Suggested Walkthrough for 1st Week in Autumn, Animal Parade

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The following sections are taken from my Animal Parade General Guide and Walkthrough, but perhaps it will be helpful to a few players if I post them here.

I understand that, as some one who is writing Guides, my own priorities may be somewhat different from some players, as one priority always must be to complete the Lists as quickly as possible for the Guides. Other players can take their time in obtaining a specific item or Crop if they prefer to focus on a different aspect of the game, but I must grow all possible Crops, catch all possible Fish and obtain all possible items from the Mines, among other things, if I am to complete a Comprehensive Guide of any Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game.

Nonetheless, I do believe that the following Walkthrough for the first week in Autumn represents a successful strategy in the 1st Year. Without making any reference to the 'Most Favourite Gifts' of any specific Eligible Girl or Bachelor, there nonetheless is a good reason to grow staples in the first Year in order to be able to cook all Dishes.

The Trophies that are given for completion of various Encyclopedia lists, including the Cookbooks, are another reason to 'diversify' farming in the first year. In the
2nd Year, your Character will be able to specialise in one specific high-value Crop in each Season if he/she prefers, in order to gain the highest Farming Titles, but in the 1st Year, I believe it is important to grow ALL Crops and Flowers at least once.




Walkthrough: 1st Week in Autumn

At the start of any Season, your first task always is to clear your Field of any withered Crops, cut down any Weeds that have appeared overnight, till any squares that the Weeds occupied, then plant your entire Field with new Crops.
In your first Autumn, you may not have been able to afford a second Field yet. If this is the case, you may have decided to chop down at least two of the Cherry Trees on your Field near the end of Summer to plant Trees that would begin to bear Fruit in Autumn. In fact, if you planted new Trees in the 3rd week of Summer, they should begin to bear Fruit at the very start of Autumn. Chestnuts, Coffee Beans and Olives are the Crops that you can obtain from Trees in Autumn.
You do not need six Cherry Trees in any case. Two will be perfectly adequate to produce any Cherries you might need for Gifts or Cooked Dishes in the second year. It therefore makes sense to chop down the remainder both for the Lumber they will provide and the space they will give to new Trees of different varieties. When you have more Fields, you can plant new Cherry Trees for the beauty of their blossoms in Spring, but with only a single field, it is wasteful to allow a Tree that will not bear fruit again until next Summer to occupy 9 squares.
Remember always that your Field needs to be fertilised regularly and this is true with respect to the squares that any Tree occupies as well as those occupied by ordinary Crops. If your Cherry Trees begin to yield nothing better than Decent Cherries in the latter half of Summer, you should fertilise the land on which they were planted again.
On the 1st day of any Season, your expenses in Farming will outweigh your profit. You therefore need to find profit in Shipping in other ways. Making new Recipes is one way in which to augment your income on the 1st Day of a new Season. Although no Autumn Crops will have ripened apart from the Fruit on Autumn Trees, there will be a fair number of new items that can be found in the Wilds.
Clams will be found on all the Beaches in Autumn and they are used in more Recipes than any other variety of shellfish. You can make Clam Soup, Butter steamed Clams, Seafood Doria and Sauteed Clams. These are all Recipes that require Clams specifically rather than generic Shellfish as an ingredient.
In terms of wild Berries, you will find Cranberries for the first time. From these can be made Cranberry Juice, Cranberry Ice Cream, Cranberry Candy and Cranberry Cocktail as long as you have stored some Sugar for Candy and Ice Cream Recipes as the Marimba Farm will not sell Sugarcane in Autumn.
By Autumn, you should have at least two Cows in your Barn even if it is not upgraded to the next Level but you should have been able to afford the upgrade by now, giving you the opportunity to house two Cows, a Sheep and a Horse. If you do not have the upgrade, it is far better to invest in two Cows than to buy a Horse at the earliest opportunity as Milk is one of the most useful items in any Harvest Moon game. You never can have too much Milk. Although you can purchase Milk at Horn Ranch, your money would be better spent in other investments if possible.
Cranberry Candy and Cranberry Ice Cream will add about 1000G to your Shipping Total on the 1st day of Autumn.
In your first Autumn, you will be introduced with an ingredient that is as revolutionary as Sugar or Coffee in Harvest Moon in the form of Olive Oil, made in a Mixer using a single Olive. If you planted at least one Olive Tree in the middle of Summer, it should yield two Olives daily, enough to make two new Recipes on 1 Autumn.
Olive Oil is one ‘Cooked Dish’ that does retain its Rank. You therefore may be encouraged to make Shining Olive Oil from a Shining Olive rather than shipping it as an Olive, although the Shipping Value of the Processed Item is only 10G higher than the raw ingredient.

