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Money Making Guide

by CW Boi 209

------------------------------------
Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness
Money Making Guide v1.0

Author: Peter Her (a.k.a CWBoi209) 
Date Started On: September 15, 2008
E-mail: [email protected]
------------------------------------


~ Version History ~

- v1.1, 09/29/2008

  * Added a new method for farming
  * Some minor changes to the wording of parts in the guide
  * Rephrased the Legal Info

- v1.0, 09/15/2008

  * Initial Written Date.


=================================
=     * Table Of Contents *     =
=================================

Use Ctrl+F and type in the <TAG> listed next to each category
to get to the section you wish to see.


1) Introduction <INT>

2) Getting Started <STA>

     a) Things You'll Need


3) The Money Making Methods <MMM>

     a) Forage

     b) Fishing

     c) Farming

     d) Mining


4) Credits <CRD>

5) Contact Info <CON>

6) Legal Info <LEG>

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------


==================================
1) Introduction <INT>
==================================

It has come to my attention that many people are finding it difficult to
earn some cash during their first year of the game, as well as not having
enough to either finish building all the bridges or building the
animal sheds for their livestock.

Not to boast or anything, but I myself am currently a millionaire in
the game and have a lot of experiences in earning them as well. However, just
like anyone else, I was once a really poor player who struggled to even make
50,000 G during the first year of the game. And so, I decide to write my very
first guide, which focuses on how to become successfully rich in this game.




==================================
2) Getting Started <STA>
==================================

Before you decide to do anything, there are a few things you must know if
you haven't already. Your Stamina decreases very fast and your Full bar
goes down every one or two hours of the day, as well as along with your
Stamina sometimes. However, there are ways to slow them down as well as
increasing them too. Though you don't need to get all of them at once,
below are things you should get before you start trying to earn some cash.


a) Things You Need
--------------------------

- Farming Tools with at least 3 open slots or more:

The more slots there are, the faster you can make money. The tools you start
off with only have 1, but you can buy the tools with more slots once Gannon
arrives on the island. Look for tools that are sold at 3,000 G or more, as
those have 3 and more slots depending on how much they cost. 3,000 G are
3 slotted tools, 4,000 G are 4 slotted tools, 5,000 G are 5 slotted tools
etc. Mirabelle sells some animal tools that have slots as well so don't
forget to check her wares too.


- Kitchen and Recipes:

A kitchen and some recipes are required if you ever hope to make a lot of
money in one trip. You'll need them to make foods that restores stamina.
A kitchen can be bought after the first house upgrade and recipes can be
gotten when you obtain the Cafe and Diner, and have gotten one or the other
remodeled by having a certain amount of residents. The recipe you may want
the most is Pudding, which recovers about half of your starting stamina bar.
You obtain it by giving milk to the Diner owner after he upgrades his place
when you've unlocked around 40-45 or so people. However, the recipes he
gives out are random and they can only be obtained once per day.


- Wonderfuls:

Some of the most important things of all besides the tools, in making the
big bucks later on. These are used to give your tools various effects
depending on what color they are. These are used as a new way to
upgrade your tools and can be removed to place on another tool at any time
when Charlie is inside the shop during business days. The amount you can
attach depends on how many slots your tools have. The Wonderfuls can
be gotten from many places, namely:

1) Chen's store in Winter, which can be pretty rare if you don't do the
   Farm Degree exploit (See Fogu for more info).

2) Floor 255 of the Mine, which you will only obtain during your odd
   visits to the mine (1st time, 3rd time, 5th time etc). The color
   you get depends on your Farm Degree (Again, see Fogu).

3) Festival Competitions, which can only be unlocked when you have
   Gannon build the first bridge. The Wondefuls you get for winning
   a competition is also determined by your Farm Degree (Once more,
   see the Fogu website).

4) The Wi-Fi Ranking System, which you must rank in the Top 10 for
   one or more specified categories of that week. The more ranks
   you ranked in the Top 10 for, the more Wonderfuls you get. The
   color you get is random though.


