Stardew Valley mini-update adds pet adoption, fixes moss issues arising from the 1.6 mega-update
Stardew Valley, one of our favourite RPGs despite coming out almost a decade ago, still has an attentive steward in the form of developer Eric Barone. After the recent 1.6 mega-update to the game, which added a whole bunch of stuff, Barone (better known in his developer form as ConcernedApe) Xeeted out a list of fixes in the now-available 1.6.3 update. This makes tweaks to things arising from 1.6 (many of them addressing moss, a new foraging item) and fixes bugs, one of which was causing 'excess trash' to be fished.
Importantly, 1.6 added more pet animals to the game, and the mini-update has built in a case where if you don't have a pet by year two, for any reason, then you can adopt them from Marnie's. This is lovely.
As well as adjusting how fast moss grows, adding foraging XP for gathering moss, and making sure adult mossy green rain trees boost the moss growth rate of nearby trees, Barone has made tweaks to multiplayer. When you're playing with pals, they all live on your farm with you, in little cabins, and 1.6 expanded the limit to 8. So 1.6.3 adds new cabins to starter layouts for multiplayer, and you can now paint the new cabins once they're at the third upgrade level.
Most other fixes are to do with things like quest titles being too wide or item names being too long in shop menus, minor graphical issues, and things like that. But the adoption case just strikes me as being particularly nice. If you're putting pets in your game, might as well make sure everyone can have one.
Previously said that 1.6 was going to make Stardew Valley "easier and more powerful to mod", so I remain interested in seeing what the (already extremely healthy) Stardew modding community get up to. Meanwhile, we can presumably expect Barone to get back to Haunted Chocolatier at some point.
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