15 Features in Fields of Mistria Every Farming Sim Needs
Fields of Mistria is a pixel art farming sim with magical elements, released in early access on August 5th. At only a $13.99 asking price, there’s a lot to love in what’s currently available for the game. After combing through all of the content the early access version has to offer so far, it’s time to highlight some of the best quality of life features in Fields of Mistria.
Read the full Fields of Mistria review here, where we cover some features excluded from this post like the jump and the never-ending watering can.
The Best Gameplay Features in Fields of Mistria
Your Character and Farm
1) Change anything about your farmer at any time, including their name.
Games are getting better about customization outside of the initial character creation screen, but some details are usually still locked to your first decision. Fields of Mistria provides complete freedom when it comes to changing your farmer’s details at any point in the game, which is a joy for those of us who sometimes create a self-insert and other times decide to create a unique character.
2) Change anything about your farm, including its name and barn/coop names.
Just like your farmer, your ranch animals and their home can go through a complete makeover as well. This is especially useful when you have a theme in mind for your farm and then ultimately decide to pivot to a different theme. I’m definitely guilty of rebranding from a flower-themed farm, to fruit, and then finally to a bakery.
3) You can store up to 8 unique outfit presets.
Who doesn’t love a good OOTD pic in-game? Animal Crossing New Horizons has this feature with a magic wand, but Fields of Mistria makes it even easier to quickly swap and edit your outfit presets from the character screen. There are enough outfits for 2 looks each season, a look for each activity, or any other category you may have in mind.
4) No time delay with building barns, house upgrades, or tools once you have the appropriate resources.
Gone are the days of seeking out the NPC who will build your barn and then waiting 2-3 days for it to finish construction. In Fields of Mistria, you can purchase the barn/coop blueprint as long as you have the money. Once you place the blueprint down on your farm, you add the required resources, and your barn will instantly be ready to use. I particularly love that tool upgrades are also instant!
5) Regaining smaller blueprints and resources when upgrading to a larger barn/coop.
So you build the barn and decide to redo your farm layout, right? In Fields of Mistria, the blueprints are designer friendly! After moving any animals to daycare, you can destroy the smaller barn and build a larger one. What’s really nice is not only do you get the smaller blueprint back (so now you can have a big and a small barn), but you also get all the resources returned to you that were used to build that original barn. It’s such a nice feature when games return the materials for previous builds.
Crafting and Exploration
6) Global inventory lets you craft without having the item in your backpack.
Every farming sim fan knows the pain of opening up a crafting menu only to realize the item you want to craft is grayed out because you don’t have all the resources in your backpack. Modern farming sims are starting to get better about crafting away from your chests, and Fields of Mistria is no exception. You don’t have to have all the materials in your limited backpack inventory, or even nearby a crafting station. All the chests are global so the crafting tables will recognize when you own something, regardless of where the chest is. One thing to note is that if you’re on controller, there currently isn’t an option to deselect a chest from being in the global inventory.
7) Craft or cook from the related appliances sprinkled throughout the town.
On a similar note to the above feature, you can also craft and cook in the early game before having a kitchen or workbench of your own thanks to the townsfolk! There are two crafting benches, a blacksmith table, and a functional kitchen in Mistria that your farmer can use while saving money to afford their own appliances.
8) Crafting and cooking are incentivized by increasing your skill level.
Fields of Mistria encourages the player to craft and cook items by tying the activities to a skill tree. The more you cook and craft, the more those particular skills will level up. Why care about leveling up? Well, the skill trees offer some great perks that help customize your gameplay in the areas that you care about, all of which are locked behind hitting specific level caps. I’ve found the perks at level 30 of most skills to be particularly useful, so get to crafting!
9) Foraged items, excluding the mines, remain outside if you pick it up with a full inventory.
This quality-of-life feature is easily one of the best additions to Fields of Mistria. Backpack space is limited, especially in early game with your tools taking up so many slots, so it’s nice that you can still forage for random goodies across town and know that they’ll be available to pick up the next day.
10) Tool upgrades don’t replace your current tool, letting you sell the older one for tesserae.
Most farming sims have the standard tool upgrade system where you have to have the basic axe to craft the copper axes, the copper to upgrade to iron, and the iron to upgrade to gold. With that standard system, the lower quality tool is lost because it’s used in the upgrade process. In Fields of Mistria, you don’t have to follow that chain. You can skip straight to iron if you have the right amount of iron bars. Even if you do follow the standard progression system, the lower tool isn’t used in the upgrade at all. What this means is you can upgrade to a nice new gold tool and then sell the silver, copper, or basic tools for additional money. It’s a great way to gain some extra tesserae.
Quests, The Town, and NPCs
11) Separate button for gifting vs interacting with an NPC.
No more accidental gifting! What a gamechanger! You can have your cursor selected on an item in your toolbag/backpack and talk to NPCs without worrying about gifting them your very expensive artifact that you still need to donate to the museum. Having a dedicated button for gifting an item that isn’t the same button you use for daily conversations is something I’d love for all farming sims to implement.
12) Turning in quests does not require you to hold the item.
Related to the above feature, Fields of Mistria also nails the quest buttons. Oftentimes with farming sims, you have to hold the item in your inventory and go up to the NPC who requested the item to close out a quest. In Fields of Mistria, you just need to have the item in your backpack somewhere. No need to hover over it or hold it, simply having it in your backpack and interacting with the NPC will trigger a pop up that you click on to turn in a quest. One thing to keep in mind is that if you have multiple items of varying quality, the quest will always turn in whichever item appears first in your inventory. So, be sure to move your buffed silver sword behind the standard one when that quest pops up!
13) Variety in how recipes are learned.
Cooking and crafting can be hit or miss with cozy gamers. Whether you love the mechanics or not, one thing that works really well in Fields of Mistria is how you unlock recipes—both for cooking and crafting. With cooking, you gain a recipe each time you ship a crop for the first time, giving you motivation to buy and ship at least one or two of each crop. You can also buy cooking and crafting recipes from shops, gain recipes from completing museum donations, and earn recipes as a reward for certain NPC quests. The variety keeps the gameplay interesting and gives you a reason to dabble in all the game has to offer.
14) Shops are always open for use, even when the shop owner isn’t around.
Going back to play other farming or life sims really highlights the benefit of this feature. As I play SunnySide (which I’m really enjoying), keeping track of shop hours and what days they are open can feel like a daunting task after seeing what the grass is like on the other side. This is not a criticism limited to SunnySide either, as most farming sims have store hours that require some planning ahead. In Fields of Mistria, every shop is open and available for you to purchase things from at all hours of the day, regardless of the day. You could argue that it breaks the immersion, but sometimes gameplay is more important than the realism of something like store hours.
15) Sell prices are visible at the time of purchase.
Related to store functionality, Fields of Mistria also lists the sell price for items in the shop menus! This is hugely helpful in the early game when you aren’t as familiar with what the most valuable crops will be. Now, you can see right away that yes, those strawberries that cost 300 tesserae actually are worth that hefty price tag.
The list could go on and on, as there are so many great quality-of-life features added to Fields of Mistria, but the above list captures most of the gameplay elements that immediately made the first playthrough so exciting. As this game is in early access, it’s exciting to think that this is only the beginning! Perhaps we’ll continue to discover new features as more updates are revealed.
