6 Features From Fields of Mistria I Wish Were in Stardew Valley

Fields of Mistria is one of the big surprise indie hits of the summer, and it’s easily the best farming sim game I’ve played since Stardew Valley from all those years ago. While we all know that Stardew Valley is still the gold standard for the genre, here are some quality-of-life features from Fields of Mistria that could make ConcernedApe’s game even better than it already is.

The Shops Are Always Open

There are so many things I love about Fields of Mistria, but I think the best thing about this game is that the shops just never close. It doesn’t matter what time you show up; you’ll always be able to buy whatever you need. The NPCs who normally tend to the store don’t need to be at the register either, leaving them free for interpersonal interactions anytime you want.

This is explained away by the fact that everyone in Mistria operates on an honor system. And y’know, the store owners know where you live anyway if they ever need to chase you down for money.

Dropped Items Don’t Despawn After a Day

With how tight inventory space can be in the early hours of the game, this is a godsend. Whenever you drop items from your inventory in Fields of Mistria, they’ll stay there for a few in-game days. Not enough space to carry your materials? Just leave them at the crafting station for easy access when you come back the next day to craft those fences you need.

This becomes less of an issue once you start upgrading your bag space, but given that your tools take up half your inventory when you’re first starting out, not having to worry about permanently losing an item can relieve a lot of stress.

NPC Locations Are Always Marked on the Map

It’s amazing that Stardew Valley doesn’t have this yet, but hey, maybe in a future update. Fields of Mistria has a good number of NPCs for you to interact with, and it’s going to take a bit of time before you start memorizing everyone’s routines and get a good sense of where they’re going to be.

To help you out, the map comes with location icons for every NPC, which updates in real time. This is immensely helpful when you need to look for a quest-giver or gift an item to an NPC for their birthday. No more just stumbling around town blindly, wasting time looking for a single person.

In-Depth Animal Breeding Mechanics

Fields of Mistria takes a few cues from Animal Crossing as well, such as the surprisingly in-depth animal breeding and color rarity mechanics. When you breed your farm animals, you have a chance of producing offspring of a different color. There are a total of 15 colors for each animal species and six rarity tiers.

While the colors are purely cosmetic for now and don’t serve any gameplay purpose, it’s still nice to have a bit of mini goal to work towards when you don’t feel like focusing on your usual farm stuff. While Stardew Valley does have some pretty cool animal variants like the Void chickens, it’d still be cool to get a wider variety of animal colors to unlock as you play.

Easy Cosmetic Changes

This is a huge quality-of-life feature that I’m a huge fan of in Fields of Mistria. As you unlock new outfits and cosmetic options, you can just change your character appearance from your menu. No need to go visit another NPC or wait until a certain point in the game to do so. Just do it from your menu, save your changes, and you’re done.

Just like with the map icons, I’m surprised this isn’t a thing in vanilla Stardew Valley yet. As cute as your characters are, you’re eventually going to get tired of their outfits, and I appreciated that Fields of Mistria isn’t shy about giving you a ton of cosmetic options and letting you change them whenever you want.

Automatic Birthday Reminders

Finally, I’m sure this can be resolved with a Stardew Valley mod, but this is yet another nice, quality-of-life feature that Fields of Mistria comes with right out of the box. Whenever it’s someone’s birthday, the game will let you know right at the start of the day.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve missed someone’s birthday in Stardew Valley just because I’m too lazy to check the calendar in the town square every day. It’s nice being spoonfed this information on the day itself, even if I still have to scramble to find an appropriate gift.

Fields of Mistria is available to play now.