Setting Up The Farm In Harvest Moon: Seeds Of Memories

Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memory could be considered an intimidating game. Everything is thrown at the player at once. Tons of crop and flower seeds are immediately available, you only have the watering can and hoe handed to you by the sprites, the vague Seeds of Memories aren’t really explained well, and you could immediately start mining, fishing, and building if you so wanted. If you haven’t played a Harvest Moon game before, it’s very easy to get lost.

The first thing you want to do is talk to everyone. These Seeds of Memories are actually more like achievements. You get one for talking to each townsfolk, along with some sort of reward. For example, talking to Tony gets you an axe and Gilbert gives you a fishing pole. You’ll also get a number of seeds and other helpful items by introducing yourself, so talk to everyone in town before doing anything else.

Once that’s done, start planting. When Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories begins, Sam stocks broccoli, cabbage, carrot, celery, corn, grass, green pepper, hot pepper, onion, potato, pumpkin, spinach, strawberry, tomato, and wheat seeds, as well as carries cone tree, leafy tree, and grapefruit tree sprouts. Iris’ initial flower seeds are blue rose, cosmos, marguerite, pink pansy, pink rose, red rose, sunflower, and white rose. No descriptions tell you what does or doesn’t grow best in spring, the first season. While everything can grow at once, certain items grow best in different seasons.

In spring, you want to start with cabbages, hot peppers, onions, and strawberries. If you go with these three, you’ll find yourself getting great cabbages, onions, and strawberries without even fertilizing. I also noticed I’d randomly get scallions from the onion seeds, which was a huge help. Unfortunately, I can’t help with information on how my onions mutated to scallions. All I know is that it happened twice. I wasn’t fertilizing, it had been a week where there were no rainy or cloudy days, and I was watering every morning. I haven’t gotten jalepeños from hot peppers or huge cabbages from cabbages yet, which were two other mutation options from Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley, but I suspect they’re there.

As far as flowers go, I’ve been following the tips from Harvest Moon: The Lost Valley. Marguerites and pink roses grew best in spring in that entry, sometimes resulting in great flowers, so I highly recommend going with those two. I haven’t actually grown any great flowers yet, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

My other tip is to immediately start heading into the mines. After doing your planting and socializing for the day, head to the hot spring on the mountain. Rest in it until all five of your hearts, representing stamina, are full. Then, go into the mine and attempt to reach the sixth level. By the fifth day, you should have both enough money and silver ore to make a silver watering can. I did. By the 15th day, I had a silver hoe to match. Both make work a lot easier, by allowing three squares to be watered or tilled, instead of one.

Also, fishing is a gold mine. It’s the most profitable venture. While you can buy bait from Sam, you can also go without bait. It’ll take longer for a fish to bite, but you’ll get at least 100 gold pure profit from it. That’s more money than you can make off of crops early on. Though, farming is encouraged to attempt to grow those more profitable mutations and ship them out.

A lot’s happening in Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories from the very start. By the 15th, you can already have one “note” with your chosen bachelor or bachelorette, some upgraded tools, 1/3 of your field fully plowed and seeded, and a chicken of your very own. I did! Veteran farmers can make a lot of progress, if they put the effort into it, and may find themselves thinking about some of the earliest Harvest Moon games as they do.

Harvest Moon: Seeds of Memories is immediately available for Apple iOS devices. It will eventually also come to Android devices and the Nintendo Wii U.