After being teased for month, the co-op beta for Stardew Valley is now available on the PC via Steam. Follow the instructions provided below to opt-in to the beta and get to farming with your buddies!
One quick note from the dev/publisher before you get into the beta, be sure to back up your current save! Save files are located in:
- %APPDATA%\StardewValley\Saves on Windows, or
- ~/.config/StardewValley/Saves on Mac and Linux.
Additionally, the beta will not work with any mods you may have, so you should remove those as well.
All of that out of the way, here's how to opt into the beta and start playing with friends:
- In your Games Library, right click on Stardew Valley
- Select Properties → Betas
- 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
Once you've got the beta update downloaded and installed, you can then use an existing save/farm and invite friends to it, or start a new one. There are some very specific instructions for how to setup the co-op in-game, so I recommend reading through this blog post to see how to get things going. As this is a beta, bugs/crashes should be expected, and that post also has a way for you to report those back to the developer so they can be fixed.
The co-op update supports up to four players total, either online, via LAN, or a mix of the two. The farm itself, money, and any world updates are shared across all players, while player inventory, NPC relationships, and skills are individual. No word on when this update will get pushed into the stable version of the game, but progress is certainly being made!