My Fluffy Life – The Fundraising is back!

11 / 15 / 2211 / 26 / 22

The Halloween event has officially ended, but the Fall season is still here to stay and with it comes the Fundraising for Cozy Winter Sweaters, alongside the return of the Fall-themed games like Apple Picking.

Unsurprisingly, another Teddy Bear on the map that I adore.

I’m really glad it seems to have improved since last year with it being milestones to earn Medals (You receive all lower medals in addition to the tier you donate for so, for example, if you donate 300K, you get all the other medals.) instead of a high score table. I’m hoping this means people will be able to continue donating after the milestone is hit as well as otherwise, only two more people need to do that 300K milestone for the donation to close off.

Just in case, if you are planning to donate, be sure to get your donations in early!

I’ll update this again when the Fundraising has finished :)

Edit: And within just a couple hours, the Fundraising has been completed. Unfortunately, it does look like there’s no way to continue donating after hitting the goal! That said, Middlepot did increase the goal last year to allow more people to donate. I hope some option is possible for everyone to contribute for all the Medals even though the goal is released.

If you did donate before the funding was reached, you can interact with the Donation Box to get your Medals! Simply hit the “Get” option and you will receive two of each: One of the actual Medal and one as an Infinite Sticker you can use in your Scrap Book and Mail.

The actual Medals are on the Shelves like Stuffies– you can choose to display them (again, we need more display space so badly T~T) or wear them– Left (The Pearlescent one) is one of the 2021 Medals and Right (The Gold one) is one of the 2022 Medals:

I also made a new page in my Scrapbook to show them all together since… even if I decided to deprive my shelf of Stuffies, I could only show up to 4/5 of just one type at a time.

Edit: As of November 20th, the donation amount required was increased from 1 million to 3 million so be sure to get those donations in! It IS cumulative so if you do 1K now and then maybe 19K later, you’ll get the 20K and all ones below it. You can only get each Medal once so no need to do more than 300K cumulative! There’s also new Minigame items.

Edit: As of November 26th, the donation amount was met once again and is no longer open. I really hope there can be a way for people to donate even after the funding hits its goal.

Genshin Impact gave me the Pokemon Journey I always wanted

11 / 15 / 22

Due to a very stubborn friend, I gave Genshin Impact another try July in last year, coinciding with Ayaka’s release that happened to be a few days after my birthday. Playing since then made two things very clear to me:
-The game is a million times more fun when you have a character who’s playstyle jives with you.
-When you’re still early on and learning everything, playing with a friend is such a godsend.

I’ve gotten to a point where I don’t necessarily need to play with someone to get through fights, though sometimes it’s still preferred to get through them faster, but generally if I need help, it’s with the exploration variety. Unfortunately, exploring is where Co-Op suffers a bit as while enemy drops are shared, forageables are not and anything you can find exploring in the world (Oculi, Chests, etc.) only counts for the host– not everyone who is playing together.

Regardless, we’re not here to talk about my general feelings of Genshin Impact, but rather its newest event: Fabulous Fungus Frenzy. The event involves you capturing Fungi with a “Wisdom Orb” to then use in Battle to win a Tournament alongside various new NPCs and a few familiar faces as well all while investigating the host of the event. The inspiration is definitely pretty obvious and with a new Pokemon game just four days away has the timing quite perfect.

While I played Pokemon Blue, collecting the cards, and watched the Pokemon Anime all at the same time, the message from the Anime was always what drew me in the most– not just “Gotta catch ’em all” and trying to finish my dex, but the idea of going on a journey and bonding with these Pokemon which is something that often falls flat in the games themselves.

There’s no miraculous thing that will cause a Pikachu to beat an Onix in the games with an electric attack, max happiness didn’t suddenly make my Pokemon suddenly power up to the extremes and be good enough for any Battle Tower-esque frustrations that suddenly required perfect IVs and specific stats and builds. Sure, type advantages weren’t necessarily the end of the world– I beat Onix with a very overleveled Charmeleon and a Caterpie back in Blue, but it made a difference and especially if your Pokemon was weak to what they were up against, they could go down very fast. There’s no real dodging or motivation to give to your Pokemon. It’s just Rock-Paper-Scissors expanded and hoping your stats are good enough.

And as someone who would get attached to specific Pokemon and desperately wanted to keep that Team together, it sucked to hit areas of the game that essentially said your Team wasn’t good enough because Pokemon Bonds didn’t matter, in the end, no matter what the Anime said. While I continue to play Pokemon games the way I want, as a completionist, this will never be something that doesn’t end up frustrating me.

But Genshin Impact’s Fabulous Fungus Frenzy event’s entire focus was on those Bonds. Sure, some attacks may have been better and each had their own attack styles, but you were forced to keep your special “Starter”, Bongo-Head*, in the party each time regardless of who else you wanted to fight. You essentially had an evil team, you had a rival, you had friends who even leant you their Fungi for the final battle, and while maybe the actual exploring was relatively small (beyond capturing each Fungi, everything was focused in one place), the focus on friendship and the bonds you made with these Fungi and how those bonds will power-through regardless is the one thing I’ve wanted from Pokemon all along. I was so scared maybe my Fungi wouldn’t be good enough, but no, the bonds were strong enough that we could win anyway.

