Harvest Moon 64/Walkthrough

Before I begin the walkthrough, let me just say that there are many ways to go about playing this game, and many different ways and times do do things. That being said, this guide will take you through a route that fulfills all the requirements for the party picture. These requirements are:


 * Your max stamina must be at 190 or higher, which means you must have gotten at least 6 of the red power berries
 * Your dog's affection must be at least 200
 * You must be married and your wife's affection must be at least 250
 * Happiness meter must be at least 250
 * You must have at least one adult chicken that is well fed
 * You must have a baby
 * You must have at least 384 squares of grass on your farm
 * Sum of affection of all characters must be at 2494 or higher

The following have been claimed to affect the evaluation, but their importance has since been disproven:


 * Animal affection can be zero
 * No cows or sheep are required
 * Shipping, fishing, lumber and money don't matter
 * Horse affection can be zero
 * No recipes are required

Learn From Mistakes
These are some mistakes (bad enough to ruin my chances) that I made during the first few times I tried to get the party picture and how to avoid them:


 * If your character's face gets blue during work, stop immediately. Eat a medicinal herb before bed if you have one and don't save that night. If you are sick for a day, among other things, you will miss an entire day of work, your animals will get sick, and you will have not shipped anything that day. Whatever you're working on is not worth risking your entire run over.


 * Don't throw edible items on the ground. Every time you throw an edible item on the ground, you lose a point on your happiness meter.


 * It's extremely easy to run out of chicken feed and / or fodder if you're not paying attention to it, and, more often than not, it will happen on a Thursday when Green Ranch closes. Refill your animal's feed when it gets into the single digits, because otherwise you could very well forget, only to wake up on a Thursday, having just written in your diary. If this happens (and I assure you it does), you may be able to buy yourself a day by leaving all your animals outside. This will automatically feed them, but it will be a hassle getting them back inside the next day. If it's raining, you're just out of luck.


 * If you do give the Goddess of the Pond an offering at the beginning of Summer and wish for weather, there will be a much smaller chance of a typhoon crashing through that summer. Some sources claim that if the weather channel says that there will be a typhoon the next day and you give the Goddess of the Pond an offering, wishing for weather, then the next day will be bright and sunny. I don't believe it, though, and you shouldn't either.


 * Make a copy of your game every week or so by moving your current game to an empty slot at the screen where you choose your game. This is so you don't have to start all the way over from Spring Year 1 if you make a small, but fatal error.

The Easy Part
To begin "Push the ". Wow, that was easy!

You'll be asked to name yourself, your farm (not that you ever see the name again), your dog, and your horse ("glue" is always a nice name). For birthday, I would choose Winter or Fall to allow enough time to befriend all the townsfolk so they will give you something nice on your birthday.

When you have entered all your information, you wake up in the farmhouse on the first day of Spring. Wait a minute? It's the 3rd? We must have overslept! Grab your rucksack and let's get going, there's a lot of work to do.