--------------------------------------------------
Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning - FAQ/Walkthrough
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Game: Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning
System: Nintendo 3DS

Author: Steve Edwards
Contact: [email protected]

Current Version 0.50
Submitted on 09/19/13

Original Version 0.50
Submitted on: 09/19/13

This guide is the copyrighted property of Steve Edwards.
Licenced for use on GameFAQs.com

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*****************
TABLE OF CONTENTS
*****************
.................

1.  Introduction and Frequently Asked Questions (FAQS)...........[100]

2.  Useful Notes and Tips and Tricks...coming soon...............[200]
    Tools........................................................[201]
    Animal Care..................................................[202]
    Something else...............................................[203]
    Crops........................................................[204]   
    Festivals................. ..................................[205]
    Online Connectivity and Multiplayer..........................[206]
    Blueprints and Edit Mode.....................................[207]
    Stuff to do in the wilderness like mining and fishing etc....[208]
    Town Restoration.............................................[209]
    
3.  Villagers....................................................[300]
    Bachelors....................................................[301]
    Bachelorettes................................................[302]
    The Rest.....................................................[303]
    				
4.  Walkthrough - First Spring...................................[400]
    Goals and How to Unlock Stuff................................[401]
    Spring 1 - a new beginning...................................[402]
    Spring 2 - getting to know you...............................[403]
    Spring 3 - How to Grow Crops.................................[404]
    Spring 4 - How to Ship.......................................[405]
    Spring 8 - Your First Harvest................................[406]
    Spring 9 - Have a Cow, Man...................................[407]
    Spring 14 - Harmony Day: The First Event.....................[408]
    Spring 15 - Iroha, the Hammer, and the Axe...................[409]
    Spring 17 - Meet the Harvest Sprites.........................[410]
    Spring 25 - Meet Rebecca and Toni............................[411]
    Spring 27 - Meet the Harvest Goddess.........................[412]
    Spring 30 - Crop Festival....................................[413]

5.  Walkthrough - First Summer...................................[500]
    Goals and the Town Restoration Project.......................[501]
    Summer 2 - You get a Fishing Rod.............................[502]
    Summer 3 - Gifts from the Forest.............................[503]
    Spring 11 - A Gardening Tour.................................[504]

6.  Walkthrough - First Fall.....................................[600]
    Goals and fun stuff you can start doing......................[601]

7.  Walkthrough - First Winter...coming soon.....................[700]
    Goals........................................................[701]

8.  Walkthrough - Second Year....................................[800]
    Goals........................................................[801]
    Spring.......................................................[802]
    Summer.......................................................[803]
    Fall.........................................................[804]
    Winter.......................................................[805]

9.  Walkthrough - Third Year and Beyond..........................[900]
    Goals........................................................[901]
    Fun Stuff to do..............................................[902]

10. Version History and Contact Info............................[1000]

..............................
******************************
1. INTRODUCTION AND FAQS [100]
******************************
..............................

Hello hello dear reader. Welcome to my Harvest Moon 3D walkthrough. This guide
exists to show you how to accomplish this game's two main objectives: saving
the doomed town of Echo Village and finding yourself a lovely lad/y to
call your own. And if this guide can give you a few tips to get super-rich 
along the way, well... that's just icing on the cake, isn't it?

This guide won't primarily be focusing on providing you with lists of items and
prices and events and people. I see Harvest Moon games as more 'story' or
'role playing experience' than 'game with exploitable mechanics'. I am writing
this guide for those people who enjoy this series because they can get wrapped
up in good characters and a good world as a good dating-sim/community living 
game, and not because it is a good item-management/farming simulator. But if 
dollars and cents are really what you're after you may find a tip or two in
here.

Anyways here are some questions and answers:

1. What is Harvest Moon?

Harvest Moon is a Japanese video game series developed by a company called 
MARVELOUS ENTERTAINMENT. The first game came out in 1996 on the SUPER 
NINTENDO and has since spawned over a dozen 'main' titles and a whole bunch
of re-makes and spin-offs and whatnot. The game is ostensibly a 'farming
simulation' game, but really that would be rather too dull a thing to spawn
a perennial video-game franchise, wouldn't it? The farming stuff is the more
mechanical 'video game-y' side of these games, but the part that hooks players
and keeps them invested and buying more games is the 'community life' aspect
of the game, which is a little like a light version of a VISUAL NOVEL or a
DATING SIM. These games are populated with interesting characters for you to
live and interact with, and eventually you can marry one and start a family.
Once-upon-a-time this was a very novel and realistic (and interesting) thing to
put in a video game, as back in the day games were usually more focussed on 
action and... well, just action. Games with more realistic settings and 
characters and romance are more common than they used to be, and the continual
success of Harvest Moon has something to do with that, I think. 

Harvest Moon games have more or less stuck to the 'farm and family' formula, 
but as they have been released on a half dozen systems over nearly two decades 
there have been some developments and changes along the way. Perhaps most 
significant is that the developers started catering to a burgeoning 'female
gamer' market by releasing versions of some of these games where players can
play as female farmers and woo manly folk. As the most recent iteration of this
series, Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning gives players the option to choose
their sex from the very beginning and from there gives each gender an equal-ish
number of potential marriage candidates.

2. What is new in Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning?

Harvest Moon 3D: A New Beginning (hereafter referred to as HM:ANB because 
writing it out over and over is tedious) is the second Harvest Moon for the
3DS... but the first one (Tale of Two Towns) was a port from the old DS and
so it was not really designed around the 3DS system (it had some programming 
problems too, or so I've heard). HM:ANB uses 3D models for the gameplay but 
the 3DS's 3D effect is very underplayed. Even wihtout a huge 3D graphic
boost, there is still a lot of change from past HM games to this one.

The biggest new feature in this game is the amount of CUSTOMIZATION available.
Believe it or not, in previous games in this series your character was 
pre-designed and couldn't be altered at all, even though people love 
personalizing things. Maybe MARVELOUS was hoping this game would attract new 
players to the series (hence 'A New Beginning') so they really increased the
amount of customizing you can do to your character. When you start up your
file you get a character creation screen that gives you lots of options...
well there are a lot of hairstyles and colors at least... so that's something.
You are able to choose which sex you want to be without having to buy a
separate copy of the game... so that's progress, at least.

The customization doesn't end with your character, though. When you arrive at
your town, you will be immediately made into MAYOR of the town and be given
the opportunity to move the buildings around to suit your mood... oh, wait...
no... that's not this game, that's ANIMAL CROSSING NEW LEAF, a game that
came out half a year later and somehow has the same new town-designing feature
as this Harvest Moon does. These games are rather similar aren't they? In my 
opinion though HM:ANB is the superior game because it allows you to marry and 
bed characters and as far as I know Nintendo has yet to implement that feature
in Animal Crossing, much to the chagrin of certain AC:NL fans I'm sure.

Anyways, getting back to HM:ANB, you really are given the option of creating
buildings and moving them around town. It sounds like a lot of freedom... and
it is... with a catch. The downside to MARVELOUS designing this game around
new players (which is really only a theory of mine) is that they felt the 
need to include a ridiculous number of TUTORIALS and only introduce you to new
characters and town-customization options slowly. So EVENTUALLY you will have
a large, populated town and you will be able to customize it however you want,
but for the first few month/seasons you are going to be VERY CONSTRAINED in
what you are able to do. That's just how it is.

Oh... and there are other new things too, besides the customization stuff. 
There's an online item-trading system. And there's probably other stuff too.

3. What is the point of this game? Why would anyone want to play a 'farm sim'?

This game is about your character (hereafter referred to as 'YOU' because I 
expect you to identify with your character) coming to own a dilapidated farm 
and undertaking the enjoyable challenge of fixing it up and turning it into a 
successful enterprise. These games have substantial farming gameplay elements
which really dig into your consumerist and entrepreneurial desires to make a
lot of money and buy a lot of stuff. And while you are indulging in the wish-
fulfillment of running your own business and making easy money, the game's 
world of interesting characters will be surrepticiously sinking their hooks
into you and arresting your interest and addicting you to continuially buying
Harvest Moon games. 

This particular game takes the standard HM premise and expands on it quite a
bit. This time around it is not just your farm that starts out as a run-down
piece of manure: it's the whole village. ECHO VILLAGE is a ghost town, or maybe
a dying town in it's last gasps. So this time around you're not just saving
your farm, you're saving a whole town. Your efforts are going to be 
instrumental in attracting people and businesses back to Echo, and if you 
work hard enough then you will be able to bring happiness and success to 
dozens of people who otherwise would have lived sad and lonely lives somewhere
else. You are the only one, no... the CHOSEN ONE... the lone soul who can bring
forth the blessings of the earth and share the bounty with a whole community
of people that you carry on your back. You aren't just a simple farmer here,
you're a veritable ARCHETYPAL HERO... blessed by THE GODDESS to save a DYING
LAND. Your actions will determine whether THE WORLD PROSPERS OR WITHERS. THIS
IS THE MOST EPIC FARMING-SIM EVER! Or something. You can just do whatever you
want, whatever.

