Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons/Stardew Valley/Etc Speed Farming Thread

[Pajaro Pete]

Pioneers of Olive Town Thoughts:

• The intro is brief, which is a welcome change after the 3DS games having, like, hours long intros and tutorials. This does come at the cost of characterization though. It was particularly noticeable when I entered the Museum, where I was greeted by a cutscene where an older woman shoves a camera in my hands and tells me to take pictures for the Museum's collection with no introduction.
• A lot of folks seem down on the lack of dialogue portraits, but honestly a lot of the characters look way better as models than they do in their artwork, and that's setting aside how much lighter skinned characters look in their official artwork.
• The short hairstyles I have access to are awful so far - there's something about the hairline that looks way off. Also hats sit weird on the head because unlike the 3DS games, where headgear would change hairstyles to accommodate the headgear, these just sit on top of your hairstyle which.... anyway!
• The daily dialogue is every bit as repetitive and boring as reported - everyone talks about The Current Event, at the cost of actual character interactions.
• Performance is also pretty rough, you can see how the game was intended to run in the tent.
• It's honestly a much better looking game than I expected it to be.
• You can move when you're charging/have charged your tools, which, after Stardew Valley, is a godsend (Although like Stardew Valley I do sometimes have trouble targeting the correct area)

 

[Kazin]

• The daily dialogue is every bit as repetitive and boring as reported - everyone talks about The Current Event, at the cost of actual character interactions.

Pete, have you heard about the Egg Hunt? It's right around the corner, you know.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Pete, have you heard about the Egg Hunt? It's right around the corner, you know.

The Egg Hunt sure was fun this year!

 

[Kazin]

Worse than even that is Laura's dialogue when I talk to her every day: "Hello there!"

 

[MetManMas]

Comparison between Harvest Moon: One World and Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town

tl;dr: Unsurprisingly, even a jank at launch Story of Seasons game is still better than Harvest Moon/Not Harvest Moon. What is Natsume even doing...

 

[Pajaro Pete]

More Story of Seasons Pioneers of Olive Town (or PoOT, for short) thoughts:

• Since there are a lot of character events (200+, according to Marvelous), they vary tremendously in quality. A lot of Japanese players apparently called a lot of them "pointless", which seems like a good description. I've had a couple of variations on the same basic premise: Someone asks my character their opinion on something (where should we hang up posters/what kind of vibe should the tone have/how should I remodel the museum), then I'm presented with three wacky monkey cheese responses, and in the end the asker calls the whole thing off.
• Had a couple of crashes/infinite load screens when I exit back onto the farm map from the house/barn. That sucks, actually!
• Fences seem largely useless because your animals will just teleport where ever
• I like not having to have a milker/brush/sheers in my inventory. The game reuses FoMT's "you have to keep breeding new generations of livestock to increase the quality of their products" but wool-producing animals don't seem to have star quality at all so
• There's no fertilizing, you just have to spend Sprite Points at the shrine to upgrade your fields (also like in FoMT). This is also how you increase your Stamina, and I'm not sure how I feel about either of those aspects
• The lower floors of the final mine are horrid and the building that needs 50 Orichalcum Ingots to repair is fucking delusional
• Debris (rocks, grass, trees, and most annoyingly puddles of various sizes) constantly spawns on the farm, and I get it, they want players to always have access to materials but it gets really annoying and ugly really quickly. Higher level tools have charged strikes which can clear out large areas, but you don't get anything like that for the puddles and small trees inexplicably take multiple hammer strikes to fell
• It's weird that this game has such a heavy focus on crafting but you can't craft, like, Beehives or Mushroom Logs or Barns or Coops or Silos and instead have to buy them from the carpenter
• Kind of wish there was a bit more in the way of home customization, you get a small space in the corner to place furniture but it doesn't appear you can change, like, the flooring or wall paper or anything
• Green Peppers are apparently the cash crop of this game

 

[Kazin]

More Story of Seasons Pioneers of Olive Town (or PoOT, for short) thoughts:

