.
• Reduced the maximum possible effect a bad luck day can have on finding a prismatic slime.
• Reduced number of bugs to kill for monster slayer goal from 125 to 80.
• Bundle changes:
• Made remixed specialty fish bundle (and analogues) reward 5 Dish O’ The Sea, to make it consistent with the classic bundle.
• River fish bundle now gives deluxe bait.
• Improved some community center rewards.
• Speed-Gro now requires 5 Moss instead of 1 Clam .
• Deluxe Speed-Gro now requires 5 bone fragments instead of 1 coral.
• Quality Fertilizer now requires 4 sap instead of 2, but produces 2 per craft (still only requires 1 fish).
• Spouses now have a seven-day “honeymoon” period after marriage which prevents them from laying in bed all day due to being upset.
• Kissing your spouse, and giving them a gift on the previous day, each reduce the “minimum heart level threshold” for a bed-ridden day by one heart (12→10 if you do both).
• Friendship gain is reduced by 33% for spouses.
• Rebalanced the crop fairy event: the chance no longer depends on the number of planted crops, it can no longer happen on the last day of the season (to avoid growing crops that might die overnight), and it can no longer choose dead crops to grow.
• Increased the shaving enchantment‘s effect on giant crops.
• The mushroom cave now provides mushrooms every second day. It was unintentionally changed to daily in Stardew Valley 1.5.
• You can no longer plant trees in the beach farm tunnel.
• Randomization no longer produces simple repeating patterns in many cases (e.g. clay farming, mushroom level prediction, crab pot fish offset, etc).(You can enable “Use Legacy Randomization” in the advanced save options to use the old randomization, though some specific patterns may still change due to the underlying changes. That option is mainly intended for speedrunners; most players should keep it disabled for the intended experience.)
• Spreading weeds can no longer destroy artifact spots.
• Increased the number of monsters that daily monster quests will ask you to slay (in some cases). Added more custom quantities, for example Dust Spirits will ask for 10-20 kills.
• Tilled dirt on the island farm now decays in the same way as the regular farm.
• Slightly increased time you have to push against farm animals before passing through them.
• Slightly boosted quarry output. Daily quarry output now increases each year, up to a limit.
• You can no longer plant trees in town.
• Secret notes are no longer created during festivals (except passive festivals like the night market and desert festival).
• Adjusted fish variety in ice fishing festival.

Credit: Stardew Valley dev blog

QOL changes

All of the quality of life changes in Stardew Valley 1.6 patch are finally answering a lot of the questions we had, including the one where the cactus seeds planted on the farm would simply die overnight. That is no longer a thing, and you won't lose the seeds; instead, you'll just get a fail message. 

You can also sit in the empty chairs during festivals, making all of these events a lot more interactive. To top it all off, one of my favourite changes is that you can also slightly change the interior of your Slime Hutch, and choose a different flooring. 

