If you've just started out your new life in Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town, you'll find yourself tasked with renovating your grandfather's old farm. As you progress, you'll make new friends, maybe even find love, and can help the little town grow in popularity too.
For those who are new to the franchise, or if you're just looking for some general tips for when you start your new life in Olive Town, here are some beginner tips to get you started so you can make the most out of each day.
Updated July 6, 2023, by Sean Murray: Just getting started in Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town? Then you've come to the right spot. We've refreshed this guide with improved formatting and breakout tips so you can start your farming adventure off on the right foot.
15 Choose the Right Difficulty for You
Pioneers of Olive Town is one of those idyllic life sims that is just nice and relaxing to play. However, there are many players who find the grind of some parts of the game pretty frustrating, so to make this easier on yourself, be sure to choose the difficulty that suits your needs.
Opting to go for Seedling Mode makes life a lot easier as items sell for more, your stamina depletes more slowly, friendship levels increase faster, experience points are easier to earn, and the price of items in shops are lower too. You can change your difficulty at any time from the main menu if you change your mind.
14 Grab Optional Tools Straight Away
While most tools are given to you as part of the storyline, there are a few that you might miss if you don't go exploring Olive Town to its fullest. The Camera is obtained in the museum, the Fishing Rod is given by Manuela when you visit Marcos's House, and the Leash is given to you by Patricia in the Animal Shop once you have upgraded to a log cabin.
While the Leash isn't all that important, the Fishing Rod means you can catch fish to sell, cook, or donate to the museum. The Camera also allows you to take photos of wild animals to start donating to the museum too.
13 Daily Farming
Make sure you take care of your farm every day, watering your crops, feeding your animals, letting them out for pasture, and petting them too. It's important to take care of your farm properly in order to get the best quality items from your crops and livestock.
Every day new items will appear around the farm and on the shorelines. Make sure you explore to the fullest and grab all of these wild harvests and items. Selling wild harvests that you find will make their seeds become available for purchase in Olive Town.
Don't forget to explore the mines too and empty out small ponds to try and get some rare items and possibly even some treasure.
12 Speak to Everyone in Town Every Day
Raising your Friendship Level with characters is important in building relationships, especially if you want to pursue some of the romance options and get married. Speaking to characters also increases your Communication Level, which unlocks additional perks such as new crafting recipes or Friendship point boosts.
Raising Friendship Levels can be a slow process as, although you can speak to characters more than once a day, you will only get a Friendship increase for the first time you speak with them per day.
You can give gifts to increase Friendship too, but these also only earn you points once per day.
11 Upgrade Your Tools and Inventory as Soon as Possible
You can upgrade your tools and inventory bag at Clemens's Tool Store, which is open every day apart from Tuesday between the hours of 8:00 am and 6:00 pm. Upgrading your inventory will make your life a whole lot easier as you won't have to keep unloading your items into other places.
Upgrading your tools will make them more efficient and also unlock charged actions increasing their area of effect, making gathering a lot easier and a lot quicker.
10 Don't Neglect to Fix the Farm
You'll be prompted to fix the chicken coop as part of the storyline, but make sure you keep fixing up other areas of your grandfather's farm as this will open up new land and new possibilities when it comes to farm life.
For some things you have to fix up yourself with materials, whereas for other things you can make a request to the Carpenter's Shop using either materials or money. New areas add new livestock, ingredients, places to explore, and more.
9 Craft Makers As Soon As You Are Able To
Makers are facilities that take raw materials and process them into new items, such as ore into ingots, or logs into lumber. Processing these materials takes time, so make sure you have your makers working at all times to maximize your crafting efforts.
You'll need these refined materials for things such as upgrades, crafting, town requests, and more, so be sure to keep a healthy stock of crafting materials.
8 Utilize Sprites on Your Farm
As you work on your farming, cutting down trees, harvesting, and breaking rocks, you might notice little strange creatures appearing — these are Follower Sprites. Once you have collected 25 of these (you don't need to actually pick them up, just see them) you will get access to the Earth Sprite Village.
Here, you can use the followers you have obtained to put them to work on your farm. Assign different followers to different areas of your farm and check in every day to collect materials from them, as well as Sprite Coins that can be spent in the Earth Sprite Village too.
7 Complete Requests
Head into Olive Hall at the northern end of Olive Town and you can find the bulletin board that offers various requests from the residents of Olive Town, as well as special Town Requests from the mayor.
Sometimes the mayor will give you requests in person to help develop Olive Town. Requests from the residents change every day and are an easy way to get some money while offloading some unwanted materials.
6 Don't Forget to Accept Title Rewards
Just to the right of the bulletin board in Olive Hall, you'll find a green mailbox where you can collect rewards for fulfilling certain conditions and obtaining new titles. These rewards range from medals (which you can sell) to all sorts of valuable items and crafting materials.
Be sure to collect your rewards often as you can get makers, gifts, and more. These rewards from requests make it worth the run to the top of town.
5 Keep an Eye on the Calendar
Story of Seasons is simply split into four seasons; spring, summer, winter, and autumn. You can always see the date in the top right corner of the screen, and you can always examine the calendar in the main menu to see how many days remain in your current season.
It's important to keep track of this; crops can only grow in certain seasons and should the season change to one they don't flourish in — your crops will wither and die. The season also dictates what items are available from some of the stores in Olive Town.
For example, you can only get seeds suitable for summer during the summer.
4 Stockpile Crafting Resources
While it may be tempting to sell most of the items you obtain to make some money, you should stockpile your lumber, ingots, and cloth (and all ingredients required to make them) as these will be needed for most upgrades and crafting recipes.
It's also worth having your Maker Machines working around the clock, so you always have stock on hand of lumber and ingots (especially the higher tier stuff) rather than having to wait on resources needed to complete repairs/requests/upgrades.
3 Check Your Farm For New Animals Often
You can find and photograph different wild animals on your farm and in Olive Town. Once you have taken a photo of a new animal, you can donate it to the Olive Town Museum so that they can add a statue of the animal to their exhibit.
New wild animals appear periodically depending on the farm area and season, as well as appearing when certain requirements are met, such as having lots of beehives or lots of tree stumps.
These animals will run away when you get too close, so be sure to carefully search your farm regularly to be able to photograph all the animals needed to complete your exhibit.
2 Purchase Blessings at the Shrine
You may notice the shrine in the northern area of Olive Town pretty fairly on, but you can't do much with it at the start. However, once you have collected 100 Earth Sprites, you can begin to purchase various blessings from this shrine. More blessings become available the more Earth Sprites you collect.
You can purchase new seasonal-specific Sprites for farming land, to help in the Earth Sprite Village, boosts for your maximum stamina, and more.
1 Unlock Special Locations
There are a whole host of Special Locations that you can unlock within the game. Some will unlock naturally as you collect Earth Sprites, whereas others require you to do certain things in order to get access to them.
Some of these secret areas feature mini-games that offer rewards such as increased maximum stamina, whereas others are prime locations for the farming of rare and valuable materials, including gold and orichalcum ore.