Stardew Valley's 1.6 update will add a 1-week honeymoon period for newly-married players that will keep their spouses 'from laying in bed all day due to being upset'

Stardew Valley wedding screenshot — (Image credit: Eric Barone)

The steady drip-drip-drip of Stardew Valley 1.6 patch notes continued apace today as creator Eric Barone revealed yet another change coming to the game. This one is all about wedded bliss, which will now have a "honeymoon period" that will keep everyone happy about their nuptials—for a while, anyway.

Marriage in Stardew Valley brings practical benefits, as spouses can help with chores like watering crops, feeding livestock, and cooking meals. But things can go south if you let the spark of romance grow cold: As the unofficial Stardew Valley wiki puts it, "Spouses can become unhappy if not treated well, which will result in undesirable actions, such as laying in bed all day and saying irritating things."

Fair is far: If you're being a jerk then maybe you deserve some crappy attitude and dirty dishes in return. Ideally, though, that shouldn't be happening within the first week of marriage, and thus this fix:

Spouses now have a seven-day 'honeymoon' period after marriage which prevents them from laying in bed all day due to being upset.

I feel compelled to point out that no one should take this as a license to be a dinkus to their new spouse immediately after the ceremony concludes: Respect, trust, and consideration are vital to any enduring partnership, even pixelated ones.

I think the real goal here is simply to avoid a specific gameplay oddity: You married me two days ago and you're already having second thoughts? Seven days, well, that's still not great but I suppose it's a little more reasonable as far as a window of time required to really sit back and consider the choices you've made over the course of your life that brought you to that particular moment in it.

The Stardew Valley 1.6 update is set to go live on March 19, and ahead of that Barone is tweeting out one single patch note from the update per day. Frankly, we're a little concerned for him.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.