Disney Dreamlight Valley is here, on almost every platform, in early access. It seems the other way around: we pay for early access to iron out the kinks, and we can get the ultimate game for free eventually. But if you love your simulation games as I do, I can’t even imagine waiting for so long! And even though every major gaming news outlet has picked this game up, I still couldn’t resist adding my own tips to our site. Because, as you know, if we love a game, we like making a guide! And love it we do (here’s our review). So here goes.
In-Game Currency: Star Coins
If there was one thing I had trouble wrapping my head around in Dreamlight Valley, it’s all the currencies. There are Star Coins and Dreamlight en Moonstones.
Star Coins
If only it were true in real life, but the coins are the simplest of the three. Sell things to Goofy at his market stall, clean away the Night Thorns and find chests with gold coins in there. You need them to upgrade structures, Scrooge McDuck won’t do the work for anything else.
As Scrooge has a good business model going (for lining his pockets) you need a lot of coins. At the start, you get a decent amount for selling carrots. You get a lot of bags of carrot seed doing things like cleaning up, and you should sow them all asap. Everything in the valley grows very quickly, so you’ll be able to sell them for good money. The other earlier available crops like lettuce and wheat don’t have such a good turnover. It’s better to process them in the meals. Later on, eggplants, pumpkins and asparagus are your cash crops.
Meals are another thing you can sell for a lot of coins, as well as fish. I’ve gotten used to storing gems in other farming games as they always come in handy later on, but they do sell for a good amount of money. So I think it will be better to sell them in the early stages.
In-Game Currency:Â Dreamlight
Dreamlight is an important currency in the game, as it can halt your progress. Collecting it works like the Nook Miles Points: you get Dreamlight for almost every action you take. Like taking a picture for the first time, feeding the squirrels, catching five fish etc. Plus, there are Dreamlight Duties daily that you can do to earn Dreamlight.
You need Dreamlight to progress: to open the doors to the different realms in the Dream Castle. Also to clear away the thorn walls on some paths, like the one leading to the beach. So, you need quite a lot of it. A good thing then is that you can also make it, using Dream Shards. But be careful, as Dream Shards are rare.
Dream Shards
If like me, you’ve bought one of the editions of the founders’ pack, you have gotten 40 Dream Shards from the start. These can be turned into Dreamlight on the workbench. At first, the workbench is at McDucks, until you get your own in your house. Every 10 shards produce 250 Dreamlight. But there are quests that require Dream Shards too, so be careful to spend them on Dreamlight.
Dream Shards are hard to find in the game. You can find some when removing the Night Thorns, and by feeding the little animals that frolic around. You feed them when they are nearby pressing A, and putting something before them, like an apple. For both, it’s not a sure thing though, it’s only occasionally that you get a shard.
Night Shards
Not exactly a currency but they are key for some tasks, and they are hard to find. Plus, you can turn 10 of them into Purified Night Shards at your workbench. And Purified Night Shards are used in quests as well. Night Shards are the counterpart of the Dream Shards, and are brought on by the Night Thorns. I have found them by using my royal Shovel on the patches in the grass that look a bit broken up.
In-Game Currency:Â Moonstones
Moonstones are the other in-game currency. If you have bought a Founder Edition you will have a certain amount of Moonstones already. In the Basic Edition you get 8,000 Moonstones, the DeLuxe Editions offers 14,500 Moonstones and the Ultimate Edition has 20,000 Moonstones. DreamLight Valley doesn’t give you a lot of Moonstones for free. In the past days, I have found 10 Moonstones a day in Blue Chests, but that’s it. Eventually, you can also buy Moonstones with real money.
But what exactly are they for? According to Gameloft, they are purely used for cosmetic additions to your Star Path.
Star Path
But what is the Star Path? Well, it’s a season-based mission system. You get various missions and tasks to complete during a set in-game season. For completing these missions you get exclusive cosmetic items (like clothing items, companions, furniture sets, etc). For now, a season’s duration lasts for one month, but the developers aren’t sure yet if it will stay that way.
Currently, we have the Pixar Fest Star Path. The Pixar Fest was introduced in 2020 as an opportunity to celebrate the animation studio. Every year different activities take place, like sweepstakes, special themed days and streaming. Now, the festivities spill over into DreamLight Valley until October 11th at 9 am ET.
