Harvest Moon Forever: Cooking in Harvest Moon

Showing posts with label Cooking in Harvest Moon. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Cooking Tricks in Harvest Moon

My own introduction to Harvest Moon came rather late in the series in the form of Friends of Mineral Town, as the first gaming system I owned was the humble GBA. One of the great delights of playing FoMT was to be able to create new variations on Recipes and to work with the values of each Dish in terms of Restoring Stamina or Recovering from Fatigue.

In later Harvest Moon and Rune Factory games, the fundamental premises and mechanics of Cooking have had many different variations. In some cases, you must be 'taught' a specific Recipe either by being given or purchasing a Recipe Book or being told the Recipe by another character. In ToT, you could find new Recipes in the kitchens of other characters, displayed on the kitchen wall. Even in FoMT/MFoMT, you could learn special variations on Recipes from various townspeople, including actual cooking 'lessons' given by Anna and one special favourite given by various characters, including the Doctor and Carter.

In Island of Happiness, you 'learned' Recipes from the owners of the Diner and Cafe. Furthermore, each Recipe was triggered by the offering of a specific ingredient. The need to offer a specified ingredient before the Recipe would be given was an interesting variation.

In Rune Factory, Skill Levels in Cooking determine your ability to make a Dish successfully. Rune Factory Frontier offered a new element in making cooking interactive. You had to press a Button at a specific point on a gauge in order to make the dish successfully. One actually could improve the Dish by making it 'perfectly' or 'with expertise'

In some games, you must try to cook a Dish a number of times, even when you possess the Recipe, before you will be able to cook it successfully.

Whenever there is a possibility of adding optional ingredients to improve a Dish, you may be able to trick the game into believing that all Dishes made previously WITHOUT the optional ingredient have the value of the augmented Dish.

For example, if Pudding is made with Milk and Egg, you may be able to make 10 Puddings with Milk and Egg, then make an eleventh with Milk, Egg and an optional ingredient, such as Chocolate, then change the Recipe to make the ingredients in future Milk, Egg and Chocolate. It is possible that ALL Puddings in your Rucksack then will have the value of the new improved 'better' Recipe.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

New Harvest Moon and Rune Factory Cooking Site

While creating the little Trivia Test about Bianca, I became aware again of the odd combination of different cuisines that have become almost 'standard' both in Harvest Moon and in Rune Factory. Perhaps it is not odd at all to any one who lives in Japan, but from a Western viewpoint, dishes such as Doria and Gratin are associated with France rather than Japan. Furthermore, they are not really common dishes in English-speaking cultures at this point in time.

How many times have we made Doria or Gratin in our Harvest Moon or Rune Factory kitchens without ever baking the dish in the real world? How many players even know how to make these dishes?

I then thought it might be interesting to publish some 'real' Recipes for favourite Harvest Moon and Rune Factory dishes, so that fans of these games could cook them in their own kitchens.

My new 'Harvest Moon Cooking Site' is the result. I am not certain how many players actually will take the time and energy to make any of the Recipes I intend to publish there, but it may be of academic interest if not as useful in practical terms.

By the way, I am offering an invitation to Harvest Moon and Rune Factory fans to send me their own Recipes for these dishes if they are favourites in their own homes.
Please send only Recipes that you actually have made and tasted if possible!

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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'.