Done with Ginger Island

[Miretar]

After collecting a bunch of walnuts and having yet another parrot scream at me for 20 more walnuts I’m done with the island. Here’s why:

1. Considering the valuable resources I gave Willy to repair the boat, it really annoys me to be charged 1000 gold per trip.
2. Access to the island is only available during certain hours of the day. After 7 annoying trips into the volcano I got 4 walnuts and no dragons’ teeth So the obelisk is unavailable. Yes I unlocked the farm, but I would still need to travel back & forth daily, to take care of the cat and tend my fish ponds.
3. Traveling around the island is slow, even with the special transport. Given that my character runs around with a permanent speed boost, that’s saying something. I find the island’s the layout annoying. The jungle mazes, what’s the point? Does this make it a better game?
4. I really find the requirements to gather walnuts to access sections of the island annoying. It seems a bit too much like performance art. I didn’t enjoy one moment of the hunt.
5. I don’t enjoy the volcano. This is coming from someone whose character died 5 times in an hour and a half on guild night in Ultima Online. The rewards were terrible btw. I want a better overall weapon, and not one that’s better against certain monsters. I can live without one if it means never setting foot on the island.
6. I plant crops only in my greenhouse. my primary sources of income are lava eel ponds and 400 crystallariums.
7. So I don’t farm, and I don’t do animal husbandry. So I don’t need new crops or animals. Though the greenhouse is now full of pineapples as an experiment, I made a lot of money with strawberries. The auto petter arrived to late for me. I sold my 12 pigs and installed another big shed filled with crystallariums and watched my profits soar. With over 37 million gold in the bank and all the iridium I need the island has zero attraction.
8. New deco In the game? Well full disclosure. I play Ultima Online, which has unmatched opportunities for creative decorating so the new stuff doesn’t interest me.
9. I got annoyed with the gathering part of the special orders so I gave up on those.

What do I regret? Three things. All the time I wasted chasing the walnuts and the fact that I stupidly planted my lone banana tree and first pineapple seeds on the island Instead of my greenhouse. The pineapples took a lot longer than 10 days to mature on the island btw (not so in the greenhouse). All of the annoying bugs that accompanied the expansion.

Finally, Stardew Valley is my character’s home. If not for the walnuts, I might have given the island more of a chance, but as it stands I’m not going back.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

1. You haven’t payed for free trips, you repaired the boat for Willy so that you have the privilege of traveling and him opening early to allow you better hours is being courteous. You paying him 1000g is compensation for him staying the whole day or longer at ginger island when he could be manning his store. 1000g isn’t even that much, that’s like 4 cauliflower buy price, without markups Pierre probably puts on them. I’d expect the price to be 5000g

2. You don’t need to tend your fish ponds and definitely not your cat, those are your responsibilities and your choice to upkeep, Willy is giving you a good in the form of pretty much free transport and has better hours too. You choose to take care of stuff on the mainland, you aren’t obligated to, nearly nothing in this game is time gated and nothing on the farm.

3. Have you ever been to an uninhabited island before? The place is going to be an utter maze. The whole island is a puzzle, parrots give you clues, the wiki has any resource a casual player would need. The island even gives you faster travel in the form of a buyable good, the horse flute. It doesn’t take that long to travel around either, buffed up it takes less than two hours to travel from anywhere to anywhere on the island, excluding places like a certain floor in the volcano.

4. It’s the whole point of a puzzle, the whole point of the island really is just to be a puzzle. Why have parts of the island if they don’t give you walnuts in some way? That’s basically all the island serves the player at its core. You don’t have to go to the island either, no one is making you, play 1.4 or just pretend it doesn’t exist, you aren’t in any way obligated to play it.

5. What? They literally give you better weapons, forges, enchants, to make your weapon better, hell, they even give you multiple sets of better weapons.

“I can live without one if it means never setting foot on the island.” Then do that? No one is making you go, if you don’t want a large part of the island in favour of not going to the island then… don’t go to the island, two birds one stone.

6. So? You don’t have to use the island for money, you don’t plant crops outside on the mainland so you obviously decorate or don’t do anything, so either decorate or don’t do anything with the island…

It’s just a bigger greenhouse anyway that takes proportionately longer to get to early on, use it, don’t use it, your game.

7. Again, again, why are you going then? Just don’t go? You obviously don’t want a weapon, you make enough cash, you don’t want to make more cash, you don’t farm, are happy as you are…
That’s it, literally it, why go to the island? You obviously don’t want nor need to in your eyes and are only going for the purpose of having a better reason to make this post to complain about one of many free updates and bug fixes on a dirt cheap game over the last seven years?

