Now that Fields Of Mistria is officially out of Early Access, it’s probably the best possible time to start playing. If you’re new to the game, it’s essentially a magical Stardew Valley with plenty of unique characters to meet, fun activities to complete, and lore to uncover alongside farming, fishing, and foraging. Not everything is explained in-game, though, and some time-saving hacks or money-making measures can be good to know when you’re first starting out. We’ve compiled a few tips and tricks to get you started in Fields Of Mistria, but you can also boost your chances of social success by checking out our Fields Of Mistria gift guide.
This guide will help you make the most of your time in Mistria.
Starting Out
Free energy
Your Stamina bar will be fairly short when you start playing, and after knocking down a few trees and smashing a few rocks, you’ll find yourself ready to hit the hay. Fortunately, even when money is tight, there are a number of places around Mistria where you can get free energy boosts to help you squeeze more into your day. Check out the drinking fountains–on the Eastern Road, The Narrows and The Beach–the free daily soup at the Sleeping Dragon Inn, and take advantage of Juniper’s offer of three free baths at the Bathhouse.
Recipes Through The Mail
When you’re growing crops it can be tempting to stockpile, gift them to new friends, or experiment with cooking–all of which is an excellent use of your time, but you might miss out on one of Fields Of Mistria’s easiest knowledge bases. By shipping one of every crop and edible foragable, you’ll soon get a letter in the mail from someone in the town with a recipe attached featuring that item.
The best order for new edibles is probably: first one to the Museum, second one in the shipping box, then the rest are yours to do with as you please. If you need a bit of help getting started with crops, check out our guide to crops in Fields Of Mistria.
Shipping produce is a great way to get recipes in the early game.
Label Chests
It’s something many players will spend several in-game years playing without, before realising and kicking themselves, but you can label chests in Fields Of Mistria without the need to craft or learn any recipes. In fact, every Chest comes with its own labelling facility. Just play around with the buttons at the top of the Chest interface, the first one will let you add a picture to categorize what’s inside.
Time-Saving Hacks
Lost And Found
If you’re constantly having to run back to the farm to empty your pockets, this tip might save you some precious time. Fields Of Mistria is a little more laid back than many of its contemporaries, and things don’t tend to decay, whether it’s quests, crops, or foraged goods. If you don’t mind a bit of temporary litter, it’s good to know that once picked, fished, or dug up, items will stay floating until you go and collect them. So you can run around picking everything even with full pockets, then go back the next day to pick them up–you might even get to pick up double if the item has respawned.
Later on in the game you’ll even unlock a “lost and found” box, which collects all your dropped items and deposits them in one place every Monday morning.
Storage is limited, so label your chests and leave things out to collect later.
Keep one of each item for later
Although as we said earlier that you should ship and then send to the Museum, if you’re able to keep one of each item in a chest as well it’ll save you a lot of time later on. Throughout the Mines you’ll reach checkpoints where you’ll need to collect a selection of items from the previous biome, quests will pop up on the board requiring items that may have belonged to the last season, and you might find yourself needing huge amounts of wood all of a sudden. So the more you can stockpile items, the better, if you don’t want to rely on RNG when the time comes.
Combat
Tools In The Mines
Another secret hidden in plain sight in the mines, but did you know you can use your tools to make combat easier? Down in the Lava Caves, you can use your watering can to traverse the boiling lava, but you can also use it on lava-type enemies to cool them off and give you time to mount a better attack. The Summon Rain spell can also come in handy down here, as it will render all of the lava completely harmless, turning it into walkways instead.
When you’re in the Crystal Caves, you can use your bug catching net to harvest Clod Bombs from the Clod Enemies (the ones that shoot silver at you). These can be thrown back at any enemy or saved up for a particularly difficult room. Don’t try and gift them though, as pretty much everyone dislikes being handed a bomb.
Don’t neglect your Mining and Combat skills.
Caldarus In The Mines
The Caldarus Shrine in the Mines gives you different perks to the one in your farm. To those who know, this might seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many people miss this entirely and think the two shrines carry the same perks. The one in the Mines offers perks related specifically to Mining and Combat skills, so don’t sleep on them when you’re trying to muscle your way down to level 100.
Settings
Disable Perks
On the subject of perks, you can disable any perks you feel are hampering your progress. If you’re looking for specific fish, for example, you might want to disable some of the perks that expand the available selection of fish so you can narrow down your search. You won’t need to use Essence to unlock them again, you can simply toggle them on and off once they’ve been unlocked. If you’re looking for more tips that could help with fishing, check out our Fields Of Mistria fishing guide.
Slowing down your game gives you more time to enjoy things like dates and festivals.
Slow Things Down
If you find your days are running away from you and you’re not getting everything done, you’re not alone. Fields Of Mistria is packed with things to do, items to collect, Mines to dive, people to win over, and quests to complete, so sometimes you need to buy yourself some extra time. In the settings, you can extend the day and slow down the speed of time passing–and can quickly shorten it again if you change your mind.
You can also turn off the oversleep penalty when you stay up past your bedtime. So if you’re regularly burning the midnight oil, this might help you mitigate some of the next-day issues that come with forgetting to sleep on time.
