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Community simulation games, like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing, are all about relaxing and pretending you can escape your busy life by running away to an old and forgotten town. Escaping into the country comes with its own set of challenges, though. Hokko Life is a new community simulation similar to these titles but with a twist. In Hokko Life, you can craft furniture from absolute scratch and build your village from the ground up.

Related: Hokko Life: Guide To Farming

Standing out from the crowd, Hokko Life's crafting and building system require learning so that you can come out the other end with a fascinating piece of furniture. That's not all that players need help figuring out. Below are some tips for getting started with this newly released cozy life simulation, as it can come as a learning curve to some.

Updated on October 7th, 2022, by Sharnelle Earle: Now that Hokko Life has finally been released, everyone is excited to jump back into this cozy simulation. A lot of important mechanics have shifted and changed for better player quality of life, and the game has improved over its early access days. Because of these changes, we have adjusted this guide to accurately portray the gameplay and what you need to know to get a head start in creating a cute village full of animals.

Mayor Merits

Certain milestones and items are locked until you've completed some Mayor Merits. Mayor Merits is a progression system that rewards you with goodies. You can access it by opening your inventory and sifting through the tabs at the top.

It will be the last tab that looks like a gold medal. Each bubble in this menu will count your progression out for you. This allows you to see how much more of something you have to complete until you get a reward.

Mayor Merit Categories:

  • Character Upgrades
  • Foraging Upgrades
  • Fishing & Bug-Catching Upgrades
  • Mining & Design Upgrades
  • Town Upgrades

The right-hand side of the Mayor Merits menu showcases what each progression icon (underneath each bubble) means to understand what actions you need to take to complete a merit.

Character upgrades will unlock money, sprinting speed increase, and emotes. The second category, shaped like an axe, will increase your ability to gather raw materials, farm, and increase the respawn rate or amount of items gathered from one thing.

The fishing and bug category will unlock fishing tools and upgrades. The most important Mayor Merits to work towards, though, are the mining upgrades and town upgrades. The last two categories will unlock higher-tier pickaxes, allow you to demolish homes, and more.

The latter is important for progressing within the game. If you find yourself stuck, unable to get certain items, you may actually need to unlock them with Mayor Merits.

How To Build Furniture From Scratch In Hokko Life

Hokko Life's crafting system involves purchasing blueprints and pieces of shapes from Sally. With these, you will manipulate, paint, and turn them into extravagant furniture. It can take seconds to hours, depending on what you try to make.

A blueprint gives you a small set of rules you can't break. By pressing "Info" while crafting, you can see these rules. They'll usually tell you how big or small your item must be and if it needs something, like a light bulb.

By pressing "Guide," you'll be able to see a grid showing you your boundaries. The arrow you'll see on the grid is the side on which your character will be able to interact with the object.

You can craft simple furniture by using raw wooden log material. To make more complex things, you need to purchase more complex shapes from Sally and then craft wooden logs, stone slabs, or others.

Tips For Building Bridges

You have to tell the game that the bridge is stable on all sides. If you're making a simple ramp or plank without a railing, it will say that the design has an error.

To fix this, you need to put any object in a far corner of the grid. If you make the plank as long as the grid will physically allow, the design will be useable without this.

Once complete, you can place it down and see if it works. If it doesn't work as a bridge, you can edit the furniture and change it without having to start over again.

Tips For Crafting Lamps

To make a house suitable for villagers in Hokko Life, you need a lamp, and you'll need a light bulb to craft a lamp from scratch, which involves several steps.

  • To get a light bulb, you first need to buy the light bulb recipe from Sally.
  • Then buy the light bulb pieces set.
  • One light bulb costs one steel bar and two sheets of glass.
  • This requires you to buy the recipe to craft glass out of sand.
  • You'll also need to progress enough through the game to unlock the mines.
  • The mines are the only way to find iron ore, which can be smelted into steel bars.

Tips For Selling Furniture To Earn Money

One of the easiest ways to earn money is by selling things you craft. They don't even have to look good or be usable.

  • The more you add to a piece, like paint and more squares, the more it will sell for and the more a villager will be pleased.
  • Always make sure none of your shapes are clipping through the ground or grid boundary; otherwise, it will say there's an issue.
  • Once you make your own house, you'll be able to unlock a location to download other players' furniture designs instead.

Housing In Hokko Life

You will have been given a house for free and introduced to Rosa in the game's tutorial. By now, you know you can go to Rosa to purchase and build more houses. There are some abilities for housing that you do not have access to until you have completed Mayor Merits.

The purple house icon, the last category in your Mayor Merits, is what you need to focus on to unlock certain town upgrades. By progressing through this merit, you will be able to unlock the ability to move houses, demolish them, and access a town donation box.

Most of the actions needed to progress through this section involve completing many villager requests, decorating, and uploading creator designs.

Getting New Villagers And Stores In Hokko Life

The only way to recruit new villagers into your town is by checking the Inn every evening. New villagers and shop owners spawn inside the Inn during lunchtime and the evening.

