Friday, September 12, 2008

Completing your Cookbook in Island of Happiness

In many Harvest Moon games, completing your Cookbook is a matter of trial and error, of having the required ingredients, the right implements and being able to put everything that is required together successfully. In Island of Happiness, all Kitchen Implements are included in your initial purchase of a Kitchen. Even then, however, you will not be able to make any Cooked Dishes until the actual Recipes for them are given to you by one of the following:
Luke at the Diner
Madelynn at the Cafe
The Harvest Goddess on the 255th Floor of the Mine

Two 'basic' Recipes are included with the Kitchen, one for Rice and one for Bread, but although they are deceptively simple, your difficulty in making either of them will be due to the fact that the ingredients must be unlocked first. Rice must be grown and harvested from a Rice Paddy, then processed through a Thresher before you can cook it in the Kitchen. Bread is made from Wheat, which is another Grain that has to be grown, harvested, then put through both a Thresher and a Flour Mill before you can make Bread with it.

So put the Rice and Bread on hold and try to fix a basic Egg Dish instead... You will find, however, that even this will be beyond your ingenuity until you have given either Madelynn or Luke (or each) an Egg. When you give either of them an Egg, you may be given a Recipe in return, but only if Luke/Madelynn actually makes a Cooked Dish successfully with your ingredient.

The results of any cooking attempt at the Cafe and Diner always are random. You will not be able to eat the Cooked Dish even if it is successful. The best you can hope to take home with you is a new Recipe that includes the ingredient you gave to the professional Cook.

My advice therefore is to give the lowest Rank and Quality of ingredient to Luke or Madelynn AND to save your game BEFORE you offer the ingredient over the counter to the Cook. If the attempt fails, you then can reload and offer the same ingredient again.

Each Recipe given by Luke or Madelynn is linked to a specific ingredient as well as being linked to a specific Cook. You only can obtain the Recipe if you give the required linked ingredient to the right Cook. The fact that an item is an ingredient in a specific Recipe will not lend it any power to prompt that Recipe from Luke or Madelynn. You have to give the RIGHT ingredient to the right Cook to obtain the Recipe.

For example,there is a Recipe for Steamed Egg Custard that requires both an Egg and a Shitake Mushroom to make. You cannot obtain it from Luke or Madelynn by giving one of them an Egg. In fact, you cannot obtain this Recipe from Madelynn at all. You must give a Shitake Mushroom to Luke to obtain the Recipe. Furthermore, there is a set order in which Recipes are given. You will receive new Recipes in a specific order by giving the required ingredient to the Cook.

I have begun a Recipe Cookbook Guide for Island of Happiness. You will find the link on the right side of this page, although it is a skeletal work in progress at this point. In fact, it is a matter of clerk work that must be completed somehow as I do have all Recipes in my game journals. I published it prematurely to force myself to complete it quickly, in all honesty. Lists of data are not my favourite sort of guide work but it is essential information and must be done. An updated, more useful version should be available later today.

I was working from the original test cartridge, so if the names of items have changed in the final retail version, they will be corrected later when I have reached the same point in my future (final version) game.

They are not organised properly and they are not written in the proper order yet. I try to organise my Guides by listing items in the same order that they appear in the game itself. Often this order has no logic in English but probably did in the original Japanese. Irrespective of this, I feel it is easier for a player to find an item if it is listed in the Guide in the same manner as it is listed in the game.

The Recipe Cookbook Guide therefore lists all Recipes in the order in which they appear in the player's own Cookbook when he/she accesses it either in the Farm Menu or in the Kitchen Menu. Writing any Cookbook Guide is one of the more tedious chores I set myself, but I myself find the results extremely useful and therefore persist in doing it for each Harvest Moon game. Cooking is one of the most interesting aspects of Harvest Moon. To have a completed Recipe Guide at one's fingertips always is useful.

Until the Recipe Cookbook Guide is complete, you always can find a fairly good list of 'Easy Recipes' in my General Guide. I posted one on this site as well about a fortnight ago.

Actually, I have drifted from the original intention when I began to write this post. I wished to give players a simple tip with respect to the entire process of obtaining Recipes from Luke and Madelynn. If you are one of those players who disdains a guide in Harvest Moon and wishes to do it all by yourself, remember that a Recipe may be linked not to an original raw ingredient but to another Cooked Dish.
When, therefore, Luke and Madelynn reject your Medium Fish after giving you a couple of Recipes, try to offer Sashimi instead. When Soybean finally fails to elicit a new Recipe, offer Tofu. When Wheat Flour no longer brings forth a new Recipe, offer Tempura instead...

