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Game Time and Weather

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Harvest Moon games do not typically use a real-time clock (except for My Little Shop), where a full in-game day is equivalent to a real-time day. Instead, the game uses a shorter day system. In A New Beginning, each minute is one second real time, with 1 minute being an hour of game time. If you were to play a full 15-hour day (6am to 9pm), it would take 15 minutes (or more if you're pausing time every so often).

The game's current time is located in the upper-right corner of the lower screen. The marker also will display the current day of the week, the season you are in, and the date of the season. If you are on a festival day, there will be an icon next to the AM/PM indicator. If you happen to move on the lower screen map to that upper-right corner, the date/time will shift over to the upper-left corner of the touch screen so that it doesn't block your location indicator on the world map.

The time will move forward when you are outside or inside of a house. When you are browsing a shop's inventory, the time will pause until you exit the inventory screen. If you want to pause the game for a moment, press the X button to bring up the main menu (Bag, Blueprint, Town Restoration, Save/Load, and Return). Time will remain paused as you go through your rucksack bag or look through the other menus. When you exit the main menu by pressing B, time will move forward again. Time also pauses when you're talking to a villager, using your workshop studio to edit the landscape, or looking at the calendar on the wall inside your farm house.

Every day your farmer will wake up at 6:00 am. If you happen to go to bed after midnight, your farmer will wake up later. Going to bed between 12:00 am and 3:00 am will cause your farmer to wake up at 7:00 am. Between 3:00 am and 4:00 am will get you out of bed at 8:00 am. From 4:00 am to 5:00 am will result in a 10:00 am wake up time. The day ends automatically at 5:00 am and does not roll around to 6am the next day. If you are still awake at 5:00 am, then your farmer will automatically go to bed and wake up at 10am.

Each year in the game comprises four seasons: spring, summer, fall, and winter. After winter ends, the next year begins and repeats the four seasons. A season lasts for 31 days, for a total of 124 days per year. The game does not end when you reach a certain year. The years will keep incrementing as you continue to play the game.

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Since there isn't a television in ANB, the weather report will appear in your farm mailbox every week. Tap on the newspaper icon to access your newsletters, and then press Y on your most recent issue to view the next week's weather report. The weather marked for each day isn't necessarily the correct weather for days that have a scheduled festival. For example, if it is going to rain on a day that is a festival, the day will actually be sunny weather.

The weather will remain the same all day long; it doesn't change mid-day like in Tale of Two Towns. The available weather are sunny, rainy, snowy, hurricane, and blizzard. Hurricanes only happen during summer season, while snow and blizzards only happen in winter season.

On rainy or hurricane days, you won't have to water your crops. The precipitation will take care of that for you. On snowy or blizzard days though, the precipitation does not water your crops for you.

Stormy days will not cause collapse of your barns or the destruction of your crops. What it does do is increase the amount of stamina lost while you work outside in the bad weather. It also decreases your crops' star points by about 10 points or so. You can easily recover this damage by adding Fertilizer to your crops. Make sure you keep your animals indoors during stormy weather!

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