Stardew Valley Dev Says Multiplayer Beta On Track For Spring 2018

Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone published an update on the farming sim’s long awaited multiplayer patch on Thursday. Fans were also treated to another glimpse of some new content that will debut when Stardew Valley Update 1.3 hits PC and consoles.

According to Barone, the next Stardew Valley patch is finally feature-complete; however, all of the new text being added to the game still needs to be translated into multiple languages. Barone is working with Chucklefish’s Tom Coxon, who handled all of the multiplayer coding by himself, on an assortment of bug fixes while they wait for the new text to be localized. Once both are complete, they’ll begin a round of “serious QA” testing before launching the multiplayer beta Barone announced last year. The good news is the developer still believes fans will get their first taste of multiplayer Stardew sometime this spring. The bad news is he still can’t provide a more specific timeline.

On the plus side, we did get an early look at some new signs that will be craftable when Stardew Valley Update 1.3 is finally released to the public. It’s a relatively minor feature. Not one that’s likely to generate much excitement from the community. But the signs do feel like an important addition to the game, if only because they’ll make it a bit easier to manage a farm without relying on voice chat applications like Discord or (for PS4 owners) Party Chat.

“These signs are crafting items that will be available to you from the start of the game,” Barone wrote. “Any item in Stardew Valley can be “clicked” onto them to display.”

We’ll have to keep waiting to find out what other new features are bundled into the next Stardew Valley patch. This isn’t the first time Barone has teased new content from Update 1.3. Back in November, the one-man dev team teased fans with an unexplained purple boat and a follow-up teaser that seemed to confirm deep sea fishing (of a sort) is coming to Stardew Valley. But we’ll have to wait for the multiplayer beta to learn more the farming sim’s next big patch.

Stardew Valley is available on PS4, Xbox One, Switch and PC.