This beginner's guide to Hokko Life has tips for crafting, fishing, making money, and managing your resources.

Community simulation games, like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, are all about relaxing and pretending you can escape your busy life by running away to an old and forgotten town. Escaping into the country comes with its own set of challenges, though. Hokko Life is a new community adventure sim with a unique crafting system.

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Standing out from the crowd, Hokko Life's crafting and building system requires learning so that you can come out the other end with a fascinating piece of furniture. That's not all that players need help figuring out. If you're new and confused by this early access title, here are some tips to get the gears turning.

Updated on September 20, 2021, by Sharnelle Earle: Hokko Life is an early access life sim that has people entranced due to its complex crafting system and adorable villagers. Because the game is in early access, you can expect huge updates on every milestone that will add content to the game. The first big update came in June 2021, introducing farming and fruit trees. We've updated this guide to ensure you get the best start to Hokko Life that you possibly can.

Once you get acquainted with the town, you'll be asked to create a bridge. Bridges will allow you to access other parts of the meadow so that you can get more resources and place more housing down.

Hokko Life's crafting system consists of purchasing blueprints and pieces of shapes from Sally. With these, you will manipulate, paint, and turn them into extravagant furniture. It can take seconds to hours, depending on what you're trying to make.

A blueprint gives you a small set of rules you can't break. By pressing "Info" while crafting, you can see these rules. They'll usually tell you how big or small your item must be and if it needs something, like a light bulb.

By pressing "Guide" you'll be able to see a grid showing you your boundaries. The arrow you'll see on the grid is the side on which your character will be able to interact with the object.

You can craft simple furniture by using raw wooden log material. To make more complex things, you need to purchase more complex shapes from Sally and then craft wooden logs, stone slabs, or others.

You have to tell the game that the bridge is stable on all sides. If you're making a simple ramp or plank without a railing, it will say that the design has an error.

To fix this, you need to put any object on a far corner of the grid. If you make the plank as long as the grid will physically allow, the design will be useable without this.

Once complete, you can place it down and see if it works. If it doesn't work as a bridge, you can edit the furniture and change it without having to start over again.

To make a house suitable for villagers in Hokko Life, you need a lamp and you'll need a light bulb to craft a lamp from scratch, which involves several steps.

Because this is a tedious and impossible task to do at the beginning of the game, the easiest way to light up a house is by buying the paper lantern recipe from Sally or stealing a lamp from a villager's house or from the town streets. The paper lantern costs one wooden plank, one glue, and four grass tufts.

One of the easiest ways to earn money is by selling things you craft. They don't even have to look good or be usable.

To get your own house, you need to convince Rosa to live in your town.

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The only way to recruit new villagers into your town is by checking the Inn every evening. New villagers and shop owners alike spawn inside the Inn during lunchtime and the evening.

All you have to do is talk to them and they will become available to fill a house.

Villagers will give you quests every now and again. Sometimes it will be to dig up flowers, other times you will have to craft the perfect piece of furniture for them.

Requests usually give you a week to complete, but if you don't complete it within that time frame there are no consequences.

You can just go into the quest tab in your inventory and discard old requests. Speak to more villagers to find another one. As a reward for completing a quest, villagers will give you money or clothing.

At the start of the game, you only have a limited amount of resources. It's important to not deplete them until you've gained access to other areas on the map.

Trees and flowers can be replanted by buying seeds at Moss'. Rocks on the other hand don't come back.

Until you unlock the mines, it's best to save rocks for when you really need them. The rocks on the beach respawn every day, but the ones in the meadow don't.

Catching bugs is pretty straightforward. It's always the fishing that gets to people. In Hokko Life, it takes a little getting used to just like other games of this genre.

To catch a fish successfully, you first have to place the bobber in front of the fish and wait for it to bite. You'll know when it bites because it will prompt you to press the interact button.

There are two challenges or mini-games you'll get while fishing.

