Story of Seasons, formerly known as Harvest Moon, gained a lot of attention after announcing that it would remake Friends of Mineral Town. The game takes you back to the classic Game Boy Advance title with new graphics, mechanics and many quality of life improvements.
The game features two new marriage candidates, the option to marry same-sex partners, and dialogue updates. Fans have been excited about the changes, especially now that the game has been officially released worldwide. But how do you get the most out of your farm early and what are the best things you can do to get started?
Updated June 27, 2023 by Branden Lizardi: Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is coming to Xbox Game Pass! This means more people will be able to experience the classic Mineral Town setting that fans of Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons love without paying full price for the new game. This is perfect for anyone interested in the recently released remake of It’s a Wonderful Life. Welcome new and old farmers and let this updated list be your guide to some of the best tips and tricks.
12 Prioritize clearing your farm early on
While you might be tempted to start planting and growing crops or even chatting with the locals, it’s best to clear your farm, or at least part of it, first. When you first acquire your farmland, it is quite clear that it has become overgrown and neglected.
Since you have a heart-shaped stamina meter, you won’t be able to freely clear everything right from the start. In any case, you should at least make some effort to clean our stinging stones and weeds. This will allow you to spend more time planting crops in your field later.
This previous point leads nicely into this. Anything extra you may be carrying can and should be sold in your shipping crate every day. This shipping crate is your friend and allows you to make quick profits, even with random things like rocks and weeds.
Of course, you don’t want to get rid of all the random items, as many of them are required for crafting. But you should at least sell anything you don’t plan to use right away so you can get money to buy supplies, seeds, and the like.
10 Buy some chickens
One of the easiest ways to ensure that you start earning an income is to buy a chicken. Chickens are easy to raise; all you have to do is place the egg in the incubator. They can graze outside if you ring the bell, which limits the amount of food you’ll need to buy per year.
In addition, your first chicken is only 1,500 gold, which is quite a low price for animals that can breed after three days.
9 Restriction on farming
While your first instinct may be to till the entire field in preparation for the crops, this will not work for the first few seasons. Your stamina is incredibly limited, and the stamina potion is quite expensive early in the game.
You will also quickly learn how much watering your crops one by one can take up your day. To start, try to make no more than nine trimming squares. Eventually, you can ask Harvest Sprites for help.
8 Take advantage of Hot Spring
Knowing that you will most likely run out of stamina in the first few seasons, familiarize yourself with the hot springs. The hot springs are located on the mountain down from your house and can completely restore your stamina in a few hours during the game.
It’s a great mid-day stop, especially if you need to add a mining session.
7 Make upgrades a priority
One way to raise energy quickly is to mine some copper and silver ore. These can be found in the first few levels and only require one ore to upgrade.
The first few upgrades are also incredibly cheap, but you’ll have to go a day without the tools. One of the best moves you can make is to check the game’s weather for a rainy day to get a feel for this gap.
6 Feed your animals outside
As mentioned before with chickens, you can keep your animals outside, including cows, alpacas and rabbits. By ringing outside your coop and barn, the animals will come to graze on non-rainy days. Every night at 8pm the bells automatically ring again to usher them out.
As an added bonus, if you don’t feed your animals in this game, they won’t get sick, but they won’t produce milk, eggs, or wool.
5 Check your TV
The television in your house is a great tool that you should get used to using. Every channel can help you in the game, especially the weather channel that helps you plan your days better.
You can get tips on the educational channel and recipes on the fun days. In addition, the news channel will remind you of upcoming festivals.
4 Upgrade your house
The first house upgrade is relatively inexpensive and something you should start doing as soon as possible. Upgrading the house will give you a kitchen where you can prepare food to increase stamina. This is a big help when your stamina is drained all farming.
Just remember that many cooking tools will need to be purchased at the general store.
3 Get a bigger bag
Your inventory and tool space is incredibly limited at the start of the game. To fix this, you simply need to collect 3000 gold and head to the general store to unlock another type of item slots.
This is a big help if you like to forge or go to mines. After the first upgrade, the last one will be available for 10,000 gold.
2 Save your wood and stone
While it’s tempting to put everything you can into your container, wait for wood and stone instead.
It will cost you a lot of materials to finish upgrading your house, and you’ll need to stockpile all the supplies you can get. Wood and stone stack automatically in your house’s storage, so you don’t have to worry about running out of space.
1 Forge for gifts
Believe it or not, many townspeople will like or at least love the forge item. For example, Brandon likes to receive honey, which can quickly help your relationship. Almost all the villagers are egg tolerant and you’ll need to get Kai some fish to win his heart.
Consider stocking up on fodder to easily develop town friendships.