4. I've just started playing and there is literally NOTHING to do. What gives?

In the beginning this game is a very empty and boring experience. The game
designers have deliberatly set about delaying your access to the different
game systems and villagers, and whenever something new is introduced it comes
with a tedious TUTORIAL. This makes the first month of the game a very tedious
experience with not much to do. All I can say is that IT GETS BETTER and 
recommend that you just plant and water and sell crops and then just go to
sleep early every day to speed the game calendar along until it gets to those
dates when interesting things start happening. 

If you just hurry forward to the first summer then the option to EDIT the
TOWN and move buildings around and whatnot will be unlocked, and the MAYOR 
will give you TOWN RESTORATION PLANS that function as goals to work towards
and drive the game towards more and more COMPLEXITY (and INTERESTINGNESS). 
From then on you'll have plenty to do if you so choose. The Town Restoration
system acts as a system of goals for you, and getting married is certainly a 
popular pursuit for players of this particular game, but you are essentially
free to live whatever sort of life you want in this game.

5. How do I read this guide?

This guide is divided up in to different sections so if you are looking for
something specific then you should check out the handy TABLE OF CONTENTS and
check out the three bracketed numbers next to that section ([xxx]) and if you
want to jump to that section you can search for it using ctrl-f or some other
search method.

I'm going to outline some of the basic GAME SYSTEMS first and then dive in
to the WALKTHROUGH. The walkthrough is going to be divided by MONTH/SEASON and
its going to include GOALS and point out when and how things get unlocked, but
keep in mind that new features get unlocked at different rates depending on how
you play so I'm going to have to be vague about when things are happening in 
this game. This game is pretty mellow and go-at-your-own-pace so don't worry if
it takes you 3 years to get married or whatever you have all of the time in the
world (or, at least until your 3DS breaks down or the game cartridge ((if you 
have one)) breaks down).

6. Are there any exploits I can use to get lots of money really quickly?

Yes, but I'm not really interested in telling you about them. Getting money is
something you're supposed to do gradually so that you stay with the game over 
a long period of time and get attached to the characters. Which is to say that
if you get all of the money at the very beginning then you are going to BREAK 
the game and get bored with it and never be able to enjoy it the way its meant
to be enjoyed. 

Now the biggest exploit in this game comes from a side-feature in this game
that allows you to CONNECT to other players, either ONLINE or LOCALLY, to TRADE
items. If you check out any gaming website that has a HM:ANB forum you're going
to find a community of people willing to trade you items that may be of better
quality or from later in the game or would otherwise just be too expensive for
you to get immediately. There are even ways to do this trading without saving
so you can keep the items you supposedly traded. If you ever played POKEMON
(is there anyone who owns a 3DS but has never played pokemon?) you may think
of this system as being just like the trading in system in those games, and 
just as loaded with game-breaking and item-duplicating possibilities. So if you
want to make a lot of money fast and not enjoy the game as it was meant to be 
enjoyed, then what you want to do is find someone online who is willing to 
send you certain items that will help you complete TOWN RESTORATION PLANS or
build houses or win FESTIVALS early or whatever.

7. What qualifies you to write a guide on this game?

Not much actually. I am a player just like you. I'm not an authority of any
kind. I don't have any knowledge about this game that cannot be found by
playing the game directly or scouring websites (particularly the HARVEST MOON
WIKI) to obtain information. The only thing that qualifies me to write a guide
to help you is that I have the time and skill to write and that I sat down and 
did it. 

So basically I'm just a guy who played this game when it came out at the end 
of 2012. And now in 2013 it's about to come out in Europe and I thought that
means there will be new players and that some person should write a guide for 
them. And then I realized that *I* am some person, so I wrote this. I started a
new file (of the opposite gender from last time) so that I could write down 
everything that happens in this game as it happens and cover the full length 
and breadth (and depth cuz it's 3D) of this game's content. 

If you've read some of my opinions on this game and you're wondering what sort
of experience I have with this series and where my views are coming from, then
I'll admit that I'm an 'old-school' Harvest Moon player in that I haven't
played any of the multitude of Wii and DS titles. I don't know anything about
them or what they've done to advance the series or what features they have. 
HM:ANB is the first Harvest Moon in many years to interest me enough to give it
a try because it tried to shake up the formula. That said, in recent years I've
been playing the Harvest Moon spin-off series RUNE FACTORY and I've enjoyed 
that a lot and I would recommend that series to anyone who likes Harvest Moon 
and fantasy dungeon-crawling (and hey, there's a 3DS RUNE FACTORY game coming 
out soon... check it out((it's got dragons and stuff!))!).

Now since I am just a guy with my own opinions of what is important in this
game there are going to be huge biases in what I choose to include and what
I don't bother to write out. For instance, I don't feel the need to include 
lists and tables of items and whatnot. That info can be found elsewhere. This
isn't a compendium, it's a guide mean to help you unlock all of the stuff that
the game has locked up. If you need to find out specific information then 
you can go look it up elsewhere (I recommend the WIKIA, but really it shouldn't
be so hard for you to go to your preferred search engine and 'something' search
for whatever you're looking for.

8. Dude, I want this game but I can't find it in stores anywhere! 
   Where can I get this game, bro?

Well dog, Harvest Moon games are sometimes hard to find in stores. I know that
when I was trying to find a physical copy of this game that it was just
impossible, even though the video game stores around my area usually had 3DS
copies of Tale of Two Towns for some reason. So if you really want a physical
copy (to say, lend to other people) then you might have to resort to Amazon.com
to get it. 

But... if you don't care about physical copies then you might be happy to learn
that this game is available from the 3DS eShop and available for download
anytime! Neat! That's how I got the game after giving up on finding it in 
stores. If you choose to download it's going to eat up like 2000 or so blocks 
of 3DS memory block units.

..........................................
******************************************
2.  USEFUL NOTES AND TIPS AND TRICKS [200]
******************************************
..........................................

Here's my overview of all of the game systems. If you want to know how this 
game works then you can read up on it here. But then again, I'm not super
interested in writing out all of the same stuff that you can find in the game's
manual, especially since all of that stuff and more gets explained to you 
tediously at the beginning of the game. And then all of that information is 
available for you to check up on in the BOOKSHELF in YOUR HOUSE. So, yeah... 
three different ways that you can look up information on these game systems 
makes me think that writing about them here would be stupidly redundant.

So like... I guess I'll mention each of the game systems, but it'll be an 
abbreviated explanation and I'll probably be all like sarcastic and 
condescending just to keep myself interested. If you're interested in finding
out how all of these systems actually work, I suggest reading the in-game 
material or checking another website. If you're interested in my opinions on 
them and which things are more fun or better uses of time or whatever, then
read on.

The MANUAL for this game covers things like controls and on-screen displays
how the menus work and what not. You should read it if you want to know about
that kind of stuff. If you downloaded the game from the ESHOP then the manual
can be found by tapping the game icon and then looking to the bottom of the 
bottom screen where there will be a 'manual' button next to the START GAME 
button.

Anyways here's a bunch of useful miscellaneous tips and things that I thought
you should read first and foremost (oops gettin' a little too tipsy to type
this may not be the most coherent or organized piece of writing in the world
but whatevers):

In your first spring you can seriously water all of your crops and take care 
of your cow and talk to everyone in the village and ship all of your items and
go gather items in the wilderness before frigging noon. If you skip the item
gathering part you can be done for the day before 9AM. Just go to bed early 
and move the day forward. When Summer comes you're going to want to have some
HONEY and BEES saved in your box, but otherwise feel free to sleep and sell
whatever you find.
*
Bugs are totally useless for anything but selling. Just sell them.
*
You want to hold onto BRANCHES and ROCKS though. You CAN turn them into LUMBER
and MATERIAL STONE using tools if you really need too... but on the other hand
you are going to need unprocessed rocks and branches and you can just buy the
processed stuff... so just hold onto this stuff (and make it a priority to 
build the STORAGE SHED asap).
*
Your initial WATERING CAN has 24 drops - after 14 it is 'almost empty'. you 
start the game with have 32 spots to water (if you plant grass near the barn) 
and 24 drops... make it work. You should make upgrading your watering can a
priority... but only AFTER upgrading the AXE and HAMMER.
*
weather forecasts are not totally accurate i don't think i need to verify that.
*
The big mushroom in the woods can be jumped on to get to a 'secret' area. It's
not a big deal. When you start playing you may also discover that you can 
jump on some rocks to get to a spot with these colorful tree stumps. Yeah,
that will be explained to you by the end of Spring. And you may notice a 
couple of boulders blocking paths and trees that when you press 'A' near them
bring up a message... yeah, all of that stuff will be unlocked as the game 
progresses just be patient.
*
If you stay up for 12 hours you can watch your fields dry up like the negative
ghost of how you planted them. You can water your fields again if you want
and maybe that'll make your crops grow faster? Whatever, it's not worth it. 
Just go to sleep early and move the calendar along.
*
You don't have to water crops on rainy days.
* 
You can hammer/axe large numbers of rocks/branches at once by PLACING large
numbers of them on the ground together and hitting them just once.
*
If you aren't very interested in listening to what a villager has to say and
you are more interested in looking at their chest, just press the R button!
*
You can move the CAMERA around using the D-PAD. When you are just starting out
you will want to zoom the camera out as far as you can so you can see your
surroundings, but after you have a pretty good idea of where everything is you
can zoom the camera in to get a better look at your character and whatnot. In
any case you should move the camera to a new angle every so often to keep the 
game feeling fresh.
    


