Harvest Moon Forever: Island of Happiness Rival Events

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Island of Happiness Rival Events

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I have not been able to play Island of Happiness for some time now and in fact am working on preliminary guides for 'Sunshine Islands', its sequel. Island of Happiness remains the most sophisticated and complex Harvest Moon game to date, however and I only now realised that some assumptions made about the requirements for triggering Events may be incorrect.

In Island of Happiness, your character's actions affect the total population on the Island. In other words, if you bring two members of the Ranching Team to the Island, sheep will be unlocked at Mirabelle's Animal Shop. On the other side of the coin, if you fail to fish for a season and thereby ship no fish whatsoever, characters from the Fishing Team will leave.

Both Main Characters such as Eligible Girls/Bachelors and Subsidiary Characters are affected by your character's activities throughout the game. Players, including myself, who were unable to trigger the final Rival Heart Event between a couple initially performed a specific activity associated with the characters and then were able to trigger the Event. In other words, after I spent a fair amount of time fishing, the final Rival Event between Denny and Lanna triggered.

Today, a player left a comment asking how many fish had to be caught before the final Rival Event between Lanna and Denny would trigger. This is what caused me to reassess the entire basis of Island of Happiness. It may be the total number of Subsidiary Characters in a specific team who are present on the island at a given time that is the determinant rather than the activity (fishing, mining, etc.) per se where the requirement for any Rival Proposal is concerned. In other words, it is not the number of Fish that you catch but the number of members of the Fishing Team who are on the Island that is significant.

In like fashion, the puzzle relating to the actual requirement to trigger Elliot's Purple Heart Event could be solved using the same reasoning. In desperation, hunting for a hidden trigger for the Event, rather absurd theories about a requirement that a player ship 200 Crops from Taro's shipping bin arose but were disproven by players who were able to experience the Event without ever shipping a single Crop from Taro's bin. I expect that the requirement for his Purple Heart Event, apart from having the specified Heart Level, actually is based on the number of Farming Team Members who are on the Island. I suspect that, if you have not brought any of the Farming Team members to the Island you will not be able to experience his Purple Heart Event even if he is at Blue Heart level.

Another situation that shows the complexity of the game involves the Ranch products in Island of Happiness. The appearance of members of the Ranching Team is based on the number of Ranch products that your character makes. Initially, I believed that the products had to be made in the appropriate Makers until characters managed to bring the members of the Teams to the Island by making the same products in their Kitchen.

In fact, my Characters Guide needs to be revised to some extent based on extended gameplay experiences. It was written using an advance copy of the game.

In particular, if I am correct in assuming now that actual Events are based on the presence of a specified number of Subsidiary Team members rather than on totals of items obtained or shipped, it will simplify matters considerably.

I would be interested in hearing from other players on this topic.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: I think you may be exactly right. I have caught many fish before, but I can not trigger Denny and Lanna's final rival event. And I just checked my assets and saw that a bunch of the fisherman are absent.; July 9, 2010 at 1:22 PM

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.

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Harvest Moon Forever!

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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.

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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'.