You might not expect mining to play much of a role in a game where you live on a farm, but mining in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town is the single source for metals you have, and metals are needed for all tool upgrades. From copper for tier 2 tools onward, you’ll need to acquire at least a small stockpile of the various ores.
If you’re looking at it from purely a tool making viewpoint, you can get away with a single long trip down the mine to get what you’ll need to get your tools to tier 5. Mining itself can be quite a profitable endeavour though, so it’s worth getting good at it, particularly in winter when crops won’t grow. That said, to get all the upgrade supplies in one journey will take planning and a large stockpile of food.
To get started with mining in Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town, make sure you have a hammer and a hoe in your tool pocket and head over to the Spring Mine. The entrance is located just above the Hot Spring and this is very good for replenishing your stamina, but more on that later.
Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town Mines
Enter the mine and you will find yourself inside a small cave with rocks scattered across the floor. Like other buildings, time does not pass while you’re inside so you can take your time and treat mining as the most casual mini-game in Mineral Town. Using your hammer, smash the rocks to reveal their contents. Most contain nothing at all, and others scrap ore that is virtually worthless but clutters up your bag regardless, and speaking of… you’ll want at least a Basic Bag to double up your inventory space (though a Big Bag is best).
In this first floor, you’ll only find copper ore but that will likely provide enough to upgrade your tools to level 2 if that’s all you’re currently after. To go deeper you’ll need to use your hoe to till the ground until you reveal a ladder leading down. While searching you might also stumble on treasure coins, consumable grasses to relieve exhaustion, and more interesting loot deep down.
Sometimes the ladder appears very quickly and other times you will be searching a long time. A good rule of thumb is that the ladder will not appear in the squares around the ladder you came down from, and shouldn’t be along the very edge of the cave. They can however be under rocks which makes quickly jumping to lower floors challenging.
As you descend further down you will notice that you don’t have enough stamina to keep going for very long. If you’re just looking for a few coins this is fine, simply exit the mine and soak in the Hot Spring until replenished. When you re-enter the mine you will appear in a reset first floor and begin again. With the time pausing while inside, you can get a fair number of trips done in a day and it’s easy coin if you need a little extra to buy something specific quickly.
Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town Stamina and Food
If you want to reach mithril (around floor 9) you’ll need to take lots of food down with you. An easy food to get for this would be grapes, and if you can afford a few additional grape trees from the workshop, they’re worth buying. Hoarding them for a few weeks should give you enough as grapes restore 10 points of stamina each, so a few stacks can really extend your excavation.
If you’re looking for deep mining, you will need a better food, and for that you need to have the kitchen upgrade. Once that’s done and you have the recipe (gained through watching TV) you can make Curry Udon for a total of 100 coin per meal, with each meal restoring 60 stamina. This will also require buying the utensils along with the ingredients.
Don’t be afraid of passing out from exhaustion either. It may be messy, but if you’re already worn out, a night’s sleep won’t see you fully recovered and you’ll do better to work yourself into unconsciousness, where you’ll awaken the next day in the clinic, back to your old self, with an inventory full of those shiny ores.
Other Stuff
If you throw items into the river by the mine you’ll attract the Harvest Goddess (she likes harvested plants the best). She also grants rewards at certain milestones which can be very useful, especially for mining. You can only give her one gift a day but if you manage to reach 100, she unlocks an elevator letting you go straight to a deeper point without having to keep starting from floor 1. It’ll take a while to get there, but if you are looking to make a career out of mining, you’ll definitely want this as the mines go to 255 deep.
One final note, you might have noticed that you can’t reach the Lake Mine yet, and that’s because you have to wait for the lake to freeze over in winter. The Lake Mine contains profitable gems instead of ores which can also be made into jewellery to sell or give away.
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