- Harvest Goddess Pendant Accessory

These are real life savers, as they'll help you get to the deeper
floors of the Mine since they increase your Stamina bar.
The first one which is red will cost you 5 Orichalcums to make.
The green one costs about 10 Orichalcums, which increases your
Stamina bar a little more than the red one does. Then the blue
one which costs about 30 Orichalcums to make, increases your
Stamina bar by a lot. These accessories' effects can stack but
there's a limit to how high the Stamina bar will go. You must
also equip them in one of the four equipment slots in order
for them to work.



==================================
2) The Money Making Methods <MMM>
==================================

Format for each methods:

=============================================================================
Method Level - Difficulty of the method to make money.

Stamina & Full - Amount of toll your Stamina and Full will take from this
                 method. The amounts are listed as: None, Small, Medium, and
                 A Lot.

Time - Comes in two categories, which are in-game time and real life time
       because the in-game time obviously moves a lot faster than real time.
       In game time means the time it takes inside the game to do the method
       while Real Time simply means the amount of time it'll take you in
       real life to do. The times are listed as: Short, Awhile, Half, Long,
       and All Day.

Earn - The average amount of cash you get from the method. The amount would
       be listed as: Little, Decent, A Lot and Loads.
=============================================================================


Below are simple ways on how I make my money for each category. If you have
your own method for one of each category that you'd like to share, feel free
to send them to me and I'll credit you for it.

NOTE: Do NOT sell any of these things to Chen! He buys them off of you
      for a really low price compared to how much they're worth!



a) Foraging

===================================
Method Level: Easy

Stamina & Full - Sta: None
                 Ful: Small

Time - In game: A Lot to All Day
       Real Time: Short

Earn: Little to Decent
===================================

This method is simply just picking things off the ground, and it's the
easiest but slow way of earning cash. It also doesn't require any Stamina
usage but it takes almost all day and isn't as effective in Winter.
Ship every magic grass and flowers that you find laying around on the
ground. Also, don't forget to ship the Seaweed that's only available in
Spring. It's usually worth around 900 G most of the time, depending on
its quality. The Seaweed can be found on the giant rock that's sitting
on the beach.

Once you have the bridge built to the forest, there are a lot of magic
grasses and flowers there along the trails. If you want, you can leave
some items on the ground for days and pick them up later in the month
to receive them at a high quality. You're probably better off just
shipping them on the spot unless you're going for an S-Rank shipping list,
since only a certain amount of items can spawn in an area and because you
get the money that you would be missing if you left the item there.

Since Foraging doesn't really have a special item you should only be
looking for, there's not much to add in this section. If not enough things
are spawning around town, the next best areas are the Forest and Jungle
areas since they seem to spawn a lot of grasses and flowers each day.



b) Fishing

===================================
Method Level: Easy

Stamina & Full - Sta: A lot
                 Ful: Some

Time - In game: Short to A Lot
       Real Time: Short to Awhile

Earned: Decent to A Lot
===================================

The most widely used method for the first year. To start fishing, you need to
befriend Taro first. Give him a magic grass each day and eventually, he'll
show up at your house with the fishing rod.


During Festivals

To earn some money while not using up any in-game time, take advantage
of the fishing tutorial cutscene or any festival events that are held
at the Meadow. Since in-game time stops completely, be sure to bring food
and magic grasses with you in order to fish for as long as you can
hold out. Also, remember that you can't access the diary during the tutorial
and festivals.


At The Beach:

The best place to fish would be the Beach. Not only can you fish up rare
items in certain seasons, but that's also where you're likely to catch a
Large Fish, even though they're pretty rare. The rare items that you can
fish there are:

Spring: Bottle
Summer: Pirate Treasure
Fall: Fish Fossil

Though the bottles are only worth 1 G, the treasure and fossil are worth
a lot. The treasure is worth around 20,000 G while the fossil is usually
around 5,000 G. To make sure you get a good day's worth of catch, you
should save your game before you start fishing. After fishing for a long
while, you can either reload your file if you aren't satisfied with
your catches or just call it a day and put them in the shipping bin.



c) Farming

======================================
Method Level: Easy to Normal

Stamina & Full - Sta: Medium to A Lot
                 Ful: Small to Medium

Time - In game: Short to Awhile
       Real Time: Short

Earned: Decent to A Lot
======================================

This is probably the best way to earn a decent amount of cash for a
long while until you start mining. This is also where your slotted tools
and Wonderfuls come in handy. For farming, the colored Wonderfuls
best suited for job would be: Red, Blue, Green and Indigo.