******************
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actual info coming soon
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
******************

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3. VILLAGERS [300]
*******************
...................

Living in a virtual world all by yourself would be sort of lonely, but living
in a virtual world with a bunch of virtual people is sort of fun. These are the
villagers you'll be getting to know as you play HM:ANB. Some of them will be
interested in you if you play as a girl, others if you play as a boy, and some
won't be into you regardless of what you do. Most of them work at SHOPS where
you can buy things and thus they give you access to different parts of the game.

Villagers will like you better if you talk to them, give them GIFTS (only one
per day) and if you participate in and do well at FESTIVALS. You don't have to
buy them stuff to make them like you, but it can sure speed that process up.
Keep your gifts for people you want to sleep with and people who will give you
stuff in return, I say. 

Villagers have an unseen FRIENDSHIP POINT SYSTEM that tracks how much they like
you, and if you get enough points it will trigger certain events and whatnot.
The BACHELORS or BACHELORETTES will have HEART METERS next to their dialouge
that give an approximate indication of how much they like you, and getting to
higher heart levels will unlock little HEART EVENT SCENES. Just something to
look forward to.

Try to talk to some of the villagers everyday. The important ones, at least.
I mean, I guess you could waste your time befriending the harvest sprites or
goddess, but really, why bother? The villagers move around town according to
their own strange schedules so sometimes finding them can be a bother. They'll
usually be home eating between 12-2 and 6-8 but you can't give them gifts then.
Maybe you could try talking to them at work as their work schedules are pretty
regular.

In this section I will list all of the villagers (eventually) and their 
birthdays and how to unlock them (because remember the town is only inhabited
by ghosts when you arrive). I'll list some items they like to receive as gifts
but usually the items they like the most are expensive and exotic and I want 
this guide to be more practical. The liked item surrounded by *asterisks* is not
the favorite or best item for gaining friendship points... but it is an easy to 
get, cheap, common item that they like and that you could potentially manage to 
give them every day without trying very hard.


...............
BACHELORS [301]
...............

....
NEIL
....
The guy that sells animals

Unlocked: First Spring 9
Birthday:
Likes: *milk*, *egg* butter, cheese, yogurt, fish, animal items, animals
Dislikes: deserts, salads, soups, jams, minerals, lot of things really

Neil already lives in Echo when you arrive, but apparently he was out of town
for nine days. On the ninth day, though, he'll come to town to give you a cow,
which is really nice, but he'll make sure to tell you that it's from Dunhill
and that he doesn't give a damn whether you live or die. He's downright hostile
towards you for some reason. They may say that he just feels more comfortable
around animals than people. Whatever. If you want to befriend or marry him it
won't be too difficult because he really likes items that animals make and you
can get that stuff every day easily enough.

The worst thing about Neil is that when he opens his store (Mon-Thur) at 10AM
he'll spend 10 minutes of your time making you watch the same damn scene every
damn time. And he'll make another scene when he closes. You will be sick of 
this unnecessary cutscene long before the first spring is done.

.....
ALLEN
.....
The hairstylist

Birthday: Spring 16
Unlocked:
Likes: butterflies, flowers, cloth, herb soup/pasta
Dislikes: lots of stuff

This good looking cool guy runs the hair salon. He's kind of grumpy in the 
mornings and a little arrogant and flippant. Well like I said he's really good
looking so he can get away with it. His prices are pretty steep when you first
get his shop, though.

...
ROD
...
The Pet Store kid

Birthday: Summer 28
Unlocked: Build a Cottage (Pet Store, TRP3)
Likes: *Bugs* *milk*
Dislikes:

......
SOSEKI
......

Unlocked: TRP4
Birthday: Spring 24
Likes: 
Dislikes: 


....
AMIR
....

Unlocked: TRP5
Birthday: Winter 26
Likes: 
Dislikes: 

......
SANJAY
......

Unlocked: TRP5
Birthday: Fall 12
Likes: 
Dislikes: 





...................
BACHELORETTES [302]
...................

.....
IROHA
.....
The blackmsith

Unlocked: First Spring 15
Birthday: Winter 5
Likes: *Scrap Metal*, *flowers*, metals, lumber/material stones
Dislikes: animals, milk, animal items like fodder, treats, cheese, yogurt

Iroha is the first new person to move to Echo. It won't take very long to
unlock her, but it will feel like forever. You just have to get to Spring 15
and an event will trigger that unlocks Iroha.

She's a friendly person and seems to like you right from the start. You'll be
really glad to meet her because she gives you a hammer and axe and those things
open up a few cool things for you to do. Also if you befriend her she'll give
you blueprints for upgrading your tools, which are super-useful (and necessary)
so make befriending her a priority. It's not that hard, though. She likes that
useless scrap metal that is laying out in the forest, and she likes flowers,
too. 

....
TINA
....
Your friendly neighborhood paperboy

Unlocked: First Summer (TRP2)
Birthday: Summer 12
Likes: whatever, she's pretty agreeable. Just give her some bugs or whatever.
Dislikes: veggies

You unlock this character by building the 'Newspaper Carrier's House', which
is part of TRP2. You'll need 25 Material Stone, 5 copper, and a lot of lumber.
It's a nice big house you give to her. Apparently paper routes in this town
pay extremely well.

Tina is a lively girl and cute too. She seems kind of young and naive. She
spends her time wandering the town and wilderness looking for 'scoops' she
can write about. She seems to suspect that you have some secret... and she's
right... but she never seems to even begin to comprehend what you REALLY are.

....
YURI
....
The Tailor

Unlocked: Build Tailor's Shop (TRP5 but you can build it way earlier)
Birthday: Winter 19
Likes: *herb soup*, cloth, flowers, butterflies
Dislikes:

She doesn't have a heart and she looks like a boy, but really she's another
bachelorette.

........
FELICITY
........
The waitress

Unlocked: Build the Restaurant AND the Inn (TRP3)
Birthday: Spring 2
Likes: egg and cheese and yogurt, cooked dishes
Dislikes: milk and milk products

........
FELICITY
........

Unlocked: TRP4
Birthday: Fall 17
Likes: 
Dislikes: 

..............
WITCH PRINCESS
..............
Which Princess?


Unlocked: 
Birthday: Winter 29
Likes: 
Dislikes: 


..................
AND THE REST [303]
..................

.......
Dunhill
.......

Mayor of Echo Village
Birthday:
Likes: *milk*, butter, cheese, yogurt, fish, animal items, animals
Dislikes: deserts, salads, soups, jams, minerals, lot of things really

Dunhill is the first person you meet in Echo. He's the mayor, which apparently
means that his job is to come up with ideas and then have you spend your time 
and money to build them. He also lets you re-arrange the town as you see fit,
so really, who's actually in charge here? He's also the paperboy until Tina 
moves to Echo. Anyways Dunhill (or Dunny, as I will be calling him) is a weak
and creepy old man who likes to come into your house when you're sleeping and
tell you about his crazy dreams and schemes.


....
Emma
....

The Shipper
Birthday:
Likes: 
Dislikes: 

Emma is the motherly woman who lives in Echo when you arrive. She also owns a
shipping box so you'll have to stop by her house to ship items (and make 
money). She also has a daughter who will eventually move back to Echo to live
with her.

....
Hana
....
The little old lady who runs the General Store

Birthday:
Likes:
Dislikes: 

Hana is the other other character who still lives in Echo when the game begins.
She runs the general store and she'll sell you things that get released for
sale gradually over the course of the game. Most of her crop seeds vary by
season, though. She also can make you flower bouquets.

.......
Rebecca
.......
The Architect

Unlocked: Spring 25
Birthday:
Likes:
Dislikes: 

Getting to Spring 25 and unlocking Rebecca is when the game really opens up
because with her comes the BLUEPRINT and BUILDING and EDITTING systems that
really make this game fun. You'll be super happy that she's here and maybe a
little disappointed that she has a kid and is not interested in dating you. Oh
well. She's pretty tough and independent and is probably too much woman for 
you to handle anyways. Her store is only open three days a week but you'll be 
there as often as possible picking up blueprints and probably the materials 
too, since the MINE won't be open until long after she arrives.

....
Toni
....
Rebecca's son
Unlocked: Spring 25
Birthday:
Likes: 
Dislikes: 

etcetera
these guys aren't so important now are they



.........................................................................
*************************************************************************
4. WALKTHROUGH - CHARACTER CREATION AND THE TEDIOUS DAYS OF SPRING [400]
*************************************************************************
.........................................................................

So you're starting a new game. I'll tell you upfront: it's going to be slow
going for a while. Grin and bear it.

When you select NEW GAME (which is the only option available to you when you
first get this game... there aren't even 'options' lol) you will be taken to
the CHARACTER CREATION MENUS. The first thing you do is pick a SEX, which is a
super big decision that is going to effect who you can woo in this game. Note
that there are no homosexual dating options.

