Harvest Stories ToT GoTS video

Harvest Stories
Tree of Tranquility GoTS video
[Updated 28 Oct 2023]

- Any%
- Marriage: Request
	> Anissa: Snowflake Flower
	> Kathy: Beat in a race
	> Candace (R): Blue Mist Flower
	> Renee (R): Fix the windmill (Daren's Rainbow)
	> Maya: Eel (caught in Summer)
	> Phoebe (R): Rare Metal
	> Luna (R): Blue Mist Flower
	> Selena (R): Talk to parents (Daren's Rainbow)

	> Calvin (R): Apple
	> Chase (R): Ship 30 dishes, then gift him the 31st
	> Gill: Help find his diary
	> Julius (R): Ruby or Sapphire (try and refine the Red Wonderful given by Chloe)
	> Luke: Collect 20 pieces of lumber
	> Owen: Reach the 30th level of the mine
	> Toby: Rock Lobster
	> Jin: Pontata Root

- Probably just choose a handful of marriage candidates, both boy and girl. Ideally, this would include at least the easiest candidates, and maybe one or two more challenging choices.
- The "basic bitch" candidates appear to be Anissa (girl) and Chase (boy). The most difficult candidate seems to be Candace (girl), though most of the boys seem pretty easy?
- Need to figure out how much of the main story needs to be completed for any of the candidates. Fogu says that Candace+Luna won't arrive until you get two rainbows, but I don't think that's true.
- So good bachelorettes to cover for now would be Renee, Candace, and Selena.

MARRIAGE BASICS
- Affection is represented in the menu as heart levels, with each heart corresponding to 100 affection, up to a maximum of 1000 (10 hearts).
- The bachelor/ettes have events at 200, 400, 500, and 600 affection. The events at 200 and 500 happen automatically when leaving the house in the morning, but the events at 400 and 600 must be triggered by speaking with the candidate, usually before 11am (to test times and locations), and then meeting with them for a date anywhere between 12pm and 12:50pm later that day.
- An additional "request" will be triggered at 500 affection as well, unique to each candidate. The request must be completed before the Blue Feather will be accepted.
- The Blue Feather can be obtained once any candidate has reached 800 affection. Hamilton will arrive at the farm in the morning to tell about the Blue Feather, then a week(?) later, another cutscene will trigger outside the farm, and the player must go to Caramel Falls to trigger a final cutscene in which the Blue Feather is obtained.
- Once the proposal is made, the player can choose when to get married; speedrunners should select the soonest option. The wedding will trigger automatically on the morning of that day.
- Hamilton's affection level does not seem to matter at all, but this needs to be tested too. The intro/tutorial section seems to give him at least 140 affection by default, though.

RAINBOW REQUIREMENTS
- Obtain Quilt:
	> 1st Hamilton CS: 500G total shipped
	> 2nd Hamilton CS: 3000G total shipped
- First house upgrade before talking to Gill
- Daren: Grilled Yam, Apple, Good Herb Fish, Common Seashell, Carp
- Ben: Grilled Eggplant, Plain Omelet, Green Herb, Good Tomato, Char
- Collin (unlocked by Daren): Blue Wonderful, Red Wool Yarn, Banana, Perfect Spinach, Saury
- Alan: Green Bell, Carrot Cake, Toadstool, Ostonnaise, Wood Fish (unlocked by Ben)
- Edge (unlocked by Alan): Snowflake Flower, Red Honey, Lapis Lazuli, Perfect Honeydew, Tuna

- Daren and Ben are trivial for the most part
- Alan's rainbow is actually locked behind Ben AND Collin, because Ben loses his "badge", and you regain it by completing Collin's rainbow, and the Woodfish (required for Alan's rainbow) is only accessible through Ben's rainbow (base of Mt. Gelato). So the order is Daren = Ben > Collin > Alan > Edge (and Daren is just so much easier than Ben).
- Most difficult items:
	> Blue Wonderful(?): Just not sure how rare they are (to test)
	> Red Wool Yarn: The yarn is easy to get, but talk online suggests you need to buy the barn even to be able to access and use the dye pot
	> Wood Fish: Upgrading the fishing rod, if necessary, will take time
	> In general, the fish may be difficult
	> Also, to even access Edge's location, I think you need to do the mama bear business

VIDEO STRUCTURE
- Game overview (general story, mechanics, version differences, etc.)
- Marriage overview (affection system, marriage requirements, etc.)
- Deeper dive into a few candidates (2-3 girls, 2-3 boys)
- RHG overview (requirements, differences between versions, etc.)
- RHG routing ideas
- Alternative category ideas (all animals, rival marriages, etc.)

