The Ushi No Tane websites specialize in information, FAQs, and guides about the Nintendo console versions of the Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, and Legend of the River King video games. These game genres are created and published in Japan by Marvelous (JP). In other regions, you'll find Natsume, XSeed Games, Marvelous (EU), and Rising Star involved in the series' release.

The latest version of the mainstream farming series that have been released in various regions of the world are:

• Japan: Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town (February 2021)
• North America: Harvest Moon: One World (March 2021) and Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town (March 2021)
• Europe: Harvest Moon: One World (March 2021) and Story of Seasons: Pioneers of Olive Town (March 2021)

The latest version of River King, in all regions of the world, is River King: Mystic Valley (JP 2007, NA 2008, EU 2009).

Since 2000, Ushi no Tane has been run by a grouchy old lady who happens to be fond of video game agriculture along with three feline helpers: Intern Reba, Intern Captain Bootu, and Intern Hondo Mewnaka. The website is not officially affiliated, sponsored, endorsed, or employed by the developers of Harvest Moon, Story of Seasons, or River King. This is simply a fan site.

Latest Farming Video Game News

Happy Farm'n Friday! Earlier this year, while browsing through garden groups, I read a post from a gardener who noted that they had excellent results with training zucchini to grow vertically along a trellis. Normally, the squash vines along the ground and eventually escape out of the garden box. Figured why not give it a try, 'ya know? I'd rather have them grow vertically instead of horizontally.

Turns out it does work really well for zucchini! Trellises were placed next to the seedlings at planting time, and it just took a bit of maneuvering as the leaves sprouted to get the vines growing upwards instead of sideways. The vines that grew vertically produced more squash than the vine that grew along the ground like normal; my control group vine, in a sense. The plants were easier to fully water, as the large ground-level leaves weren't blocking the irrigation heads.

The one downside is the compactness of the leaves made harvesting the squash a little difficult, depending on where the fruit formed on the vine. It was tricky sometimes to cut out the zucchini while at the same time trying to avoid cutting the leaf stems. The leaves are starting to die back as the season changes to fall, making it a bit easier now to access the zucchini.

Thank you to the anonymous zucchini grower for the great idea! I'll definitely grow them vertically every year! Now, back to canning more zucchini relish!

MTaP Console Version Updates

Some of the gameplay enhancements added to the Steam/PC version of My Time at Portia have finally made it to the Playstation 4, Switch, and XBox One versions of the game. The list of updates explained that not every bug has been fixed in the console edition, but the issues that stopped game progress have all been corrected. A list of all updates added to console MTaP are listed on the game's Reddit:

• Console Update Is Finally Here!

Not everything in the Steam edition made it to this latest update, but it includes everything up to the August 2021 update. The updated voiceovers and extra DLC from that improvement patch will be added to the console versions at a later date; let's hope it doesn't take another couple of years...

Spirit of the Island Funded

The tropical island town-and-farm building game Spirit of the Island reached its crowdfunding goal this week. 1M Bits Horde intends to update the game demo, including the new multiplayer mode for players to try. You can try out the beta from the game's Steam store page:

• Spirit of the Island (Steam)

HM:OW Improvement Patch

An update was released on Tuesday for Harvest Moon: One World for Nintendo Switch and Playstation farmers in NORTH AMERICA. Rising Star Games handles the EU distribution for updates. The patch updated the version number from 1.2.0 to 1.5.0. This QoL update was based on player feedback and made the following adjustments to the game:

Harvest Wisps give more seeds

Crop seeds are discovered by locating Harvest Wisps. The little fairies appear throughout the lands during various times. Sometimes they appear at their spots every day, sometimes after a few days, and so on. Talking to a Harvest Wisp would reward players with 1 bag of seeds. A bag of seeds only plants 1 crop square, so collecting enough seeds to complete tasks would take a while.

After the update, most of the Harvest Wisps give 3 bags of seeds. The ones that don't are the wisps located at the bottom of the mines that already handed over 3 bags of seeds.

Seeds cost less in shops

As players sell their mutated produce, the seeds from these crops will start to appear in town shops. The base crops (carrots, tomatoes, etc.) require at least 30 shipped or directly sold to shops before their seeds will be buyable instead of only being found at Harvest Wisp points. Gen 2 mutations require 15 to be sold, and Gen 3 mutations (if applicable) require 10 to be sold. The shops would then sell seeds of that crop for 500 G for 1 seed. When a Potato is sold for 20 G, its seeds still cost 500 G.

