1.5 Update Reactions Thread

LunarFox

Greenhorn
I'm loving the new farm type! How do we get to the new locations, though? Maybe I'm just missing something.
 

greyfoggyday

Farmhand
Crazy excited to try this out. I figured it'd come out next week after Christmas. Nope. Today. Cannot believe it. Also for new players, the game is currently on sale on Steam! man, dudes a class act, adds a ton of new content to the game, and then discounts its already generous price.
 

ManiacalSpark

Greenhorn
What is really, really funny to me is how I predicted a lot of the Island Farm stuff on the old Chucklefish forums, lol. STill absolutely great to see that the game is still receiving quality updates like this. Can't wait to play again once I get a PC that isn't a hunk of garbage that can't play any games, like this one is.

For such a large area, I'd like to see it have a bit more commitment than just being able to come and go as you please. Let's break my additions to your idea into a couple of sections for improving the depth of it.

For the sake of keeping with your 'man from the city' scenario, when you first initiate the event you get a big cutscene where you travel to the island by seaplane) with the Man from the City (if married your spouse and kids come with you, if single you go with whoever you've got the most hearts with. Or just Willy or Lewis). On the island is the Plantation Manor house, which is in disrepair, a tropical forest full of fruits (but not many trees for woodworking), a pier and a small village that supported the Manor. This village is filled with local traders and artisans that made up the Plantation's former staff and workers. There's also the larger farming area, but you can only plant tropical crops or Summer crops from Stardew Valley. And the cave itself, which would, in my mind, be similar to the Mountain Mines than the Skull Cave. I wouldn't include the option to grow the island.

When the even ends and whenever you purchase the island instead of by dingy or a smaller boat whenever you want, you have to help Willy repair an old fishing boat of his (maybe have it dry docked or just docked on the far side of the beach with the second pier) and you have to complete a another bundle (this time focused more on crafting goods, battery packs, etc) as well as spending gold in order to be able to go to the island on your own. This would be a significant investment, much like unlocking the bus was, on top of buying the island itself. Again, this is a major expansion to the game so gameplay wise it makes more sense to make unlocking the island a very, very large time/gold sink. Unless this was to be a paid expansion, then I could see it being you buy the island so that the content isn't blocked off by the bundle.

Time on the island.

For the sake of the island not being another Calico Desert distraction, once you arrive on the island you discover that a storm has destroyed the pier where you docked before. While Willy can let you off, he can't stay because there's no place to moor his fishing boat and he returns to Stardew Valley. You and your spouse (or just you) are left alone on the island with a largely empty Plantation Manor, no real supplies, and a village full of strangers. As Willy heads back to Stardew Valley, he promises to return at the end of the season and that he'll take care of the farm for you. Your immediate goal is to repair the dock so that you can get back to Stardew Valley when Willy returns.

While you do own the islanders, the islanders will treat you and your possible family with distrust. The shopkeeper will trade with you, but you'll have to go the usual route of earning the villager's trust not by spamming gifts, but completing quests. Lower heart levels would be more reliant of fetching items from the island, stepping up to cleaning out the island cave, etc. Eventually you'd be able to hire islanders to farm the Plantation, but to keep you from swimming in money from the higher yield rates of having a much larger farming space, you have to pay these workers as well as investing in repairs to the Manor and island village in general.

Once you repair the dock, you can contact Willy. Willy informs you that he's on his way, but that since he only knows about fishing, that he wasn't able to grow anything on the farm. Everything is still standing, your animals are still alive and the farm is relatively clear of debris, but it just isn't producing.

When Willy returns at the end of the season, you will have to leave the island for at least one full season (this makes the old overworld still relevant) and If you've cultivated your relationships on the island enough, you can assign a manager to take care of the Plantation for you. The downside is that while you're gone, you can't make direct money from the island. Instead, you have to use a import/export system between your farm and the plantation,, importing goods from the island every three days to sell, and exporting goods to the island to complete Manor repairs or other projects you left on the island.
 

Elenna101

Farmer
OMG I'm so excited! Was going to get a bunch of studying done today but I don't think that's happening lol... I wasn't expecting this until late this week at the earliest!
 