Olive

Growth Rate: 14 Days, half a season
Yields: Crop in Autumn
Decent: 120G
Good: 140G
Perfect: 160G
Shining: 270G
Olive Oil: (Value by Rank)
Ingredients: Olive
Decent: 130G
Good: 150G
Perfect: 170G
Shining: 280G
For the most part, Cooked Dishes are not significantly higher in shipping value than the combined value of the raw ingredients used to create them, but there is an exception in the form of Sauteed Mushroom if you use a Common Mushroom to make it. It makes a nice Recovery Item as well. Decent Olive Oil has a Shipping Value of 130G and a Common Mushroom ships for 40G, giving a combined Shipping Value of 170G. You basically double that value by cooking the two items in a Frying Pan.
Sauteed Mushroom: 310G
Ingredients: Mushroom, Olive Oil
Energy Value: 150 SR
Many Characters will speak of the Autumn Season as the Season that is most bountiful in terms of Crops.
Ruth at Marimba Farm will caution you as follows:
Ruth: A lot of vegetables harvest in the fall. Decide on what you want to grow.
In later years, when you own more than one field, you will have sufficient space to grow ALL Autumn Crops and Flowers if you wish during the Season. In the first year, you need to plan your strategy a little.
Remember that Grass does not grow during Winter. You either need to cut and store sufficient fodder to last through the Winter season or buy it from Horn Ranch.
As Cain will tell you:
Cain: The grass will only grow through Autumn. You should prepare Fodder for Winter.
At this point, you should have been able to complete all the initial Bell Quests and be at the stage where you need to earn the ‘Hero Title’ in order to ring all 5 Bells at once. This, however, is only one consideration when deciding what Crops to grow during the autumn season in your first year.
You may be tempted to plant your field with the Crops that have the highest shipping value, but another goal that should be considered is that of completing your Cookbook. Many Dishes require Rice as an ingredient and Rice is an Autumn Crop in Animal Parade. You can buy Rice from the Marimba Farm in all Seasons once the Shop reaches Level 3, but purchased items always are sold at inflated prices.
Rice Seeds cost 30G and take only five days to mature. Decent Rice is sold by the Marimba Farm for 420G. The temptation to plant costly Blue Mist Flowers throughout your Field should be weighed against the need to have a fair quantity of Rice for your Kitchen. My own recommendation would be to plant Rice and other Autumn Crops for Cooked Dishes in the first week, reserving only two rows in your field for every type of Autumn Flower, including Blue Mist Flower. Once you have harvested and stored at least servings of Rice as well as producing a few of each of the Autumn Crops for other Recipes, you can vary your strategy to concentrate on Crops and Flowers with the highest shipping values.
Remember that Fertiliser must be renewed in order to have a good probability of obtaining Crops of the highest Ranks. When Crops have variable growing periods, such as 3-5 days rather than 3 Days or 5 Days, it is the Crop grown in a well-fertilised square that has the most potential to be harvested in the shortest number of days.

Rescuing the Last Lost Animal

On the 1st of Autumn, you will have your first opportunity to rescue the third and last Lost Animal from Theodore’s Circus. You will have owned the Recipe for Vegetable Pizza since you first obtained the Quest to find the Animals but one ingredient in the Recipe in the form of Bell Pepper only becomes available for the first time on 1 Autumn at the Marimba Ranch. You should be able to buy the Seeds on 1 Autumn as well either from the Marimba Farm or from Taylor.
If you opt to perform the last Quest as early as possible, you can buy a Bell Pepper, then make a Vegetable Pizza, provided always you saved a Potato in Spring as that is another seasonal ingredient that will not be available in Autumn. Humphrey the Hippo is submerged in the lovely swamp area that surrounds the Hut of the Witch Princess. Go to the shore to the left of her Hut and use the Animal Whistle to cause him to emerge from the murky depths. You can do this at any time once you have obtained the Quest from Theodore actually but without the Vegetable Pizza, he will refuse to budge.
After feeding him the Vegetable Pizza he craves, you will receive a Letter from Theodore the next morning:
: Invitation to a Special Circus
Ahem! This is Theodore of Theodore’s Circus of Wonders! Humphrey the hippo came back! Thank you very much!
As thanks, I’d like to invite you to a special performance of my circus, featuring all my lovely animals!
-Theodore
As the ‘Special Circus’ will occur on the 22nd of Autumn, irrespective of the day on which you complete your final rescue mission, you may wish to wait until a Bell Pepper is harvested from seeds you have planted. Doing so will not delay the ultimate reward.

