Animals and livestock are a central part ofStory of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, but not all farmyard animals were created equal. Whether it’s their initial investment, their overall utility to the farm, or the sale prices of the goods they produce, there’s a lot to consider when buying or breeding new animals for your farm.
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In this list, we’ve ranked each of the animals in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life to help you decide how best to populate your Barn and Coop. Animal goods are key to making money throughout the game, so set yourself up for success.
9Your Cat
If you’re a cat-lover, then the introduction of your very own cat in Year Two was likely a welcomed surprise. Romana shows up to give you a cat that turned up at the Villa, allowing you to name and adopt it from her immediately.
And while your cat sure is adorable, it’s also not the most helpful animal you could have. While you’ll no longer face a real penalty for leaving the food bowl empty, having a cat means you’re going through twice as much pet food, and the cat doesn’t even seem to like you all that much.
8Ducks
Sure, we’ll hand it to the ducks in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life for how cute they are, but once they arrive to your farm and begin laying Eggs for you, ducks function very much like chickens – only they’re more expensive to buy and come with a startup cost.
You’re not actually able to get ducks until you’vebuilt the Pondout in your pasture for said ducks, which has a sharp cost early on. The only things keeping them above the cat in our list is their Egg-laying capabilities and the fact that they were free after we got the Pond.
7Your Dog
In the original GameCube release of A Wonderful Life, your dog’s training seemed to matter quite a bit more than it does now. Where your canine companion used to chase Pui off if he was trying to steal from the farm, training seems like little more than a side-quest nowadays.
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Training your dog does take time, but it doesn’t seem to have much of a payoff anymore. Spending time with the dog helps your relationship, but outside of the idle training sessions we had with ours, the dog is pretty easy to overlook.
6Chickens
You’ll find yourself needing Eggs fairly often throughout Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, be it in recipes you’re making at home, Bulletin Board requests, or just as liked gifts for the townsfolk. And before you spring for the Pond to get the ducks, chickens are your best bet.
Separate from your cows but still just as pivotal to your early-game operations, chickens live with the ducks over in the Coop. If you have at least one male and one female chicken, you’ll end up with Fertilized Eggs sometimes as well, which you can incubate into a new baby bird or use in recipes all the same as unfertilized ones.
5Brown Cows And Marble Cows
Before you’ve actually dished out the ridiculously high startup cost forgetting the Processing Room, you’ll likely differentiate between your Marble and Brown Cows quite a lot. After all, the Ledger does tell you specifically that one’s milk is meant for Cheeses and the other’s, Butters.
But once you actuallyhavethe Processing Room, you’ll find very little difference. Marble Milk makes better Cheese and Brown Milk results in better Butter, but you can use any milk in either machine. Even if you do use the “wrong” milk, you’ll still get a product – it just sells for 25g less per unit than the “right” milk’s resulting product does.
4Normal Cows
Not only are Normal Cows reliable in their own right, but you start the game with a free one from Takakura to help you get used to the ins and outs of farmstead life. And since it’s early in the game, you’ll likely be quite attentive to this cow, resulting in quality products pretty much from the start of the game.
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This early start with your Normal Cow is a great way to snag the Wonder related to maxing out an animal’s friendship, as you’ll have the most time to snuggle, brush, feed, and talk to this cow. You’ll be getting S-Star quality milk out of that girl in no time!
3Your Horse
When you first begin playing Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, you’re stuck to getting around on foot throughout the entirety of your first season, to try to help you get the hang of things before the game picks up too much. But when Takakura arrives in the first Summer to give you a horse, things change for the quicker.
The horse moves at a noticeably faster pace than your farmer ever does on foot, making travel by horse the prime means of transportation in Forgotten Valley. With so much going on every day and so many friendly faces to go see, you’ll want all the speed you can get, which comes from taking your horse.
2Goats
Had you asked us to rank the animals in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life 20 years ago when the original released on GameCube, the goat wouldunquestioninglybe much lower in our list. In the original game, goats were pricey, limited, and stopped producing milk after a year.
And while they still cease production in the same span of time, you’re now able to sell your animals, which is a huge pivot from the original game. Back then, the only way to get rid of an animal you didn’t want or have use for anymore was to purposely let it die – now, at least you’ll get half your investment back toput toward your next goat.
1Star Cows
Although they are the most expensive livestock you’re able to buy in Story of Seasons: A Wonderful Life, Star Milk from Star Cows sells for so much as a raw product that you’ll never need to spend time processing it in the Processing Room (in fact, you’lllosemoney on Star Milks that way).
50,000g is absolutely a steep price to pay for a cow, so it may be a while before you add one of these creative cows to your Barn. After they’re there, though, they require the same care as the rest of your cows, while giving you a high-profit item to quickly recover the initial cost.
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