By fulfilling the Duties you get tokens that can be exchanged for cosmetic items. You can, btw, also trade them in for Moonstones. Spending Moonstones means you can unlock the premium path (for 2,500 Moonstones). Or you could spend 4,100 Moonstones to get more tokens and more rewards.
Lots of Collections
Dreamlight Valley has a staggering amount of collections, in clothing, furniture, recipes, gems and more. You can also gather memories, some in the form of pictures looking at their old lives, snippets of the Old Ruler’s Lost Diaries, or in the form of puzzle pieces.
To make the most of these collections, it’s a good idea to:
- Open all chests you find (as if you wouldn’t, lol). Some contain clothes (blue bags) or furniture (pink bags) that you can unpack from your inventory. You carry your collection of clothing and furniture with you constantly, but it will open up precious slots in your inventory.
- Of course, you do a thorough search of your neighbours’ homes as soon as they move in, but occasionally, you’ll run across new items or recipes, indicated with a sparkly aura like the one you see around items in the wild.
- Memories, pieces of the Ruler’s diary and more can also be found outside. So be on the lookout.
By the way, I’m often too used to how for example Animal Crossing works. But in this game, you simply take off a shirt or a dress by clicking on the item in the Wardrobe inventory.
Get Creative
You can be very creative in this game, by for example decorating your clothes and moving things around outside. Here’s what you can do:
* In your Wardrobe under X you see Customize. A screen opens up with all manner of basic shapes in clothing and accessories. Pressing it equips the white basic item, pressing it again brings you to a Touch of Magic, in which you can make your masterpiece. Tinker around with basic colors with the Color Picker. Add Layers with all kinds of motif categories, and change their colour and size…you can really let your creativity free reign.
* The Furniture you see under your inventory can be used outside as well. And what’s more, if you scroll down a bit, you find Landscaping. Here, you find several tree shapes, rocks, fencing, paths and underbrush to play with in the Valley.
* Don’t like how things are positioned? No worries, you can change that too. Go to your inventory with X and choose furniture. Slide shut the screen with your furniture and such, and a white hand appears. With that, you can pick up things, even buildings, and move them to where you want them to go. It can be fiddly, especially moving it around, but it should work.
Great Map Options
The Map holds many secrets. You can see where your neighbours are in the village, and when you set the pointer to one of them and go back out of the map, you’ll see a sparkling trail leading you to them.
But: there’s a Fast Travel option too! Press Y while on the map, and you see the landmarks in the village you can fast-travel to. More importantly, you can also choose the Realms you want to travel to.
Good to Know
* Sure, you can eat the recipes you made and gain some stamina. But going back to your house and stepping in means your stamina bar is instantly filled. There’s one exception though. Eating entrees gives you extra stamina in the form of a gold bar over your usual blue bar. At first, it’s only Grilled Fish you can make, but even then it’s always a good idea to take a few entrees with you while you’re exploring and gathering materials.
* After you played a little while in the game, it will sync to the real-time of your Switch (or other consoles/PC you are playing it on). Just like in Animal Crossing, when you mainly play in the evening, you will see a darkened valley. The shops however stay open, but some of the characters do go to bed. So don’t wait too long if you want to talk to them.
I haven’t been able to confirm if it also uses Dynamic Weather, but I do know it rained a lot in the Valley, much like over here.
* One of Mickey’s earliest requests is to make Fish Sandwiches and Crudités. As I didn’t have those recipes it took me a while to figure out that I could make them without a recipe. And in the simplest way too: Fish Sandwiches are made from 1 fish and 1 wheat. And Crudités are even simpler: only 1 carrot or other veggies!
* The first obstacle for me was the Quest Friendship is Everything. For it, you need to bring 3 villagers to level 5. But with their Friendship Quests, I had gone as far as I could go. And the Realm Quest that I had for Maui could only be completed once I had unlocked Dazzle Beach in the village. But to do that, I needed to finish Merlin’s Story Quest first.
All that was left to me was to increase their friendship levels through gifts and talking to them daily. Or hanging out with them as that will work very well. While you do your cleaning up around the village, or gather, or fish, your companions level keeps on rising. Takes a bit of patience!
* Spend your first 5,000 Star Coins on upgrading your own house, as that’s the only way to expand your backpack.
* You can cook in the Ratatouille Realm without using your own ingredients; great for experimenting, plus he has ingredients you might not yet have!
That’s it for now! Have fun!!
