Farming can be a solo, peaceful activity, a zen ritual or an obsessive march to agricultural perfection. Or you can share the farming life with friends thanks to Stardew Valley multiplayer, which is now easy to play on Steam or GOG.

Stardew’s multiplayer does not support split screen, so make sure whoever you plan to play with has their own copy of the game. Multiplayer relies on the Cabin farm building that you can buy from Robin. You must have cabins on your farm for each friend (up to 3). Luckily, each cabin is cheap to build in an existing singleplayer save, or you can begin a new multiplayer farm with cabins already pre-built.

Saves are stored on the host player’s machine, meaning others can't keep playing after the host leaves the game. 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.

You can also read up on the Stardew Valley 1.4 update, Stardew Valley tips, and the Best Stardew Valley mods.

Stardew Valley multiplayer: How to start a multiplayer farm

The quickest and easiest way to start a multiplayer farm is from scratch:

Select "Co-Op" in the main menu. Under the "Host" tab select "Host new farm." Choose the number of additional cabins you want to start with, up to three. Select "Nearby" or "Separate" to control where the additional cabins should be placed. Select your profit margin. "Normal" means all items sell at the same price as in singleplayer so you and your friends will likely rake in cash quick, while percentages below 100% will give you more of a challenge. Create your new farmer as normal.

How to turn your singleplayer farm into a multiplayer farm

Choose "Load" in the main menu and select the farm that you want to use. Go to Robin's store and purchase one of three Cabin types for 100 gold plus either 10 Stone (Stone Cabin), 5 Wood and 10 Fiber (Plank Cabin), or 10 Wood (Log Cabin). After you place the cabin on your farm it builds instantly. Save and return to the title screen. Select "Co-op" on the title screen and then under the "Host" tab load the farm you just saved with a new cabin. Invite your friends!

How to invite your friends to your farm

(Image credit: Concerned Ape)

Load the farm that you want to play. In the "Multiplayer" section of the Options menu, check whether your Server Mode is set to "Friends-Only" or "Invite-Only." In "Friends-Only" mode, if you've launched the game through Steam or GOG Galaxy, any friend you have on the platform should be able to see your farm in the "Join" tab of the Co-op menu. In "Invite-Only" mode, you'll need to click "Show Invite Code" and then send the code shown to your friend. In the "Join" tab of the Co-op menu, they can type the code in by selecting "Enter Invite Code."

Stardew Valley multiplayer: Tips for farming together

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

Inventory

Skill levels

Energy

Relationships

If your real life significant other, like mine, still thinks they’re going to woo Jodi away from her husband you can pursue your own successful relationship while they bark up that tree.

What you do share:

Farm space

Gold

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 (too realistic, right?) and without my partner and I ever managing to communicate what we’d be working on. 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.

Modded Multiplayer (Image credit: Armitxes) For more group farming options, check out the multiplayer section of our Best Stardew Valley Mods list.

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.

Apart from time constraints, a few other oddities are worth noting. While in multiplayer mode, you will not be able to move or demolish your farm buildings from Robin’s store. Presumably this could create conflicts if your friends are inside of a building you demolish or are standing where you hope to move one. For a constant organizer like me, kicking my partner out so I could edit our farm’s arrangement in singleplayer every so often is not ideal.

Once your multiplayer farm is running like clockwork, you can expand your operation into the modded zone with the multiplayer mods linked above!