*Bongo-Head was named by Paimon and I’ll be honest, I hate that we did not get any input here unlike all the other Fungi. I get it’s because it was to be voiced and then they would have to voice three different names, but Bongo-Head deserves better. :(

While the Event ended somewhat bittersweet as our Fungi need to go away for now, the promise of seeing them again and future Tournaments in the future has me really excited… But also, why couldn’t I just have a cute Fungi Farm attached to my Teapot, Genshin??? Let me see them whenever!! Or at least be able to spawn them with the Wisdom Orb…

Despite my hopes, we had to have a Tearful Goodbye for now…

Don’t worry, my little Shroom Buddies… Bongo-Head, Bloomsoon, Superswirl, Elebit, Pickinding, Retribushroom, Pyrotechpuff, Windyhead, Hardhat, Tingleshroom… We’ll be reunited soon enough T~T

I’m hoping with Pokemon Violet having various new features from playing in whatever order you want to exploring with friends, maybe that bond of friendship can have some kind of focus, but I feel like as long as the game always puts a focus on IVs and EVs and making combat more convoluted with additional battle gimmicks, that message will unfortunately continue to only be part of the Anime instead.

If you do not play Genshin Impact and are curious about the Event, I have my entire playthrough of all six acts up on Youtube

My Fluffy Life – Halloween 2022!

10 / 30 / 2211 / 1 / 22

Halloween returns in My Fluffy Life and unfortunately, it’s still as difficult as last time, or well, at least for me as someone who really struggles with mini-games and the number of tickets/keys required. The Key minigame isn’t hard of course, but… I can only do repeated clicking so much at a time X-x I did buy some things so I only need 800 more Keys, but do need over 20,000 Tickets for all the items (and even more if you didn’t participate last year).

Like last time, I am offering Teddy Coins for Tickets and also Keys! Feel free to mail me in-game (or comment below) if interested if you are way better at the minigames and clicking repeatedly does not slowly break your wrist.

Of all the Events, Halloween was the biggest grind with items generally costing thousands of tickets and this year isn’t any less complicated with that. Most of all, of the items I haven’t gotten yet, I really want the new Bunny Stuffie and well, really should’ve shopped there first as I don’t think I’ll actually be wearing any of the new items.

In addition to Halloween items for Tickets and Black Keys, there are also new items for sale at two of the regular stores and the Rollcake Store on the Laptop. While the black furniture set isn’t really my thing, the Teddy Bear tempts me to keep this out anyway. I also can’t decide which Teddy Bear I like more.

As mentioned, all old items are back alongside the three minigames. There are no new minigames for Tickets which, if you had trouble with any last year to begin with, may not end particularly well.

With Black Keys, you get them through this new Endless Tower game which I had been excited for… before I realized we kind of just stand there while the wallpaper moves and click photos. I really hoped it would be an exploration thing where you solve puzzles to get to floors and earn keys that way (like maybe 50-100 from a chest or something) over… clicking picture frames that have keys in them.

There’s also new Stickers in the Gachapon– 6 new ones in addition to the 9 from last year for a total of 15. I may try to stock up on more of the cute Bunny plush. That said, it seems there is a bug and the stickers are missing from the inventory now…

Speaking of bugs though, my entire scrapbook ended up resetting :( And trying the new reset save feature didn’t fix it which, putting it lightly, had genuinely broken my heart. I’m glad I made this video recently so it’s all backed up in a sense, but there were a lot of photos I put there that I could like… enlarge to look at better or read the Valentine’s and now they’re just gone. I don’t think I’ll be using the Scrapbook again due to this unless it does get fixed.

Anyway, I’m off to try and farm more Tickets and Keys X-x As mentioned at the start, if you would like to trade some for Teddy Coins, let me know! I’ll update this entry after I’ve managed to get everything.

Edit as of 4:30PM EST on October 30th: The sticker and scrap book glitches have been fixed! Yay :D

Edit as of 10:56AM on November 1st, 2022: A big thank you to everyone who has helped out with the Keys and Tickets! I managed to get all the new items! ^-^ Thank you so so so much.

Disney Dreamlight Valley – Finally getting to unlock the rest of the quests…

10 / 24 / 2210 / 25 / 22

While I know some people managed to grow their Orb faster, besides the fact that it was a method not recommended as it could cause bugs, my Orb never actually dried out thus far. It’s been raining near constantly in my game which has meant I’ve had to wait.

In the meantime, as mentioned on the edit of my last post, I worked on the special Halloween tasks (though, am still waiting to take care of that last one) and also have been going hard on Star Path tasks. I only have one left now: Catch 30 Fish in Sunlit Plateau which, obviously, also requires me to wait for the Orb of Nurturing to finish.

Despite this slight setback, I did, at least, finally manage to get this item in my Scrooge’s shop:

The bathroom is definitely the worst room on the first floor right now…

Regardless, finally, Friday night, my Orb was finally ready to be harvested. It’s so pretty and I love all the flowers around it.

Initially, I planned to set up all of the Orbs around the Plaza, but honestly, it’s going to be very hard to resist putting this one wherever my character’s house ends up being…

I was surprised though that the quest essentially ended right after this. I guess it makes sense, but for some reason I thought there would be more. Regardless, it was onto Scar’s Friendship Quests now. Since he was already level 10, I was able to more or less barrel through them.

