// KOTAKU — GAMING
13 Fields of Mistria Tips For First-Time Farmers
Last week, I started Fields of Mistria, a game my friends have been raving about for ages while it was in early access, but which just now entered its full, 1.0 launch. And man, my friends were right. This game rules. It’s like Stardew Valley with a bunch of quality-of-life improvements and some new features inspired by both Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon on GameCube added. I’m having a marvelous time.
But you know, it’s a new game, with some things that are different from what I’m used to in other games of this genre, so sometimes I got a little lost and confused during those first few days. I don’t want you to be lost and confused like I was. Here are some tips based on what I learned dumping way too many hours into this game over the weekend, so that your Mistrian adventure will start off smoothly.
Yeah, you don’t have nearly enough bag space. You’re going to run up against that problem very quickly. I highly, highly, highly recommend splurging your first 1000 gold on a Basic Pouch at the general store to give yourself ten more spaces. That extra ten will solve a lot of problems for a long time, just trust me. There is another bag upgrade that unlocks later, but it’s not nearly as urgent as that first one. I know it seems expensive early on, but please trust me and do not suffer through hours of Fields of Mistria with no bag space.
That said, if you have 0 inventory space and see a cool bug or something, go ahead and catch it anyway. You’ll leave it on the ground, where it will stay until you can come back and collect it later. If you don’t catch it when you have the chance, it will disappear, but catching it ensures you don’t miss anything. A little ways into the game, you’ll also unlock a Lost and Found service that’ll gather up everything you left around town and dump it in a convenient box for you.
And I mean everyone, every time you see them! Most sim games like Fields of Mistria let you raise affection with characters a very small amount, once per day, and have NPCs give you single, repetitive lines of dialogue. But Mistria‘s inhabitants have tons to say. Any time you see a speech bubble above someone’s head, there’s something new they want to talk about, and talking to them repeatedly will raise their affection for you faster than you’d expect. It pays to be a chatterbox.
Yup, you can. Check your settings to see what button this is mapped to for your control set-up, but don’t forget you can jump! Jumping is helpful in that it lets you get over obstacles, and is also useful in combat to perform jump attacks. It’s easy to forget that jumping is an option available to you, but boy is it handy in a tight spot. You can also jump into the water, which is fine because…
It’s not immediately obvious when you start playing Fields of Mistria, but you can swim safely from the get-go! You have to walk right up next to a body of water and use your jump button to splash your way in, and then use the jump button again to get out. Swimming is fun because you can access otherwise unreachable areas. There are also dive spots, indicated by little circles of bubbles in the water, that you can swim up to and interact with to find some treasure. Swimming doesn’t cost any energy and there’s no downside to doing it, except that you can scare away fish if you get too close to them.
You can visit the Inn once per day to eat a bowl of free soup. Just interact with the pot on the fire in the back of the main room. You’ll regain a little health and stamina each time. It’s not a lot, but it can be a huge help on days where you accidentally overdo it.
If you’re interested in filling out the museum (and you should be), don’t feel like you have to run back and forth to the museum every time you want to check if an item you have can be donated. When you look at an item’s description, if it can be donated, there will be a little museum-shaped icon near the top. Next to that icon is a small box. If you have already donated that item, there wil