• NPCs now shove chests out of their way instead of destroying them.
• If Pam won’t be coming to the bus for any reason, she now leaves a sign informing you and you can drive yourself to the desert.
• Made more sounds positional (mainly players, tools, and machines).
• Positional sounds now fade with distance when off-screen, instead of cutting off abruptly.
• Softened the bomb fuse sound.
• The music now “ducks out” and then resumes when certain sounds are played, instead of stopping.
• You can now “strafe” while charging a watering can or hoe, allowing you to reposition your tool hit area without changing your facing direction.
• You can now refill slingshot ammo by right-clicking it with the same ammo. Previously that would just swap the item stacks.
• Planting cactus seeds on the farm now fails with a message, instead of the seeds dying overnight.
• Holding a tea sapling or seed over a garden pot now shows the green/red placement tile.
• You can no longer pick up rugs if there’s something on it.
• Checking a pet bowl will now show a text bubble with the pet’s name.
• Added a new post-fishing sparkling text to indicate when you’ve caught something for the first time.
• Torches can now be placed on sprinklers.
• You can now sit in chairs during festivals.
• You can now move filled chests by hitting them twice with a heavy tool (previously only with bare hands). The chests will shift one space at a time.
• You can now place flooring underneath most buildings.
• Crystalariums now have to be removed and replaced before a different gem can be put inside, to help avoid wasting gems accidentally.
• Daily billboard quests now have a more informative tracker notification when you make progress on them.
• Added a small checkmark icon on special orders you’ve completed before (only on town special orders board).
• You can now skip the pet adoption scene, which causes you to adopt the pet.
• Reduced the amount of time you need to push against a pet before they start shaking and then let you pass through them (1.5 → .75 seconds).
• Reduced time for mini-obelisk warp (750ms faster).
• Male farmers are no longer forced into wedding clothes on their wedding day, so you can choose your own outfit for the wedding.
• Emptying a fish pond with fish still in it will cause the remaining fish to flop out of the pond.
• You can now change the flooring of the slime hutch.
• You can now remove the starter incubator in the slime hutch.
• Slime balls no longer appear on crafted flooring.
• Added an hourglass cursor shown when you’re waiting for something to load on the title screen.
• Notification messages in the bottom-left corner now last 50% longer before going away.
• “Sound in the night” events now show an icon on the screen to indicate that a sound is playing.
• Dialogue question selectors no longer remain selected when you hover away from them, to reduce accidental selections.
• Robin’s building menu now shows how many days a building will take.
• Marnie’s animal shop now centers the camera on an appropriate building when purchasing an animal.
• Marnie’s animal shop now shows prices in the tooltip, in case the tooltip covers the price display.
• If an item menu exits while you’re holding an item, the item is now always retrieved. (Previously only some item menus like chests would do it.)
• The achievement menu now lists all potential achievements. Hidden achievements you haven’t unlocked yet are shown as “???”.
• The museum reward menu now prevents picking up a reward that won’t fit in your inventory.
• The museum reward menu now lets you exit while holding a reward. It’ll be added to your inventory if possible, otherwise it’ll drop at your feet.
• The save creation farm selector now has two columns instead of one, and no longer overlaps the back button on small screens.
• The shipping menu category pages no longer take up the whole screen, as long as the screen is beyond a minimum size.
• Inventory tooltips for food that gives a buff now shows the buff duration in the tooltip.
• The map now closes when you press the map button again.
• Exiting the Junimo Note menu from within the game menu now returns to where you were in the game menu rather than exit the menu.
• Shops now truncate item names which would overflow the menu width.
• Shops now have a slight delay before you can buy/sell items, to help avoid double-clicks doing it accidentally.
• Deleting a save on PC is now much faster.
• Significantly reduced save loading time when there are many custom locations.
• If a default farm building (like the greenhouse) is somehow removed, it’ll now be rebuilt next time you load the save.
• “Menu background” is now a drop down option, which includes “Standard”, “Graphical”, or “None”.
• Attempting to put something in a machine but failing will no longer cause you to try and consume or activate the object you’re holding.
• Kent intro event and Robin flute block event are now skippable.
• (PC) You can now shift + right-click an item on the toolbar to throw it out of your inventory (if possible).
• (PC) You can now press the Y or N key to confirm or cancel the “leave festival” confirmation box.
• (PC) Holding left-shift + left-ctrl + 1 when buying from a shop will attempt to buy a stack of 999.

Credit: Stardew Valley dev blog

Other changes

In addition to the quality of life changes brought by the 1.6 update, there are several new adjustments and fixes, such as the Adventure Guild being open until 2am, and spouses being a little bit kinder int he afternoon. 