The coat is definitely not my thing, but I was very happy to finally get my shovel upgraded to break all those bones. It’ll definitely be easier to go around versus having to go through the Forgotten Lands to get to the other side.

I was a bit nervous about finding the Bones for the next Shovel upgrade, but Mother Gothel’s instructions were actually helpful. The flower was so pretty– I kind of wish we could keep one.

After breaking some bones across the bridge and showing Scar the meaning of friendship, we finally got his precious heirloom which I find very suspicious for things to come…

I will say of all the Villain friendship quests so far; I do think Scar had the most friendship character development.

To finish off this entry, with a week left until Halloween, it was finally possible to complete A 3-Course Halloween Meal which was my final Halloween task. After finding one of each bucket and eating each of their respective candies (Red, Purple, and Green), that let me complete the task!

They seem to only spawn in the Plaza at least, but only a certain amount at a time until you need so check back later, so I got lucky getting at least two of each candy color right away.

Disney Dreamlight Valley – The Scar update is here!

10 / 19 / 2210 / 20 / 22

So, our first big content update is here and it continues the main story! Immediately upon loading the game up, I was hit with a cutscene showing the Sunlit Plateau ending up in much rougher shape and certain things even being moved. Before I headed over there though, I was very excited because I knew one of the fixes finally let me put the lovely Cheese Platter on the table.

It was then time to go see Scar as his house had been finally freed.

I then did various things such as working on Star Path tasks, giving Scar his favorite items to level him up, stopping by Scrooge’s shop, though, I didn’t see anything new, and best of all, finally getting to feed the Ravens! Their favorite food is 5 Star Meals.

With those things done, I finally headed to the mine with Scar to figure out what was blocking the water.

Finishing the quest taught me the Root Beer recipe (If you need help for the Extra Fizzy Root Beer, use the Dry Ginger you get instead of normal ginger plus sugarcane and vanilla) so I added that as well. The waterfall is so pretty too. The Root Beer Explosion made me think of Toon Town Online.

After we left, there was someone very suspicious. You can tell it’s evil me because I would never wear that.

Following them through the portal essentially brought us to an Evil version of Dreamlight Valley. Dreamdark Valley? Nightmaredark Valley? Darknight Valley? Sadly, they got away, but we did get the Orb of Nurturing which was unfortunately not looking too great.

According to Merlin, despite our Forgetting Doppelganger, this wasn’t our fault and to restore the Orb of Nurturing, we needed to plant it.

So now I’m just waiting for it to finish growing and I hope it’ll be done before I have to leave on Friday…

As for the Star Path, it should be no surprise that the first thing I bought was this cute Raccoon. Spooky stuff isn’t really my jam so I barely want anything from this Star Path, but I’ll still be doing my best to get everything for Collection Purposes.

Speaking of Collection purposes, the Collection is currently bugged which is driving me nuts. Many of the new items aren’t properly checking off when you get them and it’s definitely making me a bit stir crazy. I’m really hoping this will be fixed soon.

One thing I was sad to see wasn’t actually intended in the game though was that you can no longer buy crafted items from Scrooge. As many of you may know, I hate crafting. I don’t enjoy it in games and ACNH making it so some items could only be crafted was a huge detriment of the game for me. This game having it so you could always buy more after crafting once genuinely was so nice and I thought it was an actual feature so people could pick which they prefer. I really hope they reconsider this change as I know it was a huge quality of life boon for not just me, but for many of my friends who got fed up with New Horizons for similar reasons.

On the bright side, they did fix it so you can order items that you own without having to have at least one not placed which I’m really happy about. I don’t really like constantly having to pick stuff up temporarily so I’m glad that was fixed.

While I had no luck finding new seasonal stuff at Scrooge’s, I at least made sure to make the new crafting recipes.

Finally, I noticed Merlin, Goofy, and Mickey had new interior designs! They look really nice.

The only other goal I really managed to do, besides doing as much of the Star Path as I could before getting stuck with only tasks that require me to wait a day or two (I will say my leaving night thorns around came in handy though), was get Scar to level 10. Unfortunately, I can’t do his friendship task until the story quest is done and the Sunlit Plateau is fixed so here’s hoping the Orb of Nurturing is ready to be harvested very soon…

Edit: Turns out there was one last thing I could do– I had missed some new seasonal tasks under the “Village” section of Dreamlight which would give you special items upon completion. I just have “A 3-Course Halloween Meal!” left to complete now and apparently, it’s not possible to do yet… Hope we’ll figure it out soon enough.

Disney Dreamlight Valley – What I’ve been doing in the meantime

10 / 13 / 2210 / 18 / 22

So, while I’ve finished most of my main goals to the best of my ability, I’m still logging in each day to do some random things. With the Scar update on the horizon (and with a date!! Next Wednesday!), I wanted to make a post talking about what I’ve been doing since my last update and up until that new patch hits. While I don’t expect too much happening after I make this post, any small things that do will be added on and then you can expect my usual journal entries once the Scar update hits!

The short version of this post is that I’ve mainly been focusing on buying out Scrooge’s Shop, trying to get more memories, and working on completing Dreamlight Tasks.

