Garden Story is a unique action-adventure RPG on the Nintendo Switch and PC that lets you take the role of a grape named Concord, visit vibrant islands, and take on enemies known as the Rot. Released alongside Axiom Verge 2 during Nintendo's Indie World Showcase, Garden Story quickly gained interest and certainly has the charm to be a hit.
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Clearly inspired by the Legend of Zelda series, Garden Story does an incredible job of adding in new, clever ways to keep its combat feeling fresh and rewarding. It also makes you feel like you impact each village you travel to and has many ways to build up each town and grow stronger. Here are some tips for setting off on the right foot!
How To Save
Garden Story has a unique way of saving your progress and doesn't support any quick-save or auto-save feature. This makes what you do matter just a bit more than it usually would and causes each time you venture a bit too far to feel risky, yet rewarding.
To save your progress in Garden Story, you must go to your house and sleep on your leaf bed, advancing you to the next day. Additionally, if you are to die while exploring, the game saves your progress and respawns you in your house, and advances you to the next day. You will also lose some Leaflets (the game's currency) upon death as well, so be sure not to use that as your saving option.
Grab Your Mail
One important feature, and easily missable one, will be your mailbox in the early going of Garden Story. Each village you go to provides its own house with a mailbox beside it, which many players may pass by without realizing they can interact with it.
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When a new day rolls around, go outside and smack the mailbox with your melee weapon to receive a random sum of Leaflets to kick off your day! The number of Leaflets you receive can be relatively minor or pretty generous depending on the day, but they add up and help keep you from going completely broke!
How To Deshell Rot
When you reach the second village in Garden Story, you will start encountering Rot that are protected by a shell, making them immune to melee damage. However, there will be many Favors and Requests that require you to kill these pesty enemies.
Thankfully, you will receive a fishing rod early on. You can use it on the Shelled Rot to remove them from their shell, opening them up to melee damage. So, if you do not have the fishing rod and see these little nuisances running about, avoid them at all costs!
Equip Memories
Completing certain milestones in Garden Story will unlock Memories that you can browse from within your house. Memories are essentially perks you can equip to buff some of Concord's attacks and abilities. Enhancements like launching projectiles with melee attacks, consuming less stamina while sprinting, charge attacks deal two strikes, and more are all possible through this system!
You will start with one Memory slot and will eventually unlock nine slots throughout your playthrough. Furthermore, you will be able to see the challenges for locked memories while browsing the book, allowing you to go out of your way to unlock them!
Completing Requests
Every new day in Garden Story brings in new Requests for Concord to complete to help the village out and eventually unlock more extensive and better rewards. While these Requests are randomly generated, you will have the entire day and night to complete them, so don't sweat rushing to finish them!
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Requests feed into the core gameplay loop and are how Concord saves each village, so be sure to complete each task you receive to better each town and advance to new areas! However, dying during your adventure will scrap any Request you haven't finished and generate new ones. Requests you have completed will still be counted and turned in upon death.
Dew Types Are Important
When exploring the new villages, you will encounter many water taps that quickly fill your water containers, allowing you to heal two HP when in a pinch. Water taps are free to use and are scattered all around the world of Garden Story and will enable you to fill up your healing flasks whenever need be.
Although the dew obtained from the taps are free, they don't heal Concord's health all that much, making it a risky choice when entering the game's dungeons and more challenging areas. Each village will also have a vendor that sells dew capable of healing four HP, which is more than enough, especially when you can upgrade the number of flasks you can carry at a given time!
Fishing For Rare Materials
After you obtain the fishing rod in Garden Story, the world opens up a bit more in gathering material of all kinds, allowing you to upgrade your arsenal of tools. While you may not always get a good catch, fishing is an incredible way of obtaining rare materials in general.
Fishing will also enable you to collect materials you can turn into each town's library, unlocking more Memories and Slots in the process. Fishing, in general, is a crucial part of Garden Story and should not be slept on, especially in the early game.
Village Status
The status of your Village is dependant solely on the number of Requests you complete and their difficulty. As touched on above, Requests are randomly generated tasks for Concord to carry out and help save the town and its people.
Fortunately, there is a payoff for carrying out these tasks. With each new level obtained in each group of Requests, you will have access to better weapon upgrades, health upgrades, and much more. Completing Requests will make Concord much stronger over time, which is why they're so essential to do and keep track of — and why maxing your Village's Status is more than just a grind.
Upgrade Your Weapons
As touched on above, leveling up your Village's status will grant you a vast slew of upgrades for your tools, including your weapons. Upgrading your weapons early on in Garden Story is crucial and will give you a significant advantage throughout your adventure.
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Upgrading your weapons requires unique material and some Leaflets, and will make your attacks to deal more damage, swing faster, and much more. Additionally, the more you enhance your tools, the more "Upgrade Orbs" you can break, which are scattered around the world and grant things such as more HP, Stamina, and a variety of other skill points.
Sell Extra Materials
You will be balancing your physical inventory with your storage a lot in Garden Story, which can be a tad frustrating at first — that is, until you realize you can sell all extra items to vendors instead of dropping them.
Essentially, you can only store single stacks of 15 materials/items in your storage box, so any extra you have remains on-hand, clogging your inventory. Additionally, you have limited inventory space, forcing you to make a tough decision when you are at max capacity. Fortunately, every Village's vendor is more than happy to purchase materials from you, with some going for a pretty good price! Doing this allows you have extra income, which further allows you to upgrade your Tools, and much more.
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