In game events should not be tied to IRL dates.

[Knight Marius]

I feel like I am late to the party, and that makes me sad.
In all seriousness this topic is probably already been talked about but I would be grateful to have some comments, suggestions and feedback on this issue.
Stardew Valley has a good system and there are still a bunch of interesting toys to play with in the game already. But the idea of In game events tied to the specific dates on the Real world calendar just doesn't make sense to me.
The in game time passes so much faster and having those events be tied to the GAME calendar makes a lot more sense. Hopefully this is the system the developers want in the 1.0 release, it would work far better in my opinion.
Secondly there are a bunch of articles that are stubs in the wiki and finding stuff out requires some digging.
Like how do you get Ornamental axes and shield?

If anyone answers my question, Thank you and have a good day. :D

[GreyBeard512]

One in-game year in four 28-day months or seasons. This means Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas all occur in 28 in-game days. So Halloween would need to be about 5 in-game days long, and Christmas maybe 10 in-game days.

That is not long enough to complete the event quests.

That is barely long enough to swap out decorations if you are trying to do that. (I don't, I leave both Halloween and Christmas decorations up all year for the additional decor bonuses.)

I have not had problems with this, but I suppose it would help with the issue of holiday recipes requiring ingredients that are not in season.

Tying the holidays to in-game dates also means the game will be in a holiday season while the players are not, and the game will not be in a holiday season while the players are. Or the game could be in Christmas mode while the player is celebrating Halloween irl.

This isn't that big of a deal for me, and if they switch to in game seasons, I'll be fine. But my preference would be the current set up.


The old lady in town (next to the butcher) sells ornamental axes and shield.s and similar items I don't know if you can craft them yourself, but if you can you can buy the recipe inside at the blacksmith''s in town. If you haven't yet done so, you should visit the blacksmith and the sawmill and look at what recipes they have for sale.

[Sweetbettybee]

I agree with you. I miss most all of the holiday events because ironically I have less time during those holidays to sit down and play. Tying them to IRL dates makes them inaccessible to experience as part of the game. I'm sure I'm not the only one who doesn't have time to game over holidays.

[Doc Savage]

I'd prefer we have one holiday per month. Well not one really, but have two or three or ten to choose from.

For fall you could have a generic harvest festival or Halloween or Thanksgiving, but you pick one, and they would always be the 3rd week of the month.

You would get bored of the same holidays every month, so like this you have different things to do and get and decorate depending on your mood, beliefs, whatever.

Winter Solstice, Christmas, Hanuka, Festival of Lights, Oh Tannenbaum, whatever. Just pick one for the month and next month do something else.

From there you can drag people from town in and tick off a few others who have attitude about "that" holiday.

What role playing fun.

Cheers..!

[dr.desastro]

I think the main problem is, that the OP does not like to wait another year IRL to play the halloween events. Thus tied to the game calendar is the better option in my book. The only thing bad here is that we only have a month per season instead of correctly: three. Having a full calendar would give raise to more celebrations and events/quests like easter, harvest feast, new year. And holidays can also mean special customers.

[Doc Savage]

The seasons go by so fast there isn't really time for a 3 holidays in a month thing.

Think of how many times you would have a holiday. Be like every couple hours...

I'd much rather have one Holiday a "month", 3rd week, just have different themes to choose. (...and the months should be 30 days, but that would make a calendar that would need some embellishing as the days wouldn't line up nice...)

That same three hours now has all three holidays as I can have Halloween, then next year I can do Thanksgiving and the next I can do a Harvest Festival. I can mess with decorations for each, so everything will see the light of day eventually...

And think if we had a stable Tavern we could decorate for a holiday and save that set up so the next time we could just check the box and all that Holiday would be set up for you in the AM when you awoke.

It won't happen. But it's fun to think about...

I mean, this could really could be a thing for modding.

Can you imagine a player in some part of the world being able to mod in a complete 3rd week holiday for their own nationality or religion or taste or lack there of...??

SO much potential.

Cheers..!

[willow_vamp]

I wouldn’t want the events to be tied to in game time. Because the year is so short, you'd have Halloween and Christmas way too often, to the point where it gets boring. Like, in Stardew where I just stopped bothering with events after the first few times,

What I think the devs should do is to give us more time to experience the events. Halloween should be available for the whole of October and maybe half of November too. Christmas should last from 1, December to mid January. That way players who don't have time during real live holidays could experience the events either before or afterwards.

[Doc Savage]

You could have *any* holiday though. Have Christmas once a real year if you want to. Have it any time in any third week you want to, so Christmas in July could be a thing. Have anything else the rest of the time. The only limit is some code, some text files and the decorations needed.