There are two save spots, which means if you want to see both sides of this
game then you can play one as a boy and another as a girl. Then again, if you
want to share this game with someone else, you'd have to take one each. Finally
if you only want to play this game once, but when you're getting near the end 
you have two potential mates you like, you can save your game to both slots
and then marry a different person in each. Pretty neat... but not as neat as 
those games that have like thirty save slots and therefore let you marry 
everyone without having to play the game over and over again.

So okay you choose your sex. Then you have a couple of CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION
options. There are 4 skin colors, a couple of different facial styles, a lot
of different hairstyles and colors, and eye colors, and a couple of outfits 
(you can get more outfits later on). And when you're done picking all of that
stuff you get to have a NAME (but it's only 6 characters... bummer) and a 
BIRTHDAY. The game also warns you that your name and your animal's names and
your farm's name can be viewed online when you CONNECT with people, so just
be warry about putting real personal information in here. Also certain words
the creators have deemed *obscene* won't show up online.

.................................
GOALS FOR YOUR FIRST SPRING [401]
.................................

Your goal for the first Spring is to hurry through it and get to the good part
of the game. This Spring is the season of TUTORIALS and you are going to be 
sick of them very quickly, but you are also going to find that there is nothing
else to do because the game is withholding all of the good stuff to keep you
playing longer. This spring is going to suck so just bear with it and it will
soon be over.

The best thing that you can do as a virtual farmer is to get up every morning
and water your crops and take care of your cow... and then go to bed by noon,
or even 9:30 AM. If you're feeling particularly industrious you can go run
around the WILDERNESS everyday and stock up on items you will need later, but
you can still have that done by noon.

HONEYCOMBS are the item you're going to want to hoard in your house. Never
sell these things. Keep all of the BEES you find, too. You can sell any other
BUGS you find because they are useless, but you may want to hold onto any 
flowers (they make good gifts) or things that can be cooked. Also, you want
to hold onto any ROCKS and BRANCHES you find because you'll be needing them
later for building stuff. Don't be too tempted to axe/hammer them into 
processed materials.

At the end of the month is a CROP FESTIVAL and if you win it then you'll 
increase the selling point of every crop you grow from now on. When you're 
growing crops this season, pick at least one of them to FERTILIZE everyday and
keep it until the end of the month to enter it in the festival. If you have
the money you can fertilize a couple of crops and keep them for much later in
your career when you can turn them into SEEDS.

So yeah, Spring is tutorials and nothing to do. Grin and bear it, power through
it, etcetera. 

................................
SPRING 1 - A NEW BEGINNING [402]
................................

You are introduced to ECHO VILLAGE and how desolate and sorry a town it really
is. Then you step onto the scene, a chosen hero, the only one who can save
this town... but first you are the only one who can save this sickly guy who
passes out in front of you. But before you are able to save him you start 
hearing voices in your head, so you really have to wonder who is really in
trouble in this situation. Anyways, listen to the voices and go over to the
fainted man and press A to help him. He'll tell you that his name is DUNHILL
and that he's the MAYOR and that he is an old friend of your family and that he
has been waiting for you and he's going to take you to your family farm that 
you have inherited. 

Anyways Dunhill takes you to Echo Village and then to his house. He'll explain
HEALTH and STAMINA, but not very well. They're not super important anyways.
Then you'll go back to your house and on the way you'll see the town's other 
four inhabitants... and two of them are moving away. HUSSAN the INNKEEPER is 
taking his son and looking for greener pastures. Yeesh. Echo Village is looking
pretty bleak.

Then you are given the option of naming your farm. Remember, 6 characters and
it can be viewed by others if you connect to the internet for trading. Your
farm has a lot of rubbish strewn about, and Dunhill gives you another tedious
chore in asking you to pick up 10 items, just to make sure that you can pick
up items. Well, get it over with and go pick stuff up. There are some flowers 
amongst the worthless trash... so that's something.

Dunhill then explains how to work the camera, and how items have star quality
and how they take up room in your limited backpack.

Next Dunhill takes you inside your new house to show you all of your 
FURNISHINGS and the different things they do. Your KITCHEN has a REFRIGERATOR
that can store food items, and a COUNTER where you can COOK food using 
RECIPIES. Oh, and it turns out that you have 3 recipies already, and they're
made using the very crops you're going to be growing first this spring. Neat!
Also you have a CALENDAR that you'll be consulting to find out when EVENTS and
BIRTHDAYS are... but right now there is no one in town and no events so...
it's kind of depressing to look at that right now. Moving on, you have a BED
for SLEEPING, something you have to do to get to the next day (and to keep 
yourself from collapsing). You have a CLOSET for changing OUTFITS and a 
BOOKSHELF where you can look up ASSETS, RECORDS, and TUTORIALS. Pretty dull
stuff.

You have two BOXES in your house. The one on the RIGHT is for storing TOOLS, 
and the one on the LEFT is for storing EVERYTHING that isn't tools or food 
items (which go in the fridge). This storage box is divided into several 
sections and you'll be using it later in the game to redecorate your house with
WALLPAPERS and FLOORINGS.

Dunhill FINALLY gives you a DIARY, which means that you are now able to SAVE
your game. You'll want to save at the end of every day, just in case... and 
don't think you can save in the mornings, because for the next few days you're
going to wake up to find other people already in your house and waiting to
force you into more tutorials. You also get an ENCYCLOPEDIA, which has info
on items and play records and whatnot. It goes on your BOOKSHELF so I don't 
know why it couldn't have just been there when you got the shelf a minute ago.

Dunhill finally leaves you alone, but with the promise that he'll be back 
tomorrow. Some people are just really pushy when it comes to helping others,
you know. I guess it really speaks to how desperate this town's situation is
that everyone is constantly at your doorstep and sending you mail begging you
to start farming and save the town. Anyways... you automatically go to sleep...
sorta... well the screen goes black and its says you're going to sleep, but 
then when it comes back it's just later that same day and you're told to go to
sleep yourself. Very confusing. Just save your game (Press X to open the menu 
and select save) and then go to bed to get to the next day's worth of 
tutorials. If you like you can stay up a little bit and look around at all of
that stuff in your house. 

....................................
SPRING 2 - GETTING TO KNOW YOU [403]
....................................

Today to wake up to a bunch of mail... but its all ads and junkmail. Phooey.
Dunhill brings you a newspaper that you can read if you want to get a weather
forecast. Unlike in the real-world, these forecasts are mostly accurate and can
be relied on.

Dunhill takes you to meet the other two remaining villagers: EMMA and HANA.
Hana is the tiny old lady and she explains that she runs the GENERAL STORE. 
You'll get to know where it is pretty soon because that's where you'll be going
to get SEEDS and INGREDIENTS and other such stuff. She also can turn FLOWERS
into BOUQUETS in case flowers just aren't a good enough present for some snob
you have your eye on.

Hana is the middle-aged woman and she looks after the SHIPPING BIN. In previous
Harvest Moon games the shipping bin would have been located on your farm, but
now it is in town in front of this lady's puple house so you'll have to run up
there to sell things (and make money). Emma seems to be a lonely woman who is 
happy that there is is a new young person in town to put things in her box.

Dunhill then explains how your MINIMAP works, as if you couldn't see for 
yourself that the lower screen of your NINTENDO 3DS PORTABLE VIDEO GAME SYSTEM
has a map on it with little low-res icons that are supposed to represent where
the villagers happen to be. Even if you were able to figure that out yourself,
Dunhill challenges you to follow him and his icon around town for a TUTORIAL
ON WALKING. Sigh.

On a more interesting note, Dunhill expains to you the general layout of the
WILDERNESS around town. You can go EAST from town to get to the RIVER AREA, or
you can go NORTH to get to the FOREST. Whichever way you go you can get to 
a MOUNTAIN AREA that connects the river and forest in a sort of LOOP or ROUTE.
You'll be running this WILDERNESS ROUTE to go foraging an awful lot in the 
near future.

But right now Dunhill has more stuff to explain to you. For instance, that 
there are FESTIVAL GROUNDS NORTH of his house, and that there is a house in 
town that belongs to the local ANIMAL DEALER who is out of town at the moment
but Dunhill is holding out hope that he'll come back to this no-horse town.
Then you are treated to a tutorial on SHOPPING and you'll also learn that the
GENERAL STORE is closed on Wednesday and Sunday and that you can get that info
from the sign in front of the building. All of these tutorials will be added 
to your bookshelf, in case you were worried about that.

So... this may be your first chance to stretch your legs and run free! Aren't
you excited! There's so much to see! You can look around your farm and see all
of the boulders that are blocking off paths, or the fishing pier that you can't
use yet because you don't have a rod, or the hill on the EAST end of your 
property that doesn't seem to have a purpose. You might also take the 
opportunity to explore your empty BARN, with its ANIMAL INFORMATION, FODDER
SLOT, and BIRTHING AREA. If you have no idea what any of those are, don't 
worry, tutorials will be coming forthwith. And you can check out your FIELDS
and your WATERING HOLE. Looking good, aren't they? You'll be starting work on 
them tomorrow and I'm sure you'll be fast friends.

