After growing in early access for two years, Ooblets finally sprouts in its 1.0 form today. The cheerful game blends monster collecting (the Ooblets), farming simulation, and light town management as you restore a wacky village to its former glory. Though an overall laid-back experience, there’s a lot of spinning plates involved, and it can take time to figure out how to maximize each day to keep your farm brimming with valuable crops, your roster full of different Ooblets, and your wallet stretched with Gummies (the game’s currency). That’s where I come in. I’ve spent many hours playing the final version of the game, and I’d like to offer some helpful tips to make your early hours in Badgetown as enjoyable and efficient as possible.
Keep A Variety Of Crops Growing At All Times
In addition to the Ooblets themselves, crops are essential to completing the game’s most important and lucrative tasks. You’ll always need a healthy variety of produce on hand because obtaining wild Ooblets requires players to have specific crops, or dishes made from them, to challenge them to dance battles, the game’s humorous take on combat. Other tasks, such as delivering bundles of certain fruits and vegetables, can earn nice chunks of change.
That’s why you should always set aside funds to routinely purchase new seeds from the various crop stores in Badgetown and beyond. Never let your farm stay barren and inactive for long. Crops can take days to grow, and it stinks when you need a veggie to progress you haven’t grown or even planted. Create as much extra yield as you can, and you’ll cruise through objectives much faster.
Don’t Skimp On Clearing Your Farm Of Junk
It’s easy to awaken each morning and feel tempted to neglect to clear the yard once you see it full of weeds, logs, and rocks day after day. Don’t get lazy. These bothersome eyesores, specifically stones, and wood, reward nurneys and plankets, essential crafting ingredients that you’ll always need. Occasionally, breaking down these items rewards a seed, too. Look at your farm as a replenishing goldmine of foundational materials because it is, and take advantage of it as often as you can. You’ll be glad you did.
Fishing Matters
As someone who generally ignores fishing minigames, Ooblets’ version became an integral activity. For one, this isn’t even a minigame since you don’t do any manual work. You just cast your line, and you’ll automatically earn a random prize. Using various types of bait, earned by breaking down unwanted inventory items in a nearby machine, nets useful items such as fertilizer that hastens crop production, additional plankets, and other goodies.
Prioritize Inventory Upgrades, Automatic Watering Tools Early
You collect a plethora of different things in Ooblets, meaning your pockets quickly fill up. The game already has you doing a lot of back-and-forth running to grab materials, so minimize this by increasing your inventory slots as soon as possible. Purchasing backpacks or fanny packs from Kibbonbon, the local clothing shop, will accomplish this. Be sure to also upgrade Kibbonbon’s selection by spending Wishies, the game’s secondary currency earned by completing special tasks, at Badgetown’s wishing well. Doing this unlocks backpacks with even more space.
On the same note, go ahead and buy additional storage chests for your home too. The starter briefcase only has six spots, and you’ll quickly fill it with items you won’t have a use for early on. Chests are sold at Manatwee, the furniture store.
Manually watering your crops isn’t a tough task, but it does eat up precious time, especially as your farm expands. Invest in equipment that does the job for you sooner than later, such as turret-style water guns and sprinklers. You’ll have to unlock blueprints for these tools at the wishing well, then craft them using the “fabricuter” at Manatwee.
Don’t Try To Cram Everything Into One Day
Despite my tips on efficiency, Ooblets encourages players to take their time. Since the game operates on a day/night cycle, your energy gradually drains (though you can replenish by eating), and you actually need to sleep at night. Thus, it’s smart to know where to focus your efforts during your waking hours. Chipping away at everything on the to-do list helps, but I found it more effective to spend days focusing on one or two big things, such as acquiring/planting crops, assembling new equipment/buildings, or completing a campaign quest. Your attention becomes increasingly divided as more jobs arise, and it’s often better to focus on knocking out big priorities one or two at a time than slowly grinding everything on your to-do list.
You Can Take Short Naps To Refill Energy
For the first few hours, I thought going to bed early would instantly skip to the next day. However, turning in before nightfall only counts as a nap, advancing time an hour or so while replenishing a notch of energy. This is a nice method of regaining extra stamina when you’re low on snacks or want to save money on buying them. So take a rest; you’ll likely need it.
Check The Wildlands And Dance Barn Regularly
The Wildlands is a nature preserve and one of Ooblets’ longer-term restoration projects. The goal is to restore every part of the preserve by accomplishing a single, daily task. Sometimes you have to release a certain type of Ooblet to the wild; other times, you have to water some dying plants. Once you complete your job, you must wait until tomorrow to see what the next one entails. Because this mission unfolds at such a drip feed, the fastest way to get through it is to check the Wildlands’ mission board each day. This became part of my morning routine; sometimes, I can bang out a job on the spot, or it’s something I can complete en route to another destination.
The Dance Barn won’t unlock until you’ve leveled up a few times, but it hosts daily dance battle tournaments to earn a prize. This reward changes each day, and a nifty schedule reveals in advance the prizes offered every day of that particular week. Keep an eye on this schedule regularly to avoid missing out on winning valuable, hard-to-get prizes, such as important crafting blueprints and food recipes.
Both of these destinations can be easy to overlook in the face of the plethora of shorter-term goals. Try to keep them in mind.
Check Interiors Often
Shops and buildings often contain hidden goodies such as recipe pieces, crafting materials, Gummies, and more. They also hide special club coins (used for the later game). It’s easy to forget to do this in the wake of all of the outdoor activities, and poking your head into every building every day can be tedious. But try to do it every other day if you can, because you’ll likely be rewarded for your nosiness. On that same note…
Lost Ooblets Can Hide Inside Buildings
Townsfolks regularly lose their Ooblet partners, always asking you to seek them out (because, evidently, they don’t love them enough to search themselves). Badgetown is large enough that I assumed for a good while that they’d be hidden outside, frustrating me when I poked around every bush or tree with no luck. Lost Ooblets can often be found outdoors, but they’ll also hide inside the many shops and homes, so be sure to poke around interiors too. You’ll thank me later.
You Can Only Open Your Store Once Per Day
This is more of a cautionary tale based on my own stupidity. Eventually, you’ll open your own store, which allows you to sell your inventory for profit. You can sell whatever you want, but there’s a weekly event schedule listing the desired item for each day.
For example, I opened on a Sunday, which was figurine day. After unlocking my doors, I realized all of my figurines were in storage back home. I closed the shop, ran home to retrieve them, placed them on the displays, and tried to reopen it. That’s when I learned you can only open once per day – there’s no stepping out for lunch or running errands. Basically, make sure you have exactly what you want/need to sell before you flip that sign, otherwise, you’ll wind up losing an entire day that could have been spent raking in Gummies.
Hopefully, these tips will make your early hours in Ooblets more productive. You can pick up the game now on Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, Switch, and PC via The Epic Games Store.
