‘Harvest Moon DS’ Tips & Tricks

In anticipation of the Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town remake, I dusted off an old game of the series, Harvest Moon DS, and I’ve decided to share a few tips/tricks. Most of these do not work with the female version Harvest Moon DS Cute. A lot of these are only successful because there are so many bugs and glitches in the North America release of Harvest Moon DS!

1 Million Gold Tip

Before your first year is over, you can make over a million gold by using this trick. You’ll need a few water harvest sprites to do this (I had 3). Any easy way to unlock your first water sprite is by fishing in the watering pond next to your Horse Shed. After you receive the fishing pole from Galen, catch 10 fish to receive a sprite, and then fish another 100 to receive the third sprite.

When winter comes, hire the fishing team to work at the beach. Every day, there’s a chance you may receive up to 1 million gold. On Winter day 2, I had over 1 million in my assets sheet. Just refresh your asset sheet as the trick will appear randomly.

Note: This appears to have been corrected in the English version of Harvest Moon DS Cute.

The Witch Princess and Other Marriage Glitches

Harvest Moon DS has a lot of bugs, mistranslations, and glitches, so there were multiple versions of this game that was released; there are 3 versions of Harvest Moon DS in North America. There’s version 1, 1.05, and 1.1. Version 1.1 is the only version that has the Witch Princess fixed, and unfortunately, 1.1 only equals about 10% of the copies sold in NA. Unless you have version 1.1, the Witch will not count how many animals you kill and the event will not activate making her unavailable for marriage. The fix for this can be found during the New Years Festival. At the New Years Festival, if you get Buckwheat Flour instead of Buckwheat Noodles, your game is not glitched and you can marry the Witch Princess or Harvest Goddess.

There’s also an inability to marry the Harvest Goddess because of the missing Buckwheat Flour. Just like with the Witch Princess, receiving Buckwheat Flour at the New Years Festival will confirm that the game is not glitched and that marriage to her is possible. If the “Choker” accessory item does not show up in the Mining List, the Harvest Goddess is also unavailable for marriage. In shipped item list the necklace may also appear as choker, but it is not known if this is a fix for this glitch.

If you have a hurricane or snow storm while being married to Leia the mermaid, the pond might get blown away along with Leia. She will still appear for events, but she will not appear at any other time. Since you can not give her gifts her LP will drop which may cause difficult in having a child if this happens right after you marry her. Getting remarried is also not a possibility in Harvest Moon DS.

Unlimited Wool

Since it takes so long to collect the amount of wool necessary to free up the Harvest Sprites (Betty, Chamy, and Ole), those who desire a faster method can use Lord Bap’s Sheep Sheering Sheet to speed up the process. There are a lot of steps, but you may receive up to 6 wools from 1 sheep with this method if done correctly.

“First off you’ll need an adult sheep with a full body of fur. Make sure you have put the sheep inside your barn so as to prevent the passage of time. Push the sheep against a wall to prevent it from wandering around, equip your Touch Glove and Clippers, and then start the sheering mini game”. The completed visual guide can be found here.

Note: This appears to have been corrected in the English version of Harvest Moon DS Cute.

Save/Load

You can use this trick for just about anything, but this is the most fail-proof method to reach the bottom of the mine—the save/load trick. This requires an insane amount of patience, and works with the female version of the game, Harvest Moon DS Cute.

If you use your Hoe to till the ground inside the excavation site, you can find small bags of money (3 – 10 gold each) and jewelry that sells for 2000 G a piece. When you dig in the ground you exhaust your Stamina, so save/loading to only dig on the spots where the jewelry spawns can result in a nice profit.

To conserve your Stamina, enter the excavation site and then save your game. Be sure to save inside the excavation site, since the dig spots will reset every time you enter/leave. Start digging around until you find a piece of jewelry (Earrings, Broach, Bracelet, or Necklace), then reload your saved game. After you have reloaded just walk to the spot in the excavation site where you found the jewelry and dig it up with one hit of your Hoe. Leave the excavation site, enter again, save, dig around until you find another piece, and reload just like before. This can be very tedious, but you’ll have enough energy to easily make 10,000 gold or more without exhausting your Stamina to 0.

Save Your Game Often

Due to the numerous variables in the game that are randomly decided (such as weather, crop success, mining, etc.), it’s a good idea to save your game each and every time your character goes to bed. That way, if you wake up in the morning and something is happening that you don’t like (or something happens that you don’t like throughout the course of the day), you can simply reset your Nintendo DS and restart the game, hoping for better results. You can repeat this as often as you want.

Sell Fish to Van

The wandering salesman will visit Ruby’s Inn on the 3rd, 8th, 13th, 18th, 23rd, and 28th day of every season. He will set up his shop in the back of the 2nd floor—just go up the stairs to the 2nd floor, through the archway, and to the left.

Van will purchase just about anything you give him, but his price for fish is unusually high. Normally, you can ship fish for 50 G each to Thomas (in your Shipping Bin), but if you sell them to Van when he is in town, you can earn about 250 G per fish! Just talk to him, and select “Sell Items” from his shop menu.

Mining Tips + Food

As mentioned before, reaching the bottom of the mine can be a very tedious task and requires a tremendous amount of patience, but it’s well worth the effort, as floor 255 of the 2nd mine contains a potential love interest for boys, and the Dark Sword, which can be used to unlock the fertile field behind the waterfall.

As you descend down the floors in the mines you need to keep an eye on your Stamina levels. It wouldn’t be good if you where half way down and had to start over again because you passed out!

When you fall down a hole you will loose Strength equal to the number of floors you fall, up to a max of 100 STR lost. If you don’t recharge your depleted Strength, you’ll be working off of your Fatigue points instead. If you happen to fall down a hole when you have 0 STR, you will loose Fatigue instead. When you eat food you can recharge your Strength and Fatigue back to safe levels.

There are creatures throughout the mines that will try to harm you. The bugs will fly along set paths and can easily be avoided, but the other beasts will hone in on your location and knock you around. If they hit you, you will loose stamina! Fight them off with your tools (which uses Stamina anyway) or run around while avoiding the creatures with the hope you will luckily run over an invisible hole to escape down to a lower floor. Powered up tools do not hit for additional damage.

---

I really love Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, and Stardew Valley. I’ve been playing the Harvest Moon games for a really long time, and it’s one of my favorite series of all time. Follow me on Twitter to get notifications on my published works here and elsewhere!