Coral Island Beginner Guide
In our guide to Coral Island, we’ve put together important information about the basics of the game as well as some helpful tips. We’ve talked about the game’s interface and its main functions. We’ve also given tips on how to play the game and talked about some technical details, like what kind of computer you need and how to make the game easier to use.
Starting Out
Here you are on Coral Island. After a quick introduction to the island and a few of its people, whom you’ll get to know well, you’ll be thrown right into the action. You’re given a huge plot of land that’s full of things to clear out and then left to your own devices. Start the game’s first quest, “Starting Out.”
Your goal is pretty simple: plant and water ten seeds. You start out with 15 Turnip Seeds and a bunch of tools, so you have everything you need to do the job. But first, you have to clean up the land a bit. The tools come into play at this point.
Getting the Land Ready
Almost every inch of your farmland is full of things right now. You can get rid of that stuff with three of the tools you were given. You can get to the tools by using the keyboard or clicking on the icon in the Toolbelt menu at the bottom of the screen. Each tool can help you get rid of a different kind of blockage:
Your Axe can cut down trees and get rid of branches that have fallen. When you cut down trees and branches, you’ll get Wood and Sap.
With your Pickaxe, you can break rocks apart. When you smash rocks, you’ll get Stone and Coal.
Your Scythe can cut through weeds, grass, and garbage piles. When you finish these tasks, you’ll get different things, like Fiber, Hay, Trash, and Scrap.
Everything you pick up while working will go in either your Toolbelt or your Backpack. Don’t throw anything away while you’re clearing the land. Everything you find has a use. You can fit a little extra stuff in your Backpack.
When you use a tool to do something, you use up some Stamina, which is shown in the top-left corner of the screen. How much work you can do in a day is based on how much stamina you have. You can get more stamina by eating food (like the Candied Tree Seeds in your Toolbelt) or by going to sleep. Keep an eye on the top left corner of the screen to see how much more you can do before you can’t do anything else for the day. Don’t try to clean too hard, or you’ll run out of energy.
Once you’ve gotten rid of enough trash, you can move on to the next step in Starting Out, which is planting your crops.
Planting
In Coral Island, you have to till the land you’ve cleared before you can plant seeds there. The Hoe, which is also in your Toolbelt, can be used to do this. If you use the Hoe on a cleared area of dirt, you’ll make a darker patch of soil that’s good for planting. After that, all you have to do to plant them is put on the Turnip Seeds and interact with each patch of soil. When the seeds land in the soil, they will start to grow, which will take a few days.
But you can’t just plant seeds and expect them to grow; you have to water them too. Now we can talk about your last tool, the watering can. If you equip it, you can sprinkle water on the squares you’ve tilled to help the seeds you planted grow. You don’t have to be right next to the tilled squares to water them, so you don’t have to move around as much as you might think. (This is especially true if you have played other farm games.) Your Watering Can can only hold so much water. When it runs out, you can fill it up at the pool to the right of your farm.
Plant at least ten turnip seeds, but you could also plant all fifteen. Give them water. Now comes the time to wait. The turnips will be ready to pick when they are fully ripe, which will take four days. Once you’ve pulled your turnips out of the ground, you can put them in the Shipping Bin near the front of your house. Anything you put in the Shipping Bin will be sold automatically at the end of the day, and the money you make will go right to you. This is your main way to make money in Coral Island, but it’s not the only way.
Going to Town
You need to do one more thing before you can finish Starting Out. You can do it before your turnips grow. To the east of your farm, head into town. Sam’s General Store is a short walk east of the town square, near the Community Center. Sam is inside, and he will sell you more seeds to plant. Early in the game, Sam’s Seeds are the main way you can make money, so you should probably buy some more while you’re here. The next quest, The New Farmer, will also start when you visit Sam.
To finish the quest, gather your turnips and talk to Sam for the first time. But this is not the end of the quest. To do this, go to your Journal, scroll down until you see Quests, click on Starting Out, and then click on Claim Reward under the quest details. This will get you your reward and end the quest for good. If you don’t do this, you won’t get anything, so don’t forget to check your Journal.
