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7 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town

I started playing Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town after doing my research and watching Youtube videos. I thought I was prepared to play the game. Boy, was I wrong. I bet you have even been in the same boat as I was. Hopefully, this post will give you the information you need to get a great start in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. 

The 7 things I wish I knew before starting Story of Seasons Friends of Mineral Town are:

1. How to Get the  Fishing Rod
2. You Can Sell Huang Stuff once you reach a high enough friendship
3. How to get Van’s favorite 
4. Van is actually in the game
5. The Farm map will show you where the horse is
6. The sprites can water your plants and do other various chores
7. Save your game once you reach a new floor in the mine

One thing I Wish I Knew Before Starting Friends of Mineral Town was How to Get the Fishing Rod

I didn’t get the fishing rod till late spring. There is so much misinformation out there about getting the fishing rod and that’s why it took me forever to get it. I heard you could only get it on a certain day a week and blah blah. Nothing worked.

So I am going to spare you the turmoil that I suffered. You need to go to Zack’s house, located on the beach, between 11 am to 4 pm. You may need to speak to Zack to start the conversation about the fishing rod. However, your toolbag must have an empty slot in order to receive the fishing rod. (Face Palm)  Claire’s toolbag was always full so I could never get the fishing rod. 

No one that I found, even mentions this. (I think I found out this info from a YouTube comment.) If you check out this article on GamerRant, you will see that they do not mention this at all. (At least the rest of the info was correct.)

You Can Sell Huang Items Once you Reach a High Enough Friendship

When I started Story of Season Friends of Mineral Town, I thought the only way to sell your items was through the shipping bin. I mean, the general shop doesn’t let you sell items. Neither does the blacksmith, farms, etc. 

Since you can only sell certain items in the bin, I wasn’t making a lot of money in the beginning. Because of this, I got animals late in the game year and missed out on a lot of festivals. If I had this ability, in the beginning, I would have gotten my farm animals and house upgrades much much sooner. 

In order to get his friendship level up, you need to talk to Huang every day and give him a present. The best present to give him is apples from your farm, unless you got expensive jewels. Do that and you guys will be friends in no time. 

To trigger this, you must have seen Huang’s first event, the one where he couldn’t tell the difference between all the apples he dropped, and 4 friendship notes. 

Another Thing I Wish I Knew Before Starting Friends of Mineral Town is How to Get Van’s Favorite

So why should I care about an item called Van’s Favorite you ask? Well, this is related to being able to sell items to Huang. You can sell this item to Huang for around 52,000 to 59,000 gold.  That sounds good right? (Be sure to keep at least one though. I tell you why later.) Psst… you need tons of money for marriage requirements. Check them out at “Ultimate Friends of Mineral Town Romance Guide“.

You can get Van’s Favorite once a day if you know what you are doing. If you meet certain criteria, you can get a Van’s Favorite in the mail for winning the “Lottery”. In order to win this lottery, you have to make your number of shopping trips on that day be divisible by 10. Confusing right?

Let me explain. The amount of items you buy does not matter. What matters is how many times you talk to the shopper keeper, going to the buy menu and buying something. (So basically what matters is separate transactions.) So if you want to get A Van’s Favorite the next day, you need to do this at least 10 times in a day. If for some odd reason you need to do more than 10 “shopping trips”, then the next number is 20, then 30. (Remember, the total number of transactions needs to be divisible by 10).

Keep in mind that the total number of transactions is cumulative. For example, when you first start, if you only do one shopping trick a day, then it will take ten days to get a Van’s Favorite. 

What do you do if you miscount and/or not have been keeping track? An easy way to fix this is just do one shopping trip each day till you get a Van’s Favorite in the mail. Then you know that your total number of trips is divisible by 10 and start keeping track from there.  Or you could make a save at the general store, make a transaction, then go to bed. If you do not get a Van’s Favorite, reload the save and do two transactions. Rinse and repeat until you get one the next day. 