If you head back into town make sure you get acquianted with the SHIPPING BOX.
Go up to it and press A to start selling your stuff. You'll be given an
indication of how much G (gold) an item is worth, but you'll be told nothing
of the REAL VALUE your items have. What I mean to say is that some of your
items are worth nothing but gold, but some of them you would be better off
keeping and storing so that you can use them for... well you'll see. Hold onto
your ROCKS and STICKS and any HONEYCOMBS you've picked up, and maybe a flower
or two... but when you go foraging and find yourself a whole bunch of bugs,
bring them back here and sell them for mad piles of coin. Oh, and when you sell
things here, you'll get the money the next morning when you wake up.

The GENERAL STORE is selling ingredients and recipies, but there are no tools
or seeds in sight. You'll be getting them for free on the morrow. So since 
there is nothing to do in town, why not go run a lap around the WILDERNESS?
Pick up any bugs and other stuff you see up there, and get a feel for where
the walls are (hint: all of those moondrop flowers are out of reach). You'll
notice that there are lots of WILD ANIMALS about that you can pick up and such,
but they're not really good for anything just yet. Be on the lookout for bugs
and scrap metal and flowers and herbs and whatnot and then sell or store all
of that stuff as you see fit. Running this route and foraging for stuff is how
you're going to be spending most of your time and making most of your money
for the next little while, so get comfortable with it. When you've run the lap
and sold your stuff, just go home and go to bed and move the calendar forward.

.................................
SPRING 3 - HOW TO GROW CROPS [404]
.................................

Dunhill wakes you up for a TUTORIAL on CROPS. Thankfully, it's optional. Even
better, he gives you a SICKLE and a HOE and WATERING CAN and 7 TURNIP SEEDS and
a POTATO SEED. Yay! 

The basic gist of farming is that you TILL with the HOE, SOW with the SEEDS,
WATER with the CAN, and then HARVEST after a few days. You have to water every
day or the crops WITHER and eventually DIE. You can also FERTILIZE crops to
increase their QUALITY (and worth), but fertilizer costs money and you don't
have much so you can put that off until later in the month. Don't worry if you 
don't know exactly what to do because Dunhill is sure to tell you.

When you're free you should set to work growing crops. Start by TILLING ground.
Then go ahead and plant your seeds. If you plant them correctly you'll notice
that they fill up all of your fields except for those plots next to the barn
(where you'll be growing GRASS FODDER). If you plant your seeds incorrectly 
you'll waste them and have to go buy more, so be careful when you're sowing. 
Finish up by watering your seeds. Then you can go foraging if you want money 
(to by GRASS SEEDS for ANIMAL FODDER) or you can just go to sleep and get up 
the next day and water your crops all over again.

............................
SPRING 4 - HOW TO SHIP [405]
............................

When you wake up this morning, Emma will be in your house and all eager to
introducing you to the SHIPPING BOX. Wait... you already know all about the
shipping box, you say? Oh, fancy that. Well... go water your crops and run a
loop along the wilderness trail and ship whatever junk you find. Say hello to
everyone in town and maybe collect a TITLE for being a good little BUGGER and
then you can just go to bed. If you're efficient, you can do all of this before
noon.

Rinse and repeat for days five, six, and seven. Get your hands on some GRASS
SEED and start growing FODDER. Grass grows somewhat differently than other 
crops. It doesn't need watering, for one thing. It switches between 'small'
and 'large' states of growth. You want to use your sickle on the grass when it
gets tall. This is a slow animation, but it's not so bad because the grass
grows back everyday without you having to do very much. Also be careful not to
scythe short grass because that just kills it. Take your grass and put it in 
the STORAGE BOX in your house and somehow it will be available for you in your
BARN when you need it. When you start getting animals in a couple of days you
will see that one piece of fodder can fill a whole friggin TROUGH and counts 
for 5 SERVINGS. Neat!

On SPRING 8 those TURNIPS you planted are going to be ready (assuming that you
planted them immediately and watered them once a day). It's going to be a big
cash haul for you (though its easy enough to clear 1000g a day just foraging).
One thing you should know before you get to SPRING 8 is that it's a SUNDAY and
you won't be able to buy SEED tomorrow to replant your fields because the 
GENERAL STORE will be closed. Do yourself a favor and pick up a whole bunch
of SEED now so you don't lose a day. And hey, if you have the cash, get some
FERTILIZER and you can get to improving the QUALITY of your next crop.


...................................
SPRING 8 - YOUR FIRST HARVEST [406]
...................................

Today (or whenever your turnips happen to be ready) you can go outside and
get your hands on 7x4 big juicy turnips. Yum! If you didn't use any fertilizer
on them, they'll only be 1/2 star quality, but don't worry because even at that
level they're still worth 125G each... for a net total of... *does math*: 
3500G! Yay! But wait... there's more! Remember that KITCHEN you own, and those
RECIPIES you have? Yeah, one of them turns turnips into TURNIP SALAD... and
since cooking costs no time or stamina and each salad is worth 168G you would
be well advised to go ahead and turn all 28 of your turnips into turnip salad
and ship those for the original 3500G and an ADDITIONAL 1200G. Money money!

If you have SEEDS you can start sowing a new crop right away. You don't even
have to till the ground in between crops! However I'm pretty sure the game is
deviously set up for the store to be closed the same day that your first crop
is ready, so you'll loose a day if you don't stock up on seeds beforehand. This
game is kind of mean to you sometimes (and yet still does not come close to
how unfair and difficult life is for actual family farmers). 

................................
SPRING 9 - HAVE A COW, MAN [407]
................................

When you wake up the next morning there will be a COW in your yard. You might
be thinking that since the lower screen reads 'Meet Neil' that Neil is the 
name of this cow... but no... not exactly (though you can name the cow Neil 
later if you so choose). No, Neil is the ANIMAL STORE guy and he's back in town
to give you a COW and a BRUSH and MILKER and a PITCHFORK. They're not from him,
he expalins, but from Dunhill. Neil could not care less about you or your 
success or failure and he wants to make sure you know that. If you are playing
as a GIRL you will notice that there is a GREY HEART next to his dialouge to
show you that he is a POTENTIAL MATE and that he IS NOT INTO YOU AT ALL. That
heart will change color if he comes to like you, which is not so difficult to
do since he really likes milk and eggs and you'll be getting some of that stuff
everyday from now on.

He'll offer you a tutorial on ANIMAL CARE and also tell you to stop by his 
shop for animal-related items (but not on long weekends, which are every 
weekend for him). I'll briefly go over animal care here because I'm so 
professional: everyday you have to talk to your animals and brush them and
make sure they have food and milk them and clean up the barn if its dirty and
take them out in the sun if it is nice outside. You can do most of that today
if you please, even getting your first batch of milk. There are also special 
means of improving your relationship with animals, and more situational items 
thatthey require like medicine if they get sick or miracle potions if you want
them to get pregnant.

Now, here's the problem with animal care: pushing your animals outside by
hand is super hard and slow. You are simply incapable of pushing a cow for
more than a few seconds without sliding off of it. It's super irritating and
slow and at the beginning of the game you're not even going to be staying up
very long everyday anyways, so really you're going to be spending half of your
day just pushing your cow in and out of the barn. And you know what? Your 
animals can still increase their happiness towards you even if you never let
them go outside. Do yourself a big favor and just leave your cow in the barn 
until you have the option of getting a BELL to move your animals.

Let's see, what else is there to learn about animals? In your barn there is a
desk with some ANIMAL INFO on it that will tell you all about how happy/clean/
stressed your animals are. Also if you go into town at 10AM you'll see Neil 
opening up his ANIMAL SHOP to sell you animals and items (note: a cutscene 
plays everyday at 10-10:10AM when Neil opens his shop, so make sure you aren't
in town for these 10 minutes a day or you'll have to sit and watch this stupid
scene every friggin' day. It's like... we get it Neil: you crave attention but
you hate people. Get over yourself). Oh, also make sure you're not in town when
he closes, because he'll make another scene. Every. Damn. Day.

Neil will explain to you about the ANIMAL SANCTUARY, a place that animals like
to go to relax. He also sells FODDER (but it's so much cheaper to grow your
own) and CHICKENS (but you don't have a COOP yet to put them in). Oh, and you
can buy TREATS if you want to make animals like you more and give you even
more items. But really, if you just do the basic mimimum animal care everyday
then you'll get an item everyday and it will slowly increase in quality and
value, so that's pretty easy.

SPRING 10 - Your first crop of potatoes should be done today, assuming you
planted them on Spring 3 when you first had the option, and assuming you
watered them everyday. Remember that a single potato sells for 150G, but a 
potato salad or soup sells for 240G. If Hana is selling RECIPES of any kind
you should be buying them because they are like licences to print money. 

SPRING 11 - That mysterious voice calls out to you in the night again. This
time it wants you to know that there are different bugs at different times of
the day. If that's something that interests you then be sure to say 'thank you'
to the voices in your head and then go do what they tell you.

SPRING 12 - Emma shows up at your house today for a tutorial on cooking and to
give you some RECIPES for BREAD and DESERTS. Not coincidentally, out deserts. 
It's called 'Harmony Day' and the CALENDAR certainly seems to suggest that you
are obligated to hand out deserts to everyone in town. You should go buy some 
FLOUR from the GENERAL STORE and any RECIPES that might be available.

..............................................
SPRING 14 - HARMONY DAY: THE FIRST EVENT [408]
..............................................

