How to start a Stardew Valley co-op farm with multiplayer

If you're tired of facing Pelican Town on your own, Stardew Valley co-op is the way forward. With online and split-screen options to play with friends, you can mix and match how you and your friends come together to farm. Options like splitting resources and finances, and setting up designated areas for each farmer mean you can enjoy the game with others without having to thrive in chaos. Stardew Valley co-op works around how you want to play, making it a great multiplayer experience. 

With that said, co-op farming relies on Robin should you want to make more room for players. Each time you want someone new to join your game, you'll need to construct a Cabin. You can have up to 7 cabins and the farmhouse now, thanks to the 1.6 update going live which allows 8-person multiplayer, but that does mean you'll need more resources should you want more farmhands to help out. It's also important to note that saves are stored on the host player’s machine, meaning others can't keep playing after the host leaves the game though. 

We'll start off with the quickest and easiest way to play Stardew Valley multiplayer with your friends and also share some tips on how to be most effective as a farming team so you can get tilling in no time. 

How to start a multiplayer farm in Stardew Valley co-op

The quickest and easiest way to start a multiplayer farm is from scratch. In the "co-op" section of the main menu you can either join a friend's farm or choose to begin your own.

If you want to be able to invite your friends immediately, set the number of "staring cabins" to the number of farmers who will be joining you. This will save in-game resources, but if you don't know how many players will be joining you right away, you still have the option to add more players by constructing your own cabins later down the line. 

Any co-op partner needs to have a cabin in order to join in. Due to squeezing all these houses in, you'll also need to pick which farm layout you want depending on the size of your crew. Generally, the Four Corners farm is the most efficient for four or more players, since there's plenty of space for everyone to operate and have their own hut. 

When it comes to actually getting your friends into the game, you can also invite a friend via LAN connection or by sending them the invite code located in your options menu in the multiplayer section. Your co-op partner can then find options to join a LAN game or enter an invite code in the co-op section of their main menu. The "invite friends" option allows you to send an invite through your Steam or GOG friends list to the person you'd like to play with. You can also open your game for split-screen play.

How to play split-screen in Stardew Valley co-op

If you've already started up a farm and have a cabin available for a friend, open your options menu and scroll down to the multiplayer section. Clicking "start local co-op" will prompt you to press start to join the game. You can do this either with a gamepad or the escape key on your keyboard. Your extra players should now have their own section of your screen to play on.

How to host a multiplayer farm in Stardew Valley

If you want to turn your solo farm into a co-op farm, don't worry. It's easy. Visit Robin's shop to build up to three cabins for anyone you want to invite. They're quite cheap, so even if you've just started a new farm you should be able to create a spot for your friend quickly by bringing her 100 gold and 10 stones or 10 wood. Robin will build cabins instantly, so you won't need to wait any in-game days for your friend to join you. Once it's plopped down, you can now invite another farmer by starting up split-screen co-op, a LAN session, or sending your invite code.

Stardew Valley multiplayer options

Since multiplayer has been added to Stardew, other updates have added additional options and farms to make playing together easier. Here are the options you'll have access to while in multiplayer and what they mean.

Starting Cabins
These cabins will come pre-built on your farm, one for each co-op farmer you plan to invite.

Cabin Layout
Nearby cabins will be build close to the main farmhouse while the separate layout makes it feel like you have your own space. If you don't like the default placement, don't worry. You can always ask Robin to move them.

Profit Margin
If you've been playing Stardew co-op, you'll probably notice that more hands means more work gets done and you may find it very, very easy to stack up cash. You can lower the profit you earn on items to give your group a bit more of a challenge.

Building Move Mode
This setting can be changed while playing your farm. It controls who on the farm can ask Robin to move buildings. You can set it to "everyone", "host only" meaning the owner of the farm, or "building owner only" meaning your friends can't move one another's cabins and other buildings around. 

Money Style
Note: This option is now controlled by reading a green book on a table in Mayor Lewis' house, not in the game menu. 

Separate money means that you and your friends have separate wallets—a good choice if you have a friend who won't stop buying seeds when you were trying to save for that backpack upgrade. Shared money means that all farm hands share one bank account.

Tips for farming together in Stardew Valley co-op 

The most important things to remember in Stardew Valley co-op are what you share with your friends and what you don’t share. These things remain separate:

• Inventory
• Skill levels
• Energy
• Relationships

What you do share:

• Farm space
• Gold (unless playing with "separate" money enabled)
• Most importantly, your time

It makes complete sense that in a shared game the clock would march on regardless of who happens to be organizing their inventory or perusing Pierre’s store. What I forgot is just how much time I spent doing those things while playing alone. I may well have spent equally as much of my days in some kind of menu, causing the game’s clock to pause, as I did actually running about. In multiplayer, the clock stops for no farmhand and the days fly by at a breakneck pace. 

The sun is always setting hours before I feel like I’ve gotten done what I had hoped to accomplish—terribly realistic. The pressure to perform quickly isn’t a defect with the multiplayer design, but it’s a new way of thinking about playing that I had to consciously adjust to. If you absolutely must pause, the host player can press the default key T to open the text chat window and type "/pause" to force freeze the game.

Inevitably, a friend will log off with something in their inventory that you needed. You can pilfer what they held out on you by checking what looks like a dresser inside their cabin. If you choose to invite friends to one of your existing saves, they will create a new character and begin with a basic set of tools, no skill levels, and only the starting amount of daily energy. My partner was forced to dig through my abandoned clothes and weapons to find hand-me-downs that would let him dive into the lowest levels of the mines, while also finding that he didn’t have the energy to water all the crops on my farm. 

Stardew Valley cross-platform status

Currently, Stardew Valley does not offer cross-platform play between devices and at this point it seems unlikely it ever will. It's an bummer, but Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation Vita, and mobile users cannot play multiplayer with PC players and vice versa. You can only play with other friends who own Stardew on the same platform as you.