Wylde Flowers – Beginners Guide (Tips and Tricks)

I love this game. I love finding my way in a new game, getting to grips with the mechanics and learning the ingame lore. But some things can be frustrating when they catch you off guard.

TL:DR Summary

Note: Credit goes to Errapel

A few quick tips:

• Grab all the weeds.
• If an area/item isn’t available, chances are it will become available as the story progresses.
• Seasons won’t change until you want them to, so unless you have a deadline for a quest, you don’t need to rush.
• Do all quests (or risk missing out).

Foraging Priorities

So without giving too much away, in Wylde Flowers, many crafting/cooking/magic ingredients are found via foraging. Some items can only be found during certain seasons. For example Pistachios and Walnuts can only be found in fall and winter, while almonds are only available in summer and fall. Certain dishes will require specific nuts, and they will not be available after that season passes (the devs are aware of this and hopefully they’ll add a fix at some point), so it’s a good idea to collect lots of those nuts, and make sure you have a small stockpile of each until you’ve completed every dish (if getting that achievement is important to you).

It is not essential to forage daily, but certain items are needed frequently, but spawn irregularly, so grab them when you can. I recommend exploring foraging areas (the beach, the woods, the mountainside, the Gloaming , and even your own farm area) regularly (I find every other day works fine).

One minor problem I’ve encountered in the game is that an item may go from “I have loads of this but nothing to do with it.” to “I need so much of this and I’m running out fast!” really quickly, and it can be impossible to guess which items will be most important. So here is my personal (spoiler/explanation free) list of high priority items :

1. Weeds
2. Conch shells
3. Wild nuts
4. Wild herbs/flowers
5. Wild berries

There are many more things you can forage, but these were the items I found I needed the most of.

Pro-tip: (discusses a major game mechanic, but nothing story related).

You want all the weeds!

Certain farm upgrades will require LARGE QUANTITIES of soil, and the only means to get soil is via compost. Each compost bin will be able to convert 1 weed into 1 piece of soil per 24 hours. There will be potions/spells that can speed that up or increase the yield (which I strongly recommend you make use of). I recommend building 2-4 compost bins ASAP, and putting weeds in them daily. There is speculation that clearing your farm area of trees and rocks, will increase spawn rates of weeds and other items, but this is unconfirmed. It will however make it much easier to spot weeds quickly.

Making Money

I’ll warn you upfront that Fairport’s economy is a little… wonky. That’s normal for game economies of course, but it’s worth being aware that crafted/cooked items may not fetch a higher price than their ingredients.

You can sell foraged items but I’d personally recommend saving most of them for craft/cooking/magic as their availability is irregular (you’re relying on spawn rates and some items are only available at certain seasons).

You can sell food you’ve cooked and items you’ve crafted, but as I mentioned above, not all items make a profit. A little trial and error may be required to get a feel for what is most profitable.

You can sell the fish you catch. I would recommend holding onto squid until you unlock the mine . But most other fish can be safely sold. While some are rarer than others, none are dependant on time of day or season, so if you discover you need a specific one, it can usually be acquired quickly by fishing or in some cases simply buying them.

You can sell your produce. It will usually fetch a decent price, but produce is frequently requested for quests so I tend to save it for them, or for cooking new dishes.

You can do quests, which will reward you with a variety of items/money/friendship.

You can do message board requests. (Though they may ask for a lot of items that are quite rare at the start).

Options that become available later:

• You can sell gems from the mine, but there will be crafting/magical/quest related uses for them too, so keeping a few is a good idea.
• You can sell animal products. This includes eggs, milk and wool. All of these can be crafted/cooked with too. Though by the time you unlock animals, you’re probably doing ok for money
• You can sell your animals to Kim. It’s decent money, but not great as you’ve spent money feeding them until adulthood.

Shopping Advice

Every shop has ‘levels’ which you unlock by selling items to the shop. The higher the level the greater the range of items available (and it may increase the stock).

I recommend unlocking all shop tiers as quickly as is practical for you, but Kai’s shop should be a priority. He only accepts some quite tricky items so it will take time (at least at first) to unlock higher tiers of his shop, and his stock is so sporadic you’ll want to maximise your chances of getting certain rare items. I found pineapples, followed by avocados were the rarest and it’s a good idea to buy them when you see them.

