Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is a modern remake of the original Harvest Moon DS: Grand Bazaar that die-hard farm-sim lovers may remember from their childhood. The game comes with a plethora of quality-of-life changes and a shiny new look made by Marvelous, Inc., the development team behind the original.
Below we list some tips for Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, answering questions you may have early on in your playthrough, and providing information that we wish we realized faster when playing.
If you’re longingly looking at the rivers and ore-filled deposits in front of you, wondering when you unlock the fishing rod or pickaxe, don’t worry, you’re not missing anything. NPCs will hand out these tools to you through unskippable events during your first week of spring.
No, there’s no shipping box to quickly sell items
If you’re used to other farming games, you may be looking around your farm for a shipping box where you can deposit your goods to sell. In Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, the focus is on, well, the bazaar. You will mainly sell off your best items on Saturdays to improve the marketplace. You can sell your items manually to Miguel in the town shop (so long as it’s open) if you need some instant money, but you’ll mainly want to sell your items via the bazaar. The bazaar will only upgrade after you make certain amounts of money via the Saturday market, so you can’t solely sell through Miguel if you want to progress in the game.
Use these barrels as shortcuts around town
You can jump and cut through the town rather than going all the way around each time. You can also jump on these barrels to get a boost, allowing you to quickly navigate areas without having to circle around the whole place. This is particularly helpful if you need to beeline it to the market on Saturday mornings or make it to an event before it disappears.
Don’t forget to take a bath, stinky
After you go through your morning chores, watering crops and tending to your animals, remember to take a bath back in your house! This eats up 30 minutes of the day, but restores about half your stamina, which is really helpful if you want to go out and fish or collect other items.
Read those mission objectives and item descriptions carefully
Some missions will require you to give a character any of a specific item type, whether it’s flowers, dye, or perfume, but the little icon that shows up on the mission information can be kind of deceiving if you’re not actually reading what the game is telling you to do. Notably, when it comes to flowers, note that “wild flowers” are a different item category.
Grab some flour and eggs before Spring 21
On Spring 21, there’s a special holiday that involves giving honey to characters to improve your relationship with them. If you’re able to give them a honey cake, it will dramatically increase your relationship, which is great for romance candidates. You will likely have eggs by this time already, since the game’s tutorial will give you a free chicken, but make sure to grow some wheat to process into flour, so you’re not caught unprepared to make a honey cake.
Don’t be like me, who missed out on giving Arata a honey cake. Sigh. 🙁 There’s always next year.
Pay attention to the wind
The wind power in this game has two functions. For one, items in windmills will process faster if it’s windier than usual. The second thing is that once you unlock the glider, the wind will also carry you farther. There are certain areas in the game you can only reach on windy days with your glider, so you’ll want to pay attention before you try to reach these far-off areas.
Use your hoe to dig these little dirt patches
As you explore both your farm and the area around Zephyr Town, you may see these little dirt clumps in the ground. Use your hoe to dig them up to get some rocks, as well as medals that you can sell for money. Free money!
The town shop is closed on Fridays (and technically Saturdays)
Yep, plan accordingly and get any seed shopping you need to get done on Thursdays instead. The town store is also closed on Saturdays, but Miguel will just be selling a different line-up of products in the bazaar instead.
Keep things processing in your windmills
Early on, you’ll only have access to one windmill, so make sure you have a variety of objects processing in them, whether it’s turning wood into lumber or scavenged walnuts into bottled walnuts. Processed goods will sell for more, and you will need lumber and other materials to unlock certain things in the game.
Bring a variety of items to your bazaar stall on Saturdays
It’s best to bring a variety of items to stock at your bazaar, since you can display three or four items at once (and much more later in the game). If all you have is one stack of radishes, a customer will hog the stall and force the rest of your customers to walk away. As you’ll only have a few real-life minutes to sell items in-game, you’ll potentially miss out on some money.
Save your money for Saturdays, too
There are a ton of items that you cannot buy outside the bazaar. This includes upgrades to your backpack and farm, farm animals, clothing, and even some specific types of seeds and crops. That being said, don’t blow all your money right away at Miguel’s shop. Wait for Saturdays to prep for the big ticket items you’ll need to improve your farm.
