Eric Barone goes mad with power: He's revealing a single Stardew Valley update patch note every day

Eric Barone.

"Power tends to corrupt," Lord Acton warned us in 1870. "And absolute power corrupts absolutely." Those words carry no less weight today than they did 150 years ago, and I can think of no more pointed example of the truth of his caution than that of Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone, who has clearly gone mad with the kind of power only attainable as a successful indie game developer: Stardew Valley's tyrant king is now taunting his long-suffering followers with a slow-drip release of patch notes for the upcoming 1.6 update.

The March 19 release date of the Stardew Valley 1.6 update was announced in February, but with no patch notes or even a rundown of highlights, leaving players desperately craving more information. Last week, Barone further tantalized his fans with a promise that the patch "adds so much stuff to all the different aspects of the game," but still refused to say more. 

What stuff, Eric? Which aspects? Why won't you tell us?

Today, feeding on the fervor of his following (or so I like to imagine, anyway), he took the teasing a step further. "I'll post a random non-spoilery patch note line each day until the 19th," Barone tweeted.

Like a contagion, the madness quickly spread:

pic.twitter.com/SqlOpgFXTQMarch 12, 2024

But where does the true madness lie: With the madman, or in those who choose to follow him? Let's try not to think about that too much as we run down what we've got so far.

DAY ONE: FRUIT TREES

• Cutting down a fruit tree now yields the appropriate fruit sapling. If the tree is mature (ie the fruit quality is > basic), it will yield a sapling with the same quality as its fruit. The higher the quality, the faster the sapling will mature when replanted.

DAY TWO: TIME-VS-DIRECTION AS IT APPLIES TO THE PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF CROPS

• Fixed bug where it was faster to harvest left-to-right than right-to-left.

Who knows what lies in store for day three, and beyond? All we can say for certain is that we have six more days of these cryptic utterings before the 1.6 update, and the full patch notes, finally arrive. And all we can hope for is that when the day arrives, Barone will revert to the noble, fair-minded man he was, and put all of this behind him once and for all—or at least until the inevitable Stardew Valley 1.7 update comes out.

(To be perfectly clear: Power does corrupt, but in this case Barone's just having some fun in the leadup to the 1.6 launch, and so are we.)