• Since there are a lot of character events (200+, according to Marvelous), they vary tremendously in quality. A lot of Japanese players apparently called a lot of them "pointless", which seems like a good description. I've had a couple of variations on the same basic premise: Someone asks my character their opinion on something (where should we hang up posters/what kind of vibe should the tone have/how should I remodel the museum), then I'm presented with three wacky monkey cheese responses, and in the end the asker calls the whole thing off.
• Had a couple of crashes/infinite load screens when I exit back onto the farm map from the house/barn. That sucks, actually!
• Fences seem largely useless because your animals will just teleport where ever
• I like not having to have a milker/brush/sheers in my inventory. The game reuses FoMT's "you have to keep breeding new generations of livestock to increase the quality of their products" but wool-producing animals don't seem to have star quality at all so
• There's no fertilizing, you just have to spend Sprite Points at the shrine to upgrade your fields (also like in FoMT). This is also how you increase your Stamina, and I'm not sure how I feel about either of those aspects
• The lower floors of the final mine are horrid and the building that needs 50 Orichalcum Ingots to repair is fucking delusional
• Debris (rocks, grass, trees, and most annoyingly puddles of various sizes) constantly spawns on the farm, and I get it, they want players to always have access to materials but it gets really annoying and ugly really quickly. Higher level tools have charged strikes which can clear out large areas, but you don't get anything like that for the puddles and small trees inexplicably take multiple hammer strikes to fell
• It's weird that this game has such a heavy focus on crafting but you can't craft, like, Beehives or Mushroom Logs or Barns or Coops or Silos and instead have to buy them from the carpenter
• Kind of wish there was a bit more in the way of home customization, you get a small space in the corner to place furniture but it doesn't appear you can change, like, the flooring or wall paper or anything
• Green Peppers are apparently the cash crop of this game

Pretty much agreed on all points, though you're farther than I am I think (I'm in early Fall of Year 1, and haven't gotten to Orichalcum yet, though it's what I need next for tool upgrades). I hate hate hate the respawning materials, as I have to spend every freaking day getting rid of all that ugly crap to make my farm look nice, and I'm really only using the area immediately next to my house.

I'd also add that it rains too much in this game.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Pretty much agreed on all points, though you're farther than I am I think (I'm in early Fall of Year 1, and haven't gotten to Orichalcum yet, though it's what I need next for tool upgrades). I hate hate hate the respawning materials, as I have to spend every freaking day getting rid of all that ugly crap to make my farm look nice, and I'm really only using the area immediately next to my house.

I'd also add that it rains too much in this game.

the grind for orichalcum is awful, you're either going to the last ten floors of the third mine, buying pieces of ore for 50,000g at the general store or for 2,000 sprite coins at the sprite shop, or getting like three pieces every few days from Stonebreaker Valley

Anyway, new patch alert:

STORY OF SEASONS: Pioneers of Olive Town Version 1.0.4 Notes – XSEED Games

Patch 1.0.4 for STORY OF SEASONS: Pioneers of Olive Town is now live! We also have more information about the upcoming Patch 1.0.5. Patch 1.0.4 further optimizes the game to improve loading times, which many players have expressed concern about. This will cause the load time when launching the...

www.xseedgames.com

・Shortens loading times in general
・Fixes an animation when making a “Special Prayer” at the shrine
・Fixes an issue where save data could become corrupted after animals are born
・Fixes an issue where the game could freeze after the child adoption event
・Fixes an issue that created infinite items under certain conditions
・Adds a language settings menu under “Options” in the game’s title screen
・Other minor bug fixes

And the plans for next month's patch, which is the big one:
・Adjusts some of the residents’ existing dialogue and adds new dialogue
・Changes the functionality of all makers (specifically you'll be able to craft multiple things at once)
・Improves visuals during eating scenes (presumably this means they'll change the restaurant eating scenes to have the actual food intead of it always being a grilled fish meal)
・Adds the ability to lock movement in a straight line
・Adjusts cooking times
・Removes the need to press the A Button when moving from indoors to outdoors

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, I'm going to wait for some more of these patches to come out before I play more. I like the game, but it's a bit rough in its current state, honestly. I hope they can fix the framerate issues on the farm - it takes a lot to bother me with a framerate, but it is choppy as hell near my house.

 

[Violentvixen]

We tried to play Stardew Valley multiplayer for the first time since last year, and my game wouldn't generate an invite code. Searching around made it sound like this bug appeared in February and still hasn't been fixed. Tried all the simple things (marking yourself invisible/online since some people think it's related to Steam chat), but most of the more complicated fixes seemed to be PC only and I'm on a Mac. I'm bummed. Glad we've played through a ton of it and had already explored Ginger Island a bit, but definitely wanted to do more together. Hope it gets fixed soon.

