Secrets and Glitches in the Game

Glitches:

Milk the sheep:

This is a neat little trick that will allow you to get milk from your sheep or horse.  Equip the brush and the touch panel gloves.  Then, quickly drag the milker over to the equipment slot and push the y button next to the animal.  If done correctly, it will initiate a milking on a sheep or horse. The same is true for the clippers.  You can sheer your cows or horse. 

Game Freezes:

This is an unfortunate glitch that Natsume failed to fix.  Sometimes when you walk through a door or enter a new area, the game will freeze.  There isn't much you can do except turn off the power and reload your game.  This is an important reason to save and save often. 

House Building Glitch:

If you put stone in your shelf, you will find out that the game has a hard time keeping track of it.  You can buy the second house upgrade this way with only 200 stone when the game says you need 700 stone to build it. 

The Billion Dollar Glitch:

I have received several emails about this glitch. The glitch is that when you go to sleep at night and wake up the next morning your money will be set to 1 billion g. I have not managed to trigger it myself yet, but it seems that you need to hire the fishing team during the winter or the harvest team during some other time during the year. Occasionally, this will trigger accidentally.

Barns are all messed up:

Sometimes in the game you will find that your barns will mess up and look like a bunch of lines. This is cause by a damage glitch in the game during the winter. It will sometime happen if you have a fodder or wooden barn during the winter and it gets damaged by the snow. The game will correct itself if you walk in and out of any normal building or if you walk out the bottom entrance of your farm.

Save file becomes useless:

Sometimes the game will not let you load a file from the one of the save files. This is probably caused by a data read error due to moving objects while you are saving. The best solution here is to save both files of your game a few minutes apart and to save and save often. You can also avoid this by making sure nothing is moving on the screen when you save the game.

Secrets:

The RPG battle Mini Game:

Examine your doghouse at 4:44 in the morning and you will activate a short minigame where you fight the girls from harvest moon.  It works a lot like an RPG battle system.  You will get a title if you can defeat all of them. You can ship it for one gold.

The 3 Bears Game:

If you enter the Witch Princess's hut at exactly midnight she will greet you and warp you to a mini game where you try to follow the movements of three bears in front of her. The game is like the old shell and pea game.

The girl memory game:

This game is opened by touching the record holder in your house at exactly 6:01 am. You need to run out and back into the house very quickly in the morning to trigger this game. The time ring and the clock can be helpful when trying to play this game. You will be shown a screen containing 15 images of the girls from the game facing random directions in rows for a few seconds. Then, the game will ask you random questions involving how many girls were facing a certain direction or how many were a particular girls. If you get it right several times in a row you will win a prize.

High low Harvest Goddess Game:

This is the same as the new years game in mineral town. You can play this game once for every 10 gifts you give to the harvest goddess. Each 10th item you throw into the spring will trigger the game. The goddess will pick a number between 0 and 9. Then she will ask you whether the next number she will choose will be higher or lower. If you guess correctly you will continue playing if not the game ends. If you get several in a row she will give you a prize ranging from colored grass to some really nice stuff for 50 or more wins in a row.

Gifts from the Witch Princess:

If you litter 10, 100, or 1000 times, she will give you a small gift that you can store in your ruck sack.  Carrying it around will slowly lower the rating for your farm so get rid of it quickly. 

Littering and Fishing:

If you litter in the game or throw things in the water, it will cause you to catch fewer fish for a few days and increase the amount of garbage you will catch. 

Bye-bye Ball:

If you give your ball away to someone as a gift or throw it in the water.  You will find that the mayor will return it to you in a few game days. 

Buy the Island from Thomas:

Have you ever noticed the little island on the map in the instruction manual. You can buy it from Thomas later in the game for 900,000,000 g. You need to have more than that amount on you during the first day of a season in the morning. If you do, Thomas will show up and offer to sell you the island. It is rather expensive for what you supposedly get out of it. I haven't bought it yet, but I got an email about it. Supposedly, Gotz will build you a vacation house on it for an expensive fee. You get to it by taking the boat on the beach. I think there are also several new types of fish to catch on it. More to come on this event.