Story Of Seasons: A Wonderful Life Beginner Tips & Tricks - How To Make Money, Friends, And More

Will you be playing Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life? Or are you, perhaps, one of the original fans of the GameCube/PS2 game? Either way, we know what you need: A ton of tips, tricks, and hints to get past the game's special little idiosyncrasies, and into the heart of this charming farming game.

(We would like it to be noted that we tried to do one of those old-school ASCII text titles, like at the top of those 100-page GameFAQ guides you'd print off without your parents' consent, but it just looked like we'd spilt a bunch of punctuation on the page. Sorry. We tried.)

Here's your beginner's guide to Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life which covers how to make money, how to make friends, and how to raise crops and animals.

Story Of Seasons: A Wonderful Life Beginner's Guide — Tips & Tricks

Making Money

There are a lot of ways to make money in the game: selling crops, animal products, meals, fish, and fossils will all get you a little bit of cash. But it's a lot harder to make BIG money. Here are some tips on making the most of your farm to fund your terrible cow-buying habits:

Fishing is your friend

Grab the fishing rod from Van (who comes to town on the 3rd and 8th of each month) as soon as you can, and then fish by the waterfall near the mining area. The fish here sell for more than the fish in other areas (the ocean, the turtle pond, the river, and the goddess pond), but not by much. Luckily, it's super easy to fish. Just cast your line, press the button when the exclamation mark pops up, and that's it. You can do it with your eyes closed! Or while watching TV! Or in the bath!

When you've got tons of fish, sell them back to Van — you can't sell them through the shipping bin. You can save the "Lil" fish for cooking or as gifts because they sell for less.

Flowers are plentiful

Every season, there are new flowers, herbs, and sometimes even mushrooms. You'll want to save 10-20 of each for requests, gifts, and eventually growing hybrid plants (Sagesoil, Happy Lamp, Trick Blue and Upseed Flowers are the ones you'll need), but the rest you can just sell to Van. They're not used for anything, and some of them (like the Speshroom in Autumn) are worth up to 300G each!

Recipes aren't worth it

Most recipes won't increase the sale value of the ingredients, and even the ones that do require a lot of ingredients you might as well just sell early on, rather than waiting until you have them all ready to go.

Ignore older guides

Many of the prices of items have been changed since the GameCube/PS2 release. The biggest changes are the cost of farm buildings... and the reduced sell price of Sashimi. This used to be the best way to make money: catch a ton of fish, and cook up any that were worth less than 150G into Sashimi (although that doesn't really constitute "cooking"). You could easily increase the value of fish by doing this, but in the remake, Sashimi sells for 30G. Not worth it.

Look for the little guys

Every now and again, you'll see wild animals — like a lizard missing a leg, a turtle with a neckerchief, and a tanuki by the windmills — and you'll wonder what they're for.

Good news: They're signs that the fishing is especially good that day! Each animal is tied to a specific area, and if you're fishing by the waterfall, it's the lizard you need to look out for. You can't befriend them, but you can trust them.

Luck for the little guys

You'll also want to check out the TV every morning. Not only is it useful for farming tips and weather forecasts, but it'll also tell you your luck level. This influences things like how good your fishing catches will be, so if it's a good luck day, make it a fishing day!

Sell your male animals

No one likes boys, so sell your male animals! They don't provide eggs or milk, and even though they can impregnate your female animals for free, they take up valuable space in your barn or coop, and their lack of output makes them not worth the space.

However! Keep at least one male chicken so that you can get fertilized eggs, and pop them in the incubator (back left of the coop) for free baby chickens. Male sheep are also fine! They give wool the same as female sheep, so they're more useful.

Invest in trees

After your first year, trees will be your main money-making method. You'll want to grow at least one of each, so you can turn them into hybrid crops later which sell for even more. Plus, you can grow them in the field with poor soil, because they're not picky. Note that the seeds sell for more — if you have a Seed Maker, use it!

We have more tree tips in the Growing Crops section below!

What's mining is yours(ing)

Mining can be a really great way to make money, especially when you can dig up golden items worth 1,000G! Keep an eye out for the chihuahua that can sometimes be spotted by the entrance to the mine — he signifies good luck with digging that day. Fossils, statues, and ore can be used as gifts, but they're not useful otherwise, so sell 'em! Also, you'll want to mine each chapter until you get the Stone Tablet. This will increase the size of the mine the year afterwards.

Make friends wisely

This game wants you to befriend the folks in town, but it won't tell you that. Luckily, they're all easy to find gifts for (we have tips for that below), but if you only have the time/energy to befriend a couple, here are the ones who give you the most useful stuff:

• Takakura (access to hybrid crops)
• Daryl (free Seed Maker, only in Year 1)
• Lou (Lou's Spice)

So far, we've been unable to confirm if befriending Van unlocks the ability to haggle with him, but in the older games, you could say "no" to his offered price for your goods, and he would offer a higher price.

Spend money wisely, too

It may be tempting to buy all the tool upgrades immediately, but many of them don't have great benefits. The Watering Can and Fishing Rod are the most useful, allowing you to water more squares at once and catch rarer, more expensive fish. After that, it's the Hoe and the Sickle, both of which can till/scythe more squares at once. The upgraded Milker and Shears just use less energy, which is nice, but not as valuable. Save these for last!

