Harvest Moon 3D: The Lost Valley – FAQ/Walkthrough

Animals

Animal Skills

Depending on the type of feed you use, your livestock can acquire a variety of special traits. Each feed raises and lowers points in various traits, though these numbers remain invisible until the animal has learned the relevant skill. You will need to raise a skill to 100 points to learn it, another 100 points to reach Level 2, 200 more points to reach Level 3, and a massive 300 points to reach Level 4, for a total of 700 points to max out a skill. Feeds that lower points in a skill can reduce the skill's level all the way down to Level 1 with zero points, but it cannot cause the animal to unlearn the skill entirely. However, successive feedings will accrue invisible negative points, so to raise the skill level again you will need to give enough feed to make the amount of points in that trait positive again. When your animal has enough points to learn a new skill, petting, picking up, or riding the animal will trigger skill learning prompt. If the animal's skill slots are full, you will be able to delete an older skill to acquire the new one.

Because the better animal feeds are expensive to purchase, time-consuming to make, and of questionable benefit, you may prefer to forego dabbling in skills altogether. Maxing out the More Goods trait for example requires 88 Harvest Feed, for a total of 264,000 G or 176 Fodder Corn, Red Cabbage, and San Marzano. In exchange, it simply provides a chance for the animal to produce more products, all of which sell for very little gold even to Hanna. In short, raising these skills is a project only for well-heeled completionist ranchers. For horses I recommend Clean, Sensitive, and Fast; the first two skills will help the horse's affection recover when you wake her up or leave her out overnight while Fast is self-explanatory. More Goods and Greater Goods are good skills for cows, sheep, and chickens to learn, though bear in mind chickens can only learn one skill compared to the three skills other animals learn.

If you decide to take the plunge, you may wish to consider raising the Learning skill to at least Level 1 first. It will take 13 feedings of Clever or Nightshade Feed to learn, but at Level 1 it will boost skill point gain by approximately 20%. This will reduce the amount of feed needed to raise the other two skills by approximately 17 feedings each for a total of 21 fewer feeds needed. Nightshade Feed may be preferred for this purpose instead of buying or making Clever Feed, as the recipe is simpler to make, the skill point gain in Learning is the same, and more importantly Nightshade Feed does not lower points in the More Goods trait as Clever Feed does. Clever Feed does on the other hand raise the Great Goods skill, cutting the amount of Excellent Feed needed in half and partially mitigating the extra 22 Harvest Feed needed to max out the More Goods skill. For more information on acquiring and making animal feed recipes, click here.

Because feed can raise or lower points in many different traits beside the main one, plan carefully to make sure you don't lower too many points in other skills you want!