You’ll notice that Exterior Decorating is not on there so if that’s what you’re hoping for from this post, or even extended Interior Decorating, unfortunately that won’t really be happening just yet. I only find my inspiration when I know everything that can currently be gotten and I’m not even halfway through that furniture collection— I’ve had awful luck with my Scrooge store and there’s a lot of items I’ve seen others get that I am still impatiently waiting for.

Also knowing that there will likely be more characters to move in, I can’t help but want to just keep things more open right now. I do have SOME ideas and maybe even after the Scar or Toy Story update, I’ll consider doing a bit more clean-up and even finally doing the big Peaceful Meadow Revamp I’ve wanted to do since before the game launched, but right now, I’m mainly taking it easy on that front until I manage to unlock more of, well, everything.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about what has happened since my last post a month ago. Despite finishing most “bigger” goals, I’ve actually still been playing every single day.

Despite my lack of luck on some items, I’ve actually gotten several I’ve been really excited for. The round pool was a bit too big to replace the regular pool there, but I hope I can find a nice place to put it eventually.

And while I haven’t done much decorating overall, I’ve been making more improvements to the “bedroom” and main room.

I also finally got the top I really liked from the ADT so now I have my full secondary outfit too!

I also seemed to have unlocked all the Motifs, or at least I’m assuming since Critters haven’t given me a new motif bag in weeks, so I added a few extra details to my custom design dress:

As mentioned earlier, I have been trying really hard to work on Memories, but honestly, I just have really rotten luck. About the only memories I managed to clear out were the watering flowers memories. That may be a lot of memories, but this still took hours of watering repeatedly.

I also finally unlocked all the Critters! I still need Ravens, obviously, but hopefully we’ll see them showing up soon.

Finally… Dreamlight Tasks. I’m not sure when exactly my tree grew to such a point, but I suppose it’s proof of how hard I’ve been working on tasks. Most left are just ones I have to wait weeks on at this point, but the one that continues to allude me is fishing 100 times in a row. I may try and do a stream or something before the update hits specifically for trying to finally hit that goal.

I’m continuing to poke in each day for now. Any other neat things I feel like adding I’ll add on below… Otherwise, look forward to my next post when the Scar update hits next week!

But as one last thing before that, some predictions/hopes for the Scar update:

The house in Sunlit Plateau right now is Scar’s.
We already know it’ll be new story content, so I’m thinking we’ll fix the fishing pools there.
Ravens will hopefully finally unlock
Maybe we can finally do something about the fire in Forgotten Lands? If so, maybe see who is in the Pumpkin House as well.
Possibly other Lion King characters? We have a Diary entry mentioning them and Simba was even in the ADT. It’d be nice if it’s not just Scar.
Maybe a Villain/Halloween-themed Star Path.
Maybe the three recipes in the game that do not have the ingredients possible will finally be able to be made.

Edit: So, in the end, I did a few more things:

-Finally set up a proper storage area. I’ve had so many things laying around so… I did add more of the Tables I was initially using since taking this picture.

-While I’m still not doing too much decorating, I’ve been wanting to add some of the water lilies to Peaceful Meadow for a while so I finally did so:

-And the last thing I had been trying to do was focus on Cooking Memories. It had won my poll and cooking at Remy’s would save on coal, but the rate is abysmal. These photos are after roughly 10 hours of cooking each. And more than half were coins despite how many I still needed. In the end, despite days of work, I still need like 20-30 memory pieces and only completed one cooking memory overall :(

My Fluffy Life – The 1st Anniversary Event is here!

9 / 30 / 229 / 30 / 22

I meant to write this earlier this week after recording my playthrough over on Youtube, but I’ve been sick for most of the month and just have not had the chance. Regardless, I did still want to talk about some stuff with this so hopefully this is helpful! :)

If you haven’t really been poking in since the Summer Event, there have been a few updates even outside the game. For one, there’s been codes through Newsletters, but there’s also been codes available through the various Minigame on Middlepot’s website.

As for the Anniversary Event, My Fluffy Life added a whole fun area in the Clouds just for it. You can get all of the items for the Anniversary from it. There are over 40 items to get so it’s definitely packed! Your Fluffy does not get tired/lose energy up in the clouds which is likely where there is nothing to tap for Happiness, but there are other fun bonuses. You can simply click the Hot Air Balloon again to head back down.

You can collect items by clicking each of the various piles up in the clouds. The basket with the Balloons will get you a random balloon, the row of clothes will get you a random clothing item (either an outfit or an accessory), the party hat pile will get you a random party hat, and then passed the Fireworks, you can find baskets of Stuffies for a random Stuffie and a Cotton Candy Cart for a random Cotton Candy. There is also a Gachapon Machine to earn more fun Stationery stuff– like usual, it costs 1 Teddy Coin per spin.

As per usual, you can collect one item per in-game day. There’s a total of:
-3 Balloons
-4 Party Hats
-4 Plushies/Stuffies
-4 Cotton Candy
-12 Clothing/Accessories:
——6 Accessories
——6 Clothing
-16* Gachapon things
* There’s 4 color variations each (White/Pale Pink, Pink, Blue, and Green) of a Square-shaped Lace Border, a Circle-shaped Lace Border, a Star-shaped Lace Border, and 4 Ribbons.

