Game:

Harvest Moon: Save the Homeland (2001)

Duration: 6:51

182 views

5

harvest moon speedrun discord: https://discord.com/invite/7wtwtkW
crazyberzerker's original horse OoB video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zfhh_RjDldQ

this video shows a method of getting your chicken off the farm in save the homeland. normally the game does not allow you to do this, and if you approach the loading zone heading to town, it will play a short message, then force your character to walk a few steps toward the farm.

it seems like the "barrier" that triggers this text is almost exactly the same area as the loading zone itself, but they don't overlap perfectly. thus, if you are able to get out of bounds and approach the loading zone from the "wrong" side, you can get into a very specific position where the loading zone exists, but the textbox won't trigger. even still, the game seems to know you are holding the chicken and won't trigger the loading zone regardless (in some of these spots, if you put the chicken down, the load will instantly trigger and you'll enter the town).

however, there seems to be a little trick where you can press the quick inventory button (R1), and if you are in one of these specific spots, the load will just trigger, ignoring the chicken and circumventing the barrier. normally the game plays a little sound effect if you try and open the quick menu while holding the chicken, since R1 is also the button that will put an item in the rucksack, and you can't put the chicken in your rucksack. it may be that for a frame or two, the game tries to put the item away, and you briefly enter an "empty-handed" state, before the game checks whether or not the item can be put in the rucksack (only ones that can't, to my knowledge, are the chicken and the dog).

this might seem like just a funny little quirk, but it's actually very powerful, because the chicken is a +2 spam on every single villager in the game. that means that you can just stand there and keep showing the chicken until you've maxed their affection. however, the villager needs to be outside, as you can't enter buildings with the chicken (besides your own barn, coop, and house).

the one problem for speedruns is that this current setup requires the horse to get out of bounds. basically what i do is 1) set the chicken as close to the outside wall as possible, 2) sleep immediately, 3) set up the out-of-bounds with the horse, 4) carefully pick up the chicken from out of bounds, so i can carry it out of bounds with me (it won't move from where you've set it as long as it's still sitting on the egg for that day, and it's not raining), 5) get behind the barrier, walk into it from the other side so it will push me into the right spot, then press R1 to trigger the load.

i showcased spamming gina and joe a little bit, but lost the chicken as soon as i entered the goddess spring because of the cutscene that triggers there. it seems like if you trigger any cutscene while holding the chicken, it will instantly go back to the coop, so you have to be careful. the other major thing is if you set the chicken down outside the farm, it will crash the game.

big credit goes to crazyberzerker for finding the horse oob setup all those years ago; this is the first legitimate application of it in a speedrun. since it requires the horse to get oob, it won't be useful in most any% runs, but for NG+ and all endings, it's huge. ideally we will find a way to trigger the load without going oob, but this is a good start.

Other Statistics