Rings – These rare trinkets will grant you special powers when worn. Equip two at a time to customize your ability!

Boots – Boots are all the rage in Stardew Valley… But true adventurers prize them for their protective qualities. You’d be a fool to go too deep in the caves without a sturdy pair.

Minerals – Geologists from around the continent know that Stardew Valley is a wonderful place to find geodes… heavy eggs of stone that sometimes contain minerals in their hollow cores.

The local blacksmith, Clint, is happy to break them open with his hammer for a moderate fee… revealing the glittering treasures within.

When you collect artifacts and minerals, you can choose to sell them or donate them to the local museum. As a way of saying thanks, Gunther (the curator) is happy to let you arrange the artifacts as you see fit. He might even give you special gifts or museum decorations as you work towards completing the collection.

Slingshot – After getting your hands on a slingshot, you’ll have a handy ranged weapon at your disposal. Load it up with stones, ores & more. You might have to practice a bit to get your aim down… just try not to hit Mayor Lewis on the nose!

Other things I have been working on recently:

• Fixing bugs & unintended behaviors
• Drawing more character portraits
• Menus
• A new building
• Player character blinks occasionally

Things I will be working on soon (they are all started but not entirely finished):

• Farming
• Tool upgrades
• Seasons

Of course, that’s not everything… there’s still a lot of content that needs to be added before I am happy to release this… as well as finishing multiplayer, which is no trivial task. But I am not slowing down, my virtual body is moving at generous speed and will continue!

Back to work… thanks for reading, everyone!

-Ape

Here’s some of the stuff I’ve added recently:

Mine Elevators

These can be built in the mines. When you use them, you can quickly travel to any other mine elevator platform you’ve built. Build a network of these and make mine travel a breeze.

Dungeons

As you explore the mines, you might encounter a dungeon entrance. If you can make it through in one piece, you might just leave with a pocketful of golden souvenirs. These dungeons are procedurally generated to keep things fresh. They are also totally optional for those who prefer to avoid combat!

Also:

• A new dungeon-exclusive monster
• Ladders that lead to and from each mine level
• More or less finished the different mine biomes
• approx. 10 new mine-exclusive “decor” items
• (stuff I won’t spoil)
• A couple of new deep mine songs
• Back-end file IO stuff that keeps the mines persistent

I promise this is the last solely-about-graphics update for a while! I’ve been doing a big “month and a half of graphics”, and I’m finally about done with it. A lot of what I’ve been doing has involved redrawing or touching up older sprites that I wasn’t happy with. The old stuff was passable, but I am so much happier with the new, and I think it really does help breathe life into the valley. It’s funny how a seemingly trivial graphical detail can excite the imagination and evoke a sudden thrill, drawing you into the game world on a much deeper level. I know I’ve experienced it and loved it, and it’s something I’m hoping to achieve with Stardew Valley.

Here are some of the things I’ve done recently:

• Completely redrawn, taller Player Character and NPC’s.
• Player Character customization (As shown in Mini Dev Update #2), clothing, and hats.
• Redrew nearly everything in the mines, and raised the height of the mine “diggable walls” to fit the taller character.
• Added several new types of mine level (some with suspension bridges spanning across deep ravines).
• Redesigned and redrew much of the exterior landscapes, including some better looking buildings (not completely finished), taller cliffs, trees, flowers, and a few little touches here and there. (Screenshot below)
• NPC portraits, each with at least 4 expressions. (not entirely finished, but staying on schedule)
• Intro sequence (not really related to graphics but I did it anyway). The intro is part cutscene, part interactive, and include a couple of new country ditties. I will eventually add the option to skip it altogether.
• Redrew and redesigned nearly every interior in the game. (Screenshots below)

(click to enlarge)

Graphics improvements!

Better House, taller NPC’s:

The old farmhouse was not very appealing. I’m so much happier with this one. I’ll leave the upgraded houses as a surprise.

Character portraits (works in progress):

Clockwise from top left – Neutral Haley, Neutral Elliot, Angry Penny, Enraptured Sebastian

These character portraits are smaller than the previous ones… it was nice to be able to see more clothes, but these are a lot quicker to draw, freeing up more time for development in other areas of the game. Plus, I think you can see enough to get a feel for each character’s style.

I’ve made a bunch of progress on character customization, and I’d like to share some of the results with you! Above, you can see just a few of the many possible combinations for your character. After you’ve created your starting look, there’s nothing stopping you from getting a haircut or changing your outfit in the future. Below is the unfinished character customization screen. You won’t have access to all clothes when you first start your character, but over time you’ll be able to put together a pretty sharp wardrobe!

Peer across the cave floor from your very own desktop!

16:10 (widescreen)

16:9 (very widescreen)

A couple of screenshots of some cooperative activities.

Fishing with buddies 🙂

Decorating with the Mrs

New Official Stardew Valley trailer!