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• Farming & Weather

Farming in IoH You have one large field in Island of Happiness that can be used to grow Crops, Fruit Trees or Grass for grazing. You can create pens for your Chickens and Livestock using either Stones/Lumber or Materials for Building. Chickens outdoors will not require feeding. Pick them up and carry each Chicken separately into the Pen you have created for them. Do not leave them outside in bad weather just like any other series of HM. With respect to Cows and Sheep, you can use a Bell purchased at Mirabelle's Animal Shop to call them in and out of their pen, although you need to push them in and out of the Barn itself. Animals with low heart levels may ignore the Bell completely. Furthermore, if you do not have fully ripened Grass growing in your Field, they will not be able to eat and will become stressed. There is a Wild Dog in Island of Happiness which appears randomly after 8pm and can plague your animal until 1am. If your dog are trained and is at high heart level, he will chase the wild dog away from the field, preventing stress to your animal. Weeds, Stones and Branches will appear on your Field constantly at a prodigious rate, so Farming in IoH is a little more challenging than it is in other Harvest Moon games. Huge boulders of two different types and strength will appear after any severe Storm, destroying crops or anything else in their path. Crops grow at varying rates depending on the amount of sunshine and water they receive. You actually can over-water as well as under-water your Crops and either can kill them. Be careful, therefore to give the right amount of water to each Crop you grow. Time always is valuable in this game and farming takes time, unless you order a Greenhouse from Gannon. The Greenhouse is expensive but it will transform your entire game, making it possible to grow high quality crops without fear that rain or clouds will stunt their growth and without being obliged to weed daily. Best of all, no time will pass while you are inside the Greenhouse. As long as you have sufficient Stamina and Fullness, you can perform all your farming tasks without any difficulty when you have a Greenhouse. Once you have a Greenhouse, you can use your Field primarily as an orchard, growing fruit trees instead of Crops there. You may wish to grow grains there as well, as they tend to mature very slowly. Grains require less water than most Crops, so they can be grown in your Field with less maintenance than other Crops. You cannot upgrade your Tools with Ores in Island of Happiness. What you can do is ask Charlie to set Wonderfuls in slots in each Tool. There are Wonderfuls that increase the capacity of a Tool as well as its power, and others that increase the range of operation. It is your Watering Can that needs to be upgraded to a point where you can water at least one 3 x 3 square with a single use. This will require a total of three Wonderfuls of two different colours. See the section relating to Wonderfuls for details on how to best upgrade each of your Tools. The Rice Paddy You need to have a Yellow Wonderful set into your Hammer to be able to unlock the Rice Paddy. In an Event, you will be asked to smash a large boulder in the Northwest corner of your Farm. Beyond that, you will find some Rice Paddies. Once the Paddies are unlocked, you will be able to buy Rice Seeds at Chen's Market. This probably will be the first Grain that you unlock in the game. Rice takes two seasons to mature and can be grown only from Spring through Autumn. You need to plant it in the Rice Paddies, therefore, as early in Spring as possible. You cannot use a regular Hoe to till a Rice Paddy. A Yellow Wonderful must be added to the Hoe before it will till the squares in any Paddy. Once tilled, simply throw a bag of Rice Seeds onto a 3 x 3 Square. As Rice stands in water, you need not use a Watering Can to water it during its growth period. Rice grows in three stages. In the first stage, it will be a small green plant. In the second stage, it will be a green plant with buds. In the third and final stage, it becomes golden in colour. You cannot gather it from the paddies with your bare hands as you would ordinary crops. Instead, you must set a Yellow Wonderful in your Sickle to harvest it. If you harvest it prematurely, it will vanish. When harvested at maturity, you will obtain 'Cut Rice'. This must be processed first in your Thresher to obtain 'Rice' in a bale. If you have a Kitchen, you will have a default recipe for Cooked Rice. All Recipes given for Rice at the Diner or Café are obtained by giving Cooked Rice to the owner. There is a further option with respect to Rice, however. You can put the Rice obtained in the Thresher through the Flour Mill to create Rice Flour. Take the Rice Flour to the Diner or Café to obtain more Recipes. In the same way that Bread can be fed into the Flour Mill to create Bread Crumbs, Rice Cakes can be put into the Flour Mill to create 'Sweet Rice Flour'. Farming Tips and Tricks Whenever you harvest ripened crops, unlike other Harvest Moon games, where tilled squares will remain tilled until weeds or other objects randomly are placed on that square, in this game, tilled squares that are unoccupied will revert to untilled soil THE NEXT MORNING. If you wish to minimise work, you therefore should keep ALL dead crops on the ground until you are prepared to plant another crop. As soon as you have used your sickle on the dead crops, replant. Do not till soil one day with the intention of planting seeds the next. You will awaken to find that all your labours have been wasted. As in all Harvest Moon games, fishing is random in terms of the item you catch. In this game, all rare items can be caught with your first Fishing Rod. In Summer, you can catch Pirate Treasure. In Autumn, you can catch Fish Fossils. Save your game at the shore with your fishing rod