What Stardew Valley 1.7 Desperately Needs
Stardew Valley 1.7 is officially happening, which means it is once again time for us to stare at our farms and ask, “How is this game ten years old, and why am I still emotionally attached to a blue chicken?”
The upcoming Stardew Valley 1.7 update already sounds promising. ConcernedApe has confirmed that Sandy and Clint will become marriage candidates, and he has teased improvements that will make children more interesting.
Before we begin planning Clint’s divorce, however, there is one important warning: Stardew Valley 1.7 does not have a confirmed release date. ConcernedApe has also stated that supposed 1.7 leaks are fake. So no, the random TikTok claiming Krobus is opening a nightclub cannot currently be trusted.
Everything below is a wishlist based on parts of Stardew Valley that could still use more depth. These features are not confirmed unless clearly stated.
1) Children Who Actually Feel Like Part of the Family
This is the biggest one, and thankfully, ConcernedApe already knows it.
Children in Stardew Valley are adorable, but they currently contribute approximately as much to farm life as a decorative houseplant. They crawl, grow into toddlers, run around the house and occasionally block the exact doorway you need.
That is essentially their entire résumé.
Stardew Valley 1.7 desperately needs children with personalities, dialogue and small daily routines. They do not need to grow into adults and inherit the ancient fruit empire, but they should at least feel connected to the valley.
Imagine your children:
Attending lessons with Penny, Jas and Vincent.
Playing outside on the farm.
Developing different personalities.
Helping with tiny chores.
Attending festivals beside you.
Reacting to their parent and your spouse.
Giving you terrifying handmade gifts..
I do not need my child to water 700 crops. I just need them to acknowledge that I exist before sprinting silently into a wall.
Making children more interesting is one of the few Stardew Valley 1.7 features that ConcernedApe has directly discussed. Hopefully, this means our tiny household freeloaders are finally receiving character development.
2) Marriage That Does Not Become a Roommate Simulator
Getting married in Stardew Valley is wonderful. You date someone, experience their emotional heart events, give them a Mermaid’s Pendant and hold a beautiful wedding.
Then they move into your house and say the same four things for the next seven years.
Marriage deserves more life in Stardew Valley 1.7, especially with Sandy and Clint joining the romance system. Players need more couple activities, changing dialogue and events that happen after the wedding.
Spouses can currently help with certain chores, give gifts and provide meals, but married life could go much further.
We need:
More spouse-specific dates
Anniversary dialogue
Couples attending festivals together
New arguments and reconciliation events
Spouses visiting friends and continuing their hobbies
Family activities with children
More dialogue connected to farm progress
Marriage should not feel like the end of a character’s story. Leah should still make art. Harvey should still run the clinic. Elliott should continue writing. Shane should continue working on his recovery and caring for his chickens.
They married a farmer. They did not join a witness protection program.
Sandy will also need a believable schedule after marriage. She currently runs the Oasis in the Calico Desert, so somebody needs to explain who is watching the shop while she is standing on my porch at 6:00 a.m. discussing fence repairs.
4) A Community Center People Actually Use
Restoring the Community Center is one of Stardew Valley’s biggest accomplishments.
You spend months collecting fish, crops, artisan goods, minerals and one extremely inconvenient Red Cabbage. The Junimos restore the building, the town celebrates and Pierre performs his favorite hobby: making everything about Pierre.
Then the Community Center mostly sits there.
Stardew Valley 1.7 should turn it into a real community space. Villagers could hold weekly activities, cooking classes, town meetings, children’s lessons, crafting events or seasonal celebrations inside the building.
Different rooms could finally serve their original purposes:
The kitchen could host cooking contests.
The crafts room could hold workshops with Robin, Leah or Emily.
The fish tank could feature rotating fish displays.
The bulletin board could offer community projects.
The vault could store town funds or unlock upgrades.
Completing the Community Center should make Pelican Town feel more alive. Instead, everyone celebrates its return and immediately goes back to standing in Pierre’s store every Tuesday.
The Joja route could receive its own expanded content too. A restored Community Center and a Joja Warehouse should create noticeably different futures for the town instead of becoming two paths that eventually lead back to business as usual.
5) Festivals That Keep Changing
Stardew Valley 1.6 improved festivals by adding new dialogue and alternate layouts that appear in later years. That was a great start, but Stardew Valley 1.7 could take the idea even further.
Long-term farms need festivals that evolve.
The Egg Festival could add new hiding spots and more competitors. The Stardew Valley Fair could introduce rotating contests. The Flower Dance could acknowledge marriages, children and changing relationships. The Feast of the Winter Star could feature new gifts, dialogue and town traditions.
Most importantly, somebody else should occasionally win the Egg Hunt.
Abigail has been humiliating the children of Pelican Town for years. She is a grown woman sprinting through the town square and snatching eggs from Vincent. At this point, Mayor Lewis needs to create age divisions.
