📜 Chapter 1: A New Leaf

🌱 Only the gentlest of spoilers here — this chapter covers the game’s opening hours.

Every pressed flower begins as a cutting from somewhere else. So it is with Tara Wylde, who steps off the boat at Fairhaven with city dust still on her boots, come to care for her grandmother Hazel — eighty-two years old, ailing, and utterly undimmed — and to keep the Wylde family farm from going to seed.

Settling In at the Farm

Your first To-Do quests are the game’s tutorial, and they are pure farmhand’s work:

• Learn the land — till a plot, plant seeds, water them, and harvest your first crops.
• Stock up — visit Lina at the general store for seeds and supplies.
• Tend the homestead — Hazel will point you toward the daily rhythms of the farm.

Don’t rush this stretch. The habits you plant now — water in the morning, forage on the walk to town, sleep before your energy bottoms out — will carry you through the whole story. Root yourself with Farming 101 and Energy, Time & Seasons.

🌾 The farm is Hazel’s life’s work. The game never says so outright in these first hours, but everything you plant here is a promise to her.

Meeting the Town

Once your hands are dirty, Fairhaven itself opens up. Mayor Otto Soft sets you one of the game’s first and most charming quests — The Most Elaborate Icebreaker — which asks you to seek out and greet every villager on the island.

Take it seriously, with a specimen-collector’s patience:

• Villagers keep their own daily routines, so a few are easy to miss — check the docks, the diner, the church grounds, and the beach at different hours.
• Early on you can’t enter most houses, so catch people while they’re out and about.
• Friendly faces like Sophia at the diner and Damon will help steer your earliest errands.

A full pressing of who’s who lives in the Character Directory, and the Where-to-find-them tips in Welcome to Fairhaven will save you some wandering.

Small Oddities, Carefully Noted

Even in these sunny first days, an observant field botanist will spot things that don’t quite belong: neighbours who trail off mid-sentence, a grandmother who seems to know more than she says, and a certain guardedness whenever the island’s old stories come up. Note them in your margins. They will matter.

Hazel’s tea smells of herbs I cannot name. Curious. 🌙

Checklist Before Chapter 2

• Farm tutorial quests complete, first harvest sold
• The Most Elaborate Icebreaker finished — every villager greeted
• A little pocket money saved (see Money Making)
• Time spent with Hazel whenever the story offers it

Next: the island’s secrets begin to unfurl in Chapter 2: The Family Secret. Or return to the Chapter Guide Overview.

First specimen collected: one new life, freshly transplanted. It seems to be taking root. — K.