Starsand Island – Hints and Tips

Have you decided to visit Starsand Island? I’ve been playing this for the week prior to release, and wanted to share some hints and tips to start you off playing the early-to-mid game. Due to the open nature of this title, it provides a somewhat general guide, but nothing as direct as a walkthrough.

It is worth noting that the title is launching in Early Access, so some aspects may be subject to change. If you’ve not yet picked up the game, be sure to check out our Early Access review.

Professions

You will be given the option to unlock five professions by speaking to the relevant NPC. You will need to find and speak with a mentor to begin a questline to learn these professions.

• Crafter (Create Tools, furniture, and other items) – Speak with Zerine
• Farmer (Grow plants) – Speak with Graminova
• Angler (Fishing) – Speak with Delphin
• Rancher (Raise Animals) – Speak with Pastelle
• Explorer (Explore the Moonlit Forest, which is rich in resources) – Speak with Zephyria

I would recommend that you start with the Crafter profession, as it will allow you to create tools to gather resources and to get around the island more quickly.

• When you unlock a profession, you will also unlock the Workpedia app on your phone to upgrade skills for that profession. Continue completing quests for that profession to unlock higher-level skills. In addition to the quest, you will need to spend Starsand in the Workpedia app to manually unlock each one. You can upgrade skills repeatedly at a higher cost for more benefit.
• The most useful early skill is Efficiency Boost (to get more resources) in the Crafting skillset. Recuperate (to increase stamina recovery when sitting) is also useful, as are the Intermediate and Senior level skills in crafting, which add further ways to recover stamina.

Exploring the Moonlit Forest

The Explorer profession pairs well with the Crafter profession, as many of the resources you need will be in the Moonlit Forest. When exploring the Moonlit Forest, stamina and bag space are the main limits to coming home with plenty of ore and other resources.

• The skateboard and rollerblades are useful in the Moonlit Forest, where you cannot take vehicles. These are unlocked through the crafting profession.
• If you do not want to fight, you can create Sentry Bots to fight for you. With that said, combat is minimal as very few enemies exist in the Moonlit Forest.
• You can find Treasure Maps around the Moonlit Forest at times. Make this your held item in the Moonlit Forest to display an arrow. These will point to some treasure.
• You can build items not just at home but also at campsites in the Moonlit Forest, which will allow you further crafting and recovery options. You can also craft storage chests if your bag is full. Sleeping in the tent instead of going home is possible, but it may be inconvenient if you have crops and animals at home to take care of.

Farming and Ranching

Farming is fairly standard for the genre of the game. Plant the seed, water it, and optionally add fertilizer for a bonus effect like faster growth or higher yield. Conveniently, you can hold the button to continuously water, a gauge will tell you when it’s enough, then you can keep holding it down and move to the next plot. Each plot will helpfully tell you how long it has left to grow.

• Sometimes you will receive Everlasting Seeds. Don’t accidentally sell these. They can keep on giving you a crop long-term after you plant them. It may be a good idea to plant these somewhere distinctive.
• Ranching ties into farming. If you raise rabbits, they will pull weeds up from your fields, protecting your crops. If you raise chickens, they’ll eat bugs that are attracted to crops that grow on a trellis (a wooden structure that looks like a fence). On that note, there are two items called “Trellis” found when using the Workbench. One is rather large and is only for decorative purposes. The other is for growing crops. The farming one specifically says it’s “Planting equipment”.

Upgrading and Crafting

Starsand Island has quite a variety of equipment to use for crafting and to craft. You can learn to create these through blueprints.

• Some blueprints you can buy from stores in town (often locked behind a certain rank of a profession), some are quest rewards, and some you may just wander across by opening a chest or by speaking with someone.
• Tools to gather resources tie into this. You’ll need to rank up a relevant profession to unlock a tool. And certain resources cannot be gathered unless you have the correct rank of tool. For example, the Impulse Pickaxe cannot break the resource to gather gold ore. With that said, you can get lucky and find it elsewhere on occasion.
• You will also need to be able to craft the Ore Analyzer to receive useful items from some of the ore found when exploring.
• The Workbench and other crafting equipment can be upgraded by clicking Upgrade and providing the required resources when you have the blueprint.
• You can upgrade your bag in the same way without a blueprint. I would recommend prioritizing this to make the most of trips into the Moonlit Forest.

Storage

I recommend crafting many storage boxes and storing your resources inside. When you craft, it will automatically remove them from the relevant box.

