Mike Salbato
Stardew Valley 1.3 Beta Is Live, with Multiplayer Co-op and More
And now my free time is forfeit.
05.01.18 - 1:25 PM

That's it, folks: It's time again for me to not play anything but Stardew Valley for months: ConcernedApe revealed that the 1.3 update is now available to beta test, and in addition to new single-player content, it brings with it the long-awaited co-op functions.




A full blog post outlines the steps to access the beta in Steam, and some common questions and more. Once you're up and running, it's dead-simple to start farming with friends — completely contrary to the thousands of lines of re-written code that was required to add co-op to a game not originally designed around it.


Stardew Valley Cabins


You can get started in a few ways, but all co-op play revolves around cabins: Additional housing you build on your farm land, so each player has their own space and bed. I dabbled with the update a little last night, and it's really easy (and inexpensive) to quickly add a cabin or two (you can add up to 3) to an existing farm.

If you want to start fresh, there's new options now when creating a farm that allows you to begin your adventure with 1-3 cabins pre-built and ready to go. Also included are several access options, so you can farm with only your friends, only via invite codes, and more. It feels very robust and well thought-out, so hopefully the beta period irons out any bugs, so everyone can get to this update.


Stardew Valley Co-op Starting Screen


In addition to co-op, we've known more updates were coming as well, and they're apparently in this update, but ConcernedApe hasn't detailed them yet. In my quick time with it, I noticed a handful of new furniture for sale, and the new option to build additional shipping bins. I'm not sure if there's a limit on those, but the idea of placing an extra bin or two across your farm seems like we may be on the cusp of a whole new level of farming efficiency for our agricultural empires... maybe I'm too excited about this?

The plan is for 1.3 and co-op to come to Steam first, and later this year, it should hit console versions. Provided we come up for breath, we'll update you with more details as we learn them!


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