Fishing Tips

Fishing unlocks really early in the game, but some fishing areas are unavailable till much later.

Fishing areas are:

• The Beach
• The Farm
• The Lake (in the woods)
• The Mountain
• The Mine (fishing spot is in very final level)
• The Gloaming (fishing spot is in second Gloaming area)

Once fishing unlocks, go to an area with potential fishing spots, then look for the fish. When you get close to the little group of fish, you should get a prompt to start fishing.

Fishing does not involve a mini game. You wait until a fish bites, then decide if you want to reel it in. If you don’t, just wait and that fish will get away, and the next fish will bite.

You can’t tell the species in advance, but there are 4 silhouettes of fish that might appear: Small fish, large long fish, large round fish, and lobster. (You can also get ‘message in a bottle’, I recommend taking that as a priority).

For example if you are fishing in the sea and catch a fish with a ‘lobster’ silhouette, then you might catch a lobster, a shrimp, a clam etc… (there are several other ‘lobster’ fish).

I recommend fishing regularly whenever you have some time spare (but try to avoid fishing too late in the evening, you might not get to bed in time). There is an achievement for catching all fish, and that is a lot more doable if you’re fishing regularly while you play the game. There are also quests or cooking dishes that will want specific fish, and of course you can sell fish.

Cooking and Crafting Tips

Cooking and crafting unlock early, but naturally most recipes will be unavailable at the start. Most new crafting buildings and items will be introduced via quests and story events.

Useful Tip:

Many recipes (for both cooking, crafting and magic) will allow ingredient substitutions. So if you have no red mushrooms you might be able to use poppies instead. Just click on the ingredient on the recipe screen and see if it gives you options!

You can use food to replenish your stamina, though I would only do that with dishes that you can make an infinite supply of (so the ingredients can be purchased/grown on your farm). The best food for replenishing stamina however is coffee and can be bought from Sophia . You can give food to villagers to improve their relationship with you (and everyone has a few favourite dishes for an added bonus). You can sell food. And there is an achievement for cooking every recipe in the game.

Recipes are unlocked in a number of ways:

• Buying cookbooks
• Completing quests
• Finding ‘message in a bottle’ while fishing
• From digging up patches of dirt on the mountain. (Funny story, but I actually didn’t realise this at first as when I dug those patches I only found money, so I didn’t bother doing it anymore…)
• From chests in the mine, the means to unlock them becomes available as the story progresses

Relationships / Friendships

This is fairly straightforward, but some of the mechanics can catch newer players out.

Naturally you make friends with people by talking to them regularly, giving them their favourite food (or non favourite food, it just gives less friendship boost) and doing quests for them.

Once a ‘heart’ of friendship is completed, you’ll need to trigger the character’s event to progress to the next level of relationship. However you’ll still gain friendship points even if you haven’t ‘levelled up’ their friendship yet, so they won’t be wasted. Character events may be hard to find as they might only occur on one specific day of the week during very specific hours, maybe in a place you don’t go very often.

Dating is special in that once you’ve raised character’s relationship with you high enough, you’ll get a special ‘dating’ conversation option. Be aware you can only date one person at a time in this game, though you can break up with someone if you really want to. Just ignore them for a week and the ‘break up’ conversation option will become available. There is an achievement for completing (marrying) every romance option.

Animal Tips

It’s probably no spoiler that you’ll eventually unlock the ability to keep animals. You can see the old chicken coop and barn on the farmland from the start. They’re unlocked later in the game though, so just progress through the story till it becomes an option.

First Tip:

Only buy one of each animal. There will be quality of life improvements as you progress, but they take a while to unlock. And trust me, petting, feeding and collecting eggs/milk/wool from 6 chickens, 3 cows and 3 sheep every day becomes… a little repetitive. I had to use magic to freeze time DAILY so I could look after the animals and still have time to do other stuff.

Second Tip:

Stock up on the appropriate animal food. The animal food seller has some really odd work days, so you may go several days without being able to buy more feed. So stock up and keep an eye on how much you have.

Beyond that, just have fun. The animals are cute. Petting them increases their affection for you, which means they may produce extra.

Bees!