8. Whoopy doo you play another game, why not play that then? Not good at it either?

If you don’t care to decorate, don’t, same with anything else in this game, play to your liking, don’t play if it doesn’t appeal to you or you aren’t having fun, go play another game. Many people have decorated in beautiful ways in this game, there are many options and even if the options were limited - which by no means are they - people would and did still find ways to decorate in insane ways. If it isn’t your thing, don’t. do. it. Really that simple, find your niche and do that, if you can’t and can only focus on the things you don’t like? Don’t play, save yourself and others the hassle.

9. Ok, the game has options, don’t do them if you don’t want. No one’s holding you to finishing anything, least of all stuff you don’t want to do, the only one making you do something you don’t want is you.

Really seems like stuff you messed up, pineapples will grow at the same rate, the greenhouse isn’t some wonder land for crop growing. You’re wrong about growth time too, pineapples take 14 days to grow so you probably have speed-gro in the greenhouse and didn’t bother to read the pineapple seed tooltip before writing this complaint.

To sum it all up in the simplest manner, play what you like about the game, in a game about options, use them. Do what you want, don’t do what you don’t want, enjoy the parts you do like instead of focusing on the parts you don’t. And if you can’t find a way to enjoy the game, don’t play it, save everyone a break.

 

[PoppyForPenny]

I haven't made it to Ginger Island yet. Despite being so excited for the mobile update, I've been a little nervous about what it's going to be like. I'm worried it might not have the same feel as the rest of the game, that the puzzles will be too hard, or that maintaining both farms will be overwhelming.
What I am still excited about, is so much left to do! Usually after the community center, skull cavern level 100, magic ink and movie theater, grandpa's evaluation and trash bear, I don't feel like I have much left. Sometimes I stick around to max all friendships. But I've usually felt done around year 3. But now that will only be the mid point!
Someday I will play a farm to completion! And someday I will play a ten year farm!
I'm so sorry you don't like ginger island. I really hope I will like it, since I've been looking forward to it so much.

 

[Lenora Rose]

GI came out for PC right when I was hitting year 3-4 on my very first farm, had completed the community centre and was starting to wonder what to do next. I did enjoy suddenly having whole new things to do, and I liked the puzzles (not so much the mermaid one) and Leo. It's not my favourite thing but I also felt I had reasons to visit.

I am NOT saying this to imply other people have to like it; there are other good folks here who like other parts of the game more than I do. Miratar can decide this new content is "meh" and move on.

I'm saying it to reassure folks like PoppyForPenny.

I think one difference, of course, is the wait. I got into GI as a sudden total surprise, not having been on any forums or expecting it to show up. Try not to carry too much knowledge in with you, or build it up too big in your mind; it's new, that's all.

 

[nicodeux]

I think we all agree with that Miretar is free to play and enjoy the game the way he wants to play it. I'm nonetheless sorry to read that Ginger Island does not fit in his gameplay nor does it bring fun to him.

The good news for everyone is that update 1.5 does not drastically change Stardew Valley gameplay: it adds over it. Aside from a few minor changes, it is very easy to pretend that update 1.5 is not there: simply ignore Special Orders board and don't go in Willy's Shop backroom. The game will basically remains the same as it was in patch 1.4.

I'd like to reassure @PoppyForPenny about Ginger Island: the place can seem harsh at first, but the more you make progress, the easier it gets. I don't know if you played "Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening" but I've found Ginger Island to be alot like Coconut Island: same tropical naming, same mechanics of unlocking subzones one by one through quests or item gathering, same mechanics of puzzle here and there (including a mermaid puzzle)... And so on. The island is different from what you can find in Stardew Valley mainland, it brings new gameplay elements (on top of new items, NPCs and recipes). This is the reason some dislike it: it could feel "unstardew" to some. For me, it is different from the mainland, but not more that some places like the Casino for example. And overall, Ginger Island is well crafted in my opinion. There were things on Ginger Island that I disliked as first that I now accept as normal or even appreciate. It was the same with update 1.4 where I believe the Fish Pond to be a completely useless building. Now, it is a must have on most my farms and I even have a farmer that makes most of his income with Fish Ponds.

Maintaining two farms is not too difficult because the farm on Ginger Island is basically a giant greenhouse: no crows (so no scarecrows), you can plant crops or fruit trees that will produce all year round, you don't have to care about animals nor pets, nobody comes to visit you... So it's quite easy to get a setup that requires minimum workload for high profits. Like in the greenhouse, you can't construct buildings (so no Junimo's Hut) but unlike the original greenhouse, you can set bee houses (fairy roses, here I come).

In the long run, if you don't really like Ginger Island, you can still fetch whatever items/recipes/enchantments you like from it and then completely ignore the island! So, don't be afraid to let Ginger Island grow on you.


