Once more, I am compelled to BEG players not to add me to their list of recipients for forwarded emails. AOL has an email postbox capacity of 1000 new emails. For two days now, my postbox has been FULL. That means that I must go through 1000 emails to delete all the nonsense BEFORE I can begin to answer important emails from friends and family or legitimate game questions.
This is unacceptable. I ultimately either will be forced to remove my email address from my guides or create a new email address and NEVER open my postbox again. I have too much work to do as it is. Players ask me to update my guides or cover new games while continuing to flood my box with forwards or to ask basic game questions that have been answered more than once in my guides.
A concerned player was kind enough to send a suggestion. I am posting his suggestion here as it will give players a method by which they can find specific information in any of my guides almost instantly.
SUGGESTION FROM PLAYER:
'It seems like the folks flooding your inbox are completely unaware that most browsers can search and find text with in a site. I made a little list of 'find' shortcuts for the top 5 browsers.
'In Firefox, typing Ctrl f causes a little search bar to pop up from the bottom of the browers. So if I was viewing one of your guides and simply typed Ctrl f tomato seed, the guide would automatically jump to the first time 'tomato seed' appears in the guide. I have a gut feeling that if you made a post about these shortcuts on your site and added a link to that post before your email in your guides, then the volumn of emails you get asking questions that are already answered in your guides will drop significantly.
Here are the search shortcuts:
Firefox:
Find Ctrl f
Find Next F3 or Ctrl g
Find Previous Shift F3
Internet Explorer:
Find Ctrl f
Opera:
Find Ctrl f
Find Next F3 or Ctrl g
Find Previous Shift F3 or Ctrl Shift g
Chrome:
Find Ctrl f
Find Next F3 or Ctrl g
Find Previous Shift F3 or Ctrl Shift g or Shift Enter
Safari:
Find Command f
Find Next Command g
Sources:
Firefox
Internet Explorer
Opera
Chrome
Safari
I would appreciate some consideration from players in this respect. Players who have contacted me in the past with game questions know that I try to answer any emails as quickly as possible, but it is becoming extremely depressing when I receive five or six emails from a single player, sent often from a cellphone, each of which asks a basic question answered in one of my General Guides.
Furthermore, I created this site to give players quick links to ALL my guides. Players, however, continue to send me emails telling me (quite untruthfully), that they have been to this site and READ my guides and yet found no answers to their questions.
Once again, do not mistake the posts on this site for my actual guides. Links to ALL my strategy Guides are given on the right side of this page.
Finally, I would like to thank the players who DO endeavour to read the Guides first and only email me when I actually did not answer the question in the Guide and who always thank me for my quick responses and so on.
I am not paid for any of this. I do not advertisements to appear on my site, which means that I do not make any money whatsoever when readers access this site. I moderate all comments both on this site and on my YouTube channel because I dislike advertising. This is a labour of love, and it would be unfortunate if I cease to enjoy it at all because of the sheer volume of emails directed to me by thoughtless players.
Sorry for the rant, but 1000 new emails plus 60 new comments on YouTube that need to be moderated is a bit much for a Saturday morning.
A Website for all Harvest Moon fans providing Links to all Guides by Freyashawk: Actual Links on Right Side of Webpage
23 comments:
Thank you for that tip, makes it much easier to find things in your guides.
Thank you SO MUCH for creating and sharing your guides on Harvest Moon. I just cannot imagine playing one of the games without your extremely detailed information regarding all aspects of the game. No, I have never emailed you nor have ever had the need. Hope you're having a better day today. :)
I am a very big fan of The Harvest Moon and i am glad and very much happy that you have shared any information about it, i liked it very much.
Thanks, guys. Sheila, you are more than welcome to email me if you ever have any questions about any game I have covered. I always try to answer emails, but what irks me are players who send multiple emails asking basic questions that are answered in some detail in my guides or, what is worse, flood my box with forwards containing information that has nothing whatsoever to do with any game (chain letters, jokes and so on).
TrueDragonMaster, I am waiting to hear from the player who sent me all the internet search links as to how he would like to be credited for the information. HE is the one to thank here!
