🌱 First Week Guide

Mistria has no fail state. Board requests never expire, story quests wait indefinitely, and every season returns next year — the first week is not a test you can fail, only a start you can make faster or slower. What gives the week direction is Renown, the currency that lifts Town Rank. The milestone that matters is Stone Rank at 10 Renown, because the Town Rank table lists exactly one unlock at Stone: the Mines. Every day in this guide bends toward that gate — errands for Renown, forage for money, and a small crop patch so the farm is already producing when the mine opens. Days are a brisk 12.5 minutes by default; accessibility settings can lengthen them and disable the oversleep penalty — set both on Day 1.

💡 Grab every request that looks doable — they never expire, so an unfinished errand is a reminder, not a failure.

The opening scene does the heavy lifting. Celine meets you at your door with a Worn Hoe and three bags of Tulip Seeds; Hayden rides up behind her with a Worn Watering Can and three bags of Turnip Seeds; then Celine sends you north to meet Adeline in town. Take that walk — it routes you past the request board and the Inn, the two fixtures of your entire week.

• Till a small patch by your door and plant all six bags. Turnips mature in 4 days (40t each), tulips in 6 (30t) — your first two harvests land on Day 5 and Day 7.
• Forage everything on the walk into town. Early money is forage money: keep two of each item (villagers request them later) and sell the rest.
• Read the request board by the General Store. One-item errands — 5 Wild Berries for Errol, 10 Wood and 10 Stone for Ryis — pay modest Tesserae, and most requests add roughly 20 Renown.
• At the Inn, click the cauldron for a free bowl of soup: +20 health and stamina, once per day, forever.
• Sleep early. Leftover stamina is worth more tomorrow than spent on clearing debris you don't need yet.

💡 Don't till more than you can water. With starting stamina a six-tile patch is honest work; expansion is what turnip profits are for.

Mistria metes out its toolkit over days rather than minutes, and the schedule is generous as long as you keep showing up at the board. Two free tools arrive through quests on Day 2, a third a couple of days later — and only two tools in the whole set are straight purchases.

💡 Rod before shovel. Fishing pays daily; the shovel is convenience.

Once the tools land, week one becomes one continuous decision: where does today's stamina go? Community write-ups sort fresh saves into three openings, and the failure mode they flag is specific — players who push the mines on Days 2–3 tend to surface broke around Day 8 with no seeds in the ground, while forage-and-fish players stay solvent on lower peak income. The rush route does spike on Days 4–5, but it dries up by Day 8 with no crop buffer, and before copper gear the mines are also where weak swords go to die. (The money figures in the table are community estimates from early-access play, not official numbers.)

Most board requests pay about 20 Renown and Stone Rank sits at 10, so a few days of errands plus the story chain trigger the gate: a letter from Errol inviting you to the mine entrance above the museum, where a cutscene with Errol and Eiland reopens the Mines. Go prepared — the community's loudest early-game warning is that the Worn Sword hits for half a Copper Sword's damage, and one of your first blacksmithing crafts should be a Copper Sword. The chain is short: 10 Copper Ore smelt into one Copper Ingot (about 20 minutes at the anvil outside March's shop), and 4 ingots at Blacksmithing level 4 forge either the Copper Sword or a copper tool such as the Watering Can. Underground, hold to a pace of roughly five floors a day and get out — the full pacing argument, floor types, ore by biome, and the sealed-quest chain live in our dedicated Mines guide.

💡 First four ingots, pick one: the sword if you intend to mine seriously, the Copper Watering Can if your farm is outgrowing your mornings.

The board pays Renown, but people pay compound interest. Friendship rises just from greeting villagers as you pass them, and unlike most life sims there is no weekly gift cap — you can hand something to the same person every single day. Foraged flowers are perfectly respectable week-one gifts.

• Greet everyone you walk past — it is free friendship.
• Gift daily if you can spare the item; there is no weekly limit.
• Target: one villager at 2 hearts by Day 7 — that is when the first backstory dialogue and cutscene chain opens up.
• Hover any item before selling or gifting: a museum icon in the corner means the museum still wants it; a checkmark means already donated.
• Donate new species before selling them — museum sets also feed Town Rank.

💡 Quests and gifts stack: the villagers who post requests are easy early friendship targets, because you already know what they want.

Nothing here is a deadline — everything in Mistria waits. Read it as a priority order: if most rows are green by Day 7, your second week starts with the Mines open, a real backpack, and a farm that already pays for itself.

💡 Short on rows? Good — that is next week's list, and next week exists.

• Bringing the Worn Sword into the mines — it does almost no damage; forge copper gear first.
• Tilling a huge field on Day 1 — automation arrives late (the Water Sprite Statue needs Mining Lv60, an auto-feeder needs Ranching Lv45), and an oversized farm eats the whole day.
• Selling every forageable — the museum and your gift stock dry up. Keep two of everything.
• Ignoring the request board — it is the main Renown and early-cash channel, and requests never expire.
• Postponing people until "later" — two hearts by Day 7 is cheap if you greet and gift from Day 1.

💡 If you only fix one habit: check the board, drink the soup, greet three people — ninety seconds that compound all week.