Day 4, Spring 4: Trout Soup

Recap

Karl has already made some good progress in the first few days since moving to Joensuu Farm. Here are some of his accomplishments so far:

• Planted each type of vegetable currently available
• Obtained the fishing rod
• Reached Level 1 in Foraging
• Met all 28 inhabitants of Pelican Town

There are a few goals I still have for the next few days:

• Buy the backpack from Pierre
• Plant some flowers to spruce up the farm
• Repair that broken bridge at the beach

I’ve started a page called Goals which I’ll keep up-to-date as I complete these and add new ones.

Karl’s Friends List

Before starting the day I reviewed the Social tab now that it was all filled in and made some observations.

There’s still an NPC I haven’t met! From his picture I’d have to guess he is the mysterious wizard who stays locked up in the tower. Since he wasn’t required for the “Introductions” quest, I’d also guess I won’t end up meeting him until a while later.

There is also at least one character who is not listed here: Morris, the customer service guy at JojaMart. Most likely it’s because you can’t befriend him (but seriously, why would you even want to).

Each of the people I gave a gift yesterday has a one of two checkboxes ticked on the right side. Does something happen if I give 2 gifts to someone? Or is it a “strike” – I gave them something they didn’t like, and I have another chance to get it right? I’ll have to test this later.

Also – Karl seems to magically know who in town is single without having to ask anyone. A nifty superpower that might come in handy for him in the future.

Making a Plan

I turned on the TV to check the fortune and tomorrow’s weather, and saw there was another installment of “Livin’ Off The Land”. It looks like it airs on Mondays and Thursdays – hey, just like this blog!

I made a note to look for these spring onions today to add to my collection and make a little money. Speaking of making money, Karl currently has just over 1,100 gold. That’s nice, but it’s still hardly anything. I’m going to make it my primary mission to earn enough to buy the backpack either today or tomorrow.

I set a little challenge for myself: can I find a way to reach 2,000g by the end of the day? It would be roughly double my highest-earning day, but I think it can be done if I devote the whole day to it. Even if I don’t make it, tomorrow should be the parsnip harvest which would push me over the edge.

How will I attempt to do it? Well, basically with the only two options available right now: fishing and foraging. So at 7am (after watering the crops) I left for Willy’s shop to see if he sold anything useful for fishing.

Along the way I walked through a little graveyard in town:

This grave had some strange gibberish on it. Is it meant to be illegible, or another language? Is it some kind of secret code for me to decipher? Who knows…

I found a field snack in Mayor Lewis’ garbage, still uneaten. I figured it would help keep my energy up for the day. Then I had a chat with Penny, and what she said was so sad that I felt compelled to give her the snack instead.

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Continuing on I noticed a strange statue on the beach:

I’ve seen at least one more of these around, near Linus’ tent I think. No idea what they’re for.

Willy only sells two things: a replacement fishing rod, and trout soup.

A Fishing Experiment

Trout soup increases your fishing skill by 1 point, but it doesn’t say for how long. All day? A few minutes? Permanently?? It costs 250g so I would hope it at least lasts all day.

I wanted to figure out if the increased fishing ability from the soup would offset its high price tag and result in greater profits, so even though it was a quarter of Karl’s life savings I gave it a try.

The result: it lasts for only 5 minutes! However, the first fish I caught while on the soup was a record size, and felt much easier to catch. So maybe it will end up being worthwhile.

The next cast was even more interesting:

A treasure chest showed up inside the fishing minigame! I moved the green bar under it to collect it, then quickly back to the fish before it got away. After catching the fish, the chest popped up onscreen, and inside was… a lump of coal. How disappointing. Well, today’s fortune was unlucky so I’ll just blame it on that.

Trout Soup Results: Not Good

After the five minutes was up, I had caught 7 fish, 2 pieces of seaweed, and the lump of coal. Selling the fish to Willy earned me 277g, so after the 250g soup, a gain of only 27g. Ouch. Undoubtedly I would have been better off not buying it, since even a single fish caught during those five minutes would have netted me (heh) more than 27 gold. It’s now 2:30 and I think it’s safe to say I won’t meet my challenge today.

On the plus side, I did learn that Willy buys fish for the same price they would get in the shipping box! If that’s also true for Pierre, it means I never have to worry about where I sell my stuff, so I can make money sooner and clear out inventory space.

Livin’ Off The Land

I traveled west to the mouth of the river to look for spring onions thanks to the tip on TV. Down by the sewer exit pipe I found three of them:

After this I continued fishing for the rest of the afternoon and evening, trying a few different spots hoping to earn at least a little money for the day. Also found some foraging items and chatted with Leah, who’s into foraging too.

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When it got dark I made a nice campfire. When I tried to pick it up to move it, it fell into the water, gone forever. I’ll have to be more careful next time.

The splash animation is over the ground, so I’m wondering if this is a bug. Bye campfire :(

Here’s a summary of the day’s fishing areas and what I caught:

• Ocean: herring, sardine, seaweed, anchovy
• River, southwest end: sunfish, green algae, chub, trash
• Pond at Joensuu Farm: just trash
• River, in town: smallmouth bass, bream

Wrap-Up

Hey, I spotted a typo! Do you see it?

I leveled up in Fishing! Probably the best reward out of the day’s efforts.

Today’s profits were pretty low compared to what I hoped for:

Adding in the 27g from Willy brings the total to 316. Could have been much better if I didn’t waste 250 on that soup. Bummer.

Journal Progress: None

New Items Sold:

From now on I’m just going to list the things I’ve sold for the first time here.

Item	Sell Price
Spring Onion	8 g
Dandelion	40 g
Anchovy	30 g
Sunfish	30 g
Smallmouth Bass	50 g
Bream	45 g
Green Algae	15 g

Spring onions were not worth the trip down to get them. They must have another use in cooking or something.

Tomorrow’s weather: Sunny