Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, and other similar games!

story of seasons sounds cute but way too intense. the whole competition thing is one of the reasons i never got into the magical melody thing.

i am the only farmer and i set my own goals kthxbai

-is lazy-
-just wants to grow flowers and enjoy life-

 

I mean you aren't required to take part in the competitions :P You are absolutely allowed to just do whatever

 

I know but just having the competitions be a THING would be too much for my worrywart brain. i'll be sitting there watering crops and having flashbacks to my dad telling me i'll end up working at a cornerstore all my life and do i WANT to end up like my mother?

 

awwww oh no :C hopefully you can find a chill enough farm sim that that doesn't happen? I dunno actually, does stardew valley have something similar?

 

stardew is great cause i can ignore my list entirely and no one cares, i can skip festivals no big deal, so yeah i can play farm sims, and i even liked Tale of Two Towns and always participated in the cooking festival.

so its okay! I'm just putting my opinion XD cause i thought it sounded neat when it came out, but i don't own a 3DS and the competition thing isn't my style. but if i do get a 4DS someday and i can borrow the game i would probably check it out to see. i just can't see myself playing it longterm. too busy shaking my fist at my neighbors

 

hehhehehe okay fair!

 

SO
I'm very excited because MATH and SHENANIGANS

So theoretically, in Story of Seasons, you can marry in Spring of Year 2 at the earliest because that's when Dessie shows up and unlocks the Blue Feather, aye? So according to TVTropes, so TAKE WITH A GRAIN OF SALT because I haven't tested that yet, you can speed-date and marry if you trade a Blue Feather from a different savefile, you can manage to marry before Eda passes away, and she remarks looking forward to meeting the kids.
And then it hit me -- is it, mathematically, possible, to get the kids before Winter 1?
Yes, yes it is. BARELY.
Birth by AUTUMN 31st means Pregnancy Event by AUTUMN 1st, which means luxury marriage by SUMMER 16th.

You need:
1 Savefile that has a loooot of items to trade over. (amount of items currently being calculated)
1 Savefile you can start with a POPULAR GIRL, because we'll be romancing RAEGER, whose heart events net you 11k. You'll also want to play on Seedling, because shit's cheaper.
Mind you, these need to be on different cartridges, and you'll need two devices.

You start with 10k FP and a birthday between SPRING 29 and SUMMER 7
You'll want to build the Kitchen ASAP, but if you can't make it before SPRING 15 or else you make a net loss. Until you build the kitchen and fry fish for Raeger, you want to buy COFFEE PACK from Ashe, those are also liked gifts.
Liked Gift + Talk to = 400 FP/day
Since you're a POPULAR GIRL, you'll get a White Day Gift, which is 1000 FP we really need.
We aim for the first two heart events, which can trigger as early as Spring 9th & 10th, and need to be done by SPRING 27th, because you plan on going steady with him on SPRING 28th.

On the 26th, FARM VISITS are unlocked, so you can start trading all the items you need over! This means House upgrade materials, favourite clothing items, fabric for ribbons, favourite food items...
That's when the FP gain quadruples. Favourite gift + favourite wrapping + favourite clothing + favourite accessory + talk to = 1600 FP/day
Adding festival wins and the flower faire bouquet bonus, we just barely don't hit Yellow Flower for SUMMER 1st, so the Yellow Heart Event needs to happen on SUMMER 8th, and the Pink Heart Event on SUMMER 10th or SUMMER 11th, which gets us to 63400 FP for SUMMER 12, when the proposal happens.
Since it's not a reverse proposal, you need to talk to him after the Guild Hall is already closed, you need to talk to Veronica about the plan on SUMMER 13th, and then you pray that she gives you the 15th or 16th as wedding date.