SCRIPT
Hey everyone, welcome back to Harvest Stories, where we cover the world of Harvest Moon and Story of Seasons speedrunning. In today's video, I want to talk about a new event the HMSR community is doing, what we're calling "Game of the Season". Basically, we want to encourage people to play some of the games that historically haven't gotten as much attention, both to fill up some of the emptier leaderboards on speedrun.com, as well as just to celebrate a fresh side of the series. And for fall 2023, we've chosen Harvest Moon: Tree of Tranquility as our inaugural Game of the Season.

Game of the Season is intended as a community event centered on collaborating to deepen our knowledge and improve the available resources on the game in question, not just for the speedrunning community, but also for the many casual fans out there who just can't seem to trigger that last pesky heart event! Luckily, in the modern era, we have tools that allow us to more precisely investigate the mechanics hidden within our favorite farm sims, so today, we'll be talking about the ins and outs of ToT speedrunning, including the story, basic mechanics, and the categories we'll be focusing on this season. I hope this will inspire some of our runners to give the game a try, and maybe even inspire some of our casual members to get in on the fun as well.

Released in 2007, Tree of Tranquility features a bit more of a story-driven focus, although the story is pretty typical Harvest Moon fare. The protagonist arrives on an island and discovers that the Harvest Goddess has disappeared after the death of the Mother Tree. To save the Goddess, the player must revive five "Rainbows", which serve as bridges connecting new parts of the island, and eventually plant a seedling to become the new Mother Tree. Each Rainbow is created by collecting ingredients for a "recipe" that is requested by the corresponding Harvest Sprite. These Harvest Sprites can be summoned by watering the colored flower beneath each of five trees located around the island. The recipes call for a wide array of goods, such as fish, crops, dishes, or animal products, and collecting these ingredients quickly is the main hurdle in any speedrun.

For the purposes of Game of the Season, the community's gonna be focusing on two main categories: Marriage and Rescue Harvest Goddess. Marriage is pretty self-explanatory, while Rescue Harvest Goddess requires the player to complete the five Rainbows and plant the new seedling to complete the main story--basically the equivalent of "any%". Of course I can't provide comprehensive routes for every single category in this video, but I would like to look at the basic mechanics of ToT, review the category requirements, and give at least some initial ideas for possible strats or routes for the community to build off of through the coming weeks.

Before we get into it, I wanna make note of the version history of the game. The Japanese version was of course the first to be released, and it features some glitches that make speedruns significantly easier, including item duplication. This version has been run in the past by one of our Japanese runners, and he was able to rescue the Harvest Goddess somewhere in the ballpark of four hours. But for the purposes of this video, I'll be looking strictly at the English version, specifically the US version. Without these glitches, rescuing the Harvest Goddess may take somewhere between six and eight hours, which may seem daunting, but I think the game has quite a lot of interesting routing potential to offer, and I know our runners will be doing their best to bring this time down as low as possible.

As for the US version, there were two main releases. The first can be identified by the green color of the disc, while the second features full-color artwork. The green disc is noteworthy for having a glitch which causes one of Calvin's heart events to crash the game, meaning he cannot be married in that version. As far as we know that's the only difference, so if you have the green disc, you won't be able to do Calvin marriage, but you should be able to do every other marriage category as well as Rescue Harvest Goddess.

With all that out of the way, let's look at marriage in ToT. In total, there are eight bachelors and eight bachelorettes to choose from, and they run the gamut in terms of difficulty. Looking at the affection system, each villager's affection is a value on a scale from 0 to 1000. In the menu, this is represented by hearts, with each heart counting for 100 affection points, for a total of 10 hearts. Villagers and marriage candidates don't always start at zero affection--each villager has a certain amount of "base affection". For example, Anissa always starts with 99, while Candace starts with 10. This is a crucial little aspect that must be accounted for in marriage runs, and also plays a big role in Rescue Harvest Goddess, but we'll get to that later.