Hey Freya, it might be a good idea to re-post that post once in a while, just to remind the idiots (pardon me for being rude, but...) who think you have time for chains that you don't. Just a suggestion, you could copy and paste it so you don't have to type it over and over again. I actually didn't realize that people didn't know about the "control F" thing because I'm pretty sure most of your guides for old games had that information at the beginning, to make it easier to find things in the table of contents. I'm not sure about the new games, though, because the newest one I have is Rune Factory Two and then HMDS, haha...
hey. i have a question about harvest moon sunshine islands. my b-day is on the rice festival and im wondering if my hustband(elliot) will still celibrate my b-day with me. i really hope so cuz i also have a kid.and i NEED the stir fry. thx
I am going to create a post about this because Festivals operate differently in Sunshine Islands from the way they work in most Harvest Moon games.
In Sunshine Islands, it is only the Festivals that begin at 6.00 p.m. that end your day. If the Festival begins at 10.00 a.m. and ends at 6.00 p.m., you will find yourself at home afterwards and you should be able to interact with all Characters at their homes. If Elliot were single, therefore, you would have no problem in obtaining the Gift.
As your Spouse, however, the situation is a bit more complex. I honestly do not know if the Event will trigger or not. Many Events will not trigger on Festival Days. What you will need to do when you find yourself back at home at 6.00 p.m. after the Festival ends is to exit and re-enter your house. The Birthday Event, if it CAN be experienced, will trigger then. As you have married him, you have to soldier on in any case... so please do let me know!
Hey, I'll just start by saying I love your guides and enjoy the game much more when I have them a click away.
I do have a suggestion, and it could potentially help save you even more emails.
Most guides have "find codes". These are either letters or 3 or 4 digit numbers at the start of each section. Even with control find, its hard to find certain sections. I'll use your marriage guide(which is awesome btw) as an example. Searching for "Candace" on the guide yields at least 30 different topics. If I want to find out her favorite gift, I'll have to sift through a mountain of dialogue entries, since "Candace" appears so often on the page. This is a problem in many guides. The solution? Add a code to each major section, and add unique wording to each character entry. There might be multiple "green bells" on one page, but there will only be one "green bell A4". With unique wording, you could say something like "green bell walkthrough" or titling it something more poetic like"removing the rust-ringing the green bell!"
Anyways, It would probably be kind of tedious to implement(I'd estimate 2-3 hours given how many guides you have), so I'll leave it up to you to decide if its worth it.
I have one question if you're not too busy.
Since I just got the game, and I found the manual to have conflicting information with your guides(the manuals are wrong, you're right) I'm not quite sure about what the manual says about spouses, and I couldn't find it in your guides.
Here is the manual quote in question-"Depending on who you married, most spouses will help with farm chores". This really confuses me. Does this mean certain choices won't do anything?
Also, do certain choices work more than other choices? It would make sense that the ranch-worn Renee could work harder than Phoebe or Candace.
It seems like it would make more of a difference with men; Logically, it would seem that Owen could do much more work than Julius.
Anyway, like I said, your guides are awesome! Keep up the good work! ^_^
Daniel, I have to confess that I know very little about formatting. I am a writer who takes more pleasure in exploring the games and writing about them than anything else. It takes a long time simply to expand my guides with new information and nowadays, before I ever finish any guide now to my own satisfaction, there is a new Rune Factory or Harvest Moon game to cover. I wish I could make my guides more 'user-friendly'. IGN has created a special coding for me for future guides. I'll see if there is a way to implement your suggestion, but if they can't do it for me, I certainly would not be able to do it myself.
I have not completed my Animal Parade Guides by any means. I need to add the information as to which spouses will perform which tasks. To answer your question, yes, some spouses will NOT help at all. Each Eligible Girl/Bachelor has his/her own strengths and weaknesses.
Actually, Daniel, I've thought about this for a moment and I do write more than one Guide for any Harvest Moon game. My Courtship and Marriage Guide is organised BY Character, and ordinarily gives likes and dislikes, schedule of Heart Events as well as dialogues and other facts about each Eligible Character. My Characters Guide does the same for EVERY Character. I don't really understand why you couldn't go to the section devoted to Candace and take it from there if you are looking for information about Candace specifically.
