Stardew Valley’s 1.6 Patch Focuses on Bizzare Bug. That’s One of Changes in New Update, More Will Be Revealed Every Day
Eric Barone is going to share with fans one change from the 1.6 update every day until its release. Among other things, the patch will fix a rather strange bug related to harvesting crops.
It's no secret that Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone isn't taking it easy, to the worry of some fans. Maybe he has to relax after working on the next version of his hit, as the dev of Stardew Valley appears to be playfully teasing the fans by unveiling just one change from update 1.6 every day.
One change in Stardew Valley 1.6 right off the bat
We wrote about one new feature yesterday, and although it was quite important (judging by the enthusiasm of fans), no one will probably call it a big change. At that time, some SV fans were already wondering if Barone was teasing them in this manner. Clearly, these "fears" were justified.
In the next post, Barone announced that until patch 1.6 is released - which will take place on March 19 - he will publish single "spoiler-free" items from the list of changes in this update every day (via X).
Even if the developer's intention was to "demonstrate" something to the fans, they weren't concerned at all about his decision. On the contrary, the majority of players are pleased to receive a new patch teaser every day, even if it's quite modest.
The first two changes proved to be intriguing, especially considering that Barone had already disclosed a fair amount of information about the patch earlier.
Small bug, big waste of time
In yesterday's post, Barone confirmed what some fans had suspected for a long time: for 8 years in Stardew Valley, crops were harvested faster from left to right than the other way around. Patch 1.6 will fix this issue, with the developer clarifying that it means equalizing to the faster of these methods.
Players have been sharing these observations for a long time, and of course, there were also people who put it to the test in practice. This isn't a small difference either. The gathering animation now takes an extra "100 milliseconds" (i.e. 1 decisecond or 0.1 second) to complete, but it is still looped. Collecting from left to right could save up to 20% of the time compared to starting from the right side for larger orchards, flower beds, etc.
Even though internet users have been posting videos proving this thesis for a long time, knowledge about this error wasn't at all widespread (after all, most threads from the last few years on this topic didn't gain much publicity). Just take a look at the fans' comments on social media. Many fans either lacked certainty about the existence of this "bug" or were completely unaware of the possibility of its existence.
So the question arises: was Eric Barone himself also unaware of this issue? It's possible to question this in light of the player reports mentioned, but it is surprising that it took him so long to address this seemingly straightforward error. Another thing is that sometimes "simple" bugs can have a surprisingly complicated cause (or fixing them can be quite difficult).
As you can see, even seemingly trivial changes or fixes can resonate widely among players. We will soon learn if the same will apply to the next "teaser" for patch 1.6 of Stardew Valley.