And what of those that want to celebrate other things..? Someone I know celebrates the Solstice, what would she do..? It's not on the same day and has nothing to do with bows and trees and wreaths.

Maybe we can follow WalMeh't and start Christmas the day after Halloween. Although that would mean the day after Christmas all your decorations are half off and what doesn't sell in 2 days disappears.

IIRC it is on the road map to have in game celebrations. I just hope they do a better job than with the cooking changes, as I agree with the above assessment that this does have quite the potential to turn boring very quickly...

If they can't make it so there's a bit of variety in the celebrations, I too will likely just let them pass eventually. The big thing for me would be the ability to snap shot the decorations and then recall them to be installed overnight so I don't have to place everything every time.

Someday we find out.

Cheers..!

[randal_thor69]

Don't forget that you can change your computers date to the event dates and play the game to get the events.

[Knight Marius]

My issue is that even changing the dates and times on my PC, which does bring in the Christmas themed content, that said content is unfinished and the NPC snowman is missing hence I cannot do the quests that allow me to get the Christmas themed decorations, this is what I find annoying.
I've no idea what the developers plan to do this year, but I think it's very unfair to make an in game event that is only tied to IRL dates. Stardew valley does do it correct. Yes you might ignore the Events after you've done them once or twice, but I've missed Halloween and Christmas 2 years in a row so it seams because I've never owner the game until now. I like it a lot and want to buy some Christmas decor, at least enough for one room, but I'm unable to. This is sort of like seeing an advert for something you want but the company doesn't want to sell it to you because it's limited edition or something :(

[SpectralHauntings]

See I feel like the best fix for this would just be doing what tons of other games do with irl timed events. Put an option to force the event so that players can play it when they want if that's what they want. Ark does this so does core keeper and apico just to name a few games off the top of my head. All it'd need is a simple toggle in settings or smth that says "enable halloween/christmas content" simple enough.

[Lanosa]

Well, if you can fit IRL festivities from a 365 days-year into a 120 days-year, good luck.

Also, years start 21st march and ends 20th march (IRL)

[hoerv]

I would also prefer an ingame event calendar. For me it's not really the FOMA OP mentioned, it's more the state of the development. I got the game in 2020 - a lot of updates, started over a few times to experience the updates as intended. It's also not my only game to play so chances are low that I'm playing it at the time where an IRL-connected event is happening ingame.

I don't see an issue to have a spooky event in autum and xmas-y one in winter.

(and it's a fantasy world - the devs don't have to stick to rl events at all)

[hyper_goob]

This isn't really a problem for me as I've been gaming for thirty years, i'm quite accustomed to some games having special modes IRL. Minecraft, Star Trek Online, Terrarira, Satisfactory to name but a few. but i do agree it's disappointing when you miss them as i would have to log into several games and play them in order to get all the things and that's only if they don't change them every year.
I just see it as an incentive to dip your toes into it again after a while not playing them. currently waiting for Satisfactory to enter Christmas mode again as they don't carry over from saves. So that is something that i dream about, a check and balance in games that check to see if you've unlocked special content in prior saves/profiles so i don't have to wait IRL for seasonal events and holidays in new playthroughs.

for all my gripes i prefer it IRL. it keeps you coming back to play. which is nice if there have been updates since you last played.

[Caerbannog]

I agree in game events shouldn't be tied to IRL dates. even though i've had the game for a awhile, i never seem to be playing the same time the IRL events occur. why not just make those seasonal events the whole in-game month? that way you can complete at your leisure and don't have to feel rushed.

I mean... if you complete the event in the game, do you still have those items in subsequent playthroughs or are they locked to a single game?

and changing your computer date doesn't work, btw.

[SpectralHauntings]

Originally posted by Caerbannog:

I agree in game events shouldn't be tied to IRL dates. even though i've had the game for a awhile, i never seem to be playing the same time the IRL events occur. why not just make those seasonal events the whole in-game month? that way you can complete at your leisure and don't have to feel rushed.

I mean... if you complete the event in the game, do you still have those items in subsequent playthroughs or are they locked to a single game?

and changing your computer date doesn't work, btw.

I mostly agree but changing your computer date does work I did it just yesterday. It just needs to be between Oct. 24 and Nov. 7 and the date cant change back until the game is fully finished launching, it should launch with the halloween menu screen and then you can change it back. Can be annoying but it works. (you can also run the .exe file with smth like RunAsDate but then you won't get the steam overlay)