The Red Wonderfuls adds one horizontal range per stone on your
tools while the Blue Wonderfuls adds a vertical range on both sides
per stone. Equipping three Green Wonderfuls to your tools makes them 
use no Stamina except for when it's late at night, and the Indigo Wonderfuls.
adds five artificial slots to your tools. These Wonderfuls are useful for
digging plots of areas for your seeds and watering a lot of crops at once.
Not only do they get the job done faster but they also consume less
Stamina too, if you don't have any Green Wonderfuls yet. The most Indigo
Wonderful you can have on a tool is ten, and they probably can't be
attached to slots that are made by another Indigo Wonderful as far as
I'm concerned.


Without a Greenhouse:

To gain a lot of money from the crops you grow, I suggest these, as they
are the only ones I have ever used and/or found useful:

Spring: Turnips or Potatoes
Summer: Tomatoes or Corn
Fall: Eggplants or Yams (To get Yams, you must ship 100 Fall Crops)

I started off with Turnips, Tomatoes and Eggplants in their designated season.
After I got Yams unlocked, I started growing them, as they grow back really
fast and only requires you to water them once per stage and also require
little sun to grow. They also only have two stage growths after the seed.
Anyway, you can choose whatever crops you want to grow but these are the ones
I've chosen as a start.


If you have the Greenhouse Built:

If you have the greenhouse, go for Yams like I did if you want to ship crops
at a fast rate. I'm not quite sure how much they sell for but I earned
a lot for growing 6 3x3 plots of them. Otherwise, you can go for any
other crops you want if you have the correct seasonal sun items for them.


* Destiny_Breaker's Method *

I recommend strawberries and cucumbers to grow in the
green house. Both are continuous and only take three days to regrow max.
True, you have to water more but the fast regrowth rate makes it worth
while, AND both are spring items so you can use only one sun stone.



d) Mining

=======================================
Method Difficulty: Starting is Hard.
                   Otherwise, it gets
                   pretty easy.

Stamina & Full - Sta: A Lot
                 Ful: Little to None

Time - In game: Little
       Real Time: Awhile to Long

Earned: Decent to Loads.
=======================================

This is probably the best way to make loads of money, provided that you
are willing to actually go for the last floor of the mine and have
a lot of food prepared for the journey down there. Wonderfuls that
you should take but aren't necessary are: Green, Orange and Indigo.

Put all of your Orange Wonderfuls on your Hammer. The green ones
should go on your Hoe unless your hammer still have some open slots
left. Also put an Indigo on your Hammer if it's necessary. The reason
why you would want to put all your Orange Wonderfuls on your Hammer
is because for each Orange you have on your Hammer, you get an additional
quantity of an item you get when you charge smash a rock. So if you have
three Orange Wonderfuls, charge hitting a rock can net you four gems or ores
if you get any. Four Orange will net you five and so on. The most you can
get at a time is ten, as Charlie won't let you add any more than nine
Orange Wonderfuls on a tool.

On the way down the mine, you can smash every rock for the gems and ores in
there. If you don't have any accessories yet, you may want to make your
way to floors 50-74 first. Just make about 50 or so Puddings and pit dive
your way there. Collect at least 15 Orichalcums from mining and make
your way to Chen's shop if it's open. If Charlie's there, he'll tell
you about making accessories. Use the first 5 Orichalcums to make the
Red Harvest Goddess Pendant and put it on one of the four equipment slots,
which increases your max stamina. After seven days, go back to Charlie and
use 10 Orichalcums to make the Green Harvest Goddess Pendant, which
increases your Stamina even more when you have it on one of the four
equipment slots. Equip the green one and you should be ready to take on
any floors below 100.

Here are the suggested floors that you should go to when doing some
serious mining:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Floor 25: Adamantite, which are used to build Makers if you have a
          Maker Shed.

Floor 50: Orichalcum, which are used to make accessories. Those will help
          you a lot later on.

