Everdream Valley is a farming adventure with a dash of magic. By day, you restore your quaint homestead into a summer paradise. Raise crops, care for animals and rebuild to your heart’s content. At night you can inhabit the various farmland creatures through your dreams and bring enchantment to the valley. We liked the game a lot in our review (find out why here).
And you know the saying here on LadiesGamers by now: when we love a game, we try to make a guide! So, here’s what you need to know to get started!
Guidance from Grandpa and Grandma
A lot of simulation games start out with tutorials to help you find your feet. In Everdream Valley, they do this too. However, everything you have to learn comes from your grandparents. And they sure have a lot to teach you. It comes in the form of missions, some critical to the storyline, others you can choose to do.
The critical ones give you a reward you need to enjoy progress in the game. Or the grandparents give you items when issuing the quest that you need to succeed. For example, the sign that an enclosure is indeed a sheep pen. You get that from Grandma, and no matter how hard you try to make a nice and comfy enclosure for the sheep that you lure to the farm, it’s not a sheep pen until the sign that is planted in it says so.
You learn how to train the cat so it can help with finding sick animals, and how the dog can pick up a trail for you to follow. For every new kind of fence you see, Grandpa will give you the recipe, and Grandma is unmissable to stimulate your inner chef to do some cooking.
So when in doubt, just talk to your grandparents, and click on every topic they present. Help on the farm is very useful, too, as they’ll give you items they picked up that day.
Stamina wheel
Of course, a farming game always has some form of stamina in play. So does Everdream Valley. This one is shown on the rim of the mini-map in the bottom left corner of your screen. A lot of happenings can reduce your stamina. Like running, getting stung by a bee or bitten by a goose. Sleeping overnight sadly won’t do the trick to replenish, so you have to do something else to get the stamina up again.
If you are stung by bees, the way to get your stamina up again is to go to the stove. The more ingredients required for a dish, the more energy they will restore, and they will also increase the maximum available energy.
If you are bitten by a goose, use a BandAid or eat a dish like with the bees. You get your first BandAids from Grandma, and you’ll get a recipe to make them yourself too.
Building additional energy bars as early as possible is advisable. You can do this by eating meals.
Things That Might Come in Handy
The Chest
You can find it in the barn. The nice thing about the chest is that when your inventory is full, the extra items go to the chest automatically. And when you are out and about, you can also press ZL to have the item you selected go automatically to the chest!
There is a sort option in the chest which I always love, sadly, it only fills up the empty spaces in the row. I always love it when it really sorts items, like seeds with seeds and fruit with fruit. But that doesn’t work here.
Another QOL thing I miss? You can only cook or work on crafting something from the workstation for stuff you have in your pockets. It doesn’t include stuff in your chest.
Marking the Quests
You’ll probably have several quests open at the same time. You can access them on the Switch by pressing the ZR button. You can choose to track a quest by giving it a colour. This colour will show you where to go on the map, and it will also show the area circle where you must fulfil the quest. This comes in quite handy, as otherwise, you’d be searching forever.
If you go to your map by pressing ‘-‘ on the Switch, you can also set a marker for the place you want to go with A. Scroll to that same place and remove the marker again with A.
Behind the left shoulder button on the Switch
The left shoulder button holds a lot of info. You will find the map, but also the gallery where all photos you take go. You get the camera on one of your quests from Grandma, the one where you have to take pictures of beautiful places in the valley. In the Gallery, the pictures are sorted to Animals, Frogs, Plants and a Free tab for the rest. Nice touch that the game identifies the objects themselves.
This button also holds the clothes to change, your achievements and your logs. Here you can see every message that briefly appeared on your screen sorted by days, everything your grandparents have told you under the Tutorials and some statistics.
What to do with poop?
With a cow and sheep on your land, you’ll get poop too. Or maybe you’ve already found poop while exploring the world. Nothing is wasted, of course, and the poop will be very useful. You will get a recipe for a composter, for which you need boards and wood to make. You can make it at the crafting table. Haven’t found the crafting station yet? It’s covered in greenery somewhere on the side of the old barn. And boards can be made out of wood at the saw table. That one is found in the barn.
After a few days, the poop will turn into compost.
Oh, and having a hard time finding the poop in high grass? Watch out for flies!
Where to find Weeds
Weeds aren’t as plentiful as in, for example, Story of Season games. I had hoped that while mowing the grass with my wooden sword, I’d automatically net myself some weeds. This was not the case. Weeds are clearly visible, though, for example, in the veggie patch, as they are fairly large. You can pluck them and still have a weed left for next time.
Cloning through the Merchant
If you are short on materials, there is a way to get more of the same item, though it takes patience. Everything that you sell to the Merchant, he will offer it, at a higher price, of course, in his makeshift store. And if you buy it back from home, a few days later, he will have more of the same.
This works for materials, fruit trees, crops and more. This even works for bugs. So if you don’t like to constantly play the mini-games for catching insects, you would only have to do it once for every kind of insect.
Rename your animals
In one of your quests, you will have gotten a magnifying glass. When you equip it and point it to one of your animals, you can rename it! This works not only on your dog but also on the sheep, the cow etc.
Treats maker
You will find a machine to make treats for the animals in the shed. You put insects in there, and after a while, you can pick up the treats. The teller says 0/100 initially, but you don’t need to put in a hundred insects, that’s the max. Fewer insects will also lead to some threats.
The Basket is invaluable.
You get a simple basket on one of your quests, and it’s pretty invaluable. When you have it in the top bar of your inventory, you automatically pick up everything your run through. Even the odd insect now and then!
A Few Quests That Might Give You a Headache
Finding Willow
Grandpa gives you a bell that used to be attached to Willow, the cow’s collar. Your dog can track where Willow is by sniffing the bell. To get him to do this, you first have to give him a treat (Grandpa will give your four of them) and then equip the bell with A. The dog then memorizes the scent of the bell, and off it goes to find Willow. Be sure, though, to prepare an enclosure for when you bring the cow home. Otherwise, it will wander off pretty quickly.
Getting the cow home isn’t as easy as it sounds. Unlike with the chickens, you can’t pick it up. I’ve found that petting it with X is easiest: for a short while (20 seconds), it follows you. Just keep petting until you’re back at the farm.
The quest won’t be done until you put a cow sign inside. You get that from Grandma, but in case you missed that (I know I did…), it’s in your inventory. And when that is full, it goes to your chest automatically. The chest, by the way, is in the barn near the house.
Sowing seeds of flowers
One of the first quests you get is to sow a field of Primroses in a certain area. As always, the game clearly shows the quest area, and it tells you first to pick up all the trash. Meanwhile, you will find the bags of seeds there as well, showing in your inventory as miniature pictures of the flowers. When all the trash is picked up, equip the seeds. Don’t be disheartened that you picked up only 10 or 15 seed bags. Each bag sows approximately 25 flowers. Scatter them around in the quest area.
The Scarecrow quest
In order to build a scarecrow, you need a scarf and a pair of gloves. Now the scarf is easy to find; it’s bright blue and hangs under a window at the front of the house. The gloves are further away. When exploring, you might have found a broken mill. The gloves are right there on the steps into the mill.
It’s after completing the Scarecrow quest that the dreams will begin! In the first dream, you are in the mind of the dog. Go to the sheep pen, and chase away all the wolves by just running towards them. The red lines show where the next attack will be. No fighting or anything, but the wolf can steal a sheep or break some fences.