 

We have managed the list of what needs to be traded over!
mind you we're not yet sure if you should get a sewing shed and which way is the easiest to make money yet so that's not included. But without further ado! The items you need to trade over!
Blue Feather
Ring (optional)
Boys' Jumpsuit (or other item from the list)
Yellow Framed Glasses (or other item from the list)
Sea Urchin Bowl x15
Red/Yellow Fabric x5
Bouquet of any kind
Sacred Rod & Bait (optional)
Lumber x224
Stone x210
Glass Stone x10
Emerald x7
Brick x15
Black Lumber x30
Black Stone x30
Orichalcum x10

Ya also need to somehow get to 1.432.500 G over the course of the run at LEAST but we haven't completely routed out where to pull the money from most efficiently.

 

On closer inspection, it should be possible to romance LILLIE with a POPULAR BOY.
The item setup is the same (except of course clothing, accessories, and food favoured by Lillie), and you gift her fish instead of coffee pack and grilled fish, so she's a fair bit cheaper in initial pretrade setup.

The first two events happen between SPRING 7th and SPRING 22nd.
Her Yellow Flower Event needs to be on SUMMER 4th
Her Pink Flower Event needs to be on SUMMER 11th

Since you don't receive anything on White Day, the bonus for said day is +1100 and not +1400.
If you show her an animal on Saturdays and Sundays when she's out and about, it nets you a cumultative +1500.

By the time you propose, Lillie will be at 63600 according to my calculator, and I have the nagging feeling I messed up somewhere because that's way too close to Raeger (whose Flower Events give 2k more).
Lillies Flower events are locked to Saturday and Sunday, so if you get a rainy SUMMER 4th or SUMMER 11th, you're fucked. But you should be able to help that by also trading 10 SUN STATUES to your EdaGetsToSeeTheChildren% run to put on your farm, which raises the chances of a sunny day.

Come to think of it, those are probably also good for the Raeger run.

 

It's Autumn of Year 3 and the Accessory Sets that Mistel should sell didn't unlock. Ffff. I need the time slowdown aaaah

 

Turns out I'm dumb and the Accessory Set in question is from Rose Country, I bought it, and made all the necessary items. Whoops.

Also I unlocked Tropical Country, finally. I sold so much Spinach Soup. So. much.

 

I wondered if you could unlock all merchants before Winter of Year 1 to get Eda into the credits sequence and started calculating full stacks (233 full stacks on seedling, 424 on normal), but Ice country is Year 2 or later. Bluh.

 

It appears you can catch off-season fish during typhoons, at least if you have a Sacred Rod.
Dunno about blizzards yet, will test once I hit winter on this file. But I got some pufferfish (winter only) and salmons (autumn only) off the Piedmont pier during a late summer typhoon.

Also, you can have a typhoon on summer 31st. No blizzard on winter 31st, as winter 31st is New Year's, and, as a festival, obligatory sunny.

 

There's a slew of new Harvest-Moon-likes on Steam following the success of Stardew Valley.

My Time in Portia looks pretty good. Still in Early Access, but a fun setting and a novel twist: instead of your character inheriting a farm, they get a workshop! (A Let's Play)

Gleaner Hights just looks like the dev opened up RPGMaker and made a horror game out of sheer force of habit.

 

coming in probably late to say that I miss rune factory :c

I wanna marry another unicorn glasses wearing girl

 

Picking up Story of Seasons after... half a year?? of break and a not up to date notes file because they didn't synch for some reason: oh gods what am i even doing hALP

 

Why are both My Time At Portia and Staxel still in early access

I am totally ready for a new Stardew Valley-like with new people to meet and mechanics to master, but I don't want to start playing an incomplete game that might change later

And I've gotten every achievement in World's Dawn already

 

oh same after dropping it for like three months
gosh every day is so LONG and there's so much to keep up with that im in the middle of progressing

also recently discovered that if you ignore friendly villagers for too long, they'll eventually say stuff like "oh, hi jake! it's been a while, hasn't it?" ;-; my fragile heart cannot take it. I'm sorry Otmar, Angela, Rainer, everyone except Agate, really, because Agate comes to the safari with you

 

i took to making sunday my "run around and talk to everyone" day, except in autumn because i do every festival and talk to everyone then.

 

I can't remember if I ever posted this here but I love Harvest Moon, it saved my life, and I'm super excited for the Dragon cafe game the creators are releasing in August :)