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Kynseed Less than Obvious Tips n Tricks

By Sellardohr

A loose compendium of helpful things I picked up while playing.

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Sellardohr
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Category: Crafting, Secrets, Walkthroughs

Posted

25 Feb, 2024 @ 9:32am

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Guide Index

Overview

Guide

Comments

Guide

General

Don't be in a rush. The game throws tons of objectives at you, and early on you'll be hurting for the time to do them all. After an in-game year or two, you'll find you have a lot more hours in the day than goals... So go slow and enjoy the journey.
Pretty much every move you make in this game is forward. It's pretty hard to go backward, by which I mean it's hard to mess stuff up. Food doesn't spoil, relationships don't decay over time, quests don't time out. Even if you give somebody a hated gift by accident, well, now you know an item they dislike, and you'll make back up the FP in no time.
One of the main long term goals in the game is friendship, getting to know all the villagers and completing their quests. A lot of them you'll run into all the time... A few of them like to hide in their out-of-the-way houses, so you have to go out of the way to get them. My favorite way to grow friendships was to run a popular shop. Once a shop gets popular, folks from all the different regions start visiting, so you can hang out and most folks will just come to you each day.
The other long term goal is maxing out all your skills, which mostly revolves around finding 3*-5* rare items. Once your tools are levelled up, this pretty much happens on its own. It was much harder before the Big Build update -- you'd have to take notes on how to get star ratings up, and some items could only be gotten during certain weather and certain seasons. Seems like now that optimization is much more optional; it'll let you get your stars sooner, but it's not necessary to get them at all. Often it'll boil down to opening up your notes on that item and summoning the right pet + eating the right snack to get the right trait.

Crafting

The higher the quality raw material, the harder the crafting minigame. Keep an eye on that. So practice new recipes on the lower-star materials.
This took me forever: Jam making. When you dump an ingredient in, your temperature falls by more than the length of the simmering target region and the food always goes cold for a second. How do you get around that? Well, the answer is by cranking up the heat WHILE the heat is falling. So you chop your ingredient up and add it, then IMMEDIATELY go over to your heat control and crank it up. The temp rise from cranking it up will counteract the temp fall from adding the ingredient... Then, after the initial plummet, you can start to feather the heat back until it stabilizes where you want it. I NEVER succeeded at the jam making game 'til I found this out.
In the sharpening step during blacksmithing, there's actually two "ranges" around your pointer: a bad range and a good range. These are invisible but you'll get a feel for them. At low stats and/or with a high-quality ore, your bad range is actually bigger than your good range, meaning you'll be holding the button down to sharpen, your pointer will still be inside the green region, and you'll get a red blip from oversharpening. Don't sweat it too hard, but that's what's going on and why it's so hard w/o excellent stats.
There's good food to eat for each crafting task, as well as shopkeeping itself. I always eat a Bluefish Toasty before a day behind the counter, or a Creek n Coop before a blacksmithing session. Try it out, it actually helps a lot.
Batch crafting, which is new with Big Build, is practically cheating if you did a lot of crafting before. I used to spend every single in-game evening / night at my blacksmith, making stock for the next day and filling orders. Well no more! Unlock it and use it wisely, or don't use it at all if you want the old-fashioned hardcore experience.

Shopkeeping & Family Scheduling

Pricing at the blacksmith & apothecary is automatic, but the Goods Store is all about finding the right prices. Here's the trick: you actually get really good data about historical price performance in your ledger. Each sale gives you money and reputation, and there's a sweet spot on returns for both. For cheap items, look for a price that gives 5 - 10 rep per sale. For valuable items (50 coppper+), target 15-25 rep per sale. 30 rep is the max; if your sale gives you that much, you can raise the price w/o any regrets. If it gives you negative rep, of course, lower the price.
Used to be no villager would pay more than 100 copper for an item, regardless of its actual value. I don't know if that's still true, but watch out for it.
Post Big Build, you get a very helpful letter when one of your employees is unhappy so you can go troubleshoot it. Mostly that means just give them a raise (hit the "Expected" button, then add a copper or two) and a few gifts. Also don't work them to death... I run my shops in 9-hr shifts, with the weekends off. Or I'll run two crews, a weekday crew and a weekend crew.
But this is important: Run your blacksmith shops 7 days a week. Otherwise your staff will accept orders that would need to get filled on the days no one is working, and customers will go away unhappy.
Shopspecializations are super fun, and the perks are super helpful. Buy at least one early on to get a feel for how they work, then buy more and incorporate them as you go. Pick one you really like and run it yourself for a while; I had so much fun running a bakery in the mornings in this game.
When it comes to raising kids, the XP increases for stat increases are really slow. You want these to operate over many years. So the first year you get a good family, set up their schedule, then buy a bunch of Fairweather items. Otherwise you'll be waiting forever with very few results.

Combat

Combat gets really risky against a large number of enemies, especially a large number of high-difficulty enemies. The ones in the back buff the ones in the front, and the frequency of attacks is often too high to let you feel like you're making much progress. But the game gives you things you can expend: arrows, flame phials and stuff, and effigies. The time to use these is at the START of really tough fights. Once you get it down to just a couple enemies, most fights are a breeze.
It's good to keep one of every type of equipment. You'll dig these up over time with a dog and a shovel if you don't bother to make 'em. But every single piece of equipment has a niche... Er, well, at least all the swords do. Some of the wards and charms are pretty meh.
A long dungeon run is all about risk vs reward. My biggest problem was always pushing too hard and choosing to try the next floor when I should've run away. You'll figure all that out in your own time.

World / Exploration

Having at least two fast travel options -- goddess statues and one other -- is so important. I always take the Rootway as my first Fairweather gift. I never bothered with the Outhouses, because gross. But the game would be a much bigger pain without those Rootways.
A few maps have hidden locations, behind some pathways you can't see 'cuz they're covered in leaves or something. Just explore and you'll find everything, nothing's TOO tough.
Each region -- north, south, east, and west -- has characteristic flora. You'll learn what grows where. But if you have a recipe or a quest that calls for an item you haven't seen yet, it's probably quite plentiful in one of the regions you haven't been to yet. This is especially a pain for some herbs, like say Marshmallow, which not only are region-specific, but are also pretty rare within that region.
For rare herbs and fruit -- pick a few of them, and you can build something on your farm that will give it to your steadily. This is new with Big Build but it's soooo helpful. Make a grove of nightberry bushes, or about 4 herb growers growing Thyme, or Little Sap, or whatever you want. Just gotta find 'em out in the world a few times first, then you're set for life.[/

4 Comments

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Honeywine 5 Jul @ 12:45pm

Krondelo; on SD the default inputs for temp control on jams are R1 & L1! Thermometer is just behind the pot.

Krondelo 19 May @ 4:13am

awesome guide! Any tips on controlling the temp on jams? I'm playing on SD and I seem to only be able to change the heat with my finger on the screen. If I could use the analog stick....

boogers 27 Jan @ 3:43pm

that blacksmith tip is gonna save my life, thanks

Lisrt 1 Mar, 2024 @ 7:59am

Wonderful advice, and exactly what I needed to hear right now, thank you!

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