Stardew Valley’s fast-approaching 1.6 update is introducing new game content such as a new festival and dialogue, and it’s bringing some quality-of-life changes with it too. Stardew’s developer Eric ‘ConcernedApe’ Barone has been coy with plenty of the patch’s finer details so far, but did recently let one detail slip that is proving to be a much bigger deal than it seems on its surface. And folks are seemingly ecstatic about the change.
While they were working on the patch notes, ConcernedApe tweeted out the following line:
Fruit tree lovers of the world, rejoice. After 1.6, Stardew Valley players will gain a sapling of their fruit trees when they are cut down. While some players thought this might make for a way to game the economy and plant numerous fruit trees (which seem to yield a lot of money in the game), it is intended as a quality-of-life tweak to make relocating your orchards less of a chore.
Additionally, the sapling will have the same maturity as the tree, meaning that when you replant the sapling, you won’t have to begin growing the tree from scratch. According to responses from ConcernedApe, this change does not mean that the replanted fruit tree will immediately yield the same quality of fruit it was producing before it got cut down, but the fruit tree will regrow much more quickly than usual and eventually get back to where it was.
Stardew’s 1.6 update was announced last year and marked the first new content for the game in a long while. Though it was mostly intended to make modders’ lives easier, it has understandably grown a bit in the time since its announcement. At the time, ConcernedApe also claimed that they were “taking a break” from the development of their follow-up cozy RPG, Haunted Chocolatier, in order to develop 1.6. It’s safe to assume that when 1.6 drops next week, it’ll be the last major piece of content for Stardew while ConcernedApe switches gears back onto Haunted Chocolatier, which still seems to be a ways out.