Oh man, what a set-up. This whole 'Harmony Day' is a huge scam, a prank played
directly on YOU. You are such a fool. Your calendar says you should give CREPES
to people, so of course you get up and make four of them using that recipe you
were given and that flour you bought, and you take a crepe to Emma and Hana and
Dunhill and Neil... and what do you get in return? Nothing. There is no notion
of reciprocity on harmony day. No one is even overly grateful. And then there 
is Neil, who doesn't like you anyways, but it turns out that he HATES crepe 
and he takes it as a personal offence that you, a stranger who read a calendar
that said today was the day to give crepes to people, should give him a crepe.
It's almost as if MARVELOUS was deliberately trying to create a shitty festival
that would show you, the player, that villagers have certain gifts that they
HATE to receive, and also to add something to their characterization of Neil
as a prickly jerkass. Well played, Marvelous, but you're playing a very
dangerous game by making the first month of your game so unappetizing.

................................................
SPRING 15 - Iroha, the Hammer, and the Axe [409]
................................................

Things start turning around today. From now on ECHO VILLAGE is going to be 
getting more populated and more interesting and lots of different things are
going to be happening. I told you the game would get better, didn't I? 

When you wake up this morning Hana will be in your house and she invites you
on a walk. She shows you how to search tree stumps for nuts and herbs. And then
you spy someone in the woods and Hana is all eager to meet someone new. You 
meet a girl named IROHA who will have a GREY HEART next to her name if you are
playing a boy, indicating that she is a POTENTIAL MATE. She is looking for a
MINE that is rumored to be in the wilderness around Echo Village. Iroha intends
to stay at the Echo Village INN, but Hana informs her that it closed down (and
then simply vanished). Then you get the bright idea of moving her into the 
empty house and before you know it you have a new BLACKSMITH living in your 
town. She gives you a HAMMER and an AXE, greatly expanding the number of things
you can do in this virtual world. Tutorials about these tools get added to your
bookshelf in case you are interested. 

The hammer and axe can turn rocks and branches into MATERIAL STONES and LUMBER,
but don't be too trigger-happy about doing that. You're going to need lots of
unprocessed rocks and branches, too. Material Stones can be purchased (starting
next week) and lumber is easily made available by chopping up TREES and STUMPS.
Right now your axe can only chop down 'broad leafed trees' so you'll want to
upgrade it, but in the meantime why don't you go and cut down a few of the more
obnoxious trees around town or on your farm. Starting next week you're going 
to be a big-time land-developer and those stupid trees are going to have to go.

..........................................
SPRING 17 - MEET THE HARVEST SPRITES [410]
..........................................

Remember that little voice in the night that you thought was just another one
of your psychotic hallucinations (or psychedelic hallucinations, if you've been
eating a lot of the wild mushrooms)? Well, it turns out its just a little 
munchkin man from the land of magic and spirits that regular folk can't see, 
and he thinks you're special and he wants to transport you to a place where the
trees are made of a rainbow of colors and each color can be played like a 
different note in a magical tune that he's going to teach you. Nothing insane
about that.

This little guy is a HARVEST SPRITE named AARON, and his sister is named ALICE.
Aaron is the nice guy and Alice is the mean one. They explain to you that the
HARVEST GODDESS has blessed you and intends for you to revitalize Echo Village,
and that to do that you'll have to use these MAGIC STUMPS to play SHEET MUSIC
to remove the many BLOCKAGES around the town. 

Alice hides the first piece of music for you to find and the two sprites give 
you hints on where to find it (and by hints, I mean they explicitly tell you 
that it's hidden in Dunhill's house). Go check Dunny's house for the music and
then run back to the sprites (in case you hadn't discovered where these MAGIC 
STUMPS are yourself, you go to the WESTERN EDGE of the RIVER AREA and JUMP onto
some rocks to access the sprite's hidden area.

Take out your hammer and play 'the basic scale': Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do. Just
hammer the MAGIC STUMPS from left to right and they will make a soft noise
indicating that you are hitting them right (and the gnome people will tell you
if you are screwing up). Your prize is a new BOUNCY MUSHROOM and STUMP HOLE
in the FOREST. Very nice, but you just know that there are much more exciting
things hidden behind the other BLOCKAGES around town.

SPRING 21 - A CROP FESTIVAL

Today's not a crop festival, but rather Dunhill coming to tell you that there
is to be such a festival at the end of the month. He's telling you so you can
get ready now. What you need to do is plant some potatoes (or flowers, if 
that's your thing) in the next few days and then spend the money to FERTILIZE
one of them every day. If you do that you'll have a single crop of a much 
higher quality that will get you FIRST PRIZE in the BEGINNER CLASS. And you
do want to win because that means that you'll have a better BRAND and your
crops in that category will have a higher SHIPPING VALUE. 

Anyways, as Dunny (and later Aaron) point out to you, the end of the month is
approaching, and that means you have to be careful with your crop schedule.
Anything you leave in the ground over the change of seasons is going to die, 
so try to start working it out beforehand how to squeeze the most profit out
of this season. The last day to plant potatoes is coming up in just a couple
of days....

If you go out into the RIVER AREA around this time while Dunhill is out there,
he may be nice enough to give you some FISH TRAPS which can be used at those
PIERS with the nearby branches sticking out of the water. You can put down 
these traps and then come back in 30 minutes - 2 hours to see what you've 
caught. These things can break but don't worry you can buy/make more of them
easily. And they don't just catch fish, either, but rather a whole assortment 
of junk and garbage.

.......................................
SPRING 25 - MEET REBECCA AND TONI [411]
.......................................

Things are getting real busy starting today. Not only are you getting two new
VILLAGERS, but you are also getting access to the BLUEPRINT and EDIT MODE
systems. Yippy skippy!

A woman named REBECCA and her son are moving to Echo for some reason, but they
need a house first. Luckily, Rebecca is an ARCHITECT and she has the BLUEPRINTS
needed to build a house for herself. Even more lucky for her, you're just 
bored enough to be put to work building her house for her single-handedly.

First you'll have to collect the necessary MATERIALS for her house. You'll be
sent out into the MOUNTAIN AREA and told to pick up all of the stones and 
branches there and bring them to Iroha to be processed. You can't leave the
area until this is done, so just get to it.

Becky then tells you that your house has a secret side door leading to a 
STUDIO where you can turn your BLUEPRINTS and MATERIALS into useful TOOLS and
BUILDINGS. You get the obligatory tutorial on how this all works and then you
get to go ahead and build Becky's house for her. You also get a WOODEN FENCE
to put wherever you like, and Rebecca also gives you VARIOUS BLUEPRINTS for 
things like fences, roads, and tools and such. You won't be able to build all
of this stuff immediately, but they do work as GOALS for you to ASPIRE towards.
Be sure to notice those BUILDINGS you could potentially build, as building 
them will also bring you new VILLAGERS.

Rebecca's house also functions as a shop where you can buy BLUEPRINTS or
MATERIALS. It's only open Wed/Fri/Sun 10-6. It's the only place you can get
copper and iron for the next little while.

If I were to make recommendations for how you should proceed at this point, I
would say that you should set about building yourself a nice SUPPLY SHED to
store your stones and lumber and such. And then you could think about getting
a CHICKEN COOP and start raising chickens, and then you could start building
houses for new villagers.

When that's all taken care of you're free to start messing around with the 
layout of your FARM and the TOWN. Finally! Once you get into EDIT MODE you can
walk up to a house and just lift it out of the ground as if it weighed nothing!
Didn't I tell you that your farmer was actually some kind of larger-than-life
godly superbeing? You can move people around however you like, but if you
pick something up accidentally and just want it back where it was... press Y
real quick.

If I had any EDIT MODE recommendations for Echo Village I would say that you
should pick up all of those barrels and junk north of Emma's house, and then 
move the general store into that spot because it fits in there so nicely. When 
I started organizing my town I put a couple of those long, thin buildings up
by Dunhill, and then the big houses went down in the southwest section of town.
Whatever you decide to do for a town layout is going to involve a lot of clear-
cutting so fell those trees like they are monsters who are attacking your 
party.

SPRING 26 - There are only 5 days left in the month, so this your last day to 
plant turnips.

..........................................
SPRING 27 - MEET THE HARVEST GODDESS [412]
..........................................

The Harvest Goddess has been out of town, but now she's back and the sprites 
have been tasked to bring you to her. They have you throw a turnip into the
POOL up on the MOUNTAIN because turnips are a favorite of hers. The Harvest 
Goddess is glad to meet you so she can give you a new *wait for it* tutorial!
This time you'll be learning about MULTIPLAYER MODE. You can check it out if
you have FRIENDS (or at least have FRIEND CODES) from the TITLE SCREEN. 

Pay attention to her tutorial if you want to learn about MULTIPLAYER, and if 
you forget how it works then you can go read by section on the subject. 

...............................
SPRING 30 - CROP FESTIVAL [413]
...............................

This is the most important part of the first spring. If you manage to win 
this festival then you'll be increasing the SHIPPING PRICE of every crop you
ship from now on. You want that. But then again... shipping cooked food is 
still more lucrative than shipping regular crops. Whatever. Just win this 
fesitval for the heck of it.