• Name each box when you create it to keep things organized.
• You can switch between boxes by clicking the icon on the top-right of the box. This displays their names.
• You can automatically insert any matching items in your bag into the box one a one-button deposit by going up to the box. So avoid bunching boxes together in an inaccessible way.

Quests

• Speak to the relevant NPCs as noted above to start the profession quests. When you finish one, you’ll need to speak to the same NPC again to start the quest for the next rank in the profession, rather than it automatically assigning it to you.
• If you go to the bulletin board at the community center each day, you can collect some optional quests. You may not have access to the required items at times, so check carefully. These daily quests have a time limit to complete, but offer rewards, including a sizeable relationship boost, so they’re worth doing when possible. When you unlock the blueprint, you can build a Request Bulletin board at home to accept quests without going to the Community Center.
• If you’re having trouble completing a quest due to a lack of a resource, try another one. It may be that what you need will be unlocked or made easier to get by doing so.

Relationships

As of the Early Access launch of Starsand Island, there is not much to the relationships with NPCs when compared to similar games, but you can improve your relationship with them.

• Speak with them and gift them items they like daily to increase their affection toward you. Flowers tend to be a safe gift. As of Early Access launch, sometimes the text doesn’t exactly match the intentions, so look at the amount of points awarded.
• You can do the same with certain animals around the island, which can allow you to adopt them after you reach 3 Hearts. Relevant items are more likely to provide bigger boosts, such as giving a cat ‘cat food’, rather than insects.
• You can track both people and animals via the map. If you track them, the pathfinding line on screen will change if they move, so this can be more helpful than just looking on the map.
• NPCs will also gift you items back, so this can be a good way to get new items.

Money and Starsand

There are two currencies in Starsand Island, Coin (standard money) and Starsand. Both are required for various things, but Starsand is most notably required for unlocking and upgrading skills.

• Generally, you can sell items at any shop for coins. You can also craft a Quick Shipping Box when you unlock the blueprint to do this from your home. Complete the quest from Marston to unlock a ship at the port, which will buy certain items for a higher price. This is limited, but useful.
• Generally speaking, one of the more reliable ways to make money is through farming. You can also make a reasonable amount through fishing. However, you can also look to craft items depending on what you have available. Crafted items are generally worth more than the materials. Ores are not worth a significant amount in themselves, even expensive-sounding ones like gold or diamonds.
• When exploring the Moonlit Forest, make sure to grab all the mushrooms you can. They don’t take any energy to collect, and you can cook them into a source of money or stamina. Grilled Mushroom Skewers are great (but require salt and three types of mushrooms, all of which are found in the Moonlit Forest), Mushroom Soup and Mirthsroom Soup are both good (requiring the relevant type of mushroom unique to the Moonlit Forest), while Grilled Mushrooms are fairly low ranking but only require the basic Mushroom (found on Starsand Island) which is easy to find so can be cooked in bulk.
• Completing quests is a good source of both money and Starsand. You can also gain Starsand through completing objectives in the StarNote and Island Life apps.

Further Tips

• As of the start of Early Access of Starsand Island, using a controller isn’t perfect. If you find the wrong menu opening when you use the D-pad or something not responding, try using the mouse and keyboard if playing on a PC.
• If you get stuck, pause and use the ‘Unstuck’ option. Note that this will autosave, so ensure there isn’t anything you would not want saved before deciding to use it.
• Buy Land through the “Buy Land” app to unlock more space to build your home and farming area. You will need money and Starsand to buy land around your initial area, with further areas requiring completion of enough Island Life app objectives.
• Both in the Moonlit Forest and around town, you’ll find chests dotted around. Be on the lookout, as they can contain some helpful rewards. You can also find places to dig for more items and hidden items through completing small puzzles or interacting with hidden objects indicated by things such as a circle of mushrooms.
• Certain items can be found in unexpectedly easy-to-reach places. For example, the Premium Wood can be found near a locked gate in the Moonlit Forest, which takes some time to unlock the path to, but it can also be found on Starsand Island itself, around the Exploration Club.
• Try everything and have fun. There’s a lot more to do in Starsand Island than mentioned in this guide.

If you are looking for another life simulation game with action, you might want to check out Fantasy Life i: The Girl Who Steals Time or Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma.

Many thanks go to Seed Sparkle Lab for a PC review code for Starsand Island.

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Thomas Knight

A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.