For a complete total of 43 items. As mentioned, it is once per in-game day— not real life day, so if you’re not going ham on clicking for Happiness or playing minigames, it can be nice to have the game up in the background and just let your Fluffy get some rest to get more items once they get back up.

There’s also a fun bonus– clicking the Cake will get you double Happiness until you sleep while clicking the Fireworks will get you double Teddy Coins until you sleep. You can do this once an in-game day during the entire event.

Plus, a very sweet message from Puf:

I had fun putting some new pictures in my Scrapbook.

Our next event will likely be for Halloween! I’m excited to see what changes there will be from last year, if any, but I hope newer players will have a chance to get the older items! I’ll also be keeping an eye out incase we get any other Anniversary additions :)

Let’s talk about Beacon Pines!

9 / 21 / 229 / 20 / 22

Beacon Pines has been one of my most awaited games since I first heard about it. It heavily reminded me of Gravity Falls and the general thought of it as Winnie Pooh mixed with that kind of Mystery genre was so incredibly appealing to me. The Great Mouse Detective is still one of my favorite movies to this day.

So, with confirmation that, no matter how rough things get and the level of angst, there would be a way for things to turn out okay, I had been patiently waiting ever since I played the initial demo a year ago.

For those who want a spoiler-free thought thing, I’ll be blunt when I say this won’t be one. This will mainly be wrapping up my thoughts having played through the entire game more or less (I’ve missed some achievements and at least one charm, the latter especially which I’m still hoping to find) and feelings I have at the finale. I will be vague about certain aspects of the game, but honestly, the game genuinely hit all my expectations and then some— I genuinely really adored the game. I have my whole playthrough up on Youtube if you would like to watch it. This was very much a situation of “this book is too good and I need to turn the page immediately because there is no way I can leave it there” which was just my constant feeling as I played.

While there are a few things I felt a little less satisfied with, it definitely didn’t take away my overall enjoyment. Some plot points I called (or at least got before the main characters even if my initial guess was wrong), others I didn’t realize until the reveal. But anything more I can say will have to go below, with a reminder that we’ll be going into Spoiler territory below the “read more”, even if I’ll still be vague about certain aspects.

Disney Dreamlight Valley – General thoughts so far!

9 / 18 / 229 / 19 / 22

I’ve actually been asked often, both by friends and random people who generally like these types of games, but also had a request for my thoughts at this point after playing for over 100 hours in nearly 2 weeks. As a reminder, the game is in Early Access and so anything I say here could change.

The short version is if you like stuff like Animal Crossing, Stardew Valley, and Puzzles, I do think you should look into it more as you will probably have a lot of fun with this. Disney is definitely a bonus, but not an end-all be-all– I know people who aren’t super into Disney and have still gotten very into the game just due to liking the genre and getting interested in the story. It’s very much a Life-Sim Puzzle Adventure Game that just happens to feature Disney characters. Knowing things about them maybe help with certain quests or discussions, but isn’t a requirement in any way.

General In-Game Thoughts

For the most part, I am enjoying the game so far, but honestly, it’s Disney, there’s customization elements, and there’s puzzles– it’s no surprise I was interested in the game from the start and obviously, have been excited for a while now. And I think when you’re focusing on story stuff, that’s kind of where the game shines most right now for me, even if the puzzles were a bit simplistic, but it is early game so it’s kind of expected.

If you’re the really creative type, I think you can get a lot out of the Touch of Magic Tool as well with so many shapes and motifs you can unlock, but due to certain issues with it (Such as the “mirroring” option causing the item to duplicate into a new layer after being mirrored– great if you want two different colors, but kind of inconvenient otherwise, especially as if you still want to adjust the positioning, you need to either delete the new layer or move them both separately and hope they’re still lined up), you can hit those 50 layers so quickly.

My dress doesn’t look too fancy, but I still ended up hitting 50 very fast as I unlocked more motifs in the game. There’s maybe a few things I could try adjusting using new tools to get myself some more layers, but I’d worry about ruining the outfit in the process. Kind of makes me wish I could duplicate a design so I could test stuff out on a second one without worry of ruining the first. I know there’s an undo button, but I’m paranoid XP

I would say my biggest issue with the Touch of Magic customization right now is the lack of colors– we have so many more shades and even expanded gradients and stuff on existing clothes, plus more styles (I’d love to have a proper overskirt than just an illusion of one), and god, I’m so sad there’s no nice light pink shade to pick for the outfit/certain patterns– I did my best to make it work with the lightest “pink” they had, but I really wish I could’ve made it nicer.

As for actual furniture/item customization, I wish I could comment more on it, but to be honest, I haven’t done much with it yet. It’s not necessarily due to not wanting to, but due to having trouble deciding what to do. Right now, I’m getting such a random amalgamation of stuff with no idea what to predict (I really wish they showed all the items like how you can see certain other things in the Collection just faded out) so I can’t actually plan out WHAT to make. Plus, we have no house exterior customizations yet and… the yellow house really isn’t very me.