• Adventure guild now stays open until 2am, though the music will not play after midnight.
• Gender-specific clothing variants can now be worn by any gender.
• If you have 12 hearts or more with your spouse, the chance they’ll say a neutral dialogue in the afternoon (which sometimes comes across as negative) is significantly lower (25% → 5% chance).
• Penny’s forest picnic event and Leah’s forest picnic event now only happen if it’s sunny.
• NPCs now try to avoid walking through trees and other terrain features.
• Cabins have been combined into one entry in Robin’s menu.
• Replaced pet icons on the inventory tab with the current date.
• The “Organize” button now sorts items in a more intelligent way.
• You can now drink mayonnaise and jelly, and eat pickles.
• Some colored objects now count as their color for Qi quest and dye menu.
• Clam is now considered a “fish” just like all the other shellfish.
• Added more descriptive titles to daily quests.
• Added Cyrillic sprite text and some translated world pixel art text.
• Adjusted the date/time/money box in Chinese.
• The about page now shows the build number.
• Skull caves now have a chance to also play music from the upper mines.
• Changed parrot flap sound to be different from bat flaps.
• Pans now have a chance to yield bone fragments.
• Made the character randomization a little less random, and added some of the newer hairstyles and accessories to the mix.
• Pan no longer yields the same thing if you pan in the same spot twice in a day.
• The about page no longer hides the version if a tip message is shown.
• The order that you’ll get forge enchantments is now unique per player rather than per farm.
• The Ginger Island shrine item pedestals are now normal items. Modded players can spawn them to display items decoratively (though they’re not obtainable in vanilla currently).
• Map no longer closes if you click on an area of interest.
• Fixed some NPC schedules that weren’t previously applied:
• Lewis visiting the library on winter Sundays;
• Maru and Penny hanging out on summer Sundays;
• Maru tinkering on summer Mondays;
• After reaching six hearts with some NPCs, they won’t visit their rival love interest anymore. This affects Alex visiting Haley, Elliott visiting Leah, and Haley visiting Alex.

Credit: Stardew Valley dev blog

Gameplay, cosmetic, multiplayer and bug fixes

A plethora of bug and visual fixes are also live, so the game should run a lot smoothly.