To win the BEGINNER'S CLASS of the CROP CATEGORY you'll need to present a crop
you grew that has a QUALITY of at least 1 and a half STARS. You just need to
fertilize a potato or whatever every day and that will be enough to win you 
this contest. To win at higher levels you'll have to use processes you don't
have access to yet (or just trade online for super-seeds), so right now just 
concentrate on winning the beginner class. Oh, and there are three other 
categories you can partipate in, but seriously, shipping crops is your biggest
priority, right? If you find a 1 and 1/2 star item in the wild that qualifies
for the 'other' category, then sure, go ahead and win that contest. You can go 
win the flower class in FALL if you want. 

Anyways if you bring Dunhill a 1 and half star QUALITY crop between noon and 
3PM today then you'll win the festival and get some rewards like higher-
quality seeds and blueprints and recipes. 

.................................
SPRING 31 - FLOWER FESTIVAL [414]
.................................

There's one more festival to be had in Spring. Today you get to give FLOWERS to
everyone in town (and get nothing back, of course). Your reward is getting 
people to like you, which is easy enough to do in this game without spending a
lot of money, so think about who is worth treating, if anyone. The villagers
like getting BOUQUETS best (from Hana's shop) and then flowers you grew, and 
finally wildflowers.

..........................................
******************************************
5. WALKTHROUGH PART 2 - FIRST SUMMER [500]
******************************************
..........................................

Summer is going to be much better than Spring was. Before you had nothing to 
do, but now you have more stuff to do than you can afford to do immediately.
Most importantly you now have access to the BLUEPRINT system and you can build
all sorts of nice stuff: upgraded tools, new tools, new farm buildings, new 
village buildings (and that means new villagers), and some other cosmetic
stuff. You're going to be pressed to come up with the money to buy all of this
stuff and the materials to build it with. 

When summer starts you're going to be given a to-do list that gives you goals
to pursue, which is nice if you play video games to pursue goals and get a 
sense of achievement and satisfaction. The TOWN RESTORATION system is going to
be the main guage of your progression in this game as it directly corresponds
to the game's recovery narrative, and pursuing these goals is how you're going
to be attracting the rest of the characters to your village. If you want a 
better town, you're going to want to be applying yourself to these TOWN 
RESTORATIONS.

Your town is going to be bustling before too long, and soon you're going to 
have a whole new sort of problem: finding places for all of these new buildings
and new people. You are going to get familiar with EDIT MODE, which allows you
to literally pick up and rearrange the village as you see fit. It's actually
quite fun once you get a couple of pieces to play with. You're going to want
to upgrade your AXE a couple of times so you can get rid of those pesky useless
trees that stand in the way of housing development. You just need to befriend
Iroha the blacksmith by giving her a couple of flowers or scrap metals and 
she'll give you the blueprints for upgraded tools in due order.

In this summer you'll also probably be introduced to TINA and ALLEN, aka single
young people. Tina is a wannabe journalist who doesn't really do much, but 
Allen opens a SALON where you can change your hairstyle and hair color, if you
have thousands of gold. Seriously, Allen, your prices suck. Building their 
houses is part of the Town Restoration so you'll have to do it. Buy the
blueprints whenever you can and then start saving up the necessary materials.
Oh, and when Tina arrives the harvest sprites will hide some sheet music in
her house that you can use to unlock a new bouncy mushroom. And hey, if you're
really efficient, you can build Tina's house and get her moved in before her
birthday on Summer 12.

What else do you need to know about summer? Well there aren't a lot of 
festivals, unfortunately. You may be able to start raising CHICKENS or BEES or
doing all sorts of wierd things if you get the blueprints and materials. It
is a little difficult for me to tell you what you're going to be doing this
summer because what you are able to do will be up to what you choose to unlock.
Go nuts, have fun, and just understand that the things I talk about in the
next section are just suggestions of things *I* think would be good things for
you to focus on unlocking first, but if you know better or are a free-spirit
then please feel free to do your own thing. There is no wrong way to play,
especially since you can recover from any stupid decision in this game by just
going out into the wilderness on any given day and come back with a huge wad
of money.

Oh, and here's one final thing to know about summer: it's TYPHOON season. That
means that there might be a day of very bad weather that will hurt your crops
and wash away fertilizer and it will be bad for your health to go outside at
all. That's just life, I guess.

.................................
GOALS FOR YOUR FIRST SUMMER [501]
.................................

Dunhill will show up on the first day of summer to give you a literal list of
goals for you to work towards in the immediate future. There is no 'reward' to
doing these things, per se. Dunhill apparently expects for you to build all
of these buildings pro bono because you are just bored enough to do it. But 
then again, building all of this stuff makes Echo Village more interesting and
it draws all of the other characters to the village, so you might as well get
to it.

Here's the first TOWN RESTORATION PLAN:

1. Put up 5 Ball Topiaries around town
2. Put up 10 Streetlights around town
3. Put up 3 Wooden Benches around town

Small stuff at first... or so it seems. If you look into the REQUIREMENTS of 
this stuff, however, you will find out that they have some very steep prices.
For instance, each of those 10 streetlights requires 3 IRON to build... and 
right now you can only get iron by buying it from Rebecca the architect for
500 G. That's 1500G in iron per streetlight... 15,000G for all of ten of them.
That's a lot of money (especially if you just got a letter in the mail telling
you that you only made two or three times that much in all of last season).
And those ball topiaries require MOONDROP FLOWERS (so hold onto those) and
SMALL BRANCHES... so don't be too chop happy in turning those branches into
lumber. If you need lumber, chop down a tree (save a branch). 

Things I would recommend that you do outside of this town restoration are
upgrading your axe and hammer. And get yourself a BELL so you can bring your 
cow outside without so much hassle. And build yourself a CHICKEN COOP and get a
CHICKEN when you have some spare time and money. And hey, since you're a 
farmer, maybe grow some crops over the summer? Tomatoes and onions this time 
around. Oh, and plant one of those long-living flowers and fertilize it 
everyday so you can enter it in the CROP FESTIVAL at the end of the season, why
not.

Oh, and the most important thing you should build is a STOREHOUSE or whatever
it's called, the building that provides storage for all of those branches and
rocks and whatnot that you've been picking up and lugging around. That'll free
up some space in your bag. And hey, if you're getting sick of having your bag
being half full of tools and not having room for picking up items in the wild,
go over to the general store and get yourself a bigger bag for 5000G or
whatever. A good investment for sure. 

Chances are you'll get through the first TOWN RESTORATION PLAN (TRP) and you'll
move onto the second one before this summer is even half-way through.
Congratualtions! Your reward for completing TRP1 is TRP2. Without stopping for
breath, let's move onto the next round of town upgrades.

1. Build a Newspaper Carrier's House
2. Have an adult cow
3. Build a Salon
4. Put up 10 bushes around town
5. Ship 10 jars of honey

Maybe you already build the Newspaper Carrier's House just to get Tina in your
town, or the Salon for Allen. If so, no worries. If not, you better get out
there and get some money and get the blueprints and get some materials. You'll
need a lot of Material Stone, but you may want to avoid using your hammer to
make this from rocks (because you need unprocessed rocks, too) and instead
just buy the material stone from Rebecca. The lumber you can get easily from
trees so go ahead and chop them down. Chop them all down.


You probably already have an adult cow, assuming you didn't somehow kill the 
one Neil gave you last spring. So that just leaves the bushes and bees. Hmm.
Well the weirdest requirement of the bushes is that they need WEED as an 
ingredient, so hopefully you didn't sell all of that lucrative resource. If you
did, it's not like weed is ever that hard to find. You can probably find a way
to put up those bushes, but how about honey? To get honey you're going to have
to build BEEHIVES. Remember way back at the start of this walkthrough when I
told you to hold onto whatever bees and honeycombs you find? Well I did, and
you should have, because you're going to need them to fulfill this request in
a timely manner. There are no honeycombs around in the summer, so if you want
to build beehives now you better have saved some from spring. If you planned
ahead then you should be all set to build a whole bunch of beehives on your
property, fill them with bees, and then come back to them every week or so and
get yourself some sweet sweet honey. If you need room to put up beehives then
kill some trees south of you fields or somewhere else. Try to put you beehives
in a square grid to increase their YIELD.

......................................
SUMMER 2 - You Get a Fishing Rod [502]
......................................

Summer starts pretty poorly in that it starts on a Wednesday and that means the
General Store is closed and you can't buy seeds for summer crops until 
tomorrow. Rats. Also on Summer 1 you get a whole bunch of mail but most of it 
is garbage. 

Anyways once Summer 2 comes around Aaron will congratulate you on surviving 
this long and tell you that your career is actually beginning. This means that
you can go over to the River and Dunhill will give you a ROD and teach you how
to fish. Basically you can catch different stuff at different piers and you can
catch blueprints in addition to fishy-things. 

GO ahead and buy some summer crops (and recipies and a bigger bag) and start
your farming for this season.

........................................
SUMMER 3 - GIFTS FROM THE FOREST [503]
......................................

If you go to the forst then the Harvest Goddess will appear and show you how 
to use your hammer to get special gifts from that one tree that was keeping a 
secret from you. You can hammer this tree everyday now to get items. If you 
continue running around the wilderness you'll notice that summer has different
items for you than spring did, so that's nice.

