Stardew Valley's 1.6 update will be released tomorrow, March 19, and Barone said "more than people think... He said to expect "a lot more" and was drunk with power, posting one patch note every day until the patch release.

This has now reached an absurd level of praiseworthy absurdity, and Barone's Sunday announcement was this sentence: "You can now drink mayonnaise.

Believe it or not, there is some background to this: back in October 2021, a fan of the game who goes by the handle Sage asked Barone about a rumor he had heard: "You can't eat mayonnaise and pickles in Stardew Valley. Is it true?

"I like pickles. But mayo... But mayo... But if I remember correctly, the real reason you can't eat it in the game is because it's in a glass jar, and they didn't have to draw a special animation to fish out the pickle, and they wouldn't allow you to drink mayonnaise."

"No way" is now clearly a "yes way." What bothered Baron is that it is internally contradictory: "Some glass bottles are edible, but others are not: ..... .in making a big game like Stardew Valley, we forgot to make everything consistent. There was a lot to think about."

Finally, drinkable mayonnaise almost certainly means another feature will be included as part of 1.6." Barone said in 2021 that "when fish roe was added in the 1.4 update, my thinking about eating glass jars had changed" (this patch added fish roe that could be stored and eaten in jars). But I think my thinking was different when I first created "Stardew Valley" many years before that. I don't know, maybe someday there will be another update that will allow us to eat pickles."

Folks, the first thing you hear is this: Barone has clearly put a lot into 1.6 for his longtime fans, and by leaning on a few old jokes, he's showing the kind of attitude behind this patch.

In addition to drinkable mayonnaise, Stardew Valley's 1.6 update adds a week-long honeymoon period for newlywed players; Barone also revealed that for the past eight years, left-to-right harvesting has been 100 milliseconds faster than right-to-left harvesting shocked the players. What other surprises lie ahead will be revealed tomorrow.