equipped. If you do not catch anything decent, reload without saving. Gift Tip: Although the Individual List gives brief indications of the likes and dislikes of every individual, you can experiment with various items by saving your game when you encounter the individual and then reloading without saving if the item you give has a negative effect. How to Make Raw Ingredients: Rice: Buy Rice Seeds at Chen's Market. You cannot plant them with an ordinary Hoe. You must ask Charlie to place a Yellow Wonderful in the Hoe in order to till the Rice Paddies. Plant the Rice in Spring for harvest in Autumn. You cannot harvest Rice by using your hands as you would a crop. You must use your Sickle, but you must ask Charlie to place a Yellow Wonderful in it before you can use it to harvest Rice. Rice grows in three stages. The first is a small green plant that looks like a sheaf of grain. The second is a green plant with green buds on it. When the Rice is ripe for harvest, the plant will become golden in colour. When you have harvested the Rice, it must be processed before it becomes useful. You need both a Thresher and a Flour Mill in order to produce all possible Rice products. Take the Rice from the field and place it in the Thresher to produce a bale of Rice. This can be cooked in the kitchen to produce 'Cooked Rice', a recipe that you have in your Cookbook from the start of the game. Cooked Rice is an ingredient in many recipes, including all Curries. Instead of cooking the Rice that has been processed in the Thresher, you can place it in the Flour Mill to produce Rice Flour. This is an ingredient in a number of recipes. Note that Rice Cake is a separate item that you cannot produce yourself. You need to collect it at the Rice Festival on New Year's Day on 1 Spring. You can place a Rice Cake in the Flour Mill to create Sweet Rice Flour. New Recipes can be obtained from Sweet Rice Flour. Wheat, Soybeans and Buckwheat: If you have not unlocked these items by the start of the 3rd year, make certain that you have Wada at 7 hearts or higher and experience the Event that unlocks the area behind his house. You then will receive a random item from Manfred each day when you speak to him there. When you receive 'Wheat', 'Buckwheat' and 'Soybean', throw each of these in the Seedmaker to create a bag of Seeds. You then can begin to grow these valuable crops before they actually have been unlocked. Unlocking new Crops: You must ship 100 of 5 different crops each in order to unlock Wheat. You will need the Thresher and the Flour Mill if you wish to use the Wheat that you grow. Both Thresher and Flour Mill are used to process Rice, which probably is the first cereal that you will unlock. Soybeans can be processed as well to create more Recipes. Weather in Island of Happiness Weather in Farming In Island of Happiness, it is not merely the passage of time that ripens Crops. You need both sunlight and water. Rainy days provide water but do not provide sunlight. They therefore can delay the maturity of any crops planted in your Field. Every Crop is different. Some Crops require more water but others require less. You can overwater a Crop and if you do so, it will wither, as it would in real farming! Some Crops require less Sunlight than others. Fiercely sunny days may benefit most Crops but without water on those days, all Crops are more likely to wither and die. Crops requiring more water will be more at risk than others on fiercely sunny days. You will find the precise amount of Sunlight and Water needed for each Crop in the section that gives the prices and requirements for Seeds. Crops grown in a Greenhouse receive a steady amount of Light and are not affected by actual Weather conditions. Typhoons and Snowstorms Taro predicts the weather and a Typhoon, like other weather conditions will be foretold on the previous morning. It appears that the weather is fixed at least five days before the event, rather than being fixed on the previous night by midnight. It therefore is not really worth the effort to replay almost an entire week in order to obtain a different result. In the same Typhoon, one can have a tree destroyed completely and half a field filled with crops destroyed. A huge boulder can fall anywhere, even on tilled soil where crops were growing, obliterating four or five squares of crops. If one replays the event, however, the same Typhoon may deposit only countless weeds, lumber and small stones everywhere, leaving all crops and trees intact. The large variation that can occur makes it worthwhile not to save the game until one has studied the effects of any Typhoon fully. As there is nothing one can do on the day of a Typhoon in any case, one has no need to save the game on that day at all. Another effect of any Typhoon or severe snowstorm is an increase in the stress bar of all livestock and poultry. Horses and dogs appear not to suffer in the same fashion and can be perfectly content even though they were not fed during the storm. Poultry and livestock, however, will show their unhappiness in the stress bar. If you are able to use the Touchscreen to pet any animal, that will reduce the stress instantly, even if it will not eradicate it completely. Use of the brush on livestock will reduce the stress further. Do everything in your power to reduce the stress bar before you obtain product from livestock. Chickens will have laid their eggs, so your actions will not affect the yield for that day. Although Poultry and Livestock will have increased stress after a Typhoon or Snowstorm, they will continue to yield product, albeit of a slightly inferior grade. If you speak to the Witch Princess the day after a typhoon, she will confess that one of her own spells was the cause of the terrible storm. Is she telling the truth or simply boosting her image as a potent spellcaster? Witch Princess: Yesterday's typhoon? Oh, that was the result of a failed spell of mine! Sorry...!