Stardew Valley players finally learn the truth: Eric Barone confirms that for the past 8 years, left-to-right harvesting has been 100ms faster than right-to-left harvesting

GamesLife SimStardew ValleyStardew Valley players finally learn the truth: Eric Barone confirms that for the past 8 years, left-to-right harvesting has been 100ms faster than right-to-left harvestingWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Eric Barone)

Stardew Valley screenshot - farmer standing next to a well near his field and house

Stardew Valley players have theorized for years that harvesting crops from left to right is faster than harvesting them from right to left. Not hugely faster, hardly even noticeable, but just ever so slightly quicker. For non-Stardewers it’s the sort of thing that sounds a little weird and even ridiculous—not quite up there with fake moon landings and “Elvis is alive” conspiracy theories, but of a similar nature. Left-to-right, right-to-left—come on, be serious here!

Except in this case, well, it turns out that the temporally-sensitive farmers were correct: Stardew Valley creator Eric Barone confirmed today that there is in fact a bug that caused left-to-right harvesting to be faster than right-to-left harvesting, and it’s going to be fixed in the big 1.6 update coming out next week.

(Image credit: Eric Barone (Twitter))

I’ll post a random non-spoilery patch note line each day until the 19th

Now, this isn’t entirely new or unknown, at least among some deeply committed members of the Stardew Valley community. Three years ago, for instance, redditor Snow-Infernus conducted an experiment that delivered clear-cut results:

🚜 Seven-row harvesting, left-to-right: 11.11 seconds🚜Seven-row harvesting, right-to-left: 13.11 seconds

“I discovered this while playing on Switch on the latest 1.5 build. Harvesting 3 rows of 7 columns results in exactly 2 seconds difference,” theyexplained. “|No boosts or status effects applied. I’ve found that with larger plots it’s actually faster to walk back to the left side and move from left to right again, rather than harvest back from right to left.”

Barone later confirmed the specific nature of the bug—“The left facing harvest animation was 100ms longer than it should’ve been”—and that as far as he knows, the bug has been there since Stardew launched in 2016.

(Image credit: Eric Barone (Twitter))

as far as i know, yes. The left facing harvest animation was 100ms longer than it should’ve been

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There are too many variables in field size and crop type to really nail it down, so let’s look at it this way: If Snow-Infernus' experiment was replicated just once in each of Stardew Valley’s30 million copies sold, that would total 60 million seconds of lost time. That translates in turn to 1 million minutes, 16,667 hours, 694 days, or nearly two years. Two years! All because you were facing the wrong way when it was time to pick the potato trees.

Ah well, better late than never—and to be clear, Barone confirmed that the fix willspeed up the right-to-left movement, not slow down the left-to-right. Efficiency!

The Stardew Valley 1.6 update is set to go live on March 19, and in case you were worried about it, Barone confirmed last week that despite its size, it will not wipe your progress: “All your save files will be fully intact.”

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