Happy Farm'n Friday! The leaves on the blueberry bushes have turned bright red, though they're still hanging onto the plants in an attempt to hold the memories of summertime. The radish seedlings are growing well too! There's some sort of plant predator eating the radish leaves. I know it is not caused by the local tree rats, as the squirrels haven't bothered the well-caged seedlings. It is probably slug damage.

New SoS:FoMT Info

So I've played a little bit more of Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town over the past week and have reached fall of year 1. It's enjoyable and plays much faster than SoS: Trio of Towns. An in-game hour in SoS:FoMT lasts about 18 real-time seconds, whereas an in-game hour in 3oT is about 35 real-time seconds. So a day is roughly half the time in the Switch game as it is in the 3DS game. Players may feel overwhelmed with having to manage the farm in such a short time, but that's what the "Nature" Sprites are for! Just hire them to handle the watering, harvesting, or animal care (for 3, 5, or 7 days) and then go off to do whatever else you want to spend the day doing. Time does not proceed when indoor or inside of the mines.

So here's some more tidbits that players have discovered as we work through the game:

• Friendship is ridiculously easy to increase. I gave Gotz his gift of Honey for a season and he's already at 8 out of 10 music notes of friendship. Kappa was at a full 10-notes in early summer (I had saved some cucumbers from spring to toss into the water during summer). Choosing Seedling Mode when beginning the game would make raising friendships even easier.
• I haven't been able to trigger the Ann/Cliff or Popuri/Kai rival events yet, which (I believe) is because their friendship levels are too high for the rival events to trigger. The official strategy guide that was released in Japan today confirms that there are NO rival marriages in the game, but the first two rival events can be triggered in SoS:FoMT.
• Kai didn't say he was leaving in fall. He just disappeared without explanation. None of the other characters even seemed to cared... maybe Kai is part of the Mineral Town dreamscape...
• In general, to get married to a normal candidate (male or female, as same-sex relationships are possible) you see their original four heart events and then hand them a pressed Orange Venus flower to confirm you want to go steady. The Orange Venus was the winning flower name during the Pick-the-Daisy-Name contest earlier this summer. The first one is free and is given to you after you have seen the four heart events with a particular candidate. Extras are for sale at Jeff's store. After handing over the pressed daisy, you can see two new heart events for that person. You can give the preserved flower to all of the normal candidates to see their events; there's even an in-game achievement to see everyone's romantic events before you marry one of them.
• Marriage still requires the big bed inside your farm house and a hand-off of the Blue Feather purchased from Jeff's store. The ceremony for normal candidates takes place at the church regardless of the sex of the candidate. Wedding attire too! There's a thread on the UNoT community forum if you want to see images of the wedding outfits.
• All normal candidates can have a child. Same-sex spouses will have the child gifted by the Goddess. Players can choose if they want a boy, a girl, or let the game choose for them.
• Everyone is still trying to confirm the marriage system for Kappa, Goddess, and Gourmet. We'll let you know how it goes!

• The kitchen is built by Gotz when he upgrades the farm house for the first time. It doesn't come with utensils or a refrigerator. Because TV Shopping does not exist in SoS:FoMT, the utensils will be sold at Jeff's grocery store. He will send a letter in the mail once a week when a utensil is available at his shop. Gotz sells the refrigerator at his carpentry shop.
• Recipes cannot be discovered by experimenting with ingredients like in the GBA game. In the Switch game, recipes must be known and in the cookbook before you can cook the dish. Recipes can be learned by watching the Tuesday cooking show on TV, by raising friendship with villagers (they'll give you recipes), or by inspiration when you cook a known dish.
• Any edible item in the main rucksack menu will display the amount of Fatigue and Stamina it recovers when consumed. While you can eat items from the rucksack shortcut menu by holding the edible item above the protagonist's head and watching the eating animation, it is much faster to go into the game's main menu and tab over to the rucksack menu, where pressing the Y Button allows you to eat food directly from the bag as well as choose how much of the stack you want to consume.

A patch was released this week for Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. Version 1.0.2 fixed the bug where animals would get stuck on the farm such as my little horse splashing around in the stream. Other non-specific bugs were also corrected.

According to week-one sales from Weekly Famitsu, SoS: Friends of Mineral Town sold a little more than 66,000 copies in the first four days of its release; the game came out on the 17th and Famitsu's tallies end on the 20th. Nice! It was beat out by Ring Fit Adventure with 68,000 copies.

Stranded Sails Physical Release

This week Roka Publishing announced that the physical editions of Stranded Sails: Explorers of the Cursed Islands will be released on November 8 in EU and November 12 in the US. The physical signature edition is still available for preorder, which includes a copy of the game, special packaging, art cards, a numbered certificate of authenticity, enameled pins, art book, and treasure map. The Switch edition of the physical game is about $5 more than the Ps4 edition.

The game had a few patches published for it recently to correct save state corruption issues, game freezes, and other bugs.