• If you’re fishing when the pirate cave changes to pirate mode, you will catch your fish.
• Fixed artifacts found in fishing chests not counting for the collection tab.
• Fixed fishing crash if a treasure chest appears while the player has a large number of stacked fishing buffs.
• Fixed a range of bugs like attribute drift and double-debuff.
• Fixed food/drink buffs discarded if they have a balanced total of effects (e.g. +2 attack and -2 speed).
• Fixed negative custom buffs shown with a double-negative (e.g. “–2 speed”).
• Fixed Squid Ink Ravioli buff not remaining active if another food buff is added later (although the buff icon was still shown).
• Fixed Squid Ink Ravioli not resetting the buff duration when you eat another one, unlike other food buffs.
• Fixed Squid Ink Ravioli description having an extra blank line.
• Fixed Burnt not showing the -3 Attack effect.
• Fixed unable to leave the Festival of Ice until it ends.
• Fixed two-second pause when entering the Stardew Valley Fair.
• Fixed dropped tools not recovered if they’re inside a constructed building.
• Fixed potted tea bushes planted in town not being harvestable.
• Fixed bee house dropping a generic “Honey” item when you break it, instead of the flavored honey it would produce when harvested normally.
• Fixed farm computer counting fiber crops as unwatered.
• Fixed geode and lost book message not shown if your first one is from a fishing chest.
• Fixed magic bait disabling some fish area checks (e.g. so you could catch river fish in the forest pond).
• Fixed heavy tappers not tracked correctly. That caused issues like heavy-tapped trees not ignored when creating mushroom trees in fall.
• Fixed rain totem used during a storm incorrectly making the next day stormy instead of rainy.
• Fixed secret note #2 not revealing Kent‘s gift taste if he hasn’t returned yet.
• Fixed wedding rings being giftable to NPCs.
• Fixed watering can‘s water left and capacity resetting on right-click into chest.
• Fixed wilted bouquet not cancelling the wedding if it hasn’t happened yet.
• Fixed various cases where item-received logic wasn’t applied consistently.
• You can now kill any slime for the “Initiation” quest, not just green slimes.
• Fixed player stuck in swimsuit if they collapse from damage while wearing it.
• Fixed broken event if the player is defeated in the mines and their name contains a slash.
• Fixed issue where you could clear a forest-themed mine level without finding a ladder.
• Fixed Magma Sparker’s debuff ignoring squid ink ravioli’s protection.
• Pressing the trigger buttons on a gamepad while in the junimo bundle menu now snaps the cursor to the ingredients slot or back.
• Fixed an issue which could cause Junimo Kart to be unplayable with a controller, if you had rebound keys to certain values.
• Fixed issue where clicking an item attached to a letter could exit the letter if your inventory was full.
• Fixed items from dialogue being lost if your inventory was full. You’ll now see a menu to collect them when the dialogue closes.
• Fixed gates popping off when opening or closing them while the player overlaps the tile.
• Fixed random seeds on Ginger Island being based on the valley’s season.
• Fixed exploit where you could keep temporary items like Qi Fruit by selling them to Pierre and buying them back later.
• Fixed fruit trees being plantable on stone tiles outside the greenhouse.
• Fixed tree stumps dropping seeds like full-grown trees.
• Fixed riding an orphaned horse (e.g. spawned using debug commands) preventing you from owning or riding other horses.
• Fixed some mail not received on the intended day if you don’t leave the farmhouse that day.
• Fixed bug where it was faster to harvest left-to-right than right-to-left.
• Fixed some spots where forage could appear out-of-bounds.
• Fixed spot where you could run into the water on the beach farm.
• Fixed minecarts unlocked before you’ve seen the cutscene.
• Fixed able to place things underneath the traveling merchant cart and pig.
• Fixed some undiggable tiles in Ginger Island dig site.
• Fixed geode crusher “off-by-one” bug/exploit.
• Fixed speed of Taro growth when grown with agriculturist and hyper speed gro (and generally fixed issues with negative phase durations).
• Fixed invisible menu preventing you from moving after closing out of the Bulletin Board Junimo Note, if you were holding a useable object.
• Fixed NPCs not having custom dialogue when accepting a movie invite for non-English players.
• Fixed Abigail showing both default and custom item delivery dialogue.
• Fixed Lewis skipping his final dialogue at the Festival of Ice on subsequent player wins.
• Fixed the fortune teller nearly always showing the text for your combat skill, instead of your highest skill.
• Fixed issue where an NPC who bought an iridium-quality item you sold to a shop could show a low-item-quality dialogue for it.
• Fixed issue where NPC dialogue could reveal gift tastes for an invalid item.
• Fixed monster grave text only shown in English.
• Fixed wrong message shown when placing indoors-only furniture outside.
• Fixed the Krobus vs Dwarf event able to happen on Fridays.
• Fixed giving a gift not counting toward socialization quests.
• Fixed invisible spouses asking to have children.
• Fixed able to invite Leo to the movies before he moves to the valley.
• Fixed able to interact with NPCs during the ice fishing event.
• Fixed NPC spouse chores sometimes not applied on the intended day (e.g. saying they filled the pet water bowl but it’s not filled).
• Fixed NPC spouses watering crops that don’t need it (e.g. fiber seeds or already watered), and almost never showing the crops-were-already-watered dialogue.
• Fixed NPCs sometimes not reacting to dumpster diving if the horse is nearby.
• Fixed Penny losing items when redecorating if they were placed on a stone slab (or a custom table without Table in the name).
• Spanish prices are now formatted like 15o instead of 15g to match the translated term (oro instead of gold).
• Fixed unlocalized text shown for: the building paint menu’s region names (like “Roof” or “Trim”), NPC names in some movie theater dialogue, NPC names in the spouse pregnancy question, Professor, Snail’s name after his first event, Leo’s name in his introductory event for some languages, fish names for some languages in certain cases, the ‘Miss’ text when an attack misses.
• Fixed Lewis’ letter for Feast of the Winter Star saying it starts at 10am instead of 9am.
• Fixed dust sprites called dust spirits in Clint’s special order and the summit cutscene.
