O the Delights of Harvest Moon Trivia! Wild Animals have been added...

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Harvest Moon and Rune Factory fans tend to be rather literary individuals who delight in dialogue and social interactions. In fact, if you do not enjoy dialogue in a game, you really are NOT going to gain the greatest benefits from playing any Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game. Rune Factory, with its elements of combat, evidently does attract a few gamers who view the dialogue as a nuisance. but for the most part, players of both series delight in the dialogue, perceiving it properly as a reward for dedication and persistance.

New dialogues tend to occur as heart levels are raised, as new items are introduced in the course of social interaction in the form of gifts or when seasons or weather changes. If you fail to interact with a Character regularly, you may not ever be aware of this, but social interactions often are the key to unlock new options and therefore are not really optional in any Harvest Moon or Rune Factory game.

Those of us who are veteran fans of both Harvest Moon and Rune Factory tend to be thrilled by each new tidbit of information or trivia. New Events and new dialogue really often are one of the most satisfying rewards for your investment in continuing to play past the first couple of years even more than the wealth that your Character inevitably obtains.

In both Animal Parade and Sunshine Islands, befriending Wild Animals actually serves a practical purpose as they will gather items for you. In doing so, they visit different areas of the Map. Unfortunately, you cannot take them into any Building but you can show them to any Character who is outside. The results can be illuminating or simply hilarious and actually may aid in raising heart levels.

In Animal Parade, you need to 'adopt' a Wild Animal before you can take it for a walk and show it to other Characters. In Sunshine Islands, on the other hand, you can 'hire' Wild Animals to collect items for you when they attain a specific Friendship level. The number of Animals of each type increases as you give them Gifts of Food. You therefore can find up to 20 Wild Animals of a single variety roaming across the map if you have hired them for the day.

Wild Animals include Badgers, Ducks, Mice, Monkeys, Rabbits and Sparrows. Each Character will have unique responses to each Animal type. Unfortunately for the poor Badgers, they appear to be generally repulsive to most iindividuals.

I have included some screenshots of the Responses of various Characters when shown a Badger. Mark endeared himself to me by being the only Character I was able to find who actually responded warmly to the Badger. I have to confess that I was a little surprised that Charlie did not show any positive interest. Even Martin, who keeps 10 cats in his little cottage, was not kind to these wild creatures. It is apparent that no one on Sunshine Islands listened to tales from 'The Wind in the Willows' as a child. If they had, they may have displayed a little more acceptance of the Badgers.

Befriending the Wild Animals on Animal Island may not be a necessary act in terms of the plot of Sunshine Islands, but it is richly rewarding both in terms of dialogues and gifts of rare and valuable items.

Note that these Wild Animals exist IN ADDITION to the four actual Pets you can keep in the form of a Dog, Cat, Horse and Pig. For animal fanciers, Sunshine Islands offers an incredible variety of animal interactions.

Harvest Sprite Teams, Enchantments and Wild Animal Gifts

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Island of Happiness and Sunshine Islands are similar in many respects and yet, every Harvest Moon game is unique. The large number of Subsidiary Characters who pursued various traditional activities in Island of Happiness do not exist in Sunshine Islands. Instead, different Harvest Sprite Teams, much like those found in HM DS and Cute DS live on Harvest Sprite Island and can be persuaded to 'help' your Character in specific circumstances.

In Sunshine Islands, Harvest Sprite 'help' is given through 'Enchantments'. You must speak to Coral, a Member of the officiating Red Team, to organise any Enchantment. You can order more than one Enchantment at any given time and 'hire' more than one Team. As the old Latin Legal Maxim succinctly declares, however, 'Qui sentit commodum debit et sentire onus', loosely translated as: 'Who knows a benefit must know its burden'.

The 'burden' or 'price' in this case is the necessity for the Harvest Sprites involved in any Enchantment to take a rather long rest afterwards. While any Harvest Sprite is resting, you will not be able to interact with him or her.

Yes, that is another new twist to Sunshine Islands: Some Harvest Sprites are male and others are female. (One wonders if there are secret Harvest Sprite romances on Harvest Sprite Island!)

Harvest Sprite gender, like Harvest Sprite dialogue, simply is one of those very intriguing but non-significant aspects of Sunshine Islands.