Pick the right farm facility

Related to spending money, you'll also want to decide which farm facility to save up for first. Here are our thoughts on each:

• Pond — gets you ducks, which don't lay more expensive eggs, but are very cute
• Processing Room — massively expensive, but increases the sell price of all your milk, so it's very worth it
• Barn/Coop Upgrade — a good choice if you don't mind the time it takes to feed, pet, brush, and milk/shear your animals each morning
• Fertilizer Spreader — a good addition to the larger field you get later in the game, but quite expensive to run
• Fertilizer Maker — once you have tons of money, sure! It's best to use fodder to make the fertilizer, since you can't sell it anyway, and you'll have tons of it if you follow our steps below.

Growing Crops

Crops are essential in Story of Seasons, and it's no different in A Wonderful Life. You'll always be growing something in your farm, and there are plenty of easy mistakes you might make. Not with our help, though!

Water twice a day

If there's only one tip you take away from this guide, let it be this: water your crops twice a day. Many of them are slow-growing, and may not even grow in time before the end of the season if you don't water twice a day. Yes, it sucks, and it uses up all your energy, but you gotta water twice a day.

Upgrade your Watering Can ASAP to make this less painful! The more you use your tools, the faster you'll unlock the upgrades, which you can buy from Van.

Pay attention to the seasons

The seasons in A Wonderful Life are super short, which means planting in the right season is super important. You can't actually plant seeds that are fully out of season, but if you plant it at the end of its growing period, it will grow a bit, then wither and die. It's an expensive mistake to make!

Crops also have descriptions that tell you how fast they grow, so you'll know if they'll be ready before the end of the season. So we recommend reading the descriptions of every crop you get.

Is fertilizer worth it?

Not really — not until the later game, anyway. It costs 20G per pack of fertilizer, you need to use it twice a day for the entire growing period, and it only increases the sell price by 20G if you take it from B to S.

Once you have a Seed Maker, it does make a difference. You can put S crops in the Seed Maker to get two S seed packets, which will pay off much faster.

HOWEVER. Fertilizer is extremely useful, even in the early game, for one thing: Growing your own fodder for the cows and sheep. Hold down Y in the cow field with fertilizer equipped, and you'll sow a 3x3 grid of grass. This grass grows back extremely quickly, and if you let it spread, you'll have an entire field of grass that can be cut down for fodder. You'll never need to buy it again, because it'll always fill back in after you cut it — just make sure to leave some behind each time.

Sickles cut crops, but be careful

You can cut crops with your sickle instead of painstakingly picking them up one by one. But be careful! You can accidentally cut down ungrown crops if you aren't careful.

When you get the sickle upgrades that let you cut down multiple squares at once, it will only target the crops that are ready for harvest. You should be able to see only the crops with a yellow square around them. And speaking of yellow squares...

Yellow there

Yellow squares are a handy guide to whether or not your crops are ready to harvest: Blue means no, and yellow means yes. While you're watering the crops, anything that is outlined in yellow is ready to go.

This also goes for trees! When their fruit is ready to be harvested, they will also be outlined in yellow. Shake the trees to drop the fruit, and keep going until the square turns blue.

More about trees

Trees need special care, attention, and time. They need space, but they can be planted close-ish to one another if you don't mind them growing slowly.

Make sure to water your trees until they're fully grown! But once they're matured, and able to bear fruit, they won't ever need watering again.

Raising Animals

You'll start the game with a free cow, and later on, you'll get a free horse, too! But how do you keep your animals happy? How can you make money from their produce? And how can you increase their output? Here's what you need to know.

Talk, snuggle, brush, feed

Every day, you'll want to do these four things to raise an animal's happiness as fast as possible. For bonus points, you can also feed them Fodder+, which is worth the money for improving your cows' milk above C-Rank even faster (which is, annoyingly, too low-quality to sell or cook with. Sell it to Van instead).

Later on, when your animals have high friendship with you, just brush/feed them. Cows' milk may drop in quality every now and again, even at max friendship, so feed them a few days of Fodder+ to bring it back up.

Pregnancy got nerfed

In the original game, cows had to go through pregnancy in order to give milk. That's not the case any more — your cows will give milk all year round, every year. Their output will decrease in the warmer months, but they don't have to have babies, at least.

Birds are easy

Birds are plenty happy being outside all the time. Even in the rain. Even at night. Cows and sheep are more sensitive, and won't like being out in bad weather, but birds? Birds don't care. You can also save on bird feed by just having them outside.

Make sure to pick them up and snuggle them to raise their friendship, and you'll occasionally get golden eggs, which sell for 5x the price of regular eggs.

Cheese vs Butter

Once you get the Processing Room, it's worth knowing how to use it properly. Brown cows make good butter, and Marble cows make good cheese. This isn't just fun storytelling — it's actually true! Turning Brown Milk into Butter will raise its quality by a whole rank, and the same goes for Marble Milk and Cheese.

Star Milk and Normal Milk are both good as Cheese or Butter, but Star Milk is best sold as milk because it's of much higher quality.

Head to the next page to earn about making friends, cooking, and our Advanced Tips...