Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar isn’t too complex, but it does sometimes leave the player to explore the systems and figure things out for themselves beyond the very basics within tutorials. There are also some tips that can make life much easier, both early on and later in the game. While this isn’t a full guide or walkthrough, it should provide some useful hints and tips for playing Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar.
This guide assumes some general knowledge of Story of Seasons and its gameplay, but mentions tips that can help specifically in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar.
If you’ve not yet bought the game, you may be interested to check out our review here.
General Tips
You will see some icons on the top-right of the screen when playing Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. If the furthest-right icon has a red exclamation mark in it, an event is available. Check the map to find it. Remember that you can switch between maps too. If you don’t see the event on the map of the town, it may be in other areas such the mountains or where the bazaar is held.
You can check the exact items needed for a quest via the ‘view item details’ prompt. Certain quests can have unclear requirements when just looking at the icon. For example, Maple’s quest ‘Flowering Beauty’ mentions only flowers in the text description, but it needs to be one of a few specific types of flower.
You will find four types of medals when playing the game. Keep these until you can unlock the prize stall. With luck, you may win some very valuable prizes.
While storage is very limited, save your recyclables if you have space. These can be redeemed at a stall in the later parts of the game for some valuable items. You’ll mostly find these when fishing.
You can improve your chances of success in fishing by upgrading the fishing rod. Beyond that, Felix sells a skill at the bazaar which comes in very useful for bigger catches such as guardian fish.
Cooking can be used to create items that boost certain stats, including the rate of relationship points and pet training. You can learn recipes by eating food, as well as occasionally via quests and finding them around people’s houses. Some quick ways to learn recipes are buying food from the cafe and bazaar stalls, and exchanging food with people on Hearth Day in winter.
Remember to check your mail via the menu after collecting it from your mailbox. Items are often attached. If you don’t have room in your storage, you can hold off redeeming these until you need them.
Relationships and Marriage Tips
One unusual aspect of Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar is that you need to get close to the family of a given romance option, or the relationship won’t level up. For example, Sophie’s progress will be blocked until you reach a certain level of relationship with her father. It’s helpful to keep this in mind from the start so you know which relationships to prioritize.
Enter community events whenever possible, even if you don’t feel that you will win. This can provide a boost in relationships. If possible, ensure there are no outstanding quests blocking relationship level-ups before this.
Ensure that you give people gifts that they have told you they enjoy on their birthday for a stronger relationship boost than normal. For added effect, if they have shared their favorite color, then use that color of wrapping paper after unlocking the relevant bazaar stall.
Foraging and Farming Tips
After meeting the Nature Sprites in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar, you can give them their preferred items to raise the quality of their type of foraged items collected. The Nature Sprite found on the farm named Ivy can raise the quality of weeds, ores, and gems. The quality of foragable items can be boosted very quickly by collecting weeds and gifting them to that sprite. Gifting Sprites what they want will also boost your Happy Points significantly.
Following the previous tip, you can quickly boost the weeds to 5-star (and beyond) by doing this. You can then use the windmills to turn these into fertilizer of the same quality. This lets you quickly raise the quality of crops to 5-star, which is the limit for crops without winning the crops show. You can supplement this by giving them rocks and wood, along with most other foragables, but weeds are the easiest to collect large quantities of and least valuable for other purposes.
The second windmill unlocks the ability to convert crops into seeds of the same quality as the crop. Raising your crop quality through high-level fertilizer (and later field improvements), then converting them can quickly grant access to high-level seeds.
Enter and win the crop show whenever it occurs to grow crops above 5-star quality. Tea is a useful crop for this, as it grows in three of four seasons (spring, summer, and autumn tea leaves all count as the same crop) and can easily be converted to a processed good when you unlock the third windmill.
When you unlock the glider, you can use this to gain access to more areas that contain forageable items, particularly on windy days. The double-jump (unlockable via Felix’s stall at the bazaar) can also help access some areas before this.
Catching flying bugs is far easier if you jump while doing it.
Animal Tips
You will need Milk and Wool of good quality for early quests in Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. It will be helpful to have at least one cow and one sheep or alpaca.
You can ring the bell to call animals to you. If you do this near the barn door, they will automatically enter or exit if they are close enough. This is particularly useful before you train a pet to do it.
You can train dogs (which will herd big animals) and cats (which will herd chickens) by using the pet treat on them. This begins a quick-time event minigame. You can view the current herd size on the board in the barn. Increasing this helps automatically herd animals outside in the morning and back inside during the evening.
Bazaar Tips
Go to bed around 9 PM on Fridays so you wake up early on the day of the bazaar. This will give you more time to tend to the farm and animals before heading to the bazaar to start at 10 AM.
There is a freshness mechanic, so it can be helpful to prioritize selling anything that expires over time. This becomes less important over time as you upgrade your storage to keep items longer and to have more space.
Use the one-hour break between the morning and afternoon bazaar to browse the nearby stalls. This is where you can request upgrades to your farm and nearby facilities, as well as purchase some items not found elsewhere. Storage expansions are one of the upgrades found here and are vital as storage is incredibly limited at first.
One of the stalls here is run by the Nature Sprites, who will sell items for Happy Points. You can use these to unlock access to your storage in multiple places, teleporters that lead home, upgrades to your stall, and more. Get the storage next to the bazaar stall as soon as possible to make restocking your stall in the afternoon much more convenient. You can also find one of the rare Power Berries to upgrade your stamina here.
You will be asked to complete quests to unlock new stalls for the bazaar throughout Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar. One of the later quests requires mushrooms, honey, and fish of at least 3-star quality. It will be helpful to work on giving items to the relevant sprites for this over the course of the game. The sprite level will need to be upgraded to level 20. Mushrooms and Honey can be gathered via upgrades provided by Arata’s bazaar stall.
Late-Game Tips
After you unlock the rare item stall, wonderstones can be bought. If you buy the Purple Wonderstone, you can slot it into any of the three windmills to unlock new recipes. These include useful items such as sprinklers, medals, and the highest level of tools. Each windmill will give access to different sets of items, so remove it and insert it into others to see them all.
Review: Click Here
If you’re looking for something to play on the Nintendo Switch 2, check out our review of Donkey Kong Bananza.
Many thanks go to Marvelous Games for a Nintendo Switch 2 review code for Story of Seasons: Grand Bazaar.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
