How to Use The Windmills

Zephyr Town is known for its wind, and the windmills that dot the town take advantage of the breeze. These buildings are used to process raw materials into higher-level goods, such as turning Tea Leaves into cans of tea. The windmills' efficiency is based on the day's wind speed, plus other factors.

There are three windmills to repair:

• The red windmill is near the entrance to your farm. On Spring 6 of Year 1, Isaac will visit and explain the significance of the town's beloved windmills. He'll ask you to collect 10 Rock and 10 Wood to help supply the materials needed for repairs. Use the Hatchet to break up rocks and branches, then bring the materials back to Isaac to get the red windmill up and running.
• The day after unlocking Bazaar Rank 3 (Town Bazaar), talk to Isaac to learn that he lost a tool he needs to care for the windmills. Head to the bazaar grounds and look for the sparkly bits on the ground in the southwest corner by the flowerbed to locate his missing tool. Return it to Isaac to complete the task. In exchange, he'll repair the blue windmill next to the Sunnywood Hotel.
• After reaching Bazaar Rank 4 (City Bazaar), Isaac's last goal is to activate the dormant yellow windmill. He asks that you use the other two windmills to process goods a total of 100 times so that he may learn how to fine-tune the next windmill. Complete the task and talk to Isaac to unlock the last windmill.

Interior

Each windmill is set up in the same manner, with an interior shaded to match the windmill's exterior color.

Processing goods begins by adding the materials to the windmill's Processor box (A). Each windmill generally has a unique function: the red windmill is for wool/yarn, cooking staples, early tool upgrades, and flowery goods; the blue windmill is for making medium tool upgrades, jewelry, honey, and crop/flower seeds; and the yellow windmill makes tea tins, high-level tools, fruit tree seedlings, and pickled crops.

In the original Nintendo DS game, the red windmill handled tea tins, pickles, and wine; the blue windmill was dedicated to jewelry and yarn; while the yellow windmill was used for processing seeds, making oils, and grinding flour. In the Story of Seasons remake, the goods were more evenly distributed across the three windmills, and wine was removed from the game.

Once the processed product is ready, the item will appear in the Dispenser box (B). The Dispenser can hold 62 stacks of processed goods, which is handy for hoarding items to sell at the Saturday bazaar. Items that have a freshness rating (cheese, mayonnaise, etc.) will decay when stored long-term in the windmill's Dispenser, regardless of the freshness power-up you may have ordered from Garon's Construction. On average, it takes 9 days for items in the Dispenser to go from Perfectly Fresh to Should Be Good Yet, with freshness decreasing faster during summer and slower during winter.

The green locker to the left of the staircase is the Production Line (C). Checking this area shows the time remaining for each active process in the windmill. You can also check the processing status of all windmills by opening the game's World Map and selecting the "View Windmill Status" option (this function was added with the 1.4 game update).

The tube to the left of the recipe holder is a special box (D) for placing Wonderstones (see below).

Interact with the Brake Lever (E) when you need to stop all processing in the windmill. Any materials that have not yet been processed will be transferred to the Dispenser.

Wind Speed

The day's wind speed influences how quickly production jobs are completed. You can neither control the wind speed nor blow on your platform of choice to make the windmill blades spin faster like in the original Nintendo DS game. The daily weather report on the farmhouse radio will hint at the upcoming wind strength. The windsock icon in the upper-right corner, below the clock, indicates the day's wind strength.

There are four stages of wind:

• Not Much Wind: The windsock is saggy. The windmills will still process goods, but they will take the normal amount of time to complete a task. For example, it will take 1 hour to process an Egg into Mayonnaise using the red windmill on a zero-wind day.
• Gentle Breeze: There will be a single green triangle on the windsock icon, though this wind strength is no different for processing time than on a calm day. The Mayonnaise will still take 1 hour.
• Strong Wind: A yellow triangle above the green one indicates stronger wind. This reduces the processing time by 25%. The Mayonnaise will take 45 minutes instead of 1 hour.
• Stormy Gusts: The strongest winds occur on stormy days during summer and winter. Though the windsock displays an orange warning triangle, the wind strength on these days reduces processing time by 50%. The Mayonnaise will take only 30 minutes.

