Stardew Valley
Mar. 29th, 2020 10:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
potofsoupI made a Stardew Valley farm almost exactly a year ago on the iPad, and have been playing it off and on over the past year -- there was the initial sprint to get the farm up and running, but after I hit year 2, things kind of languished, since I'd hit a period where my farm was doing well, and what was left was mostly fishing and making friends, both of which I had no interest in.
About a month ago, I picked it back up, and completed a few smaller goals -- I really wanted crab pots, and the only way to get them is to do fishing. I was horrible at fishing, but I figured that even if all I get is junk, it should take 8 days of fishing from 6pm to midnight to get to level 3 of fishing, which would then allow me to make crab pots. I ended up doing it in 5, because... as it turns out, the more you fish, the better you actually get at fishing. I know, surprising. And then I discovered that you can sometimes buy fish at the Traveling Cart, which made the Fishing Bundles seem not-impossible. So I spent some in-game months just refining my farm (figuring out truffles and starfruit wine) and checking out the Traveling Cart on Fridays and Sundays.
And then, last Friday, I realized that somehow it was mid-Winter and Grandpa was going to judge my farm soon. I normally wouldn't care about Grandpa's approval, but I knew that with his approval came an statue that dispensed iridium, an extremely scarce resource that I coveted. I did some calculations and realized that I was 1 point short of getting Grandpa's approval. That one point could either come from maxing out my skills, completing the Community Center, or making friends. And of the 3, making friends was the easiest. So I created an Aggressive Friending schedule and route, where I identified easily friendable people by location and their loved items, built up an inventory stock of their loved items, and on every in-game Sunday and Monday I followed a specific route to give these gifts. By the end of Spring (4 in-game weeks), I had enough friends to earn Grandpa's approval (and get the iridium statue).
By then, I had gotten sufficiently good at fishing (and buying fish from the Traveling Cart) that completing the Community Center seemed within reach, so I then created a chart of my remaining Fish Objectives and worked to cross those off. I continued my gift-giving, because, weirdly enough, giving gifts to people and talking to them made me learn more about their lives and made me care about them.* (whaaaa?)
Anyways, 5 days into Fall, I was able to get the last fish and complete the Community Center. A day later, I hit 2 million gold savings and was able to buy the Return Scepter. At this point, I've maxed out my friendships with most of the people I cared to, so yesterday when I opened up Stardew Valley again, I was like, "I... don't need to play this anymore." It's been a hell of a week in RL to go from "ack, Grandpa's gonna judge me!" to completing all of the major objectives of the game, but it's been extremely satisfying, as well. (Embarrassingly, I've played 75 in-game days in the last week, which works out to >2 hrs of play time per day. Ack!)
But anyway, I am *really* impressed with the way the game structures skills and goals to make them seem achievable and desireable. Take fishing, for example: with the beginner fishing rod, roughly two-thirds of the fish that bite seem to be easy fish like carp or bream, which helps you build up your physical skills. Then, when you level up to a different fishing rod, you start getting harder to catch fish, like rainbow trout or tuna. And this isn't just "use your stronger axe to kill stronger reskins of the same boar monster" -- the fish are harder to catch because they are wigglier, which requires actually more physical finesse. At the same time, as you catch these fish, you are completing the fishing bundles, which makes you want to catch the remaining fish in the bundles, which then pushes you to do more fishing in a greater range of locations and weather (the fishing bundles are sorted by location and time), and completing the fishing bundles leads you a step closer to larger Community Center goals. I love how these are all interlocking and made me go from "I dread fishing and will never do it" to "heck yah let's fish."
It makes me wonder how I can apply that to teaching.
------
* The cutscenes were such a great way to make me feel invested in these characters! Shane's cut scenes, especially!
About a month ago, I picked it back up, and completed a few smaller goals -- I really wanted crab pots, and the only way to get them is to do fishing. I was horrible at fishing, but I figured that even if all I get is junk, it should take 8 days of fishing from 6pm to midnight to get to level 3 of fishing, which would then allow me to make crab pots. I ended up doing it in 5, because... as it turns out, the more you fish, the better you actually get at fishing. I know, surprising. And then I discovered that you can sometimes buy fish at the Traveling Cart, which made the Fishing Bundles seem not-impossible. So I spent some in-game months just refining my farm (figuring out truffles and starfruit wine) and checking out the Traveling Cart on Fridays and Sundays.
And then, last Friday, I realized that somehow it was mid-Winter and Grandpa was going to judge my farm soon. I normally wouldn't care about Grandpa's approval, but I knew that with his approval came an statue that dispensed iridium, an extremely scarce resource that I coveted. I did some calculations and realized that I was 1 point short of getting Grandpa's approval. That one point could either come from maxing out my skills, completing the Community Center, or making friends. And of the 3, making friends was the easiest. So I created an Aggressive Friending schedule and route, where I identified easily friendable people by location and their loved items, built up an inventory stock of their loved items, and on every in-game Sunday and Monday I followed a specific route to give these gifts. By the end of Spring (4 in-game weeks), I had enough friends to earn Grandpa's approval (and get the iridium statue).
By then, I had gotten sufficiently good at fishing (and buying fish from the Traveling Cart) that completing the Community Center seemed within reach, so I then created a chart of my remaining Fish Objectives and worked to cross those off. I continued my gift-giving, because, weirdly enough, giving gifts to people and talking to them made me learn more about their lives and made me care about them.* (whaaaa?)
Anyways, 5 days into Fall, I was able to get the last fish and complete the Community Center. A day later, I hit 2 million gold savings and was able to buy the Return Scepter. At this point, I've maxed out my friendships with most of the people I cared to, so yesterday when I opened up Stardew Valley again, I was like, "I... don't need to play this anymore." It's been a hell of a week in RL to go from "ack, Grandpa's gonna judge me!" to completing all of the major objectives of the game, but it's been extremely satisfying, as well. (Embarrassingly, I've played 75 in-game days in the last week, which works out to >2 hrs of play time per day. Ack!)
But anyway, I am *really* impressed with the way the game structures skills and goals to make them seem achievable and desireable. Take fishing, for example: with the beginner fishing rod, roughly two-thirds of the fish that bite seem to be easy fish like carp or bream, which helps you build up your physical skills. Then, when you level up to a different fishing rod, you start getting harder to catch fish, like rainbow trout or tuna. And this isn't just "use your stronger axe to kill stronger reskins of the same boar monster" -- the fish are harder to catch because they are wigglier, which requires actually more physical finesse. At the same time, as you catch these fish, you are completing the fishing bundles, which makes you want to catch the remaining fish in the bundles, which then pushes you to do more fishing in a greater range of locations and weather (the fishing bundles are sorted by location and time), and completing the fishing bundles leads you a step closer to larger Community Center goals. I love how these are all interlocking and made me go from "I dread fishing and will never do it" to "heck yah let's fish."
It makes me wonder how I can apply that to teaching.
------
* The cutscenes were such a great way to make me feel invested in these characters! Shane's cut scenes, especially!
