Van's Favorite doesn't work right?

[samsilly12345]

I didn't even know about this until recently because I didn't get it to trigger even once until Fall 9 of Year 1!!!! I looked it up after and how to get it to trigger again, but it just doesn't work.

I tried the saving and reloading trick that everyone says to do to get the count right and get it back to 0 again so you can do it on purpose, but that worked weirdly too.
I did the counter and the way I did it and have been trying to trigger it since is that I go into a shop, buy exactly one item, left the shop and the building completely, went back inside, rinse and repeat until I reached what I needed to. The save and reload trick it took 7 transactions like this, even tho the previous day I know I did more than 3 individual transactions cause I had tried to trigger it again. So therefore my counter should have been at 11 or 12. i am 100% positive of this being higher than 10.

Triggered it with the save and reload trick, then I went about my day and got in the mail as tested, then that day I went to the supermarket, did the same method. buy one item, leave the shop and the building completely, go back in and buy another single item. This time just in case I did this 13 times. went about my day, no Van's Favorite the next day.
"okay" I think, "maybe it has to be exactly 10"
so I do that. nope.

Keep in mind I did not get it triggered even once until Fall of year 1, and that includes buying seeds every season, buying 1-3 chocolates a day for gifts (at least 1 chocolate every day or 1 transaction every 2-3 days), one house renovation, a few tool upgrades, buying from Huang's shop, buying a fridge, buying all but 2 appliances, and animal feed.

I'm convinced that it must be a random number I have to hit or a random number for every seed of the game (aka every individual's game) and that 10 is just the most common.

CAN ANYONE HELP????? IS ANYONE ELSE HAVING THIS PROBLEM AS OF 2024???

separate question: why are there like no mods for this game anywhere? is it a Nintendo thing?

[Mewtwomew]

I mean, what You wrote is nice mathematic explanation of how that probably works, but I thought about one more thing to test. Yes, it has to be exactly 10 not 13, that's correct, but entering a shop itself might also count as one point in some scenarios? You probably went through tutorial marked in https://fogu.com/sos3/mineral_town/van_store.html - Please note that suggested procedure includes You saving the game *inside* the store to find out Your VanFav. I'm not thrilled about doing a science paper on that topic, so if You want, go on and test it, maybe it's so that entering store and leaving = 0, entering store, buying and leaving = 1, entering store, buying, buying, leaving = 2, entering store, buying, leaving, entering, buying, leaving = 3 and entering store, buying, leaving, entering, buying, leaving, entering, buing and leaving would actually calculate 5 (as 3 transactions+2 entering with at least one purchase made that day in that store?) or 6 (as 3 transactions times 2 entering store with more than one purchase done that day?). I don't think I saw any more detailed description of mathematic rules behind that, so some more testing would be advised. Be sure to write it down if you do

And worthless side note to sum it up: Let me just say, that in year 3 i have over ten bottles in storage, just by playing everyday farming game. So, unless You are about some speedruns, go on and enjoy game until they will start appearing, it shouldn't be so rare as You make it.

Finally, regarding mods, I don't think it is license issue, neither about Nintendo, Natsume nor Marvelous, but rather about how the game was made. Easily accessible modding in most of the recent games is depending on so-called "hooks", that must be done by game developers or really talented hackers, to even allow easy modding for modders. So the game not only doesn't have the hooks made, if we consider modding "the old way" like you might know it from GTA:SA era by replacing some internal game files, it's basically one large ZIP archive that gets opened at runtime with some unknown credentials, and assets there are hard/impossible to extract and modify. And it would be splendid if Marvelous would come back to this game and update it with some features and bugfixes reported in this forum, but I'm afraid it was fully abandoned since december 2019 or so.

[Mewtwomew]

Looking at another topic you commented on, that might be also some bug, not saying it's impossible, but in short I just gave you one more idea to test if you wish