Story of Seasons Diary: Year 1 Summer 1

Story of Seasons gets better and better. A lot of great things happened in Summer Year 1 which just added to my excitement for this game. I had new crops to plant, new routines to follow, and new traders available. Summer Year 1 was very successful for myself, and my farm did really well.

I planted two new crops this season: tomatos and onions. Onions were a single harvest item while tomatoes took longer to grow to maturity but then could be harvest a few times throughout the season. I focused on planting tomatoes on my fields around my home, coop, and barn. Onions were planted on the community field which I rented. This brought a new gameplay element to Story of Seasons.

Renting Fields, making Conquests

A new feature available beginning in Summer of Year 1 is the ability to rent community fields. Each field only allows certain plants; the only field available at the beginning of the season was one where I could plant root vegitables. This was fine, since I had onions. I only recieved 18 days however, after which I could re-rent the field. If I wanted to attempt to rent the field of someone else, I would have to engage them in a ‘Conquest.’ Players choose between battling via number of items shipped on a specific day, the total value of goods shipped, or to have it based on a previous event (like an Animal Expo).

It is a nice touch and an added change to the game, but not knowing what crops will be available in the Fall makes it hard to decide which field I should try to snag at the end of Summer. I made a Conquest attempt based 0n number of items shipped, but fell short by about 50 items.

Improving my Tools

I spent a lot of money on blueprint upgrades for my tools. I upgraded my hoe and watering can to copper status, and my brush and milker as well. There doesn’t seem to be a huge change in how much stamina gets consumed, but upgrading the watering can twice actually made the amount of time it took to water crops much shorter. That was an added bonus and allowed me more time to explore.

Routines Change

Routines are what make this game great. You get into a rhythm and you knock it out each day. Unfortunately, my routines from Spring are gone in Summer. I no longer have stamina to fish, swim and dive for goods, and the like. I still grab the bugs and frogs from around the different areas, but I can’t do anything that wastes stamina. I need it for watering and harvest crops, and for taking care of my growing group of animals. It’s at these times where I wonder why I’m playing still…for about thirty seconds. Then I realize there is still so much to unlock and build, and doing the tasks again and again doesn’t seem so bad.

Changes in the Coop

I build the Chicken Coop during Spring, but without the newest vendor, I could not purchase animals. Since the beginning of Summer, however, I’ve purchased 2 chickens and got 3 more from the eggs in the incubator. I could see this being a great money making situation for me when my coop is full (2600 base sale price), although the potential of more eggs is alluring as the value is often quite high.

 Finishing Summer

Closing out a season is my favorite time because it opens me up to do things I normally wouldn’t do. Near the end of the season, there is no point in working your crops since they won’t grow in time for you to harvest them. So, I abandoned routines over the last two days and did other things instead. Grabbing bugs and fish to finish up a few special orders from the vendors and collecting as many natural resources as possible in order to build a few extra items was what I focused on.

I needed a sickle to clean up all my tomato plants, so I had the necessary materials to build that. I collected a few other things to upgrade all my tools to copper, and then I went to sleep, preparing for Fall, Year 1.

Total time so far: 18 Hours, 30 Minutes.