Cozy Grove is a life sim by Spry Fox that plays like a combination of Animal Crossing and Spiritfarer. Completing quests for island spirits (bears) moves the story forward and gives you spirit logs. Turn these into your campfire to expand your island and meet new spirits.
A background on me – I started my game January 1 (I was time hopping in Animal Crossing and forgot to put my Switch back to date.) and am currently into mid-April. I have over 100 in-game days played. There may be some game play spoilers, but no story spoilers. I also play on the Nintendo Switch.
- Kiss your desires for “neat and orderly” goodbye.
In Animal Crossing: New Horizons, you can move and place anything, anywhere. Cozy Grove isn’t an abandoned island – it’s mystical and ghostly. Bear areas morph and change on a daily basis, making any added decor look out of place the next morning.
You will unlock 5 total empty plots along the way that you can decorate or cultivate flower fields and orchards. These patches don’t feel big enough for all the trees, bushes, animals, flowers, and decor sets out there. And animals, as much as I might desire a barn with perfectly lined up pets – nope. They don’t stay where you put them, but aimlessly wander in a large square.
Then, there’s the lamps, which you’ll read more about below that you’ll have to chain in a mismatched hodge podge across your island. And to get the most out of your harvistable plants and animals, you’ll enter into the decor chaos of the like/dislike system. - Pay attention to likes and dislikes.
Triple your harvests by taking a few minutes to address your plant and animals’ preferences. Each harvistable plant and animal comes with a set of likes and dislikes along with a 3-leaf happiness scale. Put decor items they like near these to increase their happiness – and keep away or remove disliked items. The leaf rating correlates to the amount you can harvest. Items like potted flowers, berry bushes, fruit and nut trees like their own kind, so planting them in fields or orchards is the easiest way to get the 3-leaf rating. - Buy nut trees & berry bushes early.
If you don’t take anything else away from this blog, do not go alone – take this! My single, biggest regret was not investing in berry bushes and nut trees from the start. Early game, Mr. Kit only sells 1 fruit bush OR nut tree. It may be tempting to hoard your money for the next tent or shop upgrade, but I implore you to invest 15,000 coins here and there for the trees and bushes.
Nut flour is the one thing that I never have enough of all the way into late game, so buy those trees when you can. As for the berry bushes… - Fruit = Money Maker
The single best source of income comes from FRUIT. Burn fruit to get Roasted Fruit (160 coins ea). Once you unlock the recipe for Fruit Jam, make that (1,920 coins ea). Then, once you unlock the recipe for Fruit Tincture, you’ve got your gold mine (24,000 coins ea).
Fruits from trees, like citron, pawpaw, apple, pear, and plum only yield a 1:1 ratio of fruit to roasted fruit. Each goldenberry or snowberry makes 2 Roasted Fruit. Double the fruit = double the profits. Also, plant your bushes together for a 3-leaf rating and harvest x3 berries each time.
You can see my full Money Making Guide for more details and other items that flip for a quick buck. - Always buy flowers.
This is part early game money maker and part setting yourself up to complete the flower collection. Mr. Kit sells a number of flowers. Before this week’s Cozy Grove update, I had a giant spreadsheet going to track my flower progress. Now, you can see which ones you’re missing in the item descriptions.
There are 12 colors (red, peach, yellow, orange, chartreuse, cyan, blue, purple, magenta, pink, black, and white) and there are 5 potted flowers (poppy, dahlia, tulip, coneflower, and iris) and 5 flowering bushes (azalea, lupine, lilac, aster, and beebalm). So 120 flowers to collect, right?
No. There are 3 TYPES of each color: wild, hybrid, and exotic = 360 different flowers. Wilds are always purchased with “spirit” orbs, hybrid with “happy,” and exotic with “joyous.” Start early with your collection and plant potted flowers together for x3 the harvest. Each flower sells for 350 coins to Mr. Kit. - Lamps
Light is a resource in Cozy Grove. Flowers and bushes cannot be harvested and animals cannot be fed unless lit. Use lamps to spread the light around the island to keep your produce harvistable, animals fed, and find hidden fruit and nut trees. It also makes seek and find style quests much easier to complete.
Each bear area lights up after completing a quest, so you can chain lamps from each of those hubs to cover areas. However, some days, a bear might not have a quest for you and there’s no way to light up their area, leaving the rest of you lights in the dark.
Chain them from your original campsite if you can. - Be careful what you give.
Some bears will ask for quantities of generic food. Stock up on foods that have 1:1 or low non-cooked to cooked ratios, otherwise you’re giving away extra money.
Fruit: citron, apple, pawpaw, pear, or plum (yields 1 roasted fruit each)
Do Not Give: goldenberries or snowberries (yields 2 roasted fruit each)
Mushroom: Brown (1)
Do Not Give: Red (2), Poison (3), Trumpet (4), or Chantrelle (5)
Root Vegetable: potatoes (yield 3 roasted vegetables, which is the lowest you can get)
Do Not Give: Sweet Potato (6), Turnip (9), Radish (12), or Parsnip (15)
Processed Foods: Roasted Root Vegetables (100 coins ea) or mixed greens (24 coins ea, but a little harder to come by than Roasted Root Veggies)
Do Not Give: Roasted Fruit (160 coins ea and used for making the most lucrative item in the game), Roasted Mushroom (240 coins ea), eggs (24 coins each and harder to come by), or any chef-made items like Jam (1,920 coins ea), boiled eggs (288 coins ea), Fancy Greens (288 coins ea), and Deluxe Greens (3,600 coins ea). - Press A.
Seek and find quests are the most common quest type in the game. Often times these items can be hidden behind something. Hot tip – go to the clue area, and press A here and there as you walk around. Your character is automatically drawn towards nearby items that react with the A button when you press it. Don’t spam A, however, or you may find yourself pulling up lamps and decor. - Complete all the daily things.
It’s tempting to login, complete the story quests, and log out before moving onto the next day. However, completing all the possible tasks available in a day sets you up to sail through harder quests and complete your badge collection.
Complete non-essential quests. These quests are always denoted by a time limit and will go away when the new day rolls over. Complete these for all sorts of coins, recipes, decor, food, and even a chance at a spirit log.
Imps. Imp Essences are extremely hard to come by. Give hungry imps what they want for a chance at an essence. The same goes for crying imps – lead them to another crying imp with bon bons for a shot at an essence. The crying imps appear to be bugged at the moment, and I’ve been getting only 1 crying imp on my island for multiple days in a row.
Use your tools. Fish, harvest, dig, pickup shells, jump in leaf piles, find spirit wells, and whack shrubs. Stock up on materials like charred fish, ash, greens, and produce that you’ll need. There are a whole host of achievements for using your tools – and breaking them. Plus, you’ll need all of those items later for story quests. One I just completed required 200 ash. Get saving! - Be careful when you’re running.
As your island expands, running around and stopping can put you in a precarious situation = getting stuck. Load times can be a bit slow in the game, so slow down as you approach bear areas. Remember, these areas change almost daily, so what was once a chair could be a building, and you’ll find yourself having to do a save and quit reset.
TRIPLE XP BLOG 