Those players who truly love Harvest Moon usually love the dialogues that can be discovered at new heart levels or seasons or in special circumstances.

For example, whenever you hire Seiran, a member of the Indigo Team, to increase Friendship Levels at Carol's Inn, you will be able to experience dialogue that is much like the Wizard's Fortunes in Animal Parade.

Seiran: Freya, Mark said you and he share the same dream!!
Seiran: Freya, Dr. Trent only thinks of you as some one he meets during his travels!!
Seiran: Freya, Carol only sees you as an old customer!!
Seiran: Freya, I think you understand Lily better than anybody!!

Note that these dialogues occur randomly, so you may be obliged to speak to Seiran many times before you experience all of them.

Every Sprite has his/her own unique dialogue. Whenever a new Sprite is brought to the Island, you will experience a special little Event entitled 'New Friend'. You will be advised that a new Sprite has arrived on the Island, but you will not be told his/her identity either by name or by team. You must search for the new Member or Members and speak to him/her to introduce yourself before that Sprite will be added to the Sprite list on your Friendship Page or be available for Enchantments.

Note that a Gift to one Member of a Team is a Gift to the entire Team and that Friendship Levels are raised (or lowered) collectively. The traditional Gift of Wheat Flour is a Favourite with all Harvest Sprites on every Team, but each Team has specific likes and dislikes. You will find all details about the Harvest Sprite Teams, their likes and dislikes and their dialogues, in my Sunshine Islands Characters Guide.

Enchantments are of different potency, determined by size. Whether you can order a 'Small', 'Medium' or 'Large Enchantment depends on the number of Members of the specific Team that are living on Harvest Sprite Island. With 1-3 Sprites, you cannot order anything larger than a 'Small Enchantment'. You can, however, split the Team, assigning 1 Member to one Enchantment and another to a different Enchantment. I suggest always that players keep one Member of any Team unemployed in order to be able to continue to interact with that Team while other Members 'rest'. Otherwise, you can find yourself in a position where you cannot raise Friendship Levels of that Team for up to 10 days as a 'resting' Sprite or Sprites will not be accessible to you. I certainly never have been able to enter the Hut where they rest...

Another new aspect of Sunshine Islands is the ability to 'hire' Wild Animals with three Hearts or more to forage for items for you. Each type of Wild Animal will find a different sort of item. The actual items that they bring back on any day will be chosen randomly but higher Friendship Levels give a better chance of obtaining rare or valuable items.

These items, incidentally, are 'loaded' into the game at 6.00 a.m. when you awaken and not when you speak to Cherry to obtain them. If, therefore, you would like a chance to obtain different items, you need to save your game at 5.50 a.m. or prior to that, visit Cherry immediately at 6.00 a.m. to see what the animals netted for you and, if you are dissatisfied, reload back to the previous day.

Kiffle in two Worlds

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Tree of Tranquility was the first Harvest Moon game to allow a player to domesticate the wide assortment of creatures that we had encountered in the wilds in almost every old Harvest Moon game. Players of A Wonderful Life and Another Wonderful Life constantly asked how one could take the Turtle home, for example, and a host of Urban Legends arose on message boards and false guides giving bogus instructions on how to make the Turtle Nina raced into a Pet. To set the record straight once and for all, one could NOT make the Turtle into a Pet in AWL or AnWL. Nor could the Monkeys that appeared in the Hot Spring in Harvest Moon Boy & Girl be domesticated....

In Tree of Tranquility, however, almost any Wild Animal you encountered could be persuaded to become a Pet if you befriended him/her with some dedication. Those of us who are animal lovers in any world were thrilled.

I have to admit, however, that the Pet option in Animal Parade is the best I have experienced, even more entertaining than Tree of Tranquility. Some players may shrug in response, if they subscribe to the gaming philosophy that ANY sequel has to be better than its predecessor, but that is not the case always. In fact, where Harvest Moon and Rune Factory are concerned, every game stands alone, even when the sequel is marketed as the 'female' counterpart of an original 'male' version of the game. MFoMT is so much more than the 'girl version' of FoMT and yet, FoMT is as good a game as MFoMT in a different way. The same is true of HM DS and Cute DS. They are two excellent games, both worth playing. But enough of this...