• Fixed various typos, broken tokens, translations that don’t match the original, etc.
• Fixed NPC name translations applied to horses/pets that share a name with that NPC.
• Fixed random name generator able to produce words similar to certain slurs.
• Fixed world map tooltip for Pierre’s shop still showing “closed on Wednesdays” after he extends his business hours.
• Fixed some recipe names not matching the items they produce.
• Fixed the hats added in 1.5 translating their internal name instead of setting the display name in some languages.
• Fixed museum item descriptions not having an intended newline.
• Fixed French formatting times past midnight like “26h” instead of “02h” (e.g. on the fishing TV channel).
• Fixed French and Turkish showing broken dialogues about another NPC’s gift tastes.
• Fixed French-only display text bugs related to the ^ dialogue token.
• Fixed German truncating Professor Snail’s name in his intro event.
• Fixed Japanese and Korean formatting buff effects inconsistently.
• Fixed some broken Japanese movie reaction dialogue.
• Fixed Korean credit line missing in other languages.
• Fixed Russian event for Professor Snail’s intro freezing.
• The perfection tracker now paginates better to fit the current screen size.
• Moved “?” icon on dialogue question boxes.
• Removed phantom action cursor over island farmhouse drawer.
• Fixed toolbar drawn behind the time/money box.
• Fixed cursor over NPCs sometimes showing a gift icon when they won’t accept or react to the held item.
• Fixed some in-game error messages not having an error icon.
• Fixed inventory & crafting menus misaligned if you resize the window while they’re open.
• Fixed flashing tooltips when hovering between elements in the cooking page and collections tab.
• Fixed cosmetic issues with the title & shipping screens for higher-resolution displays.
• Fixed calendar tooltip when a modded festival and birthday occur on the same day.
• Fixed calendar drawing child NPCs lower than intended.
• Fixed the ! fish bite icon not shown when fishing in the Stardew Valley Fair and Festival of Ice.
• Fixed quality fertilizer showing a green tile on sprouted crops, even though it can’t be placed there.
• Fixed perfection tracker not skipping the typing effect when it’s paginated.
• Fixed the forge preview always showing soul level one for a galaxy soul forge.
• Fixed advanced save option tooltips being able to extend off-screen, and not shown for some field labels.
• Fixed clothing/tools sometimes showing the item-received notification on unequip.
• Fixed HUD messages sometimes overlapping.
• Fixed fonts sometimes having a ‘thin’ look.
• Fixed world map tooltip for JojaMart disappearing when the movie theater is built.
• Fixed stack numbers not drawn for machine output when the stack is > 1.
• Fixed animal purchase menu having unnecessary padding on the right.
• Fixed wiggling bottom of energy bar.
• Crab pots no longer appear during the moonlight jellies.
• Tub o’ flowers now shows the correct sprite on the day it is placed, and now always blooms indoors.
• Fixed beds or chests that were hidden for an event not reappearing afterwards.
• Fixed furniture drawn over sitting players if it has no front texture.
• Fixed bombs being invisible when placed on the summit.
• Fixed bombs able to remove stick bugs‘ sticks.
• Fixed colored objects not drawn correctly when placed on tables or eaten.
• Fixed prismatic hats not displayed properly on alien rarecrows.
• Fixed lanterns and other furniture lights not turning on after save/load if they are on a table.
• Possibly fixed clumping issue for weather debris like the spring petals.
• Fixed layering issues with seagulls and Willy’s house.
• Fixed fruit tree leaves not rustling in winter even if they’re in a non-seasonal location like the greenhouse.
• Fixed barren trees having a leafy shadow.
• Fixed weeds being less varied than intended in summer.
• Fixed weeds able to grow on top of buildings on spring 1.
• Fixed intro cutscene position not adjusted when the farmhouse is moved by a mod.
• Fixed pre-built cabins sometimes placed on top of a bush or log.
• Fixed many things on Ginger Island applying the valley’s season or weather (including fiber seeds, seasonal decor, seasonal plants, tea bushes, and tubs o’ flowers).
• Fixed Elliott appearing twice during the egg hunt.
• Fixed Lewis’ saloon drinking animation having an incorrect frame.
• Fixed bombed objects becoming tiny and sometimes showing wrong sprite index while they flash before removal.
• Fixed building placement visual/sound effects playing even for players who are nowhere near it.
• Fixed speech bubbles sometimes shown over invisible NPCs.
• Fixed crane minigame‘s music sometimes continuing a few seconds after the minigame ends.
• Fixed ‘you received X’ message & animation showing wrong item if you switch held item right as it’s triggered.
• Fixed some events fading in after a scene change before they’re fully ready, which caused issues like NPCs visibly warping into place or mid-fade flashes.
• Fixed ginger showing a watered dirt tile if you water it. This incorrectly implied that ginger needs to be watered.
• Fixed missing explosion tiles in mega bomb explosions.
• Fixed town festivals not showing the right version of Pam’s house and community center.
• Fixed an incorrect frame in Lewis’ saloon drinking animation.
• Fixed layering draw issue in the fishing fair minigame.
• Fixed crash when taking a screenshot on macOS if the ~/.local folder doesn’t exist.
• Fixed crash when removing light glows in rare cases.
• Fixed window resize on character creation resetting profit margins & starting cabins, and desyncing the ‘skip intro’ checkbox.
• Fixed able to equip a staircase as pants to obtain trimmed lucky purple shorts.
• Fixed being able to place a yellow couch in a loom.
• Fixed wilderness farm spawning a stone in water.
• Fixed hill-top farm spawning grass inside of stumps.
• Fixed Trash Bear treated as a villager (e.g. it could theoretically be picked for quests).
• Fixed save folder collision if you set the save’s name & seed to the same value as an existing save.
• Fixed selecting small buildings in the construction menu’s farm view. This fixes the gap above the shipping bin where it can’t be selected, and fixes small buildings selectable by hovering three tiles above them.
• Fixed the build number not set on Linux/macOS.
• Fixed unable to write vanilla error logs for players with special characters in their name.