All villagers get +5 affection for their daily conversation. As for gifts, ToT is unique in that it actually does allow multiple gifts per day, unlike many other HM games, and every villager can get up to +10 affection from gifts each day. This could be from a single high-affection gift, or it could be from multiple low-affection gifts.

The marriage process itself is actually quite straightforward. Every marriage candidate has heart events at 200, 400, 500, and 600 affection. The events at 200 and 500 are morning farm cutscenes, where the candidate appears and presents a gift; accepting the gift gives +10 for the first event, and +50 for the second event. The events at 400 and 600 are both "date" events. By talking to the candidate in the morning on a non-rainy day before 11am, they will offer the invitation; accepting gives +10. The first date is at the beach, and the second is by Alan's tree, near Brownie Farm. Both dates have to be triggered between noon and 12:50pm, and giving the correct dialogue during the dates gives +50 each time.

When a candidate has reached 800 affection, the mayor will appear at the farm in the morning to talk about the Blue Feather, and one week later, another morning farm cutscene will trigger where the player sees a Blue Bird, at which point going to Caramel Falls will trigger the final cutscene where the Blue Feather is obtained.

All these heart events are more or less identical for all candidates. They are required for marriage, but luckily they are all very simple and easy to trigger. Where candidates differ, and where some difficulty comes into play, is with one last heart event, and that is each candidate's "request". For most candidates, the request event triggers at 500 affection, usually after the 500-affection farm gift, where the candidate will ask the player for something, usually a specific item. In most cases, accepting the request gives +10 affection, and completing it gives another +50. Candidates will not accept the Blue Feather unless this request is completed. We'll look at some examples later on, but if your preferred candidate isn't mentioned in this video, you can check out the Harvest Moon speedruns wiki, linked in the description. All told, these heart events make for a total of 240 free affection for the candidate, and once they have all been successfully triggered and the candidate is at 800 affection, the proposal will be accepted. During the proposal cutscene, the mayor will ask when you would like the wedding, sooner or later. Once the date is set, you can freely sleep until that date, and the wedding will trigger automatically.

Now, naturally, some candidates aren't available from the start of the game--many require the completion of at least one of the rainbows. The specifics can be found on the wiki, but for now let it suffice to say that for the candidates that must be unlocked, any marriage speedrun will want to complete Daren's rainbow as quickly as possible--Daren being the green sprite under the tree in the town square. The sooner it's completed, the sooner that the candidate will move in, and courtship can commence. To clarify, just because the rainbow is completed, doesn't mean the candidate will suddenly move in--there's a certain order and timing that new villagers arrive. For example, Candace and Luna are always the first to move in after the first rainbow, followed by Calvin, Chase, and Phoebe, in that order, and they arrive only on the 1st and 15th of each season. So if Daren's rainbow is completed by the end of Spring, Candace and Luna will arrive together on Summer 1, Calvin on Summer 15, Chase on Fall 1, Phoebe on Fall 15, and so on.

Lastly, it appears that two of the candidates, Renee and Selena, don't require the rainbow in order to move in, but the rainbow is necessary to complete their request events, so Daren's rainbow will still have to be completed for their marriage runs. With all that said, we'll find out more about the rainbow requirements as we get into the next category--Rescue Harvest Goddess.

RESCUE HARVEST GODDESS

As I mentioned earlier, this category is significantly faster using the glitched Japanese-only route, but since most of our runners will likely only have an English copy, I'll be looking at rescuing the Harvest Goddess in a glitchless context. Just to recap, the category requires the five rainbows to be completed and the seedling to be planted and grown into the new Mother Tree. The five rainbows are commonly referred to according to their respective sprites: Daren, the green sprite, Ben, the blue sprite, Collin, the yellow sprite, Alan, the red sprite, and Edge, the purple sprite. The player actually has access to three of these sprites pretty early in the game: Daren in the Town Square, Ben in Maple Lake District, and Alan near Brownie Ranch. However, some of the ingredients for certain rainbows are inaccessible until another rainbow has been completed, usually because that rainbow gives access to the area where the ingredient can be obtained. For example, even though Alan is available very early, the Wood Fish, required for his rainbow, can only be caught in the Goddess Pond on Mt. Gelato, which is unlocked by Ben's rainbow. Each of the sprites also gives a little "badge" upon the completion of their rainbow, which for the purposes of the story, is what allows the player to use the rainbow as a bridge. This is only relevant in the case of Ben's rainbow, as he discovers he's lost his badge, which means his rainbow can't be used right away. Instead, the player must complete Collin's rainbow, which itself requires Daren's rainbow, in order to recover the badge and use Ben's rainbow to access Mt. Gelato.