Wonderstones

There are 7 round gems that can be placed in the "wonder" slot of a windmill.

• Blue Wonderstone: Reduces the windmill's processing time by 50%.
• Red Wonderstone: Adds a half-star of quality to the finished goods, up to the maximum star rank allowed.
• Yellow Wonderstone: Produces 1 extra good for every 5 crafted items.
• Orange Wonderstone: Increases the maximum number of processed items per submission from 10 to 30.
• Green Wonderstone: Increases the maximum number of jobs in the production line from 6 to 12.
• Purple Wonderstone: Unlocks special, high-level recipes.
• White Wonderstone: Unlocks all normal recipes from the other windmills AND reduces windmill processing time by 50%

Most of these can be purchased at Felipe's Fineries for 140,000 G each after the bazaar has reached Rank 5 (Regional Bazaar).

The Blue Wonderstone is given to you after clearing Isaac's 8-heart lock request.

The White Wonderstone (added with the 1.5 game update in May 2026) is made at the red windmill by attaching the Purple Wonderstone to the windmill, which unlocks the recipe. It requires 5 Pink Diamonds, 5 Sparkly Bracelets, 5 Gold Medals, 5 Blended Perfumes (5 Citrus Perfumes + 5 Herbal Perfumes + 5 Floral Perfumes + 5 Tea Perfumes), and 20 Ultimate Stones.

Processing Time Explained

Wind speed is the primary influence on production speed. Using the Blue or White Wonderstone is the secondary influence on production speed.

For example, the base time for processing a Yellow Brooch is 2 days (48 hours) on a no-wind day. Attaching a Blue Wonderstone will reduce that to 1 day (24 hours). Now throw in a strong, 2-wind day. Since wind speed is the primary factor, the processing time will first be reduced by 25% (48 hours x .75 = 36 hours), then the power of the Wonderstone will reduce the remaining time by 50% (36 hours x .5 = 18 hours).

For jobs that will carry over to the next day, the time spent sleeping does count toward completion, though it is based on the calculated time from the day you went to bed. Let's say you started a Pink Brooch around 6:00 am on a 0-wind day, which takes 5 days (120 hours) to process. Because the Purple Wonderstone is required to unlock the brooch recipe, you can't use the Blue or White orbs to reduce processing time. Going to bed at 8:00 pm (14 hours later) leaves you with 106 hours remaining. Let's say the next day's wind was forecast for strong, 2-wind conditions, which is a 25% reduction in processing time. The game will take your 10 hours of sleep (8:00 pm to 6:00 am) and subtract it from the 106 hours that were remaining when you went to bed (106 - 10 = 96 hours), then calculates the wind speed to reduce the remaining processing time by 25% (96 hours x .75 = 72 hours).

Each morning the remaining time will be recalculated based on the morning's wind speed and any influential Wonderstones, as applicable. Continuing with the Pink Brooch, if you stayed awake until 8:00 pm that night, then there would be 58 hours remaining on the production task (72 hours - 14 hours in the day = 58 hours to go). In the morning, if the wind speed was strong again (2-wind), the remaining time would again be reduced by 25% (58 hours - 10 hours of sleep = 48 hours x .75 remaining = 36 hours to go). If there was no wind or simply a gentle breeze, then the processing time remaining when you woke up would be 48 hours.

This morning recalculation continues until the production job is complete.

Tips

When producing goods with a long processing time, such as Ultimate-level tools at 120 hours each, wait for a Strong Wind or Stormy day. Even if it only lasts for the day, the stronger wind will help speed up the project's completion.

Production jobs added to the windmill are all processed simultaneously, but they won't complete until the last item in the job has been processed. For example, if you put in a stack of 6 Milk to produce 6 Cheese, the entire job on a 0- or 1-wind day will take 15 hours (6 Milk x 2.5 hours per Cheese = 15 hours). The stack of 6 Cheese will appear in the Dispenser only after all 6 Milk have been processed. On the other hand, if you put 1 Milk in each of the red windmill's six Production Lines, the jobs will complete in 2.5 hours because there are six separate jobs of 1 Milk each.