Stardew Valley multiplayer beta to start this year

Publisher Chucklefish has finally made some new announcement about the multiplayer mode which is supposed to be coming to Stardew Valley. The team have dealt with the main technical issues in the game and are now ready to share what players can expect.

Other players will be able to join someones games a ‘farmhand’. After begining a multiplayer game, Robin will build 3 cabins on the farm to house a single farmhand. Each farmhand will be controlled by another player.

Farmhands can do “almost anything the main player can do”. The blog post explains that farmhands can farm, mine, fight, forge, marry NPCs and take part in festivals. It also stats that each player has their own inventory which can be managed through a chest in their cabin if they are not online. However, certain things can only be done by the main player such as sleeping and when to start or end festivals.

It’s been confirmed that players won’t need to set up a server for the multiplayer. Friends are invited through Steam to join the farm which is great news for PC users. However, the invitation system for non-Steam versions is still currently uncertain. The blog post states that it’s “likely to be similar in most cases”.

Player-to-player marriage is still currently being looked into. It won’t use the mermaid pendant but will feature an alternative method that requires similar effort to wooing a NPC. The developers are still working on what this could be. Hopefully they will have more to reveal soon.

The blog post also confirms that the following are not currently being planned for:

• Local multiplayer
• Split-screen
• PvP

The team expect to have a beta test at the end of the year for the Steam version of the game. In early 2018, multiplayer will be fully released as the 1.3 patch for all platforms of PC. Consoles will also be getting this patch in the future. However, the Nintendo Switch will be the first to receive this patch according to the blog post.