All you have to do is talk to them, and they will become available to fill a house. Once you have a house built, you need only interact with the white sign outside the house to choose who lives inside.

Every Recruitable NPC
  • Lasrus (clothing)
  • Aubrey (farm)
  • Hurley (desert)
Every Recruitable Villager
  • Benny
  • Sherf
  • Niko
  • Lily
  • Ruby
  • Oleander
  • Hector
  • Mei
  • Ren
  • Pip
  • Owyn
  • Poa
  • Yoyo
  • Nami
  • Tola
  • Kiko
  • Ramesh
  • Fiore
  • Patches
  • Quill
  • Cookie
  • Zea
  • Danzo
  • Finley
  • Swift
  • Timothy

Villager Requests

Villagers will give you quests every now and again. Sometimes it will be to dig up flowers, other times, you will have to craft the perfect piece of furniture for them.

Requests usually give you a week to complete, but if you don't complete it within that time frame, there are no consequences.

You can go into the quest tab in your inventory and discard old requests. Speak to more villagers to find another one. As a reward for completing a quest, villagers will give you money or clothing.

Related: Hokko Life: Everything You Need To Know About Merits

How To Harvest And Maintain Resources In Hokko Life

At the start of the game, you only have a limited amount of resources, and it's important not to deplete them until you've gained access to other areas on the map. Trees and flowers can be replanted by buying seeds. Rocks, however, don't come back unless they are within the mines.

Until you unlock the mines, it's best to save rocks for when you really need them. The rocks on the beach respawn daily, but the ones in the meadow don't.

By progressing through town upgrades in Mayor Merits, you will be able to get villagers to gather resources for you.

How To Fish And Catch Bugs

Catching bugs is pretty straightforward, and it's always the fishing that gets to people. In Hokko Life, it takes a little getting used to, just like other games of this genre.

To catch a fish successfully, you must place the bobber in front of it and wait for it to bite. You'll know when it bites because it will prompt you to press the interact button.

There are two challenges or mini-games you'll get while fishing.

First, you must hold down the interact button until the bar starts flashing yellow and red. When that happens, release the button. To stop the bar from going down all the way, it's safe to lightly tap while in the yellow.

Never tap or hold down the button while it's red, or you'll break the line.

After that happens, you'll be prompted to pull left or right. This means pressing down left and right or using the thumb grip on your controller. Once that's over, continue holding down the interact button. Rinse and repeat until you fill up the bar.

Bugs and fish are seasonal in Hokko Life. To satisfy the collector in you, you can find and catch all the butterflies and fish that change every season and time of day. When you find a new specimen, you can speak to Derris on the beach for some quick cash. He will also pay you if you find the same fish in a new size.

Making Money In Hokko Life

The best way to make money is by selling bugs, crops, and crafted furniture.

Catching 30 butterflies is way easier than catching 30 fish. Butterflies are everywhere and require no challenge; that's why it's worth purchasing the bug net sooner rather than later. A couple of petals don't mean much, but if you have a meadow's worth of blooming flowers, you'll get a lot out of selling each one.

As for furniture, the more you add to a creation, the higher the price. You can throw a bunch of random pieces together and make a lot of money.

But the best course of action is to work towards unlocking a farm and profiting from your hard labour.

Farming is the bestseller. You must unlock the ability to spawn Aubrey at the Inn, who will then unlock the farming section of the mountains. With the farm available, you can grow and nurture high-quality crops that can sell for 110+ coins.

To unlock Aubrey, you will have to have planted ten flowers and trees. Ten days have to have passed in-game, and you need to already have the ability to fish and buy houses from Rosa.

Unlockable Areas In Hokko Life

Throughout your game, you'll be able to unlock new areas to explore. These areas will also have new resources to acquire. The unlockable areas are all hidden behind the village, up some stairs, and throughout the mountains.

The only exceptions come to the City Centre and Tropical Island. To get to the mountains, you must first build stairs to the second level of the meadow (starting area of the village), then make your way to the back center to reach the mountains.

Area How To unlock
Pond First left as you enter the mountains. Go to the edge of the waterfall to unlock the flat bridge blueprint. Craft it and gain easy access.
Farm Find Aubrey at the Inn ( they only spawn after certain progression). After speaking to them, wait a day, and the second left up the mountains will be unblocked.
Forest You need to unlock the bomb recipe to then blow up the rocks in the way at the very end of the mountain path, to the right.
Mines Find the broken pickaxe in front of the mines (above the stairs at the left end of the mountains) to start Sally's quest. Repair the pickaxe and enter.
City Centre After a certain amount of game progression, you will be able to go back to the train station you started the game in and travel to the City Centre.
Tropical Island Hurley must spawn at the Inn, speak with them to begin unlocking the island. It is currently unknown what gets him to spawn at the Inn.

Next: Hokko Life: How To Move Villagers Houses