Stardew Valley is an open-ended farming/fishing/mining/building/friendship game with so much to do and such loose win & loss conditions that I like to work towards a goal that I set for myself, like completing the Community Center in Year 1, maxing out my heart level with every villager, or cooking every dish.
The Feed Pelican Town challenge imagines that the farm actually provides the food that the villagers in Pelican Town eat. I’ll need to learn the villagers likes/dislikes and their schedules, and create a diverse farm to meet all those needs.
The rules:
- Give every villager two gifts per week
The gift must be food- Is Maple Syrup food? NO, it’s inedible.
The gift must be edible- Is Pufferfish food? NO, it removes 100 energy when eaten. That’s poison
- The gift must restore at least 1 health or 1 energy
The villager must Love the gift- I’m really broke at the start of Year 1 and only have access to a few items
- The gift must be Loved if possible, otherwise it must be Liked
Dwarf only loves Magic Rock Candy, an incredibly expensive item- Look, just let me get through Spring. I’ll deal with that later.
- You don’t need to feed villagers that you can’t access, like Sandy in the Oasis, Kent who is off at war, or Krobus hidden in the sewers.
Attempt 1
The year starts on Monday. By Saturday (after the first batch of crops come in) I’ll give everyone their first gift, so I can give them their second gift on Sunday, the last day of the week.
What’s that? The “two gifts per week” week runs Sunday to Saturday? So it’s already too late to give two gifts in the first week if I didn’t give the first gift by Friday Day 5 at the latest?
FAILURE
Attempt 2
I won’t make the same mistake twice! Six days to give two gifts to everyone, so I must give the first gift to everyone no later than Day 5.
But the Community Center doesn’t open until Day 5. So I can’t get the letter from the Wizard and gain access to his tower until Day 6. It’s impossible to give the Wizard 2 gifts in the first week!
FAILURE
This is really hard!
New rules
- The Wizard only needs one gift in the first week.
- Gifts given in Spring, Year 1 must be Liked at least. No requirement for Loved gifts, even if they are available.
Attempt 3
One more time. I have my spreadsheet of gifts. I’m maximizing my income so I can spend so much on gifts and still invest in my farm. I got a lucky drop of Sashimi in the Saloon, which is cheaper than Salad, so I save some money buying gifts for people who don’t like anything I grow at the start.
Day 1: plant lots of Parsnips. Parsnips grow in 4 days, the fastest of any crop, and are liked by all but 5 villagers. They are my main source of gifts.
Day 5 is rainy. The Community Center doesn’t open on rainy days, so meeting the Wizard is delayed by a day. That means I don’t meet him at all in the first gift week, so that’s fine, right? He doesn’t need food if he’s not available. That’s like the rule for Krobus and Sandy. The Parsnips come in, so I harvest them, sell a few for money, and pass out the rest as gifts. Half today, half tomorrow (Saturday) and then the week rolls over.
On rainy days, Elliott does not leave his house. I can’t enter his house because we’re not good enough friends. I can’t give him a gift on Day 5. I couldn’t give him a gift on Days 1, 2, 3, or 4 because I can’t grow Parsnips that fast. I can give him one gift on Day 6, but that’s only one for the week.
FAILURE
Consulting the wiki carefully, I realize that I could have foreseen and avoided this. The weather report on TV predicts the next day’s weather. If I check the weather on Day 4 and see that Day 5 will be rainy, I can go to the Saloon, buy a gift for Elliot and deliver it on that day. Then he’s inaccessible on Day 5 when the Parsnips come in, and I give him a Parsnip on Day 6. But what if it rains both on Day 5 and Day 6? Unlikely but possible!
Future plans
i still like this idea. I imagine by year 2 I’ll have a kitchen in my house, cooking up people’s favorite dishes. I’ll stockpile some ingredients in season and grow others year-round in my greenhouse. I’ll have fish farms and a shed full of artisan goods. But this challenge is so hard at the beginning that I can’t get out of the first week!
Next time, I won’t give any gifts in the first gift week (Days 1-6 of Spring, year 1) Every resource is precious at the beginning of the game, so relieving the huge stress of providing 55 gifts in the first 6 days will let my farm grow a lot more, and I’ll be able to start the second week giving gifts immediately, so missing one day won’t immediately cause failure.
I could also give myself a little leeway on the rules to allow for occasional slip-ups. “No hit” challenge runs are like that. The runners start out by seeing how few hits they can take, eventually do a no-hit run, then get consistent at zero hits. A runner who restarts the run every time they take a hit will probably never finish. Alas, that’s not my style! All or nothing!