Harvest Moon Forever: The Crisis of an inveterate Packrat...

Friday, May 23, 2008

The Crisis of an inveterate Packrat...

Without being too specific, there is a game in the Harvest Moon series where one can own and place more than one Refrigerator and Cabinet in the house at any given time. Most players probably will not find this prospect particularly exciting, but I am the sort of person who collects items 'for a rainy day' (or the possibility of a Rainbow...) and I was delighted to be able virtually to double my storage capacity by using more than one Refrigerator. It is not pleasing aesthetically and I certainly wouldn't want to invite any guests to visit. It reminds me a little of my Animal Crossing home where I had the most magnificent Mansion and the rarest of items, but no floor space! I couldn't move for all the rare insects and fish cluttering my rooms, not to mention my own personal collection of rare art objects and souvenirs of alien visits.

The problem with having more than one Refrigerator and Cabinet, I am discovering, is much the same problem one has in real life. I CAN'T FIND ANYTHING!!! I have to open each Refrigerator to search through the shelves, then open each Cabinet, often wasting my most valuable real life asset, which is TIME.

As I often warned players of HM DS and Cute who spent hours upon hours in the Casino winning Medals, you do have to spend REAL TIME doing it and that time is limited. If you spend all your real time gambling, even if you come out of it a virtual millionaire, what happens to your farm and your social life?

So here I am, spending far too much real time searching through my Refrigerators and Cabinets. I thought I was extremely clever to discover that the game would allow me not only to have more than one of each but to actually use them all at the same time. Like a miser who delights in his gold, I love to see my rare items... and actually am surprised sometimes to find an item that escaped my recollection in a slot somewhere, but it is slowing me down considerably.

A lesson here? Well, it's the same lesson I have tried to learn in vain in my real life. Clutter may be impractical but it appears to be a part of my intrinsic personality at this point. I often store items that are worth a considerable sum in Harvest Moon when I actually need money simply because they are rare and I like to be able to look at them. That is a minor form of insanity, I know.

So here

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For all Harvest Moon fans and players

As Freyashawk, I have written about 150 guides for games, most of which have been guides for Harvest Moon games. These are published on IGN. IGN has given me the title of 'Mistress of Harvest Moon' and I strive daily to earn the right to maintain that title. Although there is a link page on IGN that lists all the guides published there, they are not organised by game, but rather given in alphabetical order. I therefore created this page in order to provide links to the guides I have created for each Harvest Moon game. If you access the General Guide for any game, links should be included to all other guides for that game in a section at the end. I will try to add links to ALL guides as time permits, but until I do, you always can refer to my user page at IGN for the complete list.

I wrote the Official Strategy Guide for Tree of Tranquility for BradyGames as well.
Harvest Moon Forever!

How to Use my Guides

I write three different basic types of game guides. I usually write a General Guide for every game, which is fairly comprehensive and deals with all aspects of the game. It may or may not be in the form of a Walkthrough, dealing with game aspects as they occur. My Innocent Life General Guide is an example of a General Guide that is organised as a Walkthrough.

After writing a General Comprehensive Guide, I often write a Calendar Guide giving birthday and festival dates, with additional information that may be helpful, such as favourite gifts for each individual. For all Harvest Moon games, I usually write a number of 'mini-guides', such as Events Guides for each year of gameplay, or Recipe Guides that give all recipes one can make. Fishing, Mining, Shipping or Item Value Guides are other mini-guides that can be very useful when playing Harvest Moon. Character Guides give detailed information about every character in any specific game. My Courtship and Marriage Guide is devoted to all aspects of Courtship and Marriage, including schedules of Heart Events, Rival Heart Events and the likes and dislikes of every Eligible Girl and/or Bachelor.

Although this site is devoted to Harvest Moon, I have included links to game guides for other games. I created a separate link section for Animal Crossing Wild World as well, because I wrote more than one guide for that game.

N.B. All my game guides are published by IGN. This webpage has been created simply to allow players to find links to all my guides more easily.

Copyright Infringement Warning

It is really sad to discover that there are individuals who are willing to steal my guides and to attempt to publish them under their names. Fortunately, there are many players who recognise my guides when they see them anywhere on the internet and who are willing to alert me when some one tries to steal my material. I want to thank all those players for their help in these cases.

Some one stole one of my guides and tried to publish it on Gamefaqs under his/her name. The guide has been removed and the poster has been banned. I now have a contact in the Legal Department at CNet. I spend many months sometimes writing a guide. They are available for the private use of any individual without cost, but they are not available for theft!
If you want permission to include a link to one of my guides on your site, please contact me directly.

Friends of Mineral Town and More Friends of Mineral Town

You will notice that I wrote far more guides for More Friends of Mineral Town than I did for the original 'Friends of Mineral Town'. At some point, I would like to publish more specific Events Guides for Friends of Mineral Town, but players should be aware of the fact that ALL Calendar Events Guides for MFoMT can be used when playing the original FoMT. The Events are the same in most cases in both games. If, therefore, you are playing FoMT and you wish to know the events that can be experienced in the third year of gameplay, refer to the 'Third Year Calendar Events Guide' for 'More Friends of Mineral Town'.