This might all sound complicated, but for all intents and purposes, it means that the rainbows must be completed as follows. Daren and Ben's rainbows can be completed in any order, although Daren's is usually completed first, as the ingredients are quite easy to obtain. After Daren and Ben, Collin's rainbow should be completed, which gives access to East Gull Island, where Ben's badge can be recovered. This gives access to Mt. Gelato, where the key ingredient for Alan's rainbow can be collected, which in turn gives access to Edge's rainbow. Edge's rainbow gives access to the canopy of the Mother Tree, where the final cutscene with the Harvest Goddess can be triggered once the new seedling is fully grown.

Now, before the player can even talk to the sprites, they first must complete a short introductory quest in which they obtain a special quilt. After shipping 500G worth of goods, the mayor will appear for a morning farm cutscene to talk about the quilt. After shipping another 2500G, for a total of 3000, he will appear again and give the player half of the quilt. For the second half, the first house upgrade is required. This costs 3000G, 16 stone, and 18 lumber. Once the upgrade is completed, the player must talk to Gill, the mayor's son, then Dale, then the mayor for a series of cutscenes, ending with the mayor giving the player a key. This key must be used on the lighthouse in the Town Square to obtain the second half of the quilt. At this point, any of the sprites' trees can be approached with the watering can in order to make the sprite appear.

Going back to marriage for a second, now that we've discussed the basics of the rainbow quest, you can see what makes certain candidates a little bit more challenging. Any candidate that requires the first rainbow to move in or to complete their 5-heart request requires not just the rainbow, but the entire introductory quilt quest as well. That means finding things to ship for the shipping requirements as well as purchasing the first house upgrade, in addition to the ingredients for the first rainbow.

Of course, the process of obtaining the rainbow ingredients makes up the bulk of the routing for rescuing the Harvest Goddess. Many of the ingredients are fairly easy to obtain, as many of them can actually be purchased from one of the flea markets, which take place in the Town Square on the 22nd of every season, or from the Souffle Farm, so I won't look at them all in detail. Instead, I'll provide a link to some resources in the description, where the complete list can be found, but I will take a closer look at the most difficult ingredients for each rainbow.

The ingredients for Daren's rainbow are Grilled Yam, Apple, Good Herb Fish, Common Seashell, and Carp. The trickiest ingredient for this one is the Good Herb Fish, which must be cooked in the player's own kitchen, with an Oven, and the Oven must be purchased from the General Store for 2550G. The Good Herb Fish is made with an herb and any number of fish, as long as the ingredients are worth a combined total of 300-599G. Naturally, the Oven is the costliest part of this rainbow, and adds yet another expense to marriage runs requiring it. Daren's rainbow gives the player access to West Gull Island, where Collin's tree can be found, and it also unlocks the ability to take Pascal's boat to Toucan Island, which will be necessary for some ingredients later on.

The ingredients for Ben's rainbow are Grilled Eggplant, Plain Omelet, Green Herb, Good Tomato, and Char. The Grilled Eggplant is the hardest of these, although it's not too bad. First, an Eggplant and matches can be purchased from Souffle Farm. The matches can be used on a pile of wood on the beach to start a fire, and using the Eggplant on the fire will produce a Grilled Eggplant. After Ben's rainbow is completed, he says he has lost his badge. Talking to him again after that will trigger a cutscene showing how he dropped it. Then, Collin's rainbow must be completed to recover it.

The ingredients for Collin's rainbow are Blue Wonderful, Red Wool Yarn, Banana, Perfect Spinach, and Saury. These ingredients are a bit more difficult--the Saury seems fairly rare and can only be caught in Fall or Winter in the ocean. But the Red Wool Yarn is by far the costliest. Yarn can be easily purchased from Simon at the Spring or Summer flea market. In order to dye it red, the player must purchase a Yarn Maker from the General Store for 4500G. The Yarn Maker automatically comes with the Dye Pot, which can be used to dye the yarn, but the barn must be built before the General Store will begin selling the Yarn Maker. The barn costs 3000G, 12 stone, and 12 lumber. The yarn can be dyed with a Red Herb or one of the various red flowers that the player can grow.