Small changes would give veteran players a reason to attend festivals again instead of arriving, buying one rarecrow and leaving before anyone notices.
6) More Life for Forgotten Characters and Locations
Pelican Town has several characters who feel like they are waiting for their stories to begin.
Gunther stands behind the museum desk forever. Marlon runs the Adventurer’s Guild but cannot develop a normal friendship with the farmer. The Joja cashier spends her working life silently watching Morris terrorize a small town.
Stardew Valley 1.7 should give these background characters dialogue, schedules, gifts and heart events. They do not all need to become marriage candidates. Sometimes I simply want to know whether Gunther has hobbies or whether he sleeps underneath the museum desk.
Several locations could also use more purpose:
The Spa.
The Railroad.
The Community Center (as mentioned).
The Witch’s Swamp.
The Adventurer’s Guild.
The Calico Desert outside festival days.
Sandy becoming romanceable should naturally bring more content to the desert, but the area deserves more regular activity too. New visitors, quests, shops or desert events would make the bus trip feel worthwhile after players have already conquered Skull Cavern.
Please give us something to do at the Spa beyond sitting silently in warm water while our energy bar slowly recovers from planting 400 melons.
7) Animal and Pet Competitions
Stardew Valley 1.6 gave players multiple pets, pet gifts, new pet breeds and the ability to place hats on cats and dogs. This was excellent because every serious farming simulator eventually understands that the cat requires formalwear.
Now Stardew Valley 1.7 needs to give our animals more activities.
Seasonal animal competitions would fit perfectly into Pelican Town. Players could enter cows, chickens, rabbits, sheep or pets and compete based on friendship, happiness or product quality.
Marnie could host the event. Jas and Vincent could help. Shane could enter one of his chickens and become dangerously competitive. Mayor Lewis could judge, despite clearly having no relevant qualifications.
Pets could also learn simple behaviors, follow the farmer around town or react differently based on personality. Maxing out a pet’s friendship should feel like more than repeatedly filling a water bowl until Grandpa’s evaluation notices.
Our animals have spent years producing eggs, milk, wool and truffles. They deserve one tiny trophy.
8) Better Storage and Late-Game Farm Management
Stardew Valley 1.6 added Big Chests and improved several quality-of-life features, but experienced farmers still spend an alarming amount of time opening containers and whispering, “Where did I put the hardwood?”
Stardew Valley 1.7 should make late-game organization easier without removing the satisfaction of managing a farm.
Useful additions could include:
Searchable chests.
Custom chest labels.
A button to deposit matching items into nearby storage.
Better machine tracking.
More information through the Farm Computer.
A larger calendar or planning screen.
Easier recipe and crafting-material tracking.
This would not make the game too easy. It would simply protect players from discovering that the item they spent three days searching for was inside the purple chest behind the mayonnaise machines.
Late-game farms can contain hundreds of crops, animals and processing machines. At that point, the true final boss is not Mr. Qi. It is inventory management.
9) A Farm Map Editor
A farm map editor would give Stardew Valley nearly endless replay value.
Players could design custom farm layouts, move ponds and cliffs, create themed challenges and share maps with other farmers. Console and mobile players would also gain access to the kind of custom experiences PC players often receive through mods.
A map editor has been discussed publicly as an idea, but it has not been confirmed as a Stardew Valley 1.7 feature. For now, it belongs firmly in wishlist territory.
Still, imagine the possibilities:
Tiny farm challenges.
Animal-only farms..
Maze farms.
Island farms.
Multiplayer village layouts.
Farms designed around fishing, mining or foraging.
A farm containing one enormous pond because you make questionable decisions.
A sharing system could keep Stardew Valley fresh for years without requiring every map to be created by the development team.
What Stardew Valley 1.7 Does Not Need
The update does not need more currencies.
Stardew Valley already has gold, Qi Gems, Golden Walnuts, Prize Tickets, Calico Eggs and several other items that live in my wallet while I forget what they purchase.
It also does not need to turn every activity into a longer grind. The best Stardew Valley updates add surprises, personality and useful options. They do not simply ask players to collect 900 Glowing Purple Turnips so a door will open.
Most importantly, Stardew Valley 1.7 does not need to become a completely different game. Its strongest features are still its characters, secrets, progression and strangely powerful ability to make chopping pixelated trees feel therapeutic.
The update just needs to make the valley feel a little more alive.
Final Thoughts
Stardew Valley 1.7 already has a strong foundation. Sandy and Clint are becoming marriage candidates, children are receiving attention, and ConcernedApe has said there are other surprises planned.
What the update desperately needs is more depth after the major milestones. Children should feel like family members. Spouses should continue living their lives. The Community Center should become an actual community center. Festivals, animals and forgotten locations should keep changing as the years pass.
Stardew Valley does not need to become bigger simply for the sake of being bigger. It needs more reasons to care about the world we have already spent hundreds of hours living in.
And searchable storage.
Please, ConcernedApe. I have not seen my Galaxy Soul since Fall Year 6.