Summer 4 - A Cow Festival
Today Dunhill has an idea for a new festival, but it's not for a whole month.
Try to keep you cow alive that long and take care of it and hopefully it will
like you enough by then that you can win the beginner's class. You should think
about getting the blueprints for the BELL so you can make it and bring your cow
outside for a couple of hours per day. Also make sure that your cow isn't
pregnant on Fall 4 or it can't participate. 

There aren't a lot of festivals available in your first Summer, are there? I
guess you should just spend the next few days fishing and gathering items. I
hope you bought a big bag that holds 50 items. After 8 days or so you should
have some onions ready to sell for a big payday. Maybe you can think about
investing in new fields? Also if you have lots of extra stamina at the end of 
the day then find some trees you won't miss and chop them down. You are going
to need a lot of lumber for all of the houses you'll be building shortly... but
you may have lots of extra lumber too and that stuff sells for a decent amount
of gold.

..................................
SUMMER 11 - A GARDENING TOUR [504]
..................................

Dunhill comes to tell you about another new fesitval idea of his (and like his
last idea, this festival won't be until next month). He wants you to set up a
'Garden Space' and show off lots of 'Amenities' on it, and he wants you to do
it on the 11th of every month. I'll have more info on this festival later, and
its a really great way to increase your friendship points with the villagers,
but it's kind of a big hassle and anyways you won't have the money and 
materials to make really cool amenities for a while yet. Just make sure that
before Fall 11 that you get the blueprint for the 'garden space' and then build
the dang thing, or else everyone in town will be really mad at you. The garden
space is a HUGE thing so you're going to have to move some things around on
your farm (or just cut down lots of trees... you did upgrade your axe so you
can cut down those pine trees, right?).

Summer 13 - You get a farm evaluation in the mail today telling you that you
are doing a bad job. Thanks for that, unseen farm evaluation commitee.

Sometime soon you may want to build a CHICKEN COOP. There is no tutorial for
chickens (blasphemy, I know) but you can get a sense of what you need to do
with them from the ANIMAL INFORMATION DESK that gives you your animal's status
and shows you little greyed out icons of what you can do with your animals 
every day. The chickens themselves are 5000G and you'll have to buy CHICKEN
FEED, too, but one bag of that lasts for several days so don't buy too much. 
Anyways after you get a chicken you'll also get a CHICKEN FESTIVAL on Fall 21.

For the rest of the summer you can focus on your crops and building those 
houses for the TRP and whatever else you want to build. You're going to need
to cut down a lot of trees to make room for beehives and gardening spaces and
buildings so make sure to use any extra stamina you have to chop some trees.
You're also going to have to start paying attention to the layout of your town.
You'll probably have to start tearing up some roads and things to make room,
but if you are efficient you should find space for everything. And hey, once
you finish TRP2, the villagers are going to give you a whole new town section
where you can put lots and lots of houses.

Oh and as for beekeeping, it's really easy. Just put the beehives somewhere and
put some bees inside, and then come back in a week or so when they are 
sparkling because that means the honey is ready. And then the bees will start
making honey again, they don't even have to be replaced. Bees don't work on
rainy days, though, so if you have a lot of rain then honey production will
slow down. Oh, and once you start beekeeping you'll learn of a Beekeeping 
festival... next spring. There are literally no festivals this summer.

Summer 30 is the crop festival. Try to win the beginner level in another 
category. 


........................................
****************************************
6. WALKTHROUGH PART 3 - FIRST FALL [600]
****************************************
........................................

Hooray! Fall is here! It's going to be more or less productive for you than
Summer was. On the one hand, you probably won't be getting as much Town 
Restoring done, but on the other hand the output of your farm (and your profits)
should be soaring. With an upgraded axe and some blueprints you can fill the
whole of your farm with fields and start growing all kinds of crops... even
crops that grow in all seasons like wheat and cotton and other stuff. Beyond 
crops you can also start farming new animals and even mushrooms. Neat!

The town will be getting bigger, too. Once you complete Town Restoration 2 the
townsfolk are going to give you access to a whole new screen for you to fill
with houses, if you so choose (but you can probably fit all the houses you'll 
be building in the near future into the first screen). Town Restoration Plan 3
is going to bring you into contact with a whole bunch of new residents you'll
be happy to meet. There's CLEMENT at the RESTUARANT, and YURI at the TAILOR
SHOP (not actually a part of TRP3, but an easier house to build), and KLAUS
the doctor and HOSSAN at the INN and ROD at the PET STORE. All of these new 
buildings mean new stuff for you to buy (IE you can buy new OUTFITS from Yuri if
you bring her materials like cotton and wool) and new SHEET MUSIC being hidden
about town for you to unlock stuff. You're getting closer to some of the real 
goodies now.

Fall is much busier with events than Summer was. Right away you'll be going to
a COW FESTIVAL on the 4th and GARDENING TOUR on the 11th, and then a CHICKEN
FESTIVAL on the 21st and the old standard CROP FESTIVAL on the 30th and a 
PUMPKIN FESTIVAL after tht. Winning the cow festival beginner class shouldn't be
too difficult if you've been nice to your cow. The GARDENING TOUR is a whole 
other story and you're going to have to shell out lots of cash for that one, but
at least it will make a lot of villagers like you.

As usual there is new stuff to forage (go pick up some honeycombs to complete
TRP2 now if you didn't save them from spring) and new stuff to buy from the
General Store, like an EVEN BIGGER BAG. And there are even FRUIT SEEDS you might
want to plant before fall is through. CHERRY TREES, for instance, give fruit in
spring and take 50 days to grow... so if you want a cherry filled spring then
you should be planting the seeds in fall.There are lots of new blueprints for
things you COULD splurge on, like bigger storage boxes and whatnot, stuff that
you really don't need immediately. But let's move right along into what you
should focus on doing.

...............................
GOALS FOR YOUR FIRST FALL [601]
...............................

Doing well in the GARDENING TOUR on the 11th is a priority. Dunhill will ask 
you to compete on the 2nd and explain nothing to you. Make sure you have the
GARDENING SPACE blueprint and that you build and set up that thing. It's really
big so you may have to move some stuff around. What I did was move my barnyard
south a bit and put the gardening space in the upper-right side of my property.
Anyways after you find room for it you still have to build AMENITIES to put on
it, and that costs a lot of money and materials so don't go nuts over it. This
festival happens every month so you can really go all-out on it later.

Something you want to do sooner rather than later is buy a SHEEP. The sheep
festival is in Winter and you're going to want a happy sheep by then. Plus 
getting WOOL is needed for one of the buildings in TRP3 and you also need wool
to make new outfits. So hop to it. 

Maybe we should talk about Town Restoration Plan 3. It's a doozy. It has 7
requirements, 4 of which involve building houses. That's not even the steepest
task though. One of them tasks you with shipping a lifetime total of 200,000G.
On Fall 1 you'll get a letter telling you how much you shipped in the summer,
and you can do the extrapolating needed to figure out when you're going to hit
200,000G (it proabably won't be for a long while, maybe not even before the end
of your first YEAR). So yeah, TRP3 is going to keep you busy for a while. Here
it is:

1. Build a Pet Shop (cottage blueprint, soon available)
2. Build a Restaurant (this BP is already available)
3. Build and Inn (this BP is soon available)
4. Build a Clinic (this BP is soon available)
5. Ship 200,000G
6. Have an adult sheep for sheep festival (sheep cost 7000G)
7. Have 15 villagers for a MUSIC FESTIVAL

About the last one... you have 10 villagers now and building those buildings
above (and the tailor's shop) will carry you over the 15 people mark. You will
want to have this done before 2nd Spring 25 when the Music Festival takes place.

Now building these 4 houses is going to cost you a LOT of materials... you know
the stuff: material stone... you're going to need like 60 material stones for
each house. You'll probably just have to buy it from Rebecca... and it's not
cheap. The houses have other requirements too, like mint or wool. You'll
probably get the restaurant first and then the cottage. You will also notice
that the TAILOR SHOP is not part of the TRP3 but is relatively easy to build,
so you might as well build it and bring Yuri to town.

What else should you be doing in Fall besides Town Restoration? Well, building
fields and planting lots of crops, of course. Plant some CHERRY TREES for next
spring. AND OH, OH MAN... THIS IS HUGE: UPGRADE YOUR WATERING CAN. A copper
watering can is like 80 times better than the regular one. You can upgrade your
other tools if you wish, but the watering can is the really useful one.


********************
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
other stuff coming soon
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
*******************


...........................................
*******************************************
16. VERSION HISTORY AND CONTACT INFO [1600]
*******************************************
...........................................

9/19/13 - Version 0.50 submitted. It covers the first few seasons of this game.


This guide was written by Steve Edwards, also known as CanWizard. My email 
address is [email protected]. Feel free to email me to point out 
mistakes in this guide. I mean, I'll probably catch them eventually so don't 
bother unless it's really important. I don't really want to be hassled with 
suggestions for things that could be added to this guide. I especially don't 
want to be bombarded by people asking me for help. This guide is all I am 
willing to give you.