Tips for a new player?

Tap a couple oak trees as soon as you can and hold onto the oak resin. You’ll need a lot in the not so distant future.

Hoe the little wiggly worms you can sometimes find in the ground.

Watch tv every day, you get good tips and often learn cooking recipes. Though you can’t use the recipes until you upgrade your house later in the game.

Fishing can give a lot of money!

Use your sickle to cut the little bushes for a chance to get seeds to plant (free money)!

Enjoy the game! I have too many hours in this game. Playing it for the first time again would be such a joy!

ETA: Also go to the south and collect the spring onions to eat for energy before salmon berry season hits. Then go salmon berry hunting each possible day for a basically endless energy supply.

There is no time limit to the game. Relax and have fun in your own way

That, and everybody seems to have summed things up well lol

There's no "wrong" way to play.

Look up help and tips. Or don't.

Focus on farming. Or don't.

Make friends in the community. Or don't.

It's one of the few games I've played where I haven't felt pressure to win, just to have fun. I've definitely done some things in ignorance that have delayed progress, but I've enjoyed the playtime so I don't consider it a waste. Do the things you like, find ways around the rest, and have fun.

Random list of things new players are sometimes confused about:

• Restoring the community center and buying the Joja membership is mutually exclusive. If you want to experience both, you need two save files. You can start with the community center bundles and later decide to go with Joja, but not the other way around.
• After you unlock the community center, there will be a little tree icon added to the inventory view. You can click (or tap? whatever controller users call that) it for looking at the bundles without having to walk to the community center building in town. The icon pulsates when you hover over an item in your inventory or a chest that is needed for the bundles.
• Speaking of chests, craft chests to store things. You can store extra crops, fish etc. in case you need them later, and you don't have to carry all your tools around all day. You can put chests anywhere on the map, but be vary of villagers' walking paths and the resetting mine floors (top floor of the mine is fine, though).
• You can buy backpack upgrades from Pierre. After you do, you get an additional row of inventory space. You can switch your toolbar to the next row with (*looks up control scheme*) L1/R1 on a PS4 controller or the tab key on a keyboard.
• Crops die at the end of the season. If you plant something on Spring 20th that takes 8 days to grow, fine, you get your last harvest on Spring 28th. If you plant the same crop later, you will only find a dead crop on Summer 1st. There are multi-season crops that last for the two or three seasons that they can be planted in, but even those die in winter.
• Farm animals usually feed on the grass on your farm. But they don't go outside in winter or on rainy days. So you need to feed them. Robin can build a silo that stores the grass that you cut with a scythe as hay for your animals. Then, you have to manually get the hay out of the dispenser in the coop/barn and place it in the feeder (except after you upgraded your coop/barn twice, then it's automated). Alternatively, you can buy hay at Marnie's.

There's practically* nothing in this game that is missable. No matter what it is, if you're late, you can just get it later, one way or another.

*Singular, micro-lore exception, is the 3-friendship heart event of Sam. If you live in fear-of-missing-out like I do, get 3 hearts with him before winter of year 1 (plenty of time, no rush), and then go to the beach on a sunny day, for a little view of family time. Absolutely nothing lost if you don't.

But if you do that, you can feel absolute comfort that there is nothing you can miss any more in this game 😄

A lot has been said and it's absolutely true. Just take your time. Even if the games starts to feel like you should rush you don't have to, there is no time limit.

Just 2 things I want to add:

• if the fishing mini game feels to hard, go to Willy (the fishing shop where you get your first fishing rod) and buy the training rod, it costs 25G and makes the first steps so much easier. Just remember to throw it away after the first 3 or so fishing levels, cause you can only catch the basic fish with it no matter your skill level.

• Use the wiki: even though the last updates made it easier to figure stuff like loved presents for each NPC, it's still a pain in the a**. And after so many updates (or more free add ons), there is a lot of stuff you can do and sometimes have to know otherwise it can be frustrating.

I personally recommend going with the flow and enjoy first of all. Once you start on the community building do a bunch until you want to stop playing and then look at guides.

Lovely game.

Don’t hesitate to consult the wiki, if you are feeling frustrated.

Also, take time to soak in the atmosphere of the game, which is literally the best thing about this game.

Also build a silo as soon as possible.

Play suboptimally, you'll have way more fun that way.

The fishing minigame will probably feel really hard at first but it's fun and easy once you get a feel for it.

Just do whatever. You might stumble a bit for the first few days, but you'll have an idea what you want to do soon enough.