Sweet Home
Coral Island isn’t the best way to start off. Your new farm isn’t much more than a run-down shack and a jumbled piece of land, and you’ll have to fix things pretty much on your own. There are carpenters on the island who might be able to help, but you’ll need to give them some materials before they’ll help.
Soon after you start your new farm, you’ll be able to play Home Sweet Home. If you look in the mailbox to the right of your house, you’ll find a letter from Dinda and Joko saying that they’ll fix up your house if you give them the building materials. For them to fix up your house, they need two things:
- 50 Wood. You can get wood from your property by cutting down trees or cutting up branches. To do this, you’ll need to use your Axe.
- 20 Stone. To get Stone, you can break rocks on your property. You can break rocks with your Pickaxe.
Your first chance to use your stamina will be to gather enough materials to fix your house. You may have gathered some Wood and Stone while making room for crops, but you won’t have enough Stamina to get 50 Wood and 20 Stone in one day. When you’re too tired to do anything else, go home and sleep. Keep in mind that you can go below zero Stamina, but your actions will slow down and any negative Stamina you get will be taken away the next day.
When you have enough materials, you’ll need to go to the Carpenter. Most homes and stores on the island are to the east of your farm, but the Carpenter is to the north. Take the path to the left of your house and stay on the road until you see a Ranch. A short distance east of here is The Carpenter.
You can buy things if you go to the front desk. When you click Upgrade, you’ll see the option to make your house better. If you say yes, Dinda and Joko will start improving your home right away to make it more comfortable to live in. From now on, you can go into town and buy furniture to put in your house. You can also use the TV to find out more about the game or the weather.
Just one more thing. When you finish Home Sweet Home, you’ll be asked to manually end the quest. Check the Quest menu in your Journal. Here, you can choose “Claim Reward” to get your reward for finishing the quest and end the quest for good.
The New Farmer and Making Friends
You just got to Coral Island, so it makes sense that everyone there is pretty much a stranger to you. You should fix that. The New Farmer has you meet thirty people on Coral Island and tell them about yourself. This can take a while because there are so many people to meet.
Visit Sam’s General Store during Starting Out to start The New Farmer. The mayor, Connor, will tell you to go around and meet the people who live on the island. On Coral Island, you can meet 66 different people, but for this quest, you only need to meet 30 of them. You’ve also talked to a few of them before, which cuts down on the number of people you need to officially meet. Even so, this job can take a while.
Here are some ideas on how to meet locals:
- Do your work on the farm first before you go looking. Most people on Coral Island don’t do much moving around until after 9 a.m. (Though you will occasionally meet someone who gets up early.)
- Stay south of town, close to either the town or the beach. People who live in towns sometimes go outside of them, but it’s easiest for them to meet 30 people on the streets or on the beach.
- Check the map out. It will show you where people you have met and people you haven’t will be. If the person is inside a building, you’ll have to go inside and look around. When you’re running out of people to meet, this method works best.
- Stay near buildings for a little while. Sam’s General Store, Fishenships Tavern, and the Community Center are all good places to meet people going about their days, but if you wait long enough, you can meet people just about anywhere in a public building.
- Also, don’t bother going into people’s homes during the day. During the day, most people don’t stay close to home.
- Check out the benches in different parts of town. People like to take breaks to sit down and have a drink every so often.
Once you’ve met 30 people The New Farmer will end right away, and you’ll move on to Making Friends. Now that you know a large number of people, you should start making friends.
Giving people gifts is a good way to make friends with them. Each townie has a list of things they love, like, dislike, and hate. If you want to make friends, you need to give people gifts that they either love or like. If you look at a person’s profile under the People tab in the menu, the game will tell you what they like and what they don’t like. The catch is that you have to give them things before you know what they like and don’t like. This means you have to try a lot of different things.
Luckily, you don’t have to make anyone happy to finish Making Friends. Just give five random things as gifts to the townies. This can be done with anything, even trash. Sure, giving someone trash won’t make them happy, but it will finish the quest. (But if you want to give something safer that won’t hurt relationships, you can find Tulips growing all over town.) The quest will end when you give five gifts to five different people.
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