HM: A New Beginning FAQ

Harvest Moon: A New Beginning FAQ

Q: What makes this run so long?
A: Material gathering, mining, and raising a chicken to win the Advanced Chicken Festival, with a bit of RNG thrown in. Some materials can be purchased, such as iron, material stone and lumber, but small material stone and small lumber can't be purchased, meaning you have to forage hundreds yourself. You need a lot of various items from the mine, some of which you only need 5-6 of, but their spawn rate is so low it can take longer than getting the 37 glass stones you need. You need 10 pearls from an island that takes 4 minutes per trip, sometimes 1-2 can spawn, sometimes none.
It sounds like a grind fest, but that's 6-8 hours of gameplay spread over a 16-hour run.

Q: Why aren't any runs on the board? What are the times listed on your splits?
A: There's been multiple TA (time-attack) runs done for Any% and Marriage, but since they involve pausing the game and timer to complete the run over multiple real-life days, they're not allowed on the leaderboards. The times on my splits are from a TA practice run I did offline, but they're still accurate to compare against.

Q: Is this on Emulator or Console?
A: Console. The game normally runs as low as 10-15 FPS to compensate for lag, and any visual glitches (rainbow pixels outlining some sprites, etc) are from my capture card being slightly broken.

Q: Do you get married in any%?
A: No, the main goal of any% is to complete the five Town Restoration plans, which does involve unlocking all the villagers and befriending Iroha for the Ultra Hammer and Axe blueprints, but no house upgrades or marriage.

Q: Are there any glitches in this run?
A: Sort of, but it's more of an exploit. Flax seeds sell for higher than you buy them for, which lets you repeatedly buy and sell them to make 1 million G (part of the fifth Town Restoration plan) much faster than through normal means.

Q: How much faster is marriage over any%?
A: Currently around 7 hours. I honestly don't remember exactly what you do to get married since I played this casually like 6 years ago, but with time-saves on both runs I don't see them being closer than 5 hours apart.
Here's a TA run of Allen by Mimiko: https://www.nicovideo.jp/mylist/49996872