 

[Violentvixen]

We tried to play Stardew Valley multiplayer for the first time since last year, and my game wouldn't generate an invite code. Searching around made it sound like this bug appeared in February and still hasn't been fixed. Tried all the simple things (marking yourself invisible/online since some people think it's related to Steam chat), but most of the more complicated fixes seemed to be PC only and I'm on a Mac. I'm bummed. Glad we've played through a ton of it and had already explored Ginger Island a bit, but definitely wanted to do more together. Hope it gets fixed soon.

Hooray, the 1.5.4 update fixed this!

We had completely forgotten everything we were doing and definitely wasted a couple days being inefficient, but it was so nice to play again. I'm a little wary of the Golden Walnuts getting annoying to locate, especially since we just had a big gap so I really have no clue which ones I have or haven't found. Or is there a list somewhere I haven't seen yet?

 

[Pajaro Pete]

i don't think there's any way to keep track in game, but you can go speak to the bird in what's his face's hut and it'll point you in the direction of golden walnuts you haven't yet found

(there are A Lot randomly scattered in the volcano, just as a head's up)

 

[Falselogic]

I started Rune Factory 4 Special a few days back. Farming only seems to be a very tiny part of it? I'm leveling or skilling up all the time but am not quite sure how anything works...

I've been trying to improve my cooking and the game gave me like 10 recipe loafs but I can't eat any of them because it says I need to cook more but I don't have any more recipes to cook...

I've killed two boss monsters that turned into people and I think I'm on my way to a third but the monsters in this new place got real tough real quick so I'm rethinking that.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I started Rune Factory 4 Special a few days back.

I've gotta get back to this game; got distracted with other new shinys and never went back, unfortunately. The combat isn't too hard, you just have to kinda grind a lil. I feel like I barely do any farming in this game, but I do like how the balance between farming and fighting doesn't feel as punishing as stardew.

 

[nataeryn]

I got my wife, Pica, a copy of Stardew Valley and we're playing together in multiplayer.
I was really impressed with how it handles the multiplayer and each person sort of playing their own game in terms of who I choose to make friends with. You mostly get your own cutscenes, though i think its funny when Pica walks into my cutscene.
I really like going into the cave with a helper and fighting together. We sort of had one person fight and one person mine. Its switching between the items in your hand that i'm bad at.

 

[Falselogic]

I've gotta get back to this game; got distracted with other new shinys and never went back, unfortunately. The combat isn't too hard, you just have to kinda grind a lil. I feel like I barely do any farming in this game, but I do like how the balance between farming and fighting doesn't feel as punishing as stardew.

I agree it does balance well. But considering how deep the crafting and farming appears to be I wish it could explain it a little better. Like how do I upgrade my tools and weapons? How do I get anyone to go somewhere with me? How do I know when it is appropriate to eat recipe bread and when it isn't?

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

I agree it does balance well. But considering how deep the crafting and farming appears to be I wish it could explain it a little better. Like how do I upgrade my tools and weapons? How do I get anyone to go somewhere with me? How do I know when it is appropriate to eat recipe bread and when it isn't?

I think I had my characters at level 50 when I last stopped playing. It didn't feel like I was playing it all that much, but I was blitzing through the combat sections while it felt like I was still on the first spring of my first year. I definitely got the feeling I needed to be doing more in-town stuff and more farming stuff but I did just enough to get by. I too didn't really know what I was doing most of the time, but just futzing around with things usually got me where I needed to go eventually.

I really like going into the cave with a helper and fighting together. We sort of had one person fight and one person mine. Its switching between the items in your hand that i'm bad at.

That's a nice part about coop, but it quickly becomes a not so great part in the late game. Because in a normal solo play of Stardew, when you go into a cave, the game clock slows down so the day doesn't go by as fast so you can go spelunking for longer. And when you're in the pause menu, the clock also freezes. When you're playing coop, being in a cave doesn't slow down time, and the game no longer pauses when someone is in the menus, so you can't get as far down in the dungeons. It's somewhat mitigated if you have both ppl down there fighting at the same time, or you have one person go as soon as they wake up so they can spend a whole day down there while the other person does daily farm chores. But that you're still so precariously balancing time makes things mildly stressful to me.

 

[nataeryn]

it also doesn't pause the clock when you're in a cutscene. Pica ended up not making it back home in time when she went to visit the guy with the purple/black hat and got charged money for not making it home quickly enough.

Good to know about the other stuff with time also. I feel like most things are sped up by having 2 energy bars worth of work and two inventories worth of carrying capacity so, I think I'm ok with less time for spelunking.