On top of that, despite the general customization, some things are locked (such as ponds or big rocks) and many items (and the villager houses) are huge so fitting them around the few objects that can’t be moved can be a bit harder than expected.
I’m also kind of mixed on how much I want to change. I do feel bad fully like… removing trees and shrubs for more room, so I’m really struggling just what I want to leave alone and what I want to change up. I know that’s not really an issue for a lot of people, but for me I find it a bit overwhelming so I’ve just done… well, barely anything despite having plans for where I wanted to put my character’s house since before the game’s early access began.

It’s also a bit difficult because, so far, some areas in quests have been heavily required based off where something may be located and I’m kind of worried moving something could cause issues in a future quest as the story isn’t complete yet. Obviously, this is issue has hopefully been taken into account, but I worry anyway.

There are also situations like The Forgotten Lands where it’s currently just… entirely covered in fire that I’m sure we’ll be able to remove in the future with some quest, but makes it very hard to do much of anything in. Initially, I also wanted to move all the Villains here (I’m going for some kind of theming, okay??), but even this is impossible because Ursula’s house requires water around it (I kind of hope maybe they can eventually have it so water is just stuck to the bottom so you can place it other places) and Mother Gothel is currently living in the big tree in the Glade of Trust. Maybe she’ll move out eventually.

It’s hard for me to really just plan out as I go and I really need to be able to plan ahead and have some idea of what I have to work with to properly make things work so being stuck in this state of unknowing just has had me more or less leaving everything alone beyond placing new houses, many of which I may move again once I get the ball rolling a bit here.

If I do get everything currently possible done, I may start at least making some progress to moving things like I hoped?? But it’s just hard to figure out what I want to do and set things up when I not only don’t know what is currently available (and who knows what else is to come), but also can’t make some things I do want to like the lovely path I’d love to make, but can’t because Alexandrite isn’t in the game yet ;~; I’ll have to mine a lot…

But as for what I have left to do right now… I would say, that ties into my biggest frustration with the game: The Grind is awful. At later levels, you will be crafting and gathering a lot of resources– Hundreds of Iron Ore to make into Iron Ingots (which you then need to make into Tinkering parts), Hundreds of Stone, Wood, Clay, etc. to make various items to proceed in quests… Even Seaweed, which you may get sick of fishing up, is actually used for various crafting materials in the making of Fiber (and balancing it as the favorite food for Sea Turtles as well).

As many of you may be familiar with here, I hate crafting, so needing to constantly have so many items on hand and in such large amounts is exhausting. It sucks just spending hours just smacking rocks and digging into the ground to constantly farm resources. Storage is also a huge problem with chests only being able to hold 16 items each (only your one in-house chest seems to actually upgrade in size) and honestly, even if they eventually add storage expansions, I don’t want a bazillion chests holding different things and trying to keep track. Cooking and Crafting shows they can keep track of EVERYTHING across every chest– let me do that with storing and grabbing things so I don’t have to make a map to keep track of my chests. Especially when items can only go up to 50 or 99 and you need more than that stack amount to even make certain things, it just becomes even more frustrating. If I can’t hold the amount of an item you’re asking me for to craft in a single stack, maybe it’s way too many required for a single item.

The only real positive for me with it is that with crafted furniture, if you have it in your inventory (and I hope they do fix this to make it so it notices items placed too– I’m assuming it’s just a bug right now that it does not), you can then buy more from Scrooge. And when you just made a Clocktower that takes 200+ of various materials to make and you can just buy it for like 13,000 Gold from Scrooge, it is genuinely a relief.

Unfortunately, that grind is where I’m stuck for many reasons:

Memories – I really like the memory system in theory. I think it’s fun as you unlock things story-wise and find things you can interact with in the world. I think it’s a lot less fun when you’re just stuck gardening/mining/fishing/cooking etc. for hours even if you don’t need anything just to try and farm parts of a memory that isn’t guaranteed to even be new. I get that this is to be a long-term goal and I’m criticizing about it only about 2 weeks in, but with how it works now, I don’t have faith someone could truly get through the game even when it’s “finished” to some extent and have a good amount banged out. It just feels too random and inconsistent. And I don’t know, being 44/121 even after over 100 hours has me a little concerned pacing-wise, especially as I’m sure that number will go up as more updates come out, plus some I know aren’t available just yet either. Right now, there’s also 47 pieces I have that are fragments are various memories which don’t get counted at all to that number so it’s not like I’m not finding anything… but knowing I still need so much and am getting doubles on memories even now really hurts.
- In addition, can I just say how much I really hate the “fragmented” memories system? Each memory is already kind of a fragment of a story without literally breaking up one into ~10 different memory pieces you need to find. It’s also just… honestly less exciting than finding a full memory and is another thing adding to an already extensive grind.
Motif Bags – The only real way to get Motifs right now is from feeding Critters with a higher chance at doing so when it’s a favorite item. Some of those favorites are some pretty rare stuff and as I get down to just needing the “rare” colors (ones that only show up for a day), I feel less motivated to try for them, especially when I’m getting buried in Dream Shards now. I REALLY hope another way will be added to get Motifs in the future– maybe if a clothing-specific store or something gets added… Or just a character who will sell those magic bags (The clothing, furniture, and motif ones).
Dreamlight Duties – I just like completing things, but I definitely have more than enough Dreamlight for future things. I pretty much just have Fishing, Foraging, and Mining tasks left and it’s… definitely a lot. I very much am motivated by what I “need” with those types of things– IE: I’m motivated to get one of each for any kind of collection thing and anything I may need for another collection thing such as cooking and then my motivation dies entirely because it becomes too repetitive for me. I know most people do not have this problem.
Crafting – What I’m currently working on. As mentioned, some items just require way too many things, in my opinion, and I don’t know, it kind of feels demoralizing to gather up a full stack of an item just to see it go away entirely on one item.

