If you’re looking for a whimsical open-world experience where you can let your imagination run wild, Disney Dreamlight Valley certainly fits the bill. This beginner-friendly life-sim gives you near endless possibilities to be who you want to be. But, with that comes the overwhelming feeling of not knowing what to do first and where to go in your first few hours.
Our Disney Dreamlight Valley starter guide can help make this onboarding experience a whole lot smoother. Without further ado, here are nine tips to optimize your Dreamlight Valley experience:
1. Make a Quick Buck by Selling Cheaper Crops
Playing Dreamlight Valley can be plenty of fun in its early hours, but you won’t get much done without some Star Coins. Hence, we’re letting you in on an easy and relatively quick way to make money: by growing and selling more economical crops such as wheat, lettuce, and carrot seeds.
Selling these crops in bulk after growing them will help you raise the funds you need to make your dream world a reality. You’ll even get to earn some Dreamlight (more on this later) while you’re at it.
2. Clean Your House
Cleaning isn’t exactly the most glamorous way to spend your time in a video game. However, it’s a necessity if you’re to make progress with your Dreamlight Valley home.
Narrative-wise, Dreamlight Valley will have you believe that undoing the Forgetting is a tall order. However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t attempt some cleanup. Night Thorns, for example, are an eyesore, which is why you should take your time clearing them up all over the valley. If nothing else, this is an excellent way to earn Star Coins.
3. Upgrade Your Storage ASAP
Don’t be afraid about being Scrooge McDuck when you’re just starting out. As with most life-sims, you’ll want to find and maximize every resource you can find. Unfortunately, this means your backpack and at-home storage chest will fill up pretty quick.
Thankfully, upgrading your house in Dreamlight Valley isn’t difficult—just a wee bit on the expensive side. Be sure to invest in it early, as it’ll pay dividends in the long run.
4. Don’t Forget To Complete Your Dreamlight Duties
Developer Gameloft made sure to pack Dreamlight Valley with plenty of tasks to do, even if sometimes you might do them begrudgingly. As you make progress through the main story, you’ll need to gain Dreamlight by completing Dreamlight Duties. These are easy enough to complete, if a tad monotonous.
You’ll often get a set of daily duties you can complete in an hour or less, which are as simple as gathering ingredients or cooking. Be sure to complete them, as every bit of Dreamlight counts.
5. High-Energy Foods Are Your Friends
Always cook whenever you can in Dreamlight Valley. Everything substantial that you need to do requires energy, and the best energy-yielding foods are the ones you can cook at home.
For starters, you can complete Remy’s quest and learn how to make ratatouille. After this, you can pick up other valuable recipes for five-star meals as you complete quests.
6. Use the Map
It might sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how many players don’t use the map in Dreamlight Valley. And that’s a shame. Of course, the map lets you know where you are at any given time, but Gameloft put in extra effort to make the in-game map especially useful.
Case in point: Your map lets you fast-travel to other biomes once you’ve unlocked them. Not only that, but the map has icons that are updated in real time based on characters’ whereabouts. The map even lets you know which crops you need to water and which crops are ready to be harvested, as well as which fruits are available from specific trees.
7. Fast-travel as Often as You Can
As beautiful as Dreamlight Valley is, the allure wears off rather quickly after a few hours spent in the game. Because of how massive each region is and how far they are from one another, you’ll be wanting for a quicker way to travel. Hence, the fast travel.
Luckily, this is available fairly early on in the game. After completing the “Friendship is Everything” quest, you’ll unlock the well in the Meadow you can zip your way through the valley with ease.
Just make sure that you’ve got spare Star Coins with you. Scrooge never forgets to exact his toll when you ask him to open up more wells.
8. Don’t Forget That Dreamlight Valley Runs on Friendship
They say that no man is an island, and that certainly is true in Dreamlight Valley. Just like in a Disney movie, the power of friendship is what makes the world run—figuratively speaking at least.
Dreamlight Valley plays host to several familiar faces that will be more than happy to follow and lend you a helping hand if you ask them. At level two, said NPCs can be assigned to specific roles around the valley. This means you won’t have to do everything yourself and can have someone else help you out. Soon enough, you’ll have all of Dreamlight Valley running like a well-oiled machine.
Of course, we did say friendship is key, not mindless labor, so you might want to actually spend time with your in-game NPCs. You’ll find that hanging out with them raises your friendship level and opens up more quests that you can complete.
9. Go Home
Just like other life-sims, Dreamlight Valley has a stamina system. Once you run out of stamina, you won’t be able to complete more activities. This is why you should always eat high-energy food. But, sometimes you just don’t have it in you to cook, and that’s OK. That’s what your home is for.
Your energy bar refills immediately as soon as you get inside.
Disney Dreamlight Valley FAQs
Looking to get even more value from Dreamlight Valley? Here are some answers to some frequently asked questions:
When Will Disney Dreamlight Valley Leave Early Access?
While Gameloft hasn’t confirmed a release date for Dreamlight Valley 1.0, the developer intends to launch the full finished game sometime in 2023.
Does Disney Dreamlight Valley Have Multiplayer?
If you’re wondering if Dreamlight Valley has multiplayer, we’ve got bad news for you. The game is a purely single-player experience at the moment. The good news is that Gameloft actually wants to add multiplayer somewhere down the line. Most likely, this feature will be added next year, if not in 2024. Pretty much the entirety of the Disney crew will be there to keep you company.
Final Thoughts
There’s a breathtaking list of things to do in Dreamlight Valley, and it’s easy to get caught up in its vastness. Thankfully, these nine tips will help you stay focused on what’s important so that everything else falls into place.
You can get more Moonstones (Disney Dreamlight Valley’s premium currency) if you want to unlock the premium tier of the game’s seasonal passes. Just top up with some Xbox Live Gift Cards from OffGamers here.