Credit: Stardew Valley dev blog

Fixes for modded players

Players who choose to play with multiple modes have encountered lots of crashes, so after the SV 1.6 update many of these have been fixed, hopefully. However, that's only the case with the existing mods, so any new mods that have been released since the update might require additional fixes int he future, if some bugs will re-appear. 

• Festivals now only set sunny weather in their location context. (For example, a custom festival in the desert no longer changes weather in the valley.)
• Monsters no longer spawn at night by default on custom farm types.
• Non-binary NPCs can now pathfind through any gendered route (e.g. men’s or women’s locker room), instead of defaulting to female routes.
• Fixed crashes in multiple instances.
• Fixed calendar support for multiple events on the same day (including multiple weddings, multiple birthdays, birthdays on a festival day, etc).
• Fixed horses in indoor locations or mine/volcano levels unable to return home.
• Fixed event setup not allowing more than 9 players.
• Fixed events not exiting correctly if they crash before the first script command.
• Fixed event errors not logged to the console.
• Fixed potential event crash if a custom NPC name contains ‘farmer’.
• Fixed save loading very slowly if it has a broken outdoors location in some cases.
• Fixed some items being unremovable when spawned by players. This affects incubators, mushroom boxes, slime balls, and three unused items (locked doors and alternate wicked statues).
• Fixed issue when warping to Sandy early using mods where she could give daily quests as soon as you met her, but didn’t accept items until you fixed the bus.
• Fixed issue where sleeping in a location where an event starts the next day would skip overnight events and soft-lock the game.
• Fixed invalid game state when the day of month increases past 28 due to a mod issue. Any day past 28 is now treated as the last day of the season.

Credit: Stardew Valley dev blog

This is basically the rundown of the biggest patch released to date in Stardew Valley. subsequent patches have also been released since, and you can keep reading all about them on the next pages!