The future of Stardew Valley has been hinted at by the patch notes for the recent v1.5.5 update. The patch itself was released on November 30th, but there is some important news for v1.5.6.
“A 1.5.6 update is also currently underway. We’re working directly with PathosChild (creator of SMAPI, a very popular Stardew modding tool) to add even more modding support to the game, including some long requested “holy grail” changes which should make some aspects of modding much easier in the future. We’ve given PathosChild source code access to help us accomplish this task.
There may be some new content in 1.5.6, too, but it’s not going to be anything huge like 1.5.”
Setting aside the future of Stardew Valley for a moment, the v1.5.5 update also made some important changes. The game has been upgraded from XNA to MonoGame and now targets the .Net Framework v5. If you are a modder, this will allow you to use over 4GB of ram if you wish. The v1.5.5 update also adds a number of quality of life changes:
- Holding the CTRL key in addition to shift now lets you purchase/craft stacks of 25 items at a time.
- When starting a new save, many settings now default to what they were the last time you played the game. Some settings like zoom level, gamepad mode, and multiplayer server privacy aren’t copied over.
- You can now build or move farm buildings onto artifact spots. This destroys the artifact spots.
- You can now nudge pets out of the way while building/moving a building by clicking on them.
- You can now buy back items accidentally sold in the same shopping session.
The in-game time is now shown on the upper-right hand corner of the screen when playing Journey of the Prairie King in multiplayer. - Grass placed using Grass Starter during Winter no longer disappears when the game is reloaded (but it still won’t grow or spread).