Elenna101

Farmer
Stream-of-consciousness thoughts as I read through the changelog. Probably nobody cares about this wall of text, sorry.
- Definitely going to restart on the beach farm with the remixed CC and mine rewards. I'm curious if it's a harder CC or just different, I've been hoping for a "hard mode" CC for a while but didn't think he'd actually go for that. Not sure how I feel about no sprinklers, but I guess I'll just have to rush gold/iridium watering can instead of rushing sprinklers like I usually do.
- I wonder if beach farm is going to be in the same location relative to the town as the other farms?
- I don't use mods (too lazy to install SMAPI, mostly, and I'm having fun with the base game) but it's great that CA supports modders so much.
- Oh, wow, Ginger Island sounds cool. New NPCs! And it sounds like once you unlock the island farm it might basically function as a larger (and presumably harder to access) greenhouse? Interesting.
- Gonna eventually want to redo my main farm so it has room for all the new stuff, which will be interesting. I already know that there isn't space for another obelisk in the place where I have them right now.
- Ostrich?? I strongly suspect the basic chickens and cows will still be the best for money, but that definitely won't stop me from getting some ostriches.
- Ooh, moving the greenhouse and shipping bin will open up some nice options for farm layouts. I like. Also really glad he listened to fans' desires for beds to be movable.
- Being able to set the seed value is going to make some challenge runs (e.g. seeded summer 1 CC completion) simpler to do. I wonder if CA has been lurking in the same Twitch streams as me?
- Guaranteeing year 1 CC completion is a really nice option that I hadn't thought about as a possibility
- I kinda want to try lower profit margins on my new farm now. But maybe lack of sprinklers will be enough of a barrier to profit? I assume sprinklers are still usable in the greenhouse and the island farm though.
- Half of me thinks swimming ducks are adorable, and the other half is worried because I've been using lakes as fencing
- Basically everything in "other new content and features" is fascinating. If we can meld rings, does that mean we can have more than two effects? Any chance the "special orders" will let us get some NPC couples together? The heck is that second community upgrade? Nice, more reason to actually go to festivals! Literally all the new crafted items sound useful, except maybe the geode crusher. Ooh, we can finally eat bug meat (I assume!) Only with a kitchen, but still. Gonna have to figure out how to create large amounts of hyper-speed gro. Nauseated is going to be a tough debuff to deal with, but it fixes the thing where you can pause time by eating food in single-player, making you nearly invincible if you have enough food and are paying attention.
- Sitting on chairs! and outdoor furniture!! I've been really looking forward to both of those
- YES being able to talk to people on a horse is a wonderful addition
- Mildly disappointed that he didn't add the ability to buy large amounts of items (e.g. wood/stone) with one click, but oh well. (Also kinda disappointed that we still have to change the settings in each save instead of having the ability to change the default settings for all saves, but I guess that only really matters for speedruns.)
- Thank goodness for inventory sorting not changing tool order. I might actually use it now.
- An "effective fishing level of 15+"? Pretty sure that was impossible in 1.4, are we getting new +fishing food? Or other ways to increase level?
- Oh, wow, maybe I'll actually try for Stone Owl/Strange Capsule now? I'm guessing he got rid of the thing where they could check tiles that were never empty (e.g. house tiles or pond tiles) for the "are 50 random tiles on your farm empty" check.
- New slingshot controls will take a little getting used to, but they're definitely better.
- "having a Butterfly Hutch in your house and repeatedly sleeping without leaving would spawn endless butterflies in the house." I did not know that was a thing and now I'm sad I never saw it.
- "Fixed crops sometimes growing a day slower than they should" Wait, is this the thing where pumpkins on deluxe speed-gro took a day longer than starfruit on deluxe speed-gro even though they had the same base growth time? Nice, didn't realize he was even aware of that, that'll make growing pumpkins in fall easier. Although maybe hyper speed-gro would be better to use anyways? We'll see.

TL;DR wow that is a LOT of stuff and I'm super excited :D
 

goboking

Rancher
Agriculturist + Hyper Speed-Gro = 43% increased growth speed. I'm looking forward to seeing the math on this to see if Artisan isn't the no-brainer it used to be.
 

El Ravager

Greenhorn
Thanks, updating!!!

...or not. Not on GOG yet, maybe next year.
Really? My GOG version updated to 1.5 about 10 minutes after the release was announced. Do you use GOG Galaxy? That's what did it for me.

I'm loving the new farm type! How do we get to the new locations, though? Maybe I'm just missing something.
It's through
the new door in Willy's shack.
 

josephrooks

Greenhorn
Exciting! Does anyone know the rundown on Hoppers yet? Can they remove items from machines and move them into chests, or are they only for loading new items into machines once you remove the output manually?
 

Quillmagic

Farmer
I was hooked as soon as my farmer sat down on a chair. I started a new beach farm account (The beach farm is becoming one of my favorites) and also logged into my almost endgame account (Check in the progress thread soon, but beware of spoilers) And I absolutely LOVE the new hair-- They never had any long hairstyles I liked. :laugh:
 
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Shart

Planter
Agriculturist + Hyper Speed-Gro = 43% increased growth speed. I'm looking forward to seeing the math on this to see if Artisan isn't the no-brainer it used to be.
Previously, I always had agriculturist for the day when I planted the crops and changed it to artisan the following day (assuming you already unlock sewer). You would still get the full 10% speed increase benefit despite only having it for 1 night. I assume this patch didn't change this mechanic
 
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