Forget fishponds: Stardew Valley's next update has "everything"

Well, perhaps take that with a pinch of salt. Eric "ConcernedApe" Barone's upcoming work on the charming farming lifestyle sim won't contain the sum of all things. But that's what the Stardew Valley developer has begun calling the 1.4 update, and he's not exactly wrong. From fishponds to marriage, and dozens of vital little quality of life tweaks in between, very little is going to waste when Stardew Valley's next major patch hits. Whenever that is, of course.

We've known a few things about Stardew's long-anticipated big 1.4 update for a while now. Fishponds, and the aquatic economy that comes with them, were shown off just last month. We also know you'll not longer have to share a bank account in multiplayer, but you can share a new Four Corners map designed expressly for multi-farm mundanity.

In conversation with USGamer, Barone announced that an overhaul to married life is coming - improvements to a system he hears players often feel is rather half-baked right. The institution of marriage as a fundamentally flawed entity, you say? Ah, Barone, now you're speaking my language.

That's an awful lot of stuff to cram into one update. But there's even more besides, as Barone explained that no stone will be left unturned by the 1.4 update.

"I've been unofficially calling 1.4 the "everything" update because it touches pretty much every aspect of the game in some way or another. One of my major goals was to add in a lot of "quality of life" features that make the game more convenient and effortless to play."

"There are some really simple things that were missing from the game that really improve the experience, like being able to press TAB on PC to switch from one row of your inventory to the next, or to be able to hover over an item and get an indication as to whether it's required for any of the community center bundles or not."

Altogether, Barone believes 1.4 will bring "a whole new level of polish" to Stardew Valley. He wants you to log in and wonder how you ever played the game before the update. Given that there's still no release date in sight for 1.4, we'll just have to deal with the game as it stands.

Sorry, Eric. Take all the time you need.