Stardew Valley: Acquiring a farmhand with benefits
Warning! Spoilers for Stardew Valley.
The wooing of the woobie proceeds apace. As fall wound down, my daily routine was:
- Wake up.
- Take finished jellies out of canning machines, refill machines.
- Harvest.
- Water crops.
- Water crops.
- Water crops some more.
- Goddammit crops, do you have a drinking problem?
- Water crops.
- Fill cat bowl.
- Pet cat.
- Check TV for tomorrow’s weather, cooking recipes, foraging tips, and a reading of how good my luck stat is today.
- Empty harvest into chests, organize, sort, pick out what I need to take into town, wish these games had a better inventory management system than “put stuff in boxes and remember where it is,” because I game to escape housecleaning, not to do more of it.
- Track down Elliott.
- Still tracking down Elliott.
- Goddammit Elliott, where are you?
- It’s not Thursday so you’re not at the store, it’s not raining so you’re not hiding out at home (wimp), usually you’re at the library but you’re not there, I’m not a stalker, I just happen to know your schedule in detail, but not enough detail CLEARLY because I am STILL LOOKING FOR YOUR REDHEADED ASS.
- Are you on the bridge? No.
- Are you on the beach? No.
- (Do a sweep of the beach for valuable flotsam, but don’t take too long because Elliott is still AWOL.)
- Are you on that strip of shoreline halfway across town? No.
- Fine, I know you go home for good at 7 (wimp) so I’ll just sit in your house and wait for you. This is totally normal behavior and not creepy at all.
- There you are! Welcome home, Elliott! Have a couple lines of dialogue and a fruit I brought just for you because I know it’s your favorite what no I’m not stalking you why would you ask that? Aww, you’re all blushy. So cute. Come into my web, adorable little fly.
- Bye, Elliott. See you again tomorrow.
- Fish and forage on my way home.
- Do a couple minutes of cleanup on the farm, collect any jellies that are done processing, refill machines, craft.
- Sleep.
- Wake up and do it all over again.
On days that I found Elliott earlier, I fished, foraged, or mined afterward. But mostly I kept the economic engine of my homestead running and chased Elliott’s butt all over creation. I had to talk to him every single day just to maintain our friendship score, and twice a week I could give him gifts to raise the score. (This is how all relationships in Stardew Valley work.) Once he requested an amethyst on the quest board, and giving it to him boosted the score nicely. But it was work. Real work. (#digitalfarmingproblems #thestruggleisreal) Next time I pick someone who doesn’t live all the bloody way across the bloody town.
Finally–success! I dropped in on him at home, and he was playing the piano:
When he found out I was listening, he went all blushy and talked a bit about music. Then the moment of truth:
You can! Come! Come!
Note: This is straight-up, bare-faced realism. Writing makes you want to take any job that isn’t writing. When I was in the throes of paper-writing in college, I would ponder quitting school, running away, and marrying a plumber.
The game gave me an option: Tell him farming is harder than he thinks, or invite him to come stay on the farm because I could use the help.
WTF, game. You’re not supposed to read my actual, real-life thoughts.
I mashed the “invite him to come” button so hard I nearly cracked the screen. And got this response:
Love you too. Asshole.
And then he apologized for his reaction. We’re good.
Fortunately, I find vulnerability and helplessness cute in full-grown men.
Our relationship was now at eight hearts. To break the eight-heart barrier you have to give your beloved a bouquet, which the shop stocks only when you reach eight hearts. Because it’s a small town and Pierre, the shopkeeper, is evidently a creeping creeper with nothing to do but adjust his store inventory based on other people’s love lives. I bought several because bouquets are allowed to break the two-gifts-per-week rule and winter is coming, I can’t afford your civilized romantic niceties, GET ME A MAN NOW BEFORE SPRING ARRIVES.
Elliott’s reaction:
Eloquent.
He has a few different reactions. This one is better:
I do feel the same way. I seriously want you in my house, in my life, in my kitchen making me breakfast.
The console now has a little (boyfriend) label under Elliott’s name. Life is awesome.
Fall ended and gave way to winter, a season that could be full of winter crops and numb-fingered gardening, but the game designer decided not to take that route. No farming in winter. Thank god. It’s the Stardew Valley farmer’s vacation season. I had hours more time to mine and fish after tracking Elliott’s butt down.
…Which was still necessary, because despite being eight hearts deep in love with me, Elliott wasn’t breaking from his daily routine. Jerk. You know where I live. Other locals have no problem turning up on my doorstep at breakfast o’clock, and all they want to do is drop game event notifications on me. Just once, come by and say howdy before you hare off all over the valley. Just once.
But he did the next-best thing: He sent me a letter. (That’s still a thing in this town.) Inviting me to his book launch.
Woohoo!
So I showed up, along with most of the town, and we all sat around in the library listening to him read from his newly published romance novel. Why a romance novel? Not because he’s a romantic. It’s because early on, he asked me which of three genres I liked best, and I said “romance” because I thought he’d like that answer best. He dedicated three seasons of work to writing a romance novel to please me, because I lied to please him. I really am the Austenesque villainess in this story.
After this magnificent demonstration of why Elliott is too good for me, I went back to work, plying him with gifts to convince him that he’s lucky to have me. Still stuck at two gifts a week, though buying the occasional (expensive) bouquet helped. But what really put me over the top was that the bats dropped some pomegranates, and the wiki helpfully informed me that Elliott loves–
What?
There’s a cave on my farm. A while back a local kid asked if he could use the cave to either grow mushrooms or study bats. I chose bats. They’re fruit bats (because all bats are fruit bats), and they occasionally drop out-of-season fruit in the cave for me to pick up. Where are bats getting out-of-season fruit? The grocery store, presumably. Anyway, some flying mice dropped a mystery pomegranate on the guano-covered floor of the cave they’re renting from me, and I picked it up, wiped it off, and presented it to my beloved as an inducement to marriage.
Which worked! We’re at ten hearts now. Elliott arranged a private boating excursion with a boat that he repaired and refurbished himself, because he’s way too good for me. He told me that he wrote the novel for me and now Pelican Town feels like home to him, and a lot of other romantic things that I didn’t get a screenshot of. Argh. The long and the short of it is, he’s mine and I’m his, and we are in love.
The next morning the mayor wrote me a letter to tell me that in this area, it’s tradition to propose marriage by presenting your beloved with a particular type of pendant. The mayor is a nosy parker.
And that’s where things stand. Elliott is in love, I’m excited at the prospect of gaining a farmhand with benefits, the entire goddamned town knows our business, and busy, busy spring is coming. Somebody get me a pendant now.