The seed shop prices now are a bit more reasonable at 50 G! This will make earning money less costly when growing higher-profit crops like Snow Moon and Pink Orchid Cactus, as after deducting the cost of seeds, you can now earning 1950 G for selling the Queen of the Night flower mutations instead of 1500 G.

Players still need to ship 30/15/10 crops for the seeds to appear for sale in the shop. There's the exception of Rice and Lotus, as these two DLC expansion crops still don't seem to appear for sale as seeds in any shop that I could find.

Bag trashing options

Previously, when a player's bag would fill up, the only option was to head home and toss stuff into the shipping bin or farmhouse storage. When running around to find Harvest Wisps, this becomes cumbersome as players quickly run out of bag space if they haven't completed the bag upgrade sequence. A bag full of items meant the wisp wouldn't hand over new seeds.

After the update, a new Throw Away button is located in the profile of each bag item. The game will throw away the whole stack of goods when tossing an item. You can't pick to toss only 4 Wheat Seeds from a stack of 10; it's all or nothing.

Additional teleport locations

The memory portal travel points throughout One World help players get around quickly. The teleport points appeared at the Harvest Sprite shrines as the shrines were restored. While it was great to not have to walk everywhere, it still took some time to move from the sprite shrine to wherever you wanted to go. For example, the desert tree shrine was far from the desert farm location and Pastilla Village. Teleporting to the tree still meant a long trek across the desert to reach the desired location.

After the update, there are new memory portal teleport locations for Mom's House, Saeed's house in Pastilla, and the four mines. Players still have to run from Lebkuchen to the lava field or Salmiakki to the top of the snowy mountain, but now there's a fast-travel to Doc Jr's house! The mine teleport locations will appear on the memory portal map after you enter/exit the mine.

Some memory portals have been renamed because of the inclusion of new portal locations. For example, the old tree that was "Pastilla Village" is now the "Sacred Tree" because Saeed's house is now the "Pastilla Village" fast-travel point.

Text Changes

The patch notes from the Natsume community blog says there were some minor text changes included in the update.

Not every in-game text issue was corrected. Franz still explains that he needs three cooked meals as contest entries for the Red Hot Cook-off, but in actuality, only one cooked meal will be accepted for judgment during the cooking festival.

Additional changes

When married to Gabrielle, the animal vet doesn't spend all day asleep in bed anymore. As she's a night owl, Gabrielle would only be up and about by her house in Calisson during the evening. After the 1.5.0 update, she is now awake and walking around inside the farmhouse during the day, going to bed at 9:00 pm.

Some of the request villagers are available for longer now. For example, Deiter in Lebkuchen was only available to talk to and hand over requested items from 8:00 am until 10:00 am, but now he's around from 1:00 pm until 6:00 pm. Hikaru in Wagashi was only around from 6:00 pm until 8:00 pm, and now the little girl is at the crossroads from 6:00 pm until 11:00 pm. It should be easier to complete those tasks when the task givers are around for longer periods.

HM:OW Launches on Steam

Also new in the One World world (heh), the PC edition of the game launched on the Steam gaming platform for $49.99. The game's system requirements are a Windows operating system with at least 8 G of RAM. The game also supports Steam achievements, which are not a walk in the park, so to speak. Harvesting all 216 crops to unlock the Crop Master achievement is a challenge!

The four optional DLC bundles are also buyable from the Steam Store page. The Interior Design and Tool Upgrade Pack unlocks an extra level of tool upgrades beyond what the game already has, plus some minor interior designs. The Far East Adventure Pack unlocks the island of Wagashi and its water paddies that keep the crops nice and wet. The other two packs are simply extra pets and wild animals.

You can check out the game on the Steam Store page:

• Harvest Moon: One World

More MEGA Plushies

CeeCee finally regained control of her unruly camera and posted pictures of the two new mega-plushies from Nastume.

These big-bottomed cow and Welsh corgi are available for purchase directly from Amazon.com. Each mega-plushie is 12 inches long and about 7 inches tall. The corgi is selling out quickly!

You can read more about the ba-donka-donk plushies on the Natsume community blog:

• Introducing Two New Harvest Moon Plushies

Until next time!

- Cher
(Happy Tales Of Arise Day!)

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