One side note about the fee that Willy charge us for the boat ride. I think this is really similar to the ticket for the bus ride to Calico desert. The same way the farmer had to give a bunch of valuable money to get access to the bus, he has to give a bunch of valuable materials to get access to the boat. Both bus and boat require a fee for each ride (and we can imagine in-game reasons for that), the bus being cheaper than the boat because it is available earlier in the game. Both bus and boat are not available all the time, but the boat has a bigger availability range (2 more hours than the bus). Finally, both bus and boat usage can be discarded once the related obelisks are built.
For me, the only significant difference between the bus and the boat is that the Island Obelisk takes more time to get than the Desert Obelisk. Two reasons for that: even if you are lucky and get a banana sapling on the first day on Ginger Island, it still takes 1 full season and 10 days to get the required amount of bananas. Secondly, the dragon teeth are not easy to find in the volcano: it sometimes takes several days to get a single one. These make the raw materials for Island Obelisk harder to get than their counterparts for the Desert Obelisk.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

I think we all agree with that Miretar is free to play and enjoy the game the way he wants to play it. I'm nonetheless sorry to read that Ginger Island does not fit in his gameplay nor does it bring fun to him.

The good news for everyone is that update 1.5 does not drastically change Stardew Valley gameplay: it adds over it. Aside from a few minor changes, it is very easy to pretend that update 1.5 is not there: simply ignore Special Orders board and don't go in Willy's Shop backroom. The game will basically remains the same as it was in patch 1.4.

I'd like to reassure @PoppyForPenny about Ginger Island: the place can seem harsh at first, but the more you make progress, the easier it gets. I don't know if you played "Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening" but I've found Ginger Island to be alot like Coconut Island: same tropical naming, same mechanics of unlocking subzones one by one through quests or item gathering, same mechanics of puzzle here and there (including a mermaid puzzle)... And so on. The island is different from what you can find in Stardew Valley mainland, it brings new gameplay elements (on top of new items, NPCs and recipes). This is the reason some dislike it: it could feel "unstardew" to some. For me, it is different from the mainland, but not more that some places like the Casino for example. And overall, Ginger Island is well crafted in my opinion. There were things on Ginger Island that I disliked as first that I now accept as normal or even appreciate. It was the same with update 1.4 where I believe the Fish Pond to be a completely useless building. Now, it is a must have on most my farms and I even have a farmer that makes most of his income with Fish Ponds.

Maintaining two farms is not too difficult because the farm on Ginger Island is basically a giant greenhouse: no crows (so no scarecrows), you can plant crops or fruit trees that will produce all year round, you don't have to care about animals nor pets, nobody comes to visit you... So it's quite easy to get a setup that requires minimum workload for high profits. Like in the greenhouse, you can't construct buildings (so no Junimo's Hut) but unlike the original greenhouse, you can set bee houses (fairy roses, here I come).

In the long run, if you don't really like Ginger Island, you can still fetch whatever items/recipes/enchantments you like from it and then completely ignore the island! So, don't be afraid to let Ginger Island grow on you.


One side note about the fee that Willy charge us for the boat ride. I think this is really similar to the ticket for the bus ride to Calico desert. The same way the farmer had to give a bunch of valuable money to get access to the bus, he has to give a bunch of valuable materials to get access to the boat. Both bus and boat require a fee for each ride (and we can imagine in-game reasons for that), the bus being cheaper than the boat because it is available earlier in the game. Both bus and boat are not available all the time, but the boat has a bigger availability range (2 more hours than the bus). Finally, both bus and boat usage can be discarded once the related obelisks are built.
For me, the only significant difference between the bus and the boat is that the Island Obelisk takes more time to get than the Desert Obelisk. Two reasons for that: even if you are lucky and get a banana sapling on the first day on Ginger Island, it still takes 1 full season and 10 days to get the required amount of bananas. Secondly, the dragon teeth are not easy to find in the volcano: it sometimes takes several days to get a single one. These make the raw materials for Island Obelisk harder to get than their counterparts for the Desert Obelisk.

You can use ponds to speed up getting the obelisk, get a half dozen of them leading up to and then just replace whatever fish you had in there previously.

It might to be the most fruitful but could pan out in your favour.

 

[Quirinea]

One thing I always do before I get the Island obelisk, and usually even after: I leave for GI one day, sleep over there, come back next day, back to island on third... (must admit I cheat by using timespeed which changes the game rhythm quite a lot. And on every new run I swear to myself that I do not stop time and -- ahem...
(alas, I cannot play SDV at the moment. Or I can, but picking up the old -puter with its faulty keyboard takes out most fun...

 

[Elenna101]

Before getting the island obelisk, if you find 100 golden walnuts, open up Qi's room, and do some of his quests, you can get the Key to the Town which lets you enter town buildings (including Willy's shop) at any time of day. Unlike the bus, Willy doesn't actually have to be there to take the boat, so this basically means there's no time limits on taking the boat.
(Also, if you hoe up artifacts spots on the island, you can get warp totems every so often.)