Beehives are so useful. Some quests will require honey/beeswax, either directly or as part of a cooking/crafting recipe. Certain spells will use them, and depending on your play-style, you may find you want LOTS of these.

But beehives aren’t 100% intuitive. You will need at least one beehive. Each beehive needs at least 1 patch of flowers, and will receive a boost if you’re growing multiple species of flowers. So a beehive with a patch of snow drops and a patch of tulips, will ‘fill’ twice as fast as if it just had one patch. If you build more beehives, you’ll need to build more flower patches. The more flowers you grow, the faster the beehive will produce. So you’ll need to balance your need for produce with your need for honey/beeswax.

Bees can reach flowers anywhere on your farm. Including inside the greenhouse , so don’t worry about the placement of beehives and flower patches.

Tricky Achievement Tips

Some of the game’s achievements take a LONG time to complete, so having a rough idea what to do to make progress as you go along, can be useful.

Do notice board quests from time to time. Focus on ones that ask for items you have loads of or can easily get more of. There are two achievements for doing notice board quests, but it can take a while to do enough.

Fish regularly. The ‘catch every fish’ achievement is much easier if you do it as you go along.

There is an achievement for crafting all items (this includes potions and spells, as well as farm crafts), and an achievement for cooking all dishes (see the ‘cooking’ section for how to unlock all recipes).

You will need precisely 3 pieces of animal fat (at time of writing). One piece is required for crafting and two pieces for cooking. At time of writing there is only one way to get animal fat: sell your animals to Kim. When I did it, I didn’t get fat from a chicken, this may or may not be a bug, so I recommend selling cows/sheep. If you are like me and cannot bare to betray the trust of your animals, there is a (really convoluted) solution:

• So first complete all other crafting/cooking recipes.
• Then find your save-game folder (see ‘save game location’ in this guide for details).
• Create a back-up of your save (put it somewhere safe).
• Turn off steam cloud saves. To do this go to your steam library, right click on the game, and select ‘properties’ from the drop down menu. Go to ‘General’ then scroll down to ‘steam cloud’, then
• uncheck the box marked ‘keep game saves in steam cloud’.
• Launch the game, go to Kim, sell three large animals. Go to bed. The next day Kim will be outside your house, they will tell you they sold your animals, and here’s your cut of the money. They will also give you some meat, bones and animal fat. Take this animal fat and immediately cook the two recipes that require it (Black Pudding and Skirlie, other recipes you can substitute in other fat types so you don’t need animal fat).
• Your two achievements should drop (if they don’t then either it’s a bug or you didn’t complete ALL other crafts/dishes yet).
• Now go back to your save game location and restore the backup.
• Start game and pretend you never killed your animals. It happened in a different timeline!

Marriage Achievements

So there 7 potential love interests in the game. And you get an achievement for marrying each one. Yes that’s 7 play-throughs to get all those achievements! But there are a few ways you can speed things up.

First you can usually marry someone before the end of spring if you work fast. So marry them, then divorce them, then date the next person etc…

I don’t like that option as I hate breaking up with characters in game. It should also be noted that there will be some story related dialogue from your sweetheart/spouse, which you’ll miss if you take this route.

Another option is to get every love interest’s relationship with you high enough that the ‘date’ option becomes available. Do not take that option yet through. Once you have everyone up that high, make a back-up of your save. Do the first romance (this should take a no more than 2 weeks, should be a lot less assuming you can do the romance cut scenes and quests fast enough, but either way it will take a week to organise a wedding). Marry them. Get that achievement. Cheer. Then restore your back-up and start again with the next love interest. (You could even make a back-up of every romance so you can play from that point onward if you really want to…) This option is fastest (though still takes some time), avoids break-ups (since that other relationship happened in a different timeline, doesn’t count!), but does mean you might miss out on story/quest related dialogue/quests from your spouse.

Honestly at present the relationships aren’t super well developed, so you aren’t missing that much. However the devs are aware that relationships are an area fans would love to see expanded, so there may be lots more content in the future.

Save Game Location

If you need to find and back-up the save game folder, it can be found here:

• C:/user/”username”/appdata/locallow/studio drydock/wylde flowers

The appdata folder is hidden by default. If you don’t know how to make it visible, do a quick internet search for ‘how to unhide appdata folder’ for instructions.