Yes, more codes might be nice for players, but I really have to try to use MY time to add more actual information to the guides. I'd rather spend time making the guides more accurate than in adding codes so that players don't need to read...
Having said that, if there is an easy way to do it that wouldn't take time, and I could understand HOW to implement it, I wouldn't be against it.
Thanks for the answer, I'll keep that in mind about the spouses when I make my choice.
Yes, please don't take away any of the detail from your guides, and don't work yourself to the bone either! It must be exhausting writing all that you do AND answering all the questions that come in; especially considering you're the ONLY reliable Harvest Moon source on the internet(you're the only one I could find on google, and I looked a LONG time for multiple references)
Anyways, thanks for the answer, and hope you have a nice day!=)
Thanks for understanding. It takes me about six months of concentrated labour to cover any Harvest Moon game properly. I am embarrassed by small errors that I find in my guides due to the fact that I never have sufficient time to proof-read them. I will try to add the spouse labour information to the AP Guides as quickly as possible... probably won't be able to do it until the weekend though. I will post it on this site as well.
I literally fell of my chair when I saw how HUMONGOUS all your guides are! I have never met a person who writes practically BOOKS without being paid for it, just for other people. Not to mention playing tons of games like a trillion times and finding things out!
I'm officially a fan of yours now =D
Thanks to the Ctrl F I can find everything now, because you wrote practically EVERYTHING xD but really THANKS!
PS: How dus Freya Fanclub sound n_n?
Thanks, Eliza! It always makes me happy when some one tells me that he or she uses my guides.
I found some of your guides to be a bit incomplete, and I thought I may be able to help. This will mainly be on Animal Parade, though, seeing how it's the only one I own. I would be able to contribute dialogues for events, and perhaps find new events, because I'm one of those curious people who wants to find everything and isbothered when something is left undone. So, if you are willing to accept my help, just post a comment here. It would just seem to make sense, seeing how mine is here.
Thyst, I actually have very extensive files filled with AP events that have not been added yet to the guides. I had to move on to work more on SI and then HoLV... I can't begin to think about returning to AP yet. If you send me your email address, though, I'll put it in my saved files and contact you if I actually am missing any Events. Thanks for the offer.
Freya, first of all, thanks for making the awesome guide for this game. it is very useful ;)
It is true that you can find easily with ctrl+f, but your guide, despite it's awesomeness, is not search friendly. It would be truly easy to read if you insert shortcut text to every title in your guides. For example
instead of
"Introduction
How to Save Leaf Valley
30 Winter in the 2nd Year
The Fate of the Harvest Goddess"
it is easier if you were to put shortcut in table of contents such as
"Introduction [Intro]
How to Save Leaf Valley [SaveL]
30 Winter in the 2nd Year [30w2nd]
The Fate of the Harvest Goddess [FateHG]
therefore we just put ctrl+F and type [intro] and we will jump directly to introduction section. If we were to type 'introduction', we might go to the word 'introduction' in the sentence of 'You will regain control of your Character after your Introduction to the Harvest Goddess' instead of going to the introduction section
this is only my humble opinion, nevertheless, i love your guide :)
I don't know if you may have posted this already but you can also forage walnuts in the spring in Harvest Moon: Grand Bazaar. It is on the top of you farm in the left corner, it's not always there but you can get it in spring.
Arvilla has a really good suggestion, those tag things are a godsend for guides with tons of information.
Continuing the HoLV example, the other day I was trying to find Charles' schedule... but since he's after Alice, I had to Ctrl+F my way through almost all of Alice's dialogue and events before I reached his section. Similarly, trying to get at Gina's information is a bit of a chore because Dia likes to yell her name so much.
If you aren't comfortable putting tags in, perhaps changing the format of your headers? The character guide is extensive, but each character's section is labaled with just their name. You could create a header that you just don't use anywhere else in the guide would really speed up searching. Instead of just "Gina", you could start her section with "Character: Gina", and put the same thing in the table of contents. I searched the section heading in the general guide when I was looking for ocarina commands and it worked like a charm.
Isaac never came to me on the 3rd of fall/autumn do you think i need to do something for him to come?
How long do you have to wait to get the cut seane for your girl character to be pregnant, and how long after do you have to wait for it to be born?
edit to my last comment my Question was for Grand Bazaar
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