Eric Barone riles up Stardew Valley fans hungry for update 1.6, tells them to "get ready" and then immediately "don't get too ready"

Stardew Valley update 1.6 is arriving imminently, and creator Eric Barone is riling everyone up. Well, he's riling everyone up and then pouring buckets of cold water on them by adding, "don't get too ready, it'll still be a little bit probably."

Stardew Valley fans have been waiting for the big 1.6 update for many, many months, and after a full week of tantalizing patch notes, the big day is finally here: Tuesday, March 19. The only question remaining is when exactly Barone will release the patch and the accompanying patch notes revealing every change.

Over on Discord, the developer recently said simply, "get ready," to which throngs of virtual farmers reacted with eager anticipation to what seemed like the imminent arrival of update 1.6. But then, shortly thereafter, he tempered expectations by saying it's still "a little bit" out. Here's the exchange as captured by a Twitter user:

The reason everyone's so psyched for the Stardew Valley 1.6 update release date? Well, among many changes (presumably many of which we still don't know), the update adds a whole new farm type that starts you out with two chickens and features "chewy blue grass that animals love."

In addition to that genuinely major change, 1.6 fixes a long-standing bug that made it faster to harvest from left to right, makes the area of effect of your sword's downward swing bigger to improve "game feel," and gives newlyweds a "honeymoon" period in which your new spouse can't mope around in bed all day, because that's not how you start a marriage.

Most importantly, Stardew Valley's 1.6 update lets you chug a jar of mayonnaise.