How extensive is the Multi-Player Coop in Stardew Valley, is it worth buying the game for that purpose?

[Corporal Hellcat]

My partner has recently taken an interest in Stardew Valley after extensively playing many other farming and survival simulator titles, Starbound included. In fact we beat the entire game together and went on adventures for a good hundred hours before stopping. My question is how much of Stardew Valley can be played cooperatively, and is it worth the purchase for those intending to primarily play it as a cooperative experience. Starbound allowed for us to pretty much do exactly as we pleased while maintaining/upgrading our ships and mostly staying together. Is Stardew similar, or is it a bit more focused on its solo activities?

[aegis3d]

I just started playing multiplayer for the first time with my daughter, though I've been playing solo since the game came out. It's definitely an interesting experience multiplayer. The biggest disappointment I've had so far about multiplayer from an otherwise wonderful game is that the already fairly short/limiting days become even shorter since you don't pause in multiplayer in the usual places you do in single player. I'm probably going to look into getting a mod for stretching the time out just a little for multiplayer (too much would definitely break the game by making it too easy).

Otherwise it's looking like a very good multiplayer experience. And as for your questions, I'd say it's an interesting mix between solo and co-op style. You gain a whole lot of benefit by splitting skills well and working in completely different places. The obvious being one person farming while another does other does a different energy and time-intensive activity like fishing or mining. In single player, that's one of the biggest drawbacks is usually having to split the day between both for time and energy. But there are other parts of the game that will likely do very well as co-op like spelunking/adventuring, having fishing competitions on rainy days, and designing your farm together. As with many of these types of resource-gathering games, the cooperation isn't always right next to each other since the resources are out and about at different places and different people will often favor different tasks (my daughter loves the farming part).

[Kleyguerth]

The only solo activities are fishing (although you can fish side by side), befriending the npcs and playing the saloon arcade games (which is a very minor feature). Everything else can be done cooperatively in a more efficient way than solo.

For example: when farming, one can till the soil while the other plants, then one fertilizes the soil and the other waters. Whem mining one can focus on defeating monsters and the other can focus on breaking rocks. When caring for animals one can pet while the other gets their produce...

The only downside of coop is the time. Time isn't paused on cutscenes and menus like single player is, and the mines are the same pace (in singleplayer, the time inside the mines runs slower). The game can be played primarily cooperative and it is fun as long as you don't get frustrated by losing half your day in a cutscene. Two achievements are impossible in coop (both related to the saloon games)