Luck
| Luck | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Mechanic |
Luck is the hidden statistic that nudges almost every random roll in the valley. It decides how often a ladder appears under a broken rock, how often a fishing bobber comes back with a Treasure Chest, how much wood a felled tree leaves behind and how kindly the slot machines at the Casino behave. Part of it is handed out by the game each morning and cannot be changed, and the rest comes from food, from a ring and from a charm earned by solving a puzzle. The morning value can be read off the Television before the day starts, which makes it the one statistic worth checking before deciding what to do. A good day in the Skull Cavern and a bad one can look like two different games, and the difference is usually luck.
Overview
The morning roll is called daily luck. The game picks a number between minus a tenth and plus a tenth, settles on it the moment the day begins, and leaves it alone until the next sunrise. Sleeping and waking again gives a fresh number, but restarting the same day does not, since the roll was already made. There are two hundred and one possible values, so the very best day, the very worst day and the perfectly neutral day each turn up about once in two hundred mornings.
Reading the value takes a right click on the Television and a choice of Fortune Teller. Welwick opens with a line of theatre that means nothing, then delivers the forecast itself. The wording maps onto bands rather than exact figures: spirits showering everyone with good fortune sits at the top, spirits in good humour means a mild bonus, spirits feeling neutral leaves the day in the farmer's hands, somewhat annoyed spirits mean a mild penalty, and very displeased spirits are the worst band of all. Watching the programme costs a few minutes of the morning and changes nothing about the roll, so it works purely as information.
The one permanent addition is the Special Charm. Secret Note number twenty shows a puzzle, and solving what it depicts awards the charm, which adds a quarter of a tenth to daily luck for the rest of the save. That shifts the whole range upwards, so the worst possible morning becomes less punishing and the best becomes better. A quirk of the arithmetic means a charmed farmer never sees the perfectly neutral forecast again, because the stored value is a hair off zero and the Television checks for exact zero.
Buffs are the part under the farmer's control, and they work on a separate track from the morning roll. Food and drink give a luck buff for a few minutes, with one drink buff and one food buff active at a time. Lucky Lunch is the strongest ordinary dish and only needs a Sea Cucumber, a Tortilla and a Blue Jazz. Pumpkin Soup pairs a solid luck bonus with a defence bonus, which suits a cavern run. Fried Eel, Spicy Eel, Ginger Ale, Cave Jelly, Banana Pudding and Shrimp Cocktail each give a smaller lift, often alongside something else useful. Magic Rock Candy is in a class of its own and raises luck five times further than a plain dish while also boosting mining, attack, defence and speed. The Lucky Ring, which drops in the Skull Cavern or very occasionally from panning, holds a buff of its own for as long as it is worn, and two of them stack.
The Chef at the Desert Festival breaks the one-dish rule. Dishes bought there stack on top of whatever food and drink buffs are already running, so a Sour Salad, a Superfood Cake, a Warrior Smoothie or a Rumpled Fruit Skin can be layered onto a Lucky Lunch for a much larger total than either gives alone. Each of those asks for a Rare Fruit plus one other festival ingredient. Sweet Bean Cake, Crystal Cake, Elf Quesadilla and Shrimp Donut lead on another statistic and add a smaller luck bonus behind it.
Buff luck and daily luck are not interchangeable. Most of what the morning roll touches, a buff touches too, but a handful of rolls listen only to the morning value: gem nodes and Mystic Stones in the caves, the golden upgrade on a fishing chest, the special items and Mystery Boxes inside those chests, a Woodskip on the Forest Farm, a Duck Feather or a Rabbit's Foot from the coop. Buffs instead have their own list, including the chance of hooking Sea Jelly, River Jelly or Cave Jelly, extra Stone, Clay, Ore, Bone Fragments and Cinder Shards from broken rocks, critical hit chance with a weapon, and the chance that the Ring of Yoba or the Warrior Ring fires. Buffs also upgrade the rings found in fishing chests, turning a Small Glow Ring or Small Magnet Ring into the full version.
The practical shape of all this is simple. Mining is the activity luck rewards most, because ladders, crates, gem nodes and treasure rooms all roll against it, so a good forecast is the signal for a Skull Cavern run. Fishing comes next, since treasure chests are where the rare rings and weapons come from. Panning, garbage cans, tree chopping and the Casino all shift a little. A poor forecast is a fine day for farm chores, building, gifting and cooking, none of which care about the roll at all.
Notes
Two of luck's effects run in opposite directions during a storm. High luck makes lightning strike more often across the map, which feeds Lightning Rods and fills a shed with Battery Packs, while it lowers the chance that any individual tree is the thing struck. A stormy day with a cheerful forecast is therefore the best day to own rods and the safest day to own an orchard.
Luck decides how many geodes fall out of the rocks, but what is inside each one is fixed by the save file and the order they are cracked open, so hoarding geodes for a lucky morning changes nothing about their contents. The same split applies elsewhere: luck changes how often a roll succeeds rather than what the roll hands over.
Dying underground is cheaper on a lucky day, since the amount of gold and the number of items lost on the way back to bed both scale with the morning value. It is a small mercy, but it means the deepest and riskiest Skull Cavern pushes belong on exactly the days when the Fortune Teller is in a good mood.
The crop harvest carries a quiet bonus too. Any crop can roll double on being picked, and a distinctive chime plays when luck is what caused it, which is the only time the game admits out loud that the statistic did something.
All Mechanics
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
