In November last year, Stardew Valley developer Eric Barone told us work on the sedate farming sim's much-anticipated multiplayer component was "coming along great". In January this year, we received the teasiest of teases from the creator, and yet another assurance of its well being earlier this month. 

Now, alongside the base game's 1.3 update, Stardew Valley's public multiplayer beta is go. 

Via Steam and/or LAN, up to four players can get their hands dirty in both new games or the host's existing single-player save. Each player is assigned their own cabin, says Chucklefish's Tom Coxon in this post, as you work together towards common goals such as farming, mining, fishing and fighting. 

A scalable difficulty level means profit margins can be tweaked to suit high production—while a new chat box and custom emoji suite (which stocks 200 custom Stardew Valley emojis) let you communicate with your pals. 

And if things get more serious than that, you can of course "woo Pelican Town’s NPCs" or "craft a wedding ring to propose to a fellow Player". Likewise, you can also divorce or ban farmhands by demolishing their cabins. Nasty. 

Here's Chucklefish's advice on how to join the beta:

  • Log into your Steam account 
  • In your Games Library, right click on Stardew Valley
  • Select Properties → Betas (see:https://imgur.com/a/H1gH4)
  • Enter the Beta access code “jumpingjunimos” and press Check Code
  • After this, select the beta branch option on the Beta selection drop down list above 
  • If you have any problems with gaining access or experience any bugs, email us at contact@chucklefish.org

Chucklefish also advises players backup their files: "Your save files are located in %APPDATA%\StardewValley\Saves on Windows, or ~/.config/StardewValley/Saves on Mac and Linux. You should also remove any mods you've installed—full compatibility is in the works."

As for its single-player features, Stardew Valley's update 1.3 adds hats for horses, new character events by way of new cutscenes, and a new three-day travelling Winter festival. 

Full details on Stardew Valley's v1.3 Beta can be found here.