First, you must hold down the interact button until the bar starts flashing yellow and red. When that happens, release the button. To stop the bar from going down all the way, it's safe to lightly tap while in the yellow.

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Never tap or hold down the button while it's red or you'll break the line.

After that happens, you'll be prompted to pull left or right. This means pressing down A and D or using the thumb grip on your controller. Once that's over, continue holding down the interact button. Rinse and repeat until you fill up the bar.

Bugs and fish are seasonal in Hokko Life. To satisfy the collector in you, you can find and catch all the butterflies and fish that change every season and time of day. When you find a new specimen, you can speak to Derris on the beach for some quick cash. He will also pay you if you found the same fish, but at a new size.

The best way to make money is by selling bugs, petals, and crafted furniture.

Catching 30 butterflies is way easier than catching 30 fish. Butterflies are everywhere and require no challenge, that's why it's worth purchasing the bug net sooner rather than later.

A couple of petals don't mean much, but if you have a meadow's worth of blooming flowers, you'll get a lot out of selling each and every one.

As for furniture, the more you add to a creation, the higher the price. You can throw a bunch of random pieces together and get a lot of money out of it!

With the farm update to Hokko Life came a new area to unlock. This area is where you build your farm. Having a farm is important in the late game because it gives you more to do when you find yourself completing all the tasks available and getting tired of designing furniture. The farm also unlocks new items to start selling for profit.

To unlock the area, you first need to find a way to get up to the second level of the meadow (the meadow is the area where you build villager houses and where Sallys is). To the very back of the map on this second level is an area that will take you to some mountains. As you walk up the mountain, there are multiple paths that split off in different directions. The first left path leads to a pond, the second left path is blocked off and leads to the farm.

Before the path to the farm can be opened, you must recruit Aubrey. Aubrey is a villager who will be teaching you all the farming basics and live on the farm. To find new villagers and store owners, you must visit the Inn during the evening and night. Once you find them at the Inn, all you have to do is talk to them. It then takes one day for Aubrey to show up on the farm. It takes a week for store owners.

Once the farm is unlocked, there will be plenty of new rocks and logs to break and collect materials from. There will also be a new item — fruit trees. Fruit trees are new following this farm update. You can sell them, or a villager may ask for one. By speaking to Aubrey, you'll be told to start collecting and crafting the materials and tools necessary for starting farm life. These tools are a watering can and a hoe. Upon unlocking the farm, new recipes will be unlocked at Sally's workshop. Purchase these recipes to start crafting them.

A major attraction that Hokko Life has is its furniture designing. If you love creating furniture from scratch or love using other people's extravagant work, you should unlock the Creator Catalog sooner rather than later. The Creator Catalog allows you to:

If you were never good at creating a stairwell out of planks of wood, you can use the Creator Catalog to find someone who has done just that in the style you want. Or you can share your creative projects for others to enjoy. To unlock the Creator Catalog, you first need to build yourself a house. The moment you occupy a house, there will be a mailbox beside your front door and a computer will become available at Moss' store.

The computer at Moss' general store is how you access the Creator Catalog. The catalog only shows hot pieces, so you'll have to search up people's Creator Codes to find what you're looking for. Once you've found an item you like, all you have to do is order it and it gets sent directly to your mailbox. Ordering another person's design costs absolutely nothing. You don't need to pay coins or have the materials needed for the design. Once you have the person's design, you can duplicate it at Sally's. Duplicating it does require having every single item the original creator used, which can be tough since most detailed and good projects use around 30 different pieces and colors. You can just re-order the same item instead of duplicating it.

The best way to find Creator Codes and popular designs is by joining the Hokko Life discord and going into the #hokko-creations channel.

Next: Hokko Life: How To Move Villagers Houses

A small town Canadian with a passion for writing, gaming, and animals. She writes by day and helps animals by night. What started with creative writing blossomed into sharing her gaming passion with the world. Sharnelle's poison of choice is well-brewed black tea and fantasy adventure is her favorite genre.