Besides those, it’s mainly “waiting game”-related tasks otherwise. Waiting for Scrooge to restock, waiting for Eric to add new blueprints, waiting for those 1-Day only Critters to come back around, etc. So, when I do feel like playing, I’m either popping on just for one of these or using my brief grind tolerance to work on the above.

The 1-Day only Critters ties into my only other big issue with the game right now: Despite the flexibility of making stores 24 hours and sleep schedules being more like naps (though, those can still be inconvenient to people– they at least seem to wake up for urgent quests, but if you can only play for an hour a day and it’s the one hour they’re taking a nap, you’re out of luck with giving them their favorite items which does suck), there’s a handful of time-specific tasks such as finding the Shards in Mother Gothel’s questline each requiring a specific time of day and some Critters only sticking around for 6-8 hours. Anyone who knows me knows I love pets and I have absolutely bent my sleeping schedule out of shape trying to keep up with them.

Similarly, while it’s great they have made it so crops always grow “in minutes”, when some take 90 minutes to 4 hours, honestly, I wish I had some way to speed it up. Even making it so they grow faster as you level up would be nice.

That said, while friendship is also kind of a grind, I actually didn’t find it too bad in the long run. Between Remy’s Restaurant, favorite items, and even doing the chosen task with whoever when you hang out with them (I find Mining and Gardening to be the best– I may do solely Mining later as I feel like I need more Gems than Crops at this point and it felt the fastest), they honestly can go up really fast and only around 8-10 does it feel kind of slow.

Ursula and Ariel are about the only hang-ups as they currently cannot hang out with you, and in the sense of Ursula, won’t be at Remy’s restaurant (I’m not sure if Ariel goes or not once you do get her the ability to walk on legs again when she feels like it), which means all you can do to get them up is spam them with gifts. While you can give gifts infinitely (Favorite gifts are a boost from 3 different items a day that you get from the first time you give each item that day), it’s still relatively slow. At the very least, it does seem they took this in mind as Ursula and Ariel get more from non-favorite gifts than other characters… but that doesn’t make it any less slow at times.

The Stamina system, at the very least, is honestly really odd because it almost feels unneeded with how easy it is to work with. Go home or eat some fruit you likely quickly foraged from somewhere anyway. I guess it could be a good way to get some people to take a break, but I’m kind of glad that you can just keep trucking along if you want to. It really lets you play at the pace you want… ignoring those weird time-locked situations.

tl;dr version: The Story and Questline stuff are really interesting. Looking for stuff to interact with that could find you a new memory or collectible is a lot of fun. I also really love the puzzles.
The main problem is that the game gets incredibly grindy right now and I don’t think that’s a fun way to expand the playtime. Plus, some strange choices on what’s time locked and what’s not.

Obviously, if you’re the type to go super hard on farming with hundreds of crops plotted and you like spending all day mining, some of these issues may not be a problem at all for you.

I think the game is still really fun and even if you mainly just play for story and some customization, I think you can get a lot out of it. Just those grind 200+ of things may wear you down a bit if you have trouble with those kinds of things like I do.

Exclusives and Monetization

Obviously, I’ve been playing since Day 1, but I do hope they will reconsider and let people be able to get the Week 1 Bonus items later on, even if maybe you need to spend some money to get them. Similarly, I still think the Founder’s Pack items should stick around after the game launches Free to Play– considering the prices for the packs were likely around the amount of Moonstones you get, the items were essentially free gifts, so I hope they do consider just putting them in the market for people to buy, though, maybe for cheaper since they won’t come with Moonstones or any other bonuses. I know right now this isn’t the plan, but with Early Access, things can change so I’m just saying again how I really hope they consider this.

Similarly, I hope all “Star Path” stuff can still be gotten as well in the future, considering there is still supposed to be a premium store. I also hope something can be done for those who maybe have no way to access the ADT to get the Dreamlight Valley Jersey as well.

Now, let’s talk about the biggest question I get asked about: The Game’s Monetization. I’ve spoken previously about my concerns with the Star Path, so now that I’ve experienced and finished it, I wanted to refine my thoughts a bit.

I will say, in general, I’m still not a fan of Mission Pass systems. That said, I do think Dreamlight Valley’s is better than many I’ve seen previously, but it does also fall into a bit of a concerning grind at points.

The way the system works, at least for the moment, is it costs 2,500 Moonstones (Likely to be about $10 based off the estimates they gave for how many months you can complete based off the amount you got from each Founder’s Pack) to unlock or 4,100 if you take an extra 100 Event/Mission Pass Currency (Discounted for your first purchase of 100) which allows you to get a bonus three tasks showing up in addition to the three already and unlocks more items you can buy on the Star Path.

