Joja Community Development Form
| Joja Community Development Form | |
|---|---|
| Type | Bundle |
| Location | JojaMart |
| Membership | 5,000g |
| Projects | 5 |
| Total Cost | 135,000g |
The Joja Community Development Form is the paperwork that buys the valley's repairs instead of earning them. Morris keeps it on his counter inside JojaMart, and it appears there the day after a farm pays him for a store membership, which is also the moment the Community Center stops being a community centre and becomes a Joja Warehouse for the rest of the save. From then on the bus, the bridge, the boulder, the minecarts and the greenhouse are items on a list with prices beside them, bought one at a time with gold. Morris and his crew do the work overnight, and only one project can be bought in a day, so the quickest possible run through the whole form still takes five nights. It ends with a ceremony outside the warehouse, a promotion for Morris and a Soda Machine for the farm.
Overview
The route trades time for money, and that is the whole of it. Nothing on the form cares what season it is, which fish are biting or whether the farmhouse has a kitchen yet. A farm with a good Summer behind it can clear the entire list in under a week of game time, in any season, having grown nothing in particular. A farm without the gold can do nothing with the form at all, however many crates of produce are stacked in the shed.
The switch is permanent inside a save. Once the membership is paid the golden scrolls are gone, the Junimos leave, and there is no counter anywhere that will take items again. What does carry across is finished work. A room completed in the Community Center before the membership is bought stays completed, and the form simply shows that project as already done. Partial progress is worth nothing, though: a room with one scroll still hanging pays the full Joja price, and the price never moves to reflect what was collected. Rewards already taken out of the Center are safe, because they are items the farm is holding rather than promises it is owed.
The two routes also differ in what they hand back. The Junimo route pays a reward for every scroll and a second reward for every finished room, from seed packets and sacks of fertiliser to machines a young farm could not otherwise build, and it ends by warming the whole town by two hearts. The form pays nothing along the way. Each purchase buys exactly the repair it names, which is why the friendship reward belongs to the Junimo route alone.
Projects
The repairs themselves are identical whichever route pays for them, so the form is best read as a menu of unlocks. The bus at the Bus Stop is the biggest single door: it opens Calico Desert, and with it the Oasis, the Casino, the Desert Trader and the long climb down Skull Cavern. The greenhouse is the other purchase that changes daily play, because it drops a patch of all-season soil onto the farm where crops, fruit trees and ordinary trees carry on growing through Winter.
The three smaller projects are quality-of-life work. Mending the bridge on the Beach opens the quarry and its endless supply of stone and ore nodes. Clearing the glittering boulder in the river west of the mine entrance lets the water run again and brings panning into reach. Repairing the minecarts stitches the Bus Stop, the town, the Mines and the quarry together, which saves more walking over a long save than any of the rest.
A farm buying its way through the list tends to want the bus and the greenhouse first and the minecarts last, since the carts only shorten journeys that are already possible. The oddest part of the whole business is the reaction in town. Lewis, Robin, Willy and the rest are plainly baffled by the improvements appearing around them, as though an out-of-town work crew could come and go without anyone noticing who sent it.
The table lists every project the form sells, dearest first.
| Project | Cost |
|---|---|
| Bus to the Desert | 40,000g |
| Greenhouse | 35,000g |
| Bridge to the Quarry | 25,000g |
| Panning, by clearing the glittering boulder | 20,000g |
| Minecarts | 15,000g |
Strategy
For a farm with money, the form is a shortcut worth taking. The full list costs roughly what one good greenhouse of aged wine brings in, and it removes a year of chasing a single fish or a single out-of-season crop. Players who want the valley's buildings open by the second Spring, or who have already done the Junimo route once, generally find this the cleaner path.
For a farm without money, it is a trap. Five thousand gold for the membership is a serious sum in the first year, and it buys nothing on its own; the first repair is many times that again. The bus is the clearest illustration, because paying the Vault for it through the Junimo route actually costs a little more gold than Morris asks, and that smaller route hands over cake, fertiliser, a Lightning Rod and a Crystalarium on the way. A poor farm that pays Morris has spent its savings and still has to gather the same crops to live on.
There is a middle line that works well. Nothing forces the membership to be bought early, so a farm can spend its first season or two filling the cheap scrolls, collecting the rewards that only the Junimos give, and finishing whole rooms rather than leaving them half done. Since completed rooms carry over and partial ones do not, the sensible moment to walk into JojaMart is after a room has just closed, with the gold for a project already banked. Anything the Junimos were about to hand over for a few forage items should be finished first, because the form will charge tens of thousands for the same repair.
Notes
The closing scene waits for good weather. Starting the day after the last project is paid for, the first walk into Pelican Town on a sunny day triggers a ceremony in front of the warehouse, at any hour. Rain or a festival in town pushes it back to the next clear day. Morris makes a speech about Joja's innovators, the pilot programme and the promotion he has just been given, and then presents the farm with a Soda Machine, which turns out one Joja Cola a day for the rest of the save.
Two more things open at the same counter. The Auto-Petter goes on sale inside JojaMart, which is the one genuinely enviable reward on this route, since it keeps a barn or coop full of animals happy without a morning round of petting. Morris also raises an entertainment opportunity, and taking him up on it converts the warehouse into the Movie Theater, so the town still gets its cinema on this path, bought rather than earned.
A letter from Willy arrives the day after the ceremony, inviting the farmer into the back room of the Fish Shop and the boat that waits there. The letter comes whether or not the ceremony was actually watched, so a stretch of rainy days delays the scene without delaying Ginger Island.
The shop itself behaves differently on this route. JojaMart keeps its doors open, so Pierre's General Store keeps its closing day, which is the reverse of what happens when the Junimos win. Finishing the form also satisfies the condition the Wizard checks before he will deal with the Goblin Problem, which means the Obelisks and the rest of his catalogue open on the Joja path exactly as they do on the other one.
All Bundles
Every room of the Community Center, with the number of bundles it holds and what finishing them repairs.
| Name | Bundles | Reward |
|---|---|---|
| Crafts Room Bundles | 6 | Bridge Repair |
| Pantry Bundles | 6 | Greenhouse |
| Fish Tank Bundles | 6 | Glittering Boulder Removed |
| Boiler Room Bundles | 3 | Minecarts Repaired |
| Bulletin Board Bundles | 5 | Friendship |
| Vault Bundles | 4 | Bus Repair |
| The Missing Bundle | 1 | Movie Theater |
| Joja Community Development Form | 5 | Bought with gold |