Traveling Cart
| Traveling Cart | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Location |
| Address | Cindersap Forest |
| Open Hours | 6:00am to 8:00pm Friday and Sunday; 5:00pm to 2:00am during Night Market; 12:00pm to 2:00am during Desert Festival |
| Closed | Monday - Thursday, Saturday |
| Residents | Traveling Merchant |
The Traveling Cart is the covered wagon that parks in Cindersap Forest south of the farm on Fridays and Sundays, and checking it is one of the habits that separates a tidy save from a scrappy one. The merchant carries ten random goods, a piece of furniture and sometimes something rarer, and the list is different every visit. Her prices are usually a joke, but what she sells cannot always be bought anywhere else: Rare Seeds for the Sweet Gem Berry, Coffee Beans before the farm grows its own, a crop that is months out of season and a bundle item that has been holding up the Community Center all year. She also turns up at the Night Market in Winter and at the Desert Festival in Spring, which gives six extra chances at her stock. The pig in a fez pulling the cart is a bonus.
Area
The pitch is the clearing in Cindersap Forest between the lake and the path up to the farm, close enough to be part of a normal morning walk. During the Night Market the whole operation moves to the Beach, where the pig floats behind the cart in a rubber ring. At the Desert Festival the cart appears among the stalls in Calico Desert and keeps late hours with the rest of the fair.
The cart itself is the shop. One menu, a handful of goods and no shelves to browse, which is why a visit takes seconds and is easy to make part of the routine.
Shops
Stock is rolled fresh for every appearance. Ten items make up the standard list, each sold either singly or in fives, with one piece of furniture alongside them and room for a special item on top. Almost anything can appear, from cooked dishes and artisan goods to fish, forage, seeds and tapper products, so a farmer short of one specific ingredient has a genuine chance of finding it here. Everything sold is normal quality.
Prices move from visit to visit and are usually well above what the item is worth, which is the cost of that convenience. Once in a while something is priced below its own value, and a cooked dish or a crop bought cheap and shipped turns a small profit. The real argument for paying over the odds is the calendar: the cart ignores the seasons, so a Red Cabbage in Spring or a Pumpkin in Winter can finish a bundle that would otherwise wait a year.
The special stock is where the money goes. Rare Seeds appear on every visit in Spring and Summer, usually one at a time and occasionally in a stack of five, and they are the only way to grow a Sweet Gem Berry. Coffee Beans and the fourth Rarecrow show up in Fall and Winter. The Red Fez is a hat for anyone who wants to match the pig. The furniture catalogues are the expensive prizes, with the Joja Furniture Catalogue opening up after the Community Center is finished, the Junimo Catalogue after either community route is complete and the Retro Catalogue priced like a small farm. The skill books turn up here too, each one adding experience to the skill it is written about, though the Bookseller is the likelier place to find them.
Two items depend on the save rather than the season. A multiplayer farm sees the Wedding Ring recipe until it is bought. A married farmer at full hearts can buy a portrait of their spouse, or of Krobus if he moved in as a roommate, which is the only place those paintings come from.
Notes
The merchant never explains herself, and the pig does all the talking. Prodding it earns an oink, which is the entire conversation.
A save started with the year one completion option switched on gets one guaranteed day of Red Cabbage Seeds, somewhere between the cart's second visit in Spring and the last day of the Night Market. The guarantee covers that single day only, whether or not the cart is visited, which is the strongest argument there is for looking at the stock every Friday and Sunday.
Items pulled from the cart's list fill gaps rather than replace farming. A seed bought here is almost always dearer than the same seed at Pierre's General Store, so the wagon earns its keep on the things the valley cannot supply on demand, and on the days when an eight hundred gold cooked dish happens to be exactly the loved gift a villager has been waiting for.
All Shops
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
| Name | Image | Open Hours |
|---|---|---|
| Abandoned House | 
|
All Day |
| Adventurer's Guild | 
|
2:00pm to 2:00am |
| Blacksmith | 
|
9:00am to 4:00pm |
| Bookseller | 
|
- |
| Carpenter's Shop | 
|
9:00am to 5:00pm |
| Casino | 
|
9:00am to 11:50pm |
| Desert Trader | 
|
Always |
| Fish Shop | 
|
9am to 5pm |
| Giant Stump | 
|
- |
| Harvey's Clinic | 
|
9:00am to 3:00pm |
| Ice Cream Stand | 
|
1pm to 5pm during Summer |
| Island Trader | 
|
Always |
| JojaMart | 
|
9:00am to 11:00pm |
| Marnie's Ranch | 
|
9:00am to 4:00pm; (Building open 9am to 6pm) |
| Oasis | 
|
9:00am to 11:50pm |
| Pierre's General Store | 
|
Shop: 9am to 5pm; Building: 9am to 9pm |
| Qi's Walnut Room | 
|
Always |
| The Stardrop Saloon | 
|
12:00pm to 12:00am |
| Traveling Cart | 
|
6:00am to 8:00pm Friday and Sunday; 5:00pm to 2:00am during Night Market; 12:00pm to 2:00am during Desert Festival |
| Volcano Dungeon | - | - |
| Wizard's Tower | 
|
6:00am to 11:00pm |