Incidentally, the information as to where a Recipe is obtained is included in my Recipe Cookbook Guide. Under each Recipe entry, I include the way in which the Recipe is obtained (specific ingredient and specific cook), the shipping value and Recovery Value of the Cooked Dish, and finally the basic version and best version of the Cooked Dish. Where possible, I include the Recovery Value both of the Basic and Best versions...

This information takes time to organise. I think I will concentrate on including ALL entries first with the Basic Version of the Recipe and only then add the 'Best' version.

At the end of the Guide, I have begun a section that is organised by ingredients. It is a list of the ingredients that elicit Recipes either from Luke or Madelynn. In other words, under 'Egg', I am listing all the Recipes that can be obtained with an Egg...

I think this may be quite useful. It is kind of tiresome to keep visiting the Cafe and Diner with ingredients that neither Luke nor Madelynn will accept any longer...
If a player instantly can look at a Guide that shows ALL the Recipes that the ingredient will bring forth, it will save time.

By the way, when you visit the Harvest Goddess on the 255th Floor of the Mine, she will give you a gift, but if you attempt to return for another on the same day, you will receive nothing more. At first, I was a little bemused by the number of players who were able to reach the 255th floor twice in a day early in their games, but now I realise they were using cheat devices. Well, Harvest Moon does not take kindly to cheat codes ordinarily and the Harvest Goddess was NOT impressed apparently either.

This is the case with respect to any gifts in Island of Happiness. Manfred only gives one item per day as well.

7 comments:

Fammy said...

I find this information good to know as it's very hard for me to remember to go to Luke/Madelynn every day to get a new recipe. But, I manage... or try to. Thanks.

jcsimpson said...

YOU are the Harvest Goddess !

Anonymous said...

Wow ... your level of detail in these descriptions never ceases to amaze me. Heh, no wonder I keep coming back here to look at guides ...

Anyway, how many recipes are in this title? I know these days there's usually quite a few ... I bet ToT also has a lot ... (too bad I can't start trying it though since Natsume delayed it again...).

Anonymous said...

Oh, thank you very much for the tips and info! =D I wasn't sure how to go about these ingredient giving tasks. I LOVE especially your last tip regarding the fact that recipes can be related to another cook dish.

Jadis said...

So this time's cookbook is harder to complete? Now I know why this HM game is harder than the rest... But at least you won't end up with any burnt food, I'm sure.

Freyashawk said...

Well, every Harvest Moon game is different where Recipes are concerned. Remember 'A Wonderful Life' where you had to make the same dish a few times before it would be successful? That was interesting! In FoMT/MFoMT and HM DS/Cute DS, you could simply experiment if you didn't have my Cookbook Guide and add new Recipes that way... In FoMT/MFoMT, you could obtain Recipes from other characters as well. I loved that. HM Boy & Girl included that option as well... And of course, there were the many Cooking Programmes on the telly in various HM games.

In ToT, you can experiment or you can go to the kitchens of the most successful cooks on the Island and read their daily Recipes posted on their walls. You can sneak into their houses even when they aren't home and snag a new Recipe that way!

Island of Happiness though is the strictest in not allowing ANY experimentation. There is only one way to obtain each Recipe. Either you take a specified ingredient to a specified cook or you obtain it from the Harvest Goddess on the lowest floor of the Mine...

If you don't obtain the Recipe, you can't make the Dish. Full stop. Knowing that there is Tomato Juice and knowing that all you need to do is use a Tomato won't give you anything but a Failed Dish if you haven't obtained the Recipe from the Cafe.

Freyashawk said...

JCSimpson, thanks for your compliment! I wish it were so, but I'm afraid I often flounder along like every other player at the start of any new Harvest Moon game. There are fundamental rules to Harvest Moon and having played extensively can help with some aspects of the game, but advanced gameplay always requires testing and replaying and scrutinising every action again and again. That is why I like to be able to revise my guides. Sometimes a chain of events leads to a glitch that only can be proven after the game has been played by many different players for a year. It's the same with respect to the requirements to trigger events sometimes. What I may have thought to be a requirement may have been nothing more than coincidence. I need to play three of four different games to see if it really WAS a requirement or not.

Some guide writers don't include their email address in their guides but it's only when I hear the problems that other players are having that I am able to improve my own guides by making them more detailed or explicit.