Van's Store

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To unlock this merchant, a total of 30 daily gifts must be offered to the Harvest Goddess. Van will then introduce himself on the first sunny-weather Wednesday as you exit your farm house. He will set up shop on the second floor of the Inn from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm (or 9:00 pm depending on your friendship level with Dudley).

Products

The Record Player and records will be added to your farmhouse after purchase. Since Marv/XSeed did not use the Natsume localized names to reference the series titles, each of Van's records are a XSeed-ified translation of the original Japanese names for the Bokujou Monogatari series.

• Outset of Seasons = Harvest Moon (SNES)
• Flower Bud Village = Harvest Moon 64 (N64)
• Moonlit Girl = Harvest Moon for Girl (Ps1)
• Sugar Village = Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland (Ps2)
• A Wonderful Season = Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life (GC)

Huang has 5 records you can win from his Apple game raffle tickets. The remaining 5 records are prizes from the Harvest Goddess' Rock-Paper-Scissors game that airs on the TV inside of the Town Villa that can be built by Gotts. As it is unrealistic that you can beat her 50+ times in a row, the best option is to purchase the All BGM item (see details below).

Van's Favorite

Occasionally in the morning you will receive a letter in your mailbox from the Harvest Goddess, congratulating you on winning a raffle. The prize awarded is a Van's Favorite, a strange purple bottle that you can't toss into your shipping bin. Van's Favorite will be sent to your farmhouse mailbox when the game's VanFav counter reaches 10. Each time you access a shop, make a transaction (regardless of the number of items you buy), and then close the shop inventory, this counter increments by 1. When the counter reaches 10, a Van's Favorite will be delivered to your mailbox the next morning.

Selling items to Huang does not increment the VanFav counter. Huang's front-door visits to your farm also do not affect the counter. Along with standard purchases, ordering tool upgrades, buying trees, ordering a gift wrapping, and upgrading your rucksack do increment the counter.

You can force a Van's Favorite if you intentionally modify the game's VanFav counter. To find out what your current VanFav count is:

• Save your game
• Buy something at a shop (Lillia's cheap Chicken/Rabbit Feed is a good choice)
• Go home and go to bed

If you don't see a Van's Favorite in your mailbox the next morning, reload your save game. This time, buy something, exit the shop inventory, go back into the shop, and make a second transaction. Return home and go to bed. If you don't see a Van's Favorite after the two transactions, reload your save game and try it with three transactions. Continue on like this until you discover the magical delivery in your mailbox and learn how many individual transactions you needed to make to reach 10. Reload your game so you can continue on with the rest of the day, but before you return to your farm for the night, make sure you hit up the shops and make the number of transactions that will make the VanFav counter reach 10. I've had an instance where a new-item notification letter from Jeff makes the Van's Favorite letter move to the next day's mail delivery.

The next morning after you collect your Van's Favorite, simply make 10 individual transactions that day to trigger a Van's Favorite the next day. And so on. The commission requests from Saibara and Gotts also count as transactions.

So what do you do with these bottles? One option is to sell them to Huang. When Huang has 4 or more notes of friendship, he'll start buying items from you. Huang will offer between 48,000 G and 57,000 G per Van's Favorite.

The other option is to use them for their intended purpose, which is to unlock Van's secret shop inventory. When you give him a Van's Favorite, he'll give you the option to buy a special item. The item that he offers is random based on how much money you have:

Van will offer the items randomly based on how much money you have on-hand. If you decline to buy the special item he offers, you will not receive your offered Van's Favorite back again.

Van's Favorite - Oy boy, you can buy a Van's Favorite for giving Van a Van's Favorite! Alas, spending 100,000 G for something you received (essentially) for free isn't a very good deal.

Quiz Book - After purchase, take this item to Marie's Library and examine the far-left bookcase on the first floor while holding the Quiz Book. You'll be presented with a multiple choice question. Answer the question correctly to receive another question, and so on until you answer a question incorrectly. The quiz will then end. You can start over by examining the bookcase again.

There are a total of 100 questions that test your knowledge of the game. Some questions are pretty easy, such as what day does the Fetch Fest take place (answer: Summer 1). Then some questions are a little tougher, such as what is the maximum size of a Tuna? Then there's ridiculous questions like what is Rory's birthday from the Mechabot Ultor tv show, or what day of the week is Autumn 10 in year 100. Huuzhwatzit?!

If you answer all 100 questions correctly, congratulations! You win... absolutely nothing!

The answers to the quiz book can be found on the UNoT forum section for SoS:FoMT.

All BGM - This isn't an item like his other offerings. Buying this option unlocks all records for the Record Player inside of your farmhouse. As some of the records can only be obtained by winning the Harvest Goddess' rock/paper/scissors contest at least 50 times, this All BGM service from Van is the best way to collect all the background music records.

Mystery Flower - This is the same flower you can win for completed all 10 rounds of Huang's Apple Swap game. Giving 10 of these flowers to the Harvest Goddess will reward you with a Goddess' Present. The Goddess' Present can then be sold to Huang for 1 million G.

Remote Control - This item can be used to select each episode of the show that is currently airing on the Entertainment channel inside your farm house. If you happened to miss an episode of Tasty Time, you can use the remote to go back an episode or move forward an episode, instead of waiting for it to play on tv again.

All Letters - Take this to the far-left bookcase on the first floor of Marie's Library to unlock a list of all available letters that can be sent to your farm house mailbox.

All Books - Same as the letters and quiz book, this special items unlocks all the books in one spot.

Master Shopper Award - This golden credit card allow you unlimited access to all the shops in the game, even if they aren't open for the day yet. The inventory of the shops are still seasonal, so you can't use the Master Shopper Award to buy Tomato Seeds during Spring, or buy dogs from Van's Pet Shop during Winter; but, you can use it to buy pets even when it isn't the 15th of the season.

Selling Van's Goods

Just as you can sell Van's Favorites to Huang, you can also sell the special items that you purchase from Van's secret inventory.

Note: The original Japanese version of the Switch game had the Remote Control selling to Huang for 50 million G. This was nerfed to 5 million G in the localized version.