In Animal Parade, the size of your house determines the sort of Pet you can keep, but you can raise the Friendship Levels of all Wild Animals in anticipation of a time when you may be able to keep them as Pets. Furthermore, you can release existing Pets into the Wilds again in order to keep a new one. I am an absurdly sentimental person even when playing a game, and I cannot imagine that I will have the heart to relinquish any Pet for the sake of another in Animal Parade.

Nonetheless, although my heart was set on gaining the White Cat as my Pet, especially in view of the fact that Beauty now has three little adorable White Kittens, I became seduced by the Squirrel in Flute Fields. The problem was that I passed through Flute Fields daily but the little peninsula at the Lighthouse is out of the way. I had to make a concerted attempt to visit the White Cat and catch a Fish for her each time I did. The Squirrel, on the other hand, was thrilled to accept any Herb I collected along the way or even a Common Mushroom. Likewise, with countless Common Mushrooms at my disposal, it never was a hardship to slip the Baby Boar one, even though I had no desire to take him home with me.

I resisted the Squirrel for some time after the option to Adopt him appeared at 6 Hearts, with my avowed intention of adopting the White Cat firmly set in my mind and heart. On the night when I experienced the Event in Fugue Forest with all the Wild Animals, however, my heart caved. I had hoped that the Event would raise the Heart Levels of ALL the Wild Animals by a full Heart Level, but it does not do that. It raises Friendship Levels a little but not by a full Level. The White Cat, therefore, remained at 5 Hearts and the darling little Squirrel cavorted so charmingly that I surrendered...

With a Chinchilla named Kiffle, I had to name the Squirrel Kiffle. What a delightful companion he proved to be! His antics are enchanting and he digs for little treasures each time I take him for a walk. Most of the time, he unearths nothing more interesting than a Common Mushroom but he has discovered other Mushrooms as well... Another reason for Adopting him now is the realisation that I may be able to win the Pet Contest next Spring if I begin to train him immediately. Every day that I remain petless in the interest of obtaining the White Cat is one more wasted day in terms of training...

In Animal Parade, as mentioned previously, there is an option to release any Pet back to the Wilds if you decide you would rather adopt another. If you attempt to adopt more than one Pet when your House does not meet the requirements in terms of space, the game will taunt you a little, giving you the option to declare that you wish to adopt another Pet but then telling you that you haven't the space for an additional Animal. This will go on and on until you finally admit defeat and choose one or the other...

As in other Harvest Moon games, you can show your Pet to other Characters when you go out for a walk with him/her. Each Character will remark upon the Pet, but I expect that the comment will not vary from Pet to Pet as the Character invariably refers to Kiffle simply as my 'Pet' rather than 'Squirrel'.

The only disappointment here is that you cannot take your Pet into any building to show him/her to Characters who remain indoors. When I tried to carry Kiffle into the local Shops or homes, he simply disappeared from my arms, awaiting me outside.

In many Harvest Moon games, you actually can gain Affection/Friendship Points with specific individuals by showing them your Dog or Cat. I do not know if this is the case in Animal Parade. It is difficult if not impossible to test as simply speaking to an individual raises Friendship Levels a little... There is no Love Bangle or other Accessory that will display precise point values in terms of Love or Friendship in Animal Parade. Heart Levels are displayed on the Friends page of the Farm Menu but only as full Hearts.

I still intend to adopt my White Cat one day, but for now, my life is immensely enriched by the presence of my Kiffle.

Later:

Incidentally,your Pet will find different items in different Districts and, unlike any Transport Animal, a small Pet can accompany you on the Mine Cart and on the ferry to Toucan Island. It's most satisfying! When he is in the Flute District or Garmon Mines District, Kiffle finds Common Mushrooms or Mushrooms (White). I wonder if he is able to find Fugue Mushrooms in Fugue Forest... That I need to confirm!

In Harmonica Town, the Church Grounds or on Toucan Island, he has been finding Green Herbs. I do not know if the colour of the Herb will vary, but again, something to confirm.

I expect that all Pets give a variety of items depending on where you take them for their 'walk'.