Mining for Salt

You can find Rock Salt in all three of the Mines in Animal Parade. It must be ground into Salt in order to be used in Recipes and until you repair the Watermill next to your original Farmhouse, you will be obliged to take all Rock Salt to the Big Windmill east of Horn Ranch. Salt, like any of the substances ground at the Windmill is produced in four different Ranks. Unlike the other items, however, the original raw ingredient in the form of Rock Salt is free from Rank. The Rank of the Salt you grind depends on weather and wind conditions. Another section of this Guide gives the variables of every type of wind and weather condition and the effects on Salt, Coffee Beans, Spicy Pepper and Sugarcane.
Salt is an ingredient in a number of different Recipes but it is onnly when you have access to Olive Oil that you will be forced to collect a fair amount of Salt if you wish to make all the Cooked Dishes that use Olive Oil. All of the Pasta dishes require both Olive Oil and Salt. Rank disappears when Salt is used in one of these Recipes so even Decent Salt will suffice but you must spend time in the Mines if you wish to find sufficient Rock Salt to complete every Recipe.


The Versatile Yam


A number of Characters will praise the Yam. Yams are highly regarded in every Harvest Moon and Rune Factory game. In Animal Parade, they can be used in sweets as well as appetisers, main courses and snacks. There are Yam Cocktails, Yam Ice Cream and Yam Cake as well as Yam Rice, Yam Stew and Yam roasted on a Bonfire. Chase will hint at as much when he tells you that:

Chase: Fall has many food items that you can use in many ways, like Yam.

Spinach is another useful Autumn Crop. It can be boiled in a Pot, fried in Olive Oil, used to make a Cake as well as Vegetable Juice and Steamed Egg. Steamed Egg is an interesting Recipe to note because three out of four of its ingredients are of very low shipping value when shipped separately as raw items. Shrimp is a generic term both in Animal Parade and Tree of Tranquility and refers to any crustacean. You therefore can use Freshwater Prawn or Crawfish in any Recipe that calls for Shrimp rather than using the more valuable Rock Lobster or Lobster.

Steamed Egg: 644G
Ingredients: Egg, Mushroom, Spinach, Shrimp
Energy Value: 200 SR

Steamed Egg is cooked in a pot. Another Pot recipe that uses Spinach, Rice and Onion is Spinach Risotto with a shipping value of 730G. If you have any interest in courting Luke, one of his favourite Dishes is Boiled Spinach. As one might have suspected, any Spinach Dish has a fairly decent Energy Recovery value.
These are only a few examples of reasons why a player may wish to grow all Crops in the first Autumn.


Quick Cash and Long-Term Investments

In the first Autumn, you may be presented with two conflicting needs. The first is to plant Crops in your denuded Field that will mature as quickly as possible to give you some income for the new Season. The second is to plant the slow-growing Crops such as Pumpkin as early as possible in order to reap the greatest benefit from them in terms of multiple harvests.
Pumpkin IS a Multiple Harvest Crop in Animal Parade, unlike many other Harvest Moon games where it is a Single Harvest Crop. You therefore should plant a few Pumpkins on 1 Autumn if possible.
A number of Autumn Flowers take only 3 Days to mature. They may not be quite as valuable at the Blue Mist Flowers that can take longer to blossom, but they will give you a quick turnover that will benefit you in the 1st Autumn.
Rose Seeds, even if not unlocked yet at the Marimba Ranch, can be purchased from Taylor and usually take only 3 days to mature, although they can take as long as 5. A Rose ships for over 220G and with four Roses, you can make Red Perfume, which ships for 910G. It may not be as valuable as Shining Perfume, but it delivers quick profits.

Honeybees are likely to produce Royal Jelly in Autumn as well. This is an important item and another reason why a Field that contains both Crops and Flowers may be to your greatest advantage.

Both Harvest Moon and Rune Factory games allow players to make their own choices ultimately. A Walkthrough gives nothing more than a few suggestions. If a player wishes to forge ahead independently by trial and error, he/she is as likely to do as well if not better in terms of his/her own priorities as by following some one else's Walkthrough.