The Story of the Grand Bazaar

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Bored with your everyday city life, you notice a flyer posted on a community message board. Where did it come from? The paper describes the opportunity to take care of an old farm, growing crops and caring for livestock. Before you can set out, you'll need to complete your Move-In Paperwork, which is made up of five components: portrait, character name, pronouns, birthday, and a name for the new farm.

Portrait

There are a LOT of options to choose from when creating the visual appearance of your farmer:

All of these visual options can be changed later. To change your look, simply use the dresser/closet in the left corner of the farmhouse main room, next to the bed. At this point, you only have limited hat/clothing options, with additional options appearing (including eyewear) as you play through the game.

There are 4 additional hairstyles in the Trunk of Transformation DLC that are not available during character creation. Those can be accessed in the clothing closet.

Character Name

The name is up to 8 characters in length. There is a word filter in place that will prohibit the use of words that Marvelous has deemed offensive, despite the game being a single-player experience. The filter is active on all platforms, even Steam/PC. Names you would typically assume to be blocked are included in the banned list (for example, Cocaine, Horny, Pervert, Sexy, Shag, and Tramp), but the word filter list also includes names like Dio, Feltcher, Honkey, Jude, Knob, Lucifer, Monique, Puff, and Trick.

A name that is included on the game's hidden naughty list will result in a "That name cannot be used" on-screen message.

If you're playing the Steam/PC version, there is a user-crafted Unsensored Words mod at Nexus Mods that will disable the banned word list.

The name you select cannot be changed after starting the game.

Pronouns

Players can select the pronouns to be used for their character: he/him, she/her, or they/them. Though in the game, pronouns aren't extensively used. Typically, conversation dialog will refer to your character's name or simply "you."

The Japanese version refers to this choice as gender, with the options of boy, girl, or neither.

This option cannot be changed after starting the game.

Birthday

The date you choose for your protagonist's birthday will be celebrated. Talk to a villager on your birthday to receive a birthday greeting. If you have at least 3 hearts of friendship, talking to a resident will reward you with a random birthday gift, such as ore, a cooked meal, or other goodies.

Your birthday is also celebrated by your spouse when entering the farmhouse after 7:00 pm.

There is no penalty for having your birthday on a festival day or sharing another villager's birthday. Since most festivals occur on varying dates as the calendar changes with the years, you may inevitably share your birthday with a festival. Scheduling your birthday on the last day of the year, New Year's Eve, would require you to choose whether to attend the festival or attend your post-marriage birthday meal.

This option cannot be changed after starting the game.

Farm Name

You can choose up to 12 characters for your farm name, which will automatically include the word "Farm" at the end. There is no way to omit "Farm," sorry. The word filter exists here too, prohibiting words like Fart (though "Passing Gas Farm" is okay) and Wanker.

This option cannot be changed after starting the game.

Bailing Early

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After confirming the character options and starting the game, you'll be greeted at the entrance to the bazaar by our jovial Mayor Felix. He will give a basic explanation of how the farm and bazaar are linked together and ask if you're interested in trying your hand at setting up a bazaar booth and selling a few basic products. If you choose "Sure, I'll give it a go," then Felix will walk you through the bazaar booth tutorial and eventually walk you to your new farm.

On the other hand, if being put to work within minutes of arrival isn't for you, select the "Nah, I'm going home" option. This choice puts Mayor Felix in the uncomfortable realization that he may have assumed that you were the person who responded to his bulletin board flyer. After the (not new) farmer leaves, you'll watch an awkward scene of Felix's overactive imagination as he patiently waits for the new farmer. The game will end and return to the title screen, where you can go through the character creation process again to restart your adventure.

Beginning Tips

After the introduction to the bazaar, you'll return to your farmhouse, with the only action to take being to go to bed for the day. Starting on the morning of Spring 2, the first week on your farm will consist of tutorial days. Every morning, you'll have a visitor at your front door, though you can spend the rest of the day doing whatever farming tasks you desire.

Critters can be caught from the beginning of the game, even without an explanatory tutorial. Collect the butterflies and locusts to sell at the bazaar. Critters will reappear throughout the day and don't have freshness.

Forageable items reset at 5:00 pm. The rocks, branches, ore stones, weeds, wild mushrooms, and flowers will regenerate at 5:00 pm when you reenter the area. You may need to enter a house and then exit to see the items appear if you happen to be in the area where you want to scavenge for ground goodies again.

Look for piles of dirt around town, as they can be excavated using your hoe. Medals, rocks, recyclables, and sometimes gems can be found hidden in plain sight. You may also randomly find medals on the ground behind Cafe Madeleine and Miguel's Mercantile.

Anything you drop on the ground will disappear after 2 days. For example, if your rucksack is full and collected items simply fall to the ground, remember to return and pick them up when there's available inventory space. Otherwise, they will naturally decay after 2 days. Dropping items onto the ground does NOT negatively impact villager friendships like in other Story of Seasons games.

Keep all Gold Medals you find. These trinkets become important after the Fortune Teller unlocks at the bazaar. While you can process lower-quality medals into Gold Medals at the blue windmill, there are better uses for that windmill's abilities. Check the road sign outside your farm and the road sign near the blue windmill for a few golds.

Also keep items from the "Recyclables" category. Empty bottles, cans, boots, etc. You'll need at least 50 recyclables when it comes time to get the rare item from the Treasureland bazaar booth later in the game. Fish Bones are not included in the Recyclables; their main purposes is for crating fish bait at the yellow windmill. Recyclables are most often found while fishing, but digging up dirt piles the day after a storm can also produce these items.

You can water crops twice per day, with a 10-hour period between waterings. Watering twice will result in a 40% increase in maturity rate. If you are using fertilizer to increase crop star rank, apply the fertilizer after the second crop watering of the day. Fertilizer also becomes 40% more effective after the second watering.

Once you reach bazaar Rank 2, Arata will arrive and unlock access to the Mountain area (most likely around Spring 9). Take advantage of the ore nods to work on upgrading your tools at the red windmill.