Floor 100: Mythic Ores, which ships for a very high price of about 9,000 G.
           Be sure to have your Hoe with you, as this floor doesn't have
           a pitfall.

Floor 125: Alexandrite, which ships for around 20,000 G as far as I know.

Floor 150: Pink Diamonds, which also ships for around 20,000 G.

Floors 250-254: Various Gems and Ores, as well as Mythic Ores, Alexandrites,
                Adamantites, Orichaclums and Pink Diamonds. Also the
                floors where I make all my money from since everything there
                is bound to be high quality, meaning they'll ship for more
                than the average price.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Instead of wasting my time by mining on any floors besides 50, I pitfall
my way all the way down to Floor 250. I then charge smash everything on my
way down to Floor 254. Because I have a Hammer with 9 Orange Wonderfuls,
I get about 10 of each items I get from charge smashing the rocks. After
completing the Mine, I ship everything and earn about 2-5 mil. Doing all
this takes awhile, as you have to reload a lot if you end up fainting from
a pit fall.


Anyway, these are all of my current but basic methods for now. If you have
any that you would like to submit, just send me an e-mail with the name
you'd like to go by and your method, as well as method level, stamina & full
consumption, time consumption and usual amount earned from the method.
If it's good enough, I will post it here in my guide and give you credit
for it.



==================================
4) Credits <CRD>
==================================

These are people I'd like to thank for helping me write this guide.

- Cherubae, for her fogu site which helped me a lot during the early
  course of my game on where I can obtain certain ores and unlocking certain
  crops. Her site has also helped me a bit with the fishing info as well as
  the Farm Degree exploits for obtaining the Wonderfuls at Festival
  Competitions, Chen's Shop and the Mine.

  Her fogu website: http://www.fogu.com/hm

- Rabid Possum, for his awesome Mini Crop FAQ that's been stickied in
  the message boards of GameFAQs. His mini faq is what helped me
  decide which crop I should grow for each season in my farming method.

- Destiny_Breaker for his farming method.

- vinheim, for his help on final suggestions and looking over this guide
  before I submitted this to GameFAQs.

- Marvelous, for developing such an addicting game that I've been playing
  since Friends of Mineral Town for the GBA.

- Natsume, for translating this game for us and making it possible for me to
  write this guide.



==================================
5) Contact Info <CON>
==================================

Below is my e-mail address, in which you can contact me for only the
following reasons:

- Contributing methods to this guide.
- Asking relevant questions about this guide.
- Correcting me for any errors and mistakes I have made.
- Asking me for permission on using this guide on your site, with the
  information I have asked for included (See Legal Info for more details).
- Reporting a site that has violated my terms of usage for this guide.
- If I have forgotten to credit someone for their work
- Comments and Suggestions on how I can improve this guide.

E-mail: [email protected]

In order for me to respond to your e-mails, please include "Harvest Moon"
in the subject headline or other means that'll get me to realize it's
<<This>> guide related, or "Guide Usage Permission" if you want to use this
guide on your site (Again, see Legal Info for more information about this).



==================================
6) Legal Info <LEG>
==================================

Copyright (c) 2008 Peter Her

Ignoring this warning/section does not exempt you from folling them.

This guide may not be reproduced under any circumstances except for personal,
private use. To use this guide on your website, you must leave all
names, copyright holder and content of this guide intact and unaltered,
and sending an e-mail asking me for my permission. The name of the site,
the site owner and a link to said site must also be provided. If I have
ignored the e-mail or have clearly stated that I do not want my guide used
on the site provided, then you are not allowed to freely use my guide on your
site. If you have switched to a different site and still wish to continue
using my guide on your new site, you must also send me a new e-mail
displaying the above information as well.

You may copy my methods used within this guide for your own work, only if
you provide proper credits to me. If you wish to copy the methods sent by
others, you must ask them for their permission first.

I have the right to request the removal of this guide from your site
at any time. If for any reason should I ever request a removal of this guide
from your site, failing to remove it is a violation of copyright and
legal action will be taken against you.

I'm in no way, shape or form, involved with Marvelous or Natsume.
By using this guide, you are using it at your own risk. I am not responsible
for any damages that may result in the usage of this guide.