 

[Falselogic]

I completed the first part of RF4, I think? The game gave me some credits. This second chunk is much more difficult. At least the dungeoneering part is. Well, the monsters aren't more difficult just that my weapons do so little damage or none. I'm having to figure out elements and other such things. But this dragon I'm fighting even with his weak element I'm barely doing any damage.

I'm hoping I'm missing something and its not that I just need to grind. I've got two fields now and an enlarged monster barn. I know that each area has fields for growing things is that so you can grow seasonal veggies out of season? Seems like a pain to have to schlep out to them every day though.

I'm almost done with Summer in the First year. Still having fun. But annoyed with the weapon stuff.

 

[Falselogic]

Still at the tail end of the first year (about 10 more days in Winter) I unlocked the third storyline recently but so far it seems mostly undoable. Depsite being at lvl 121, I can barely do any damage to things.

Farming has also stalled out as the requests Eliza is giving me I can't meet without some real awful grinding. (I need level 10 veggies, but I can't get those until I can make at least gold tools, but I can't make gold tools until I learn their recipes, but I can't learn recipes until I forge more tools. But the only tools I can forge are the older ones that don't give me much experience in forging. So, I just have to collect a ton of materials and then just grind out these useless tools that I then immediately sell.

This sort of thing is making me want to drop the whole game.

 

[Falselogic]

Still trying to get through the final dungeon. I've made it to the 4th part. Still don't have upgraded tools.

 

[Johnny Unusual]

I think I'm almost ready to stop. Almost completed the community center, made it 25 floors into the desert dungeon but the game hasn't gave me any incentive to go deeper so once I'm done the community center, I think I'll stop, maybe occasionally coming in to do other thingies.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

This sort of thing is making me want to drop the whole game.

You got probably a lot farther than me, but I had a gut feeling that this was the kind of endgame grind that was gonna happen and decided. I still wanna come back to it, but once I get to this point I'll probably just youtube the ending.

I think I'm almost ready to stop. Almost completed the community center, made it 25 floors into the desert dungeon but the game hasn't gave me any incentive to go deeper so once I'm done the community center, I think I'll stop, maybe occasionally coming in to do other thingies.

The tropical island is pretty neat and worth exploring a lil just to see it. But that represents a whole new endgame grind that's even worse than the desert. I don't blame anyone for tapping out.

 

[Kazin]

Spent most of the weekend playing Stardew Valley on PC with a bunch of mods installed. Most are just QoL stuff like being able to see how much exp each skill has, but I also installed Stardew Valley Expanded, which adds several maps and a bunch of new NPCs, some of which you can marry. I'm going for Olivia, the single mother who would appear to be significantly older than the player character, which is kind of neat since no option anywhere near that was available in the base game (and usually, with this sort of thing, the age of potential love interests goes down with fan mods, not up. Hooray for this one!).

Anyone else have any experience with this mod? I've only beaten the base game once, but most of the NPCs in the base game were kinda bland, at least as far into their stories as I got (not that the added characters are super deeply written so far, either, but it's something). I'd married Penny in the Switch version, mostly because I felt like I wanted to get her out of a bad situation with her mom (and I ended up getting her mom a house, eventually, too, and fixing the bus, etc.). Other than Penny, I wasn't particularly interested in any of the other characters, though I suppose I didn't get too far into their storylines - Penny just seemed interesting right up front.

 

[Violentvixen]

I have never seen this mod but that looks incredible. I especially love that the made the Joja mart employees you can't interact with NPCs (at least I assume so based on the art and my vague memories of the store).

 

[Kazin]

Yeah, they did do that - the one I started befriending works crazy hours and is tired all the time, and there's a cutscene where you help her pay for a meal that was more expensive than it had been the last time she'd ordered it. Really seems like she's going to fit in nicely with what the original game was doing with Joja Mart.

 

[Violentvixen]

Looks like Pioneers of Olive Town has a free trial for the next week-ish on Switch. Been curious about this so going to give it a try.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

It's definitely worth playing as a free trial

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

Went and bought Olive Town. I like it! It's almost funny how many of Stardew's ideas got recycled back into the source-series.

 

[Violentvixen]

Stardew Valley had an update, mainly bug fixes and things but this is nice:

- Holding the CTRL key in addition to shift now lets you purchase/craft stacks of 25 items at a time.

And there was a note that the next update is going to mainly be to help support modders and they've brought someone else on to help so that's cool to see support of the community.