Essentially, there’s five pages of rewards with a bonus page at the end if you get everything. To unlock the next page, you need to buy at least three items from the current page. So, for example, if you get three items on page one, you’ll unlock page two. Buy three items on page two, you can unlock page three, etc. The only thing that requires you to have EVERYTHING unlocked is the final page which lets you exchange an extra event currency (which, you’re unlikely to have unless you bought some to get some items right away) for Moonstones.

I actually liked this system a lot as I only really wanted a few items from each page so this let me get nearly everything I really wanted pretty quickly before working on getting the other items just for completionist reasons. Item costs varied– Motifs were pretty much always 5 while clothing and furniture often varied between 10-25. The most expensive item was the IncrediSquirrel, who I needed immediately, which cost 40.

Some pages also have Moonstones available as well. Some of the tiers also allow you to get more Moonstones which I kind of wish some weren’t tied to Premium so people who go hard on the tasks can maybe get some Moonstones to help pay for their tier.

That said, you are able to get 10 Moonstones Daily from a blue chest somewhere in the Valley to help build up currency, but while you may manage to earn a lot of Moonstones from doing the Premium Star Path, it’s impossible to really get a leg-up unless you’ve bought Moonstones previously. I think anyone who has a Founder’s Pack will have some advantage in the future and maybe be able to keep up with it and have a good supply of Moonstones for future ones as well, but anyone who jumps in when it’s Free to Play will be unlikely to get Premium without putting in some money which I do think kind of sucks. You really do get an advantage from playing now in Early Access.

I would say my big worry with the Star Path though is the missions themselves. As mentioned, you can only see 3 at a time unless you get the Premium version which lets you see 6. There is a permanent set of tasks, it’s not random (the only thing I think may be random is the order you get them), and so when you have a task to go catch 20 Tuna, you are stuck with that task unless you buy the event currency you’d get from it to essentially “skip” it.

There’s no re-rolling on tasks and so if you get six that may be a bit too hard for you or require things you can’t access yet (because some of these tasks do require certain areas and characters unlocked), you’re essentially screwed until you can get those things… And even then, RNG can be rough. Grinding 20 Topazes took me ages, especially as any from your Companion don’t count, and the Plaza really just wanted to constantly give me Garnets.

I really wish they had it so you could see all tasks from the get-go so you can always make progress with the premium thing just being tied to some items you can claim. I only completed a handful of tasks while doing other stuff– most of the time, I had to completely focus on a single task to get it done which… honestly isn’t very fun. Especially when it’s like sell 200 of some item you probably have sold enough of already if only you had that task up when it came around.

The only real positive I have for how tasks are done is that there’s no time limit– you have the entirety of the Star Path to get it done. You don’t need to worry about getting close and then it rolling over when the day or week ends.

As for any other monetization, we won’t really know until Early Access is further along. The Premium Shop is supposedly not coming during Early Access (or at least not until closer to the end of Early Access). All we know is supposedly it’ll just be some cosmetics which hopefully won’t be too expensive and Expansions, though, it’s mixed on if those will only be new Biomes or if they will be Realms as well, so we just need to wait and see.

At the very least, since they seem to be listening to feedback, I’m going to keep my fingers crossed it may not be too bad. It’s entirely possible to make something that both makes money and doesn’t completely break your consumer’s wallets, so…

I do think the Star Path could work really well with just a few more adjustments. At the very least, it doesn’t feel as exhausting as most other games’ do for me.

I hope that gives you guys some idea of what I’ve thought about the game thus far! I guess the shortest way to explain it is I am mostly happy with it, but the grinding at certain points (and right now as repeat memories make me cry) is really exhausting. The Monetization also seems okay so far, but I could see it causing issues for those who choose not to play during the Early Access period/may play solely free to play.

Hopefully they’ll continue to consider feedback in the future though and it can continue to improve on some of the parts that really frustrate me in other Life-Sim games. I’m keeping my fingers crossed at least and looking forward to seeing how the story unfolds when we get the next update.

Tokyo Game Show VR!

9 / 15 / 229 / 16 / 22

I had initially planned to write about this last year in the wake of various digital events having ways to participate/interact online being really nice both for accessibility reasons and to give more people options to be part of a Video game convention/event and is something I’d love to see more companies do, even as we get back to live events, but for various reasons, couldn’t really figure out the best way to explain it. There was even Pokemon Virtual Fest back in 2020 which was a lot of fun.

The big highlight for me last year though was Tokyo Game Show VR where they made a whole VR world (and you can check it out without VR– that’s how I played) for you to explore and check out to see things available in Tokyo Game Show alongside earning special items as you played. I did a whole gameplay video of it:

And some of the many pictures I took:

With Live Events getting such a focus again, I figured this would be a one-time thing. To my surprise, they announced it would be returning with a whole new website set up for it advertising a whole Quest System. To say I was excited was an understatement and I had been looking forward to it since I found out… so obviously, as soon as 8PM EST was hit, I was ready to go.

Right from the get-go, I was impressed. It’s only been a year, but it honestly got such an impressive make-over.

It took us about 90 minutes to get through all the quests and check out everything and honestly, I enjoyed it every single second.

There’s a really neat story mixed in with everything as you go and while you can finish without doing all the quests, I’m happy I took the time to do everything. I’ll definitely keep an eye out incase more quests/content gets added during the event.

I have a full video up on Youtube as well: