A strange Stardew Valley bug makes names magical
What's in a name?
An unusual bug has been discovered in feel-good farming game Stardew Valley, and developer Eric Barone has decided that he won’t be patching it out. The good news is that it’s actually helpful, and you're almost certainly never going to come across it unless you seek it out.
The bug in question, noticed by IGN, is an exploit. If you name your character or pets after the ID number of an item, whenever an NPC mentions you by name, that item will spawn in your inventory. If, for instance, you’re all about jade and can’t get enough of it, name your character ‘[70]’ and you’ll get a lovely gift of jade whenever anyone uses your strange and exotic name.
“I am aware of it, but I don’t think I want to fix it,” Barone said. “It's not game-breaking, it's kind of amusing, and the likelihood that someone would randomly stumble upon it is extremely low. So I feel like it's okay to leave it, and actually kind of fun.”
Barone also gave IGN a list of codes that can be used, and you can find them all here.
It’s not an exploit that I fancy using, since I couldn’t live with myself if I gave my poor farmer a numerical name. He’s not a cog in the machine! He’s a person! But if you don’t really care about what people call your character, then cheat away. It won’t be going anywhere.
While you’re here, why not also check out my favourite piece of writing on the game, Paul Dean’s ‘A year in Stardew Valley’. It is very good.