Principles of HMSR

Principles of Harvest Moon Speedrunning
[Updated 18 Feb 2021]

- Routine repetition: HM involves developing a routing and repeating it on a routine basis. When comparing two potential methods of achieving the same outcome, one can often measure the time it takes to perform a single repetition of each routine, then multiply each by the number of repetitions. E.g. corn vs. tomatoes in StH.
- Using downtime: In HMSR, there are often periods where the runner must wait for a certain shop to open, event to trigger, etc. This time is essentially free time to be filled with other simple tasks, such as foraging. For example, in StH any% HR, you must forage 11 gifts for Bob. But because 6/7 days he is only available once his shop opens at 8am, foraging is essentially “free” and costs no time. Thus a major method of optimization is finding this downtime and filling it with various tasks, often foraging. Another example would be spamming a tool to upgrade it.
- In-game days vs. RTA: It is often faster to spread tasks over a longer stretch of in-game days if certain days of the week/seasons of the year allow more efficient completion of those tasks, especially in games where insta-sleep is particularly fast. E.g. wed/sat Gina strats in sth
- Required cutscenes: For many HM categories, certain cutscenes must be triggered to advance the game or plot toward the goal. In general, cutscenes have four kinds of requirements: 1) affection, 2) time/day/date, 3) location, and 4) weather (5) NPC location, which can be partly random; to-do). Common examples of cutscenes required by a speedrun would be bachelor/ette heart events in marriage categories, or story cutscenes in StH/HoLV.
- Faster vs. "Faster on average": In a series like HM, the player usually has a wide variety of options available to them in gathering the resources required to accomplish some goal, such as lumber or money. Since these options may vary from each other in the amount of required luck, comparing two strategies or overall routes in HM is rarely a case of considering which is strictly faster on paper. Care must be taken to consider which route is more consistent, i.e. likely to succeed, as well as how much faster it is. For example, in HM64 marriage, excellent mining luck can raise the money required to bet on the dog race, but this luck is so unlikely that runners opt help build the bridge for money instead. In StH Cake Contest, it is faster to befriend Gina on Wed/Sat instead of Katie, but this requires near-perfect weather luck. Another consideration is the length of a run--a runner may be much more likely to use an extremely luck-dependent strat/route in a category of only 10-20min, since they can easily make many attempts. In longer categories, consistency is generally of higher value.
- Affection basics—general: All HM games use a hidden value associated with each NPC that represents their “friendship/romance level” with the player. Many early games don’t represent this value in-game (except for bachelor/ette’s heart color), so in those cases it must be tracked manually or routed in advance. This value often must be raised to trigger various events throughout the game, or cutscenes with that NPC.
- Affection basics—gift vs. conversation: In most HM games, NPCs may receive two boosts to their affection per day, one for a gift, and one for talking without a gift. Both of these boosts are often unique to each NPC (i.e. preferred gifts and individualized convo boosts), and may be subject to further intricacies, e.g. birthday gifts, introductory convos, sth location-dependent boosts, etc. In some games(?), the two boosts may be applied at the same time if the first interaction is with a gift (HoLV I think)
- Affection basics—spams: In some HM games, developer oversight, or other circumstances allow the above rule to be flouted, in that an NPC’s affection can be repeatedly raised by the same stimulus on the same calendar day. E.g. “dogging” Karen in HM64, “gift pocketing” spam in MM
- Affection basics—cutscene boosts: An NPC may receive an increase or decrease in their affection after a cutscene in which they appear. This may affect other NPCs as well, even if they are not present in the cutscene. E.g. sth’s many cutscenes (Kurt gets a boost from a villa cutscene he’s not in), HM64 girl’s ankle events (boost for helping, nerf for getting help), etc.

TO-DO
- structure affection section to be broad, but include game-specific exceptions (e.g. MM tree planting, AWL celia animal effects, StH goddess Q's, etc.)
- Additions?
	> Text management