The ingredients for Alan's rainbow are Green Bell, Carrot Cake, Toadstool, Ostonnaise, and Wood Fish. The Wood Fish is the challenge here. To start, it can only be caught in the Goddess Spring, on Mt. Gelato, which is accessed through Ben's rainbow. It's the only fish in that area, but it is very rare, and only appears from 6pm to 4am when the player is using a Silver rod. Upgraded tools can be bought from the General Store, but they are quite expensive. The alternative is to upgrade the rod at the blacksmith, first to Iron, then Copper, then Silver. To obtain the material necessary for the upgrades, the player must obtain sparkling ore from the mine and give them to Mira, also at the blacksmith's, who will refine them for free. Non-sparkling ore will result in the useless Scrap Iron, so it's important to take only the sparkling ore. Then, the next big barrier to the Wood Fish is a wild bear that blocks the player's path to the Goddess Spring. The bear must be befriended before the player can pass. It starts at 99 affection and must reach 200, and it'll accept gifts if the player approaches while holding something, for a total of +15 affection per day. The easiest gift is probably fish, since the player will most likely have caught a lot of them in the process of obtaining the Carp, Char, and Saury. Once the bear is befriended and the rod is upgraded to silver, the Wood Fish can be caught at the Goddess Spring in any season.

Last is Edge's rainbow. Edge's tree can be found on the summit of Mt. Gelato, which is accessed through Alan's rainbow. The ingredients for Edge's rainbow are Snowflake Flower, Red Honey, Lapis Lazuli, Perfect Honeydew, and Tuna. The Lapis Lazuli might seem hard at first, but in fact, one can be found right at the start of the game through the little "scavenger hunt" minigame, in the gift box located on the beach behind the mayor's house. Otherwise, it can only be obtained by refining a sparkling Blue Wonderful with Mira. The Red Honey is straightforward, but can be a bit tedious. First, the player must grow red flowers on the farm--either tulip, hibiscus, cosmos, rose, or anemone--and rather than picking them, keep watering until bees appear hovering over them. The flowers with the bees will produce Red Honey. The final challenge is another fish--the Tuna. It can be caught either in the Waffle Town ocean or on East Gull Island, accessible through Collin's rainbow, with a Copper rod, in Spring, Fall, or Winter. Unfortunately, for this one, there's nothing to be done except to just keep casting.

The rainbows are quite the gauntlet of Moonery, but even once Edge's rainbow is completed, it's not quite over. The player must go to the top of Mt. Gelato, where the Harvest Goddess will explain that a seedling must be found to grow a new Mother Tree. This requires a fairly simple fetch quest, where Jin and Calvin will provide the player with prospective seedlings, but ultimately both will wilt. The true seedling can then be obtained after another little wild goose chase with Hamilton. The specifics will be in the resources in the description, but once the third seedling is obtained and planted at the Goddess Spring, it will prove to be the true Mother Tree.

Now, the seedling still has to grow, and this depends on the total affection of every villager and animal on the island. But interestingly enough, this total even includes villagers who haven't yet met the player, and even those who haven't moved in yet, and because most villagers start with a small amount of affection, this adds up quite a lot. The seedling needs a total of 5,000 affection points to finish growing, but it starts with a whopping 3225. Giving the optimal responses during the opening tutorial section will grant even more, and there are various other boosts that the player will automatically obtain just from completing other objectives. As for getting the remaining 1500 or so affection points, there are a few possible strategies. One option is an exploit that's possible on any version of the game, including the US version--the Shelly rucksack spam. At the Tailor, if the player asks Shelly to upgrade the rucksack without having enough money, she will gain 30 affection, and this can be spammed until she reaches the cap of 1000. This is a bit of a slow spam, but still effective. Another option would be simply to talk to random villagers whenever they pass, slowly chipping away at the necessary affection through small, +5 daily conversation boosts. It's not clear yet what the best strategy is, but this will surely be an area for further exploration and optimization.

The seedling will undergo four growth cutscenes upon sleeping as the affection approaches the 5,000-point threshold, and once it is fully grown, the player can take Edge's rainbow to the top of the tree, where the five sprites will summon the Harvest Goddess, and the credits will roll.