Van is Actually In The Game

 I thought the only reference to Van was Van’s Favorite. I mean there is already a merchant trying to sell “valuable items”. However, he really is in the game. He is the one who sells you pets on the 15th of the month. Van also sells items in the inn on the top floor every Wednesday, unless there is a festival. 

He sells metals, a record player, and records (once you buy the record player.) According to thegamer.com once you earned 1,000,000 gold, you can give this to Van. Once you do this, you can buy a remote control for 10,000,000 gold. You can then sell it to Huang for 50,000,000 gold. 

In order to unlock Van, you need to give the Harvest Goddess 30 good (or better) gifts. If you do not know how to do this, throw a flower into the river by the Hot Spring. She will pop up to thank you for the offering. 

Another Thing I Wish I Knew Before Starting Friends Of Mineral Town is That the Farm Map Shows You Where Your Horse is  

The reason why knowing where your horse is is that in order to keep the horse when it matures, you need to talk to it and brush it every day. If you don’t, you could risk Mugi taking it away due to the horse not having enough hearts.

However, chasing the horse around a big farm filled with weeds, rocks and more is a pain. Especially if you do not know where the horse is. I wasted many in game hours looking for the horse. Instead, I could have used that time to make friends with the people of Mineral Town. 

Once I found out about the farm map, the hard way, I saved so much time tracking down the horse.

The sprites can water your plants and do other various chores

Knowing that the Sprites can water crops for you is something I really wish I knew earlier. That would have saved me so much time. First off, I didn’t even know how to meet the sprites. (They are in the hut behind the church.)

And then, once I found the hut, I kept arriving so late that the door was always locked. Because of this, I thought I needed a key or something. That wasn’t the issue. I just wasn’t getting to the sprites’ hut earlier enough. (Silly me.)

However, you need to befriend them in order to ask for help on the farm. To make it easy, all of the sprites love wheat flour, just like Brandon, so give them that. 

Another Thing I Wish I Knew Before Starting Friends of Mineral Town is to Save Your Game When You Reach a New Floor in the Mine

If you have explored the Spring Mine yet, you probably noticed that you can use up your stamina really fast trying to find the ladder down to the next level. In the beginning, I could only go down a few floors until I learned a certain trick.

Each time you reach a new floor, save the game. Then look for the ladder down. Once you do, remember the location and reload your save. Go back to where you found the ladder and use your hoe. The ladder is still there. 

This means that the ladders are in set positions when you enter the mine, not random. Doing this on every floor will save you tons of Stamina, allowing you to go farther down the mine. 

Bonus Tips: Throwing Cucumber in the Lake and Eggs in the Spring

I already knew about these since, as I mentioned in the beginning, I did research and watch videos but I will list them here in case you don’t know. If you read the section about Van earlier, then you should already know about throwing flowers in the river. What about the lake and the spring?

Throw cucumbers into the lake for Kapp’n to appear. Do this every day until he gives you a green power berry.

Throw eggs into the hot spring to get hot spring eggs. Rick really loves those.

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That’s all the things I Wish I Knew before Starting Story Of Seasons Friends Of Mineral Town 

Did you learn something new? I hope so. Just a recap, this post discussed the things I Wish I Knew before Starting Story Of Seasons Friends Of Mineral Town that were: 

1. How to Get the  Fishing Rod
2. You Can Sell Huang Stuff once you reach a high enough friendship
3. How to get Van’s favorite
4. Van is actually in the game
5. The Farm map will show you where the horse is
6. The sprites can water your plants and do other various chores
7. Save your game once you reach a new floor in the mine

If you learned something new please share this post with your friends. If you like this game then check out “Fall in love with these 7 Game Like Stardew Valley” or check out the resources pages for other posts. I’ll see you next time. 

Amber Borden

Amber is an avid gamer. The first game she ever played was Super Mario Bros on the NES. She has seen many genres of videos games due to her 30 years of gaming. However, Amber typically sticks to RPGs, Sandbox and Simulation.
Since she loves gaming, her first job was at a Gamestop. Also, she has written guides for Gamefaqs. Amber was a full time worker in the retail world, but now she is working on this site from home. No matter what, however, she still plays her video games.

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