Stardew Valley’s latest update adds a new friend to retrieve lost items and more

Seven months after the launch of Stardew Valley‘s 1.6 update and developer Eric “ConcernedApe” Barone is still introducing new features and fixes for the beloved farming sim; and that continues with today’s 1.6.9 update – released alongside 1.6 for consoles – which, among other things, adds a new friend to retrieve lost items.

More specifically, once Stardew Valley’s 1.6.9 update is installed, players who’ve unlocked and then lost a unique item will find a special shop now materialises in the secret woods at midnight. Items that can’t be re-obtained any other way will be available here for 10,000g, and Barone notes anyone will be able to buy lost items in multiplayer.

Elsewhere, players can now put legendary fish in fish ponds, albeit it limited to one fish per pond. These in turn will produce legendary fish roe with fish having a unique water colour. There are also new Easter eggs, dialogue tweaks, JojoMart work portraits for Sam and Shane, the ability to place beds and sleep in any constructed building (as long as they permit furniture), and objects dropped in water now float, meaning there’s a short time to retrieve them.

That’s on top of balance changes – which, among other things, introduce several new items to shops – and quality of life updates, including improved automatic save game recovery and tweaks that’ll resend most achievements, recipes, and important mail if players manage to miss them.

Stardew Valley’s 1.6.9 update is available now on PC, and full patch notes can be found on Barone’s website. Additionally, all 1.6.9 features are included as part of the game’s mayonnaise-guzzling 1.6 update on consoles and mobile, which – if you missed last month’s announcement – also launches today.

Whether that’s it for Stardew Valley updates remains to be seen; Barone hasn’t detailed his plans for the farming sim beyond his 1.6 for consoles release, although he did previous admit he’d been so “committed to finalising Stardew 1.6 first”, he hadn’t done any additional work on his next game Haunted Chocolatier – “in a long time”.