Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life goat FAQ by Orporg Preface: Welcome! This file is meant to help people out with the goat in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life. The goat is a bit of an enigma and a lot of questions (including mine) have been asked about it on the message boards. Hopefully this will clear up some of the confusion. Many thanks go out to all the message board users who have posted about the goat. This FAQ (as dorky as it sounds) is dedicated to them. Special thanks got out to Shatterpated for giving me the prices on the goat products. Thanks goes out to Flamebeamer and Sillygirl for informing me that you could get haggle Van's goat price down to 2,000 G. And of course, thanks goes out to CJayC and Gamefaqs for hosting this document. Let the FAQ commence: Q: How do I/Where do I get the goat? A: The goat can be obtained in the spring of either the second or third year of the game. That is, the years that make up chapter 2. Purchase the goat from Van (the guy who you sell stuff to) for the price of 4,000 G. Van always comes on the 3rd and the 8th of each month. He often comes more frequently but you can always be guaranteed of his presence on the 3rd and 8th. The time that he sets up his shop varies but he always closes it at 6:00 PM. If you are outside when he sets up you will get a message telling you so. You will not get a message if you are inside a structure. Q: I heard you can get your goat for only 2,000 G? A: This is apparently true. I myself paid the full 4,000 G for him but some people have managed to haggle him down to 2,000 G. Sometimes you can make Van mad with your haggling though, so be careful. Just keep trying and you can probably get a discount on the goat. It may help if you are friends with him. This isn't hard to do, just give him eggs once in a while when his shop is closed and he will quickly become your friend. Q: My goat comes with a goat milker? What does it do? A: It's exactly like the cow milker except for goats. You can either use the milker or milk the goat by hand, it makes no difference to your character or the goat. Using the milkers supposedly influences your child more towards the science career path while milking by hand makes it more likely he will become a farmer like your character. Q: Does the goat take up barn space? A: Yes, the goat will take up a space in your barn just like the cows and sheep. You can choose where to place it's feedbox. As a result, you MUST have a free space in your barn when trying to buy the goat. I don't know if having a pregnant cow counts against your space quota when buying the goat. It probably does. Q: How much does the goat eat? A: Like the sheep, the goat eats only one fodder per day. Like all the other critters you can put him outside to graze at his leisure. The goat will not eat good fodder. At least not if you show it to him. Q: How much milk does the goat produce a day? A: The goat will only produce one bottle of milk per day. There is no way to raise the quantity of milk it provides per day. Q: How long does the goat provide milk for? A: 1 year or 40 days, approximately. My goat gave me 37 days which is almost a year. Q: How do I get the goat to give milk again? A: You don't. This is the drawback of the goat. The goat will only give milk for 40 days and then it stops. Permanently. There is no way to get it give milk again. You cannot breed the goat. You cannot have more than one goat. Once your goat stops giving milk you're stuck with it. Q: That sucks! Why is this? A: It certainly does. No one knows why the goat is flawed in this way. My personal guess is that the developers did not have the time and/or money to spend fleshing out the goat species the way they did with the cows. They may also be saving a more comprehensive goat breeding system (like the one implemented with cows) for the next game in order to have something fresh. Q: I need that barn space for something else. How do I get rid of my goat? A: You cannot sell your goat either before or after it stops giving milk. The only known way to get rid of the goat is to kill it. That's right, kill it. Q: Ok, I hate my unproductive goat. How do I kill it? A: The key to killing the goat is to make it sick. Once the goat becomes sick it is only a matter of time until it dies. A combination of bad weather and not feeding it will make your goat sick and eventually kill it. It will then disappear from your Status Book and you will get the space back for cows or sheep. Q: Have you killed your goat yet? A: Yes. I can confirm success with the following method: I used a combination of starvation and keeping the goat in the rain and snow. This is easier said than done however. The best time to try and kill your goat is during the Fall and Winter seasons. In order to starve the goat you must keep all your animals inside or put out all the critters except your goat. However, as long as your other animals are not at their feedboxes the goat *will* pilfer their food (it's not stupid, you know). So if you're going to put your other barn animals outside you must make sure all the feed boxes are empty first. The easiest way to do this is to simply not fill the feed boxes when you go to sleep. Shortly after you get up your other critters should have cleaned our their feedboxes. Put everyone except the goat outside. Keep your other animals outside for as long as the weather is good. This will keep the goat from eating. Also, when it rains, put the goat outside and leave the other critters in the barn. This works especially well in the Fall when it can rain almost every day. Eventually the goat will get sick. You can find out if its sick by talking to it or looking at the chalkboard inside the barn. If you talk to the goat and the message reads "[Your goat's name] needs the Animal Medicine" then your goat is sick. Do *not* give it Animal Medicine. Don't feed it and keep putting it in the rain if you can. Eventually you will wake up one day and the Harvest Sprites will call you over to the barn where you the goat will finally keel over. Her feedbox will now disappear and you can put another animal in the barn. It will take about a game year to do this depending on how bad the weather is. Q: Well, my goat's giving me milk for now, how much is it worth? A: Regular goat milk sells for 115 G a bottle. Q: Can I use my food processing room to make goat cheese and goat butter? A: Yes. Goat cheese sells for 155 G. Goat butter sells for 150 G. Q: Can you get the goat milk to go up in quality like the cows milk? A: Yes. Unlike the cows, which have 3 grades of milk (B, A, and S) the goat can produce regular Goat Milk as well as higher quality Good Goat Milk. Like the cows your goat must be very happy to give good goat milk. Unfortunately, since you have the goat for such a small amount of time you won't get much good goat milk out of it no matter how nice you are. But you should be able to get a few bottles. Good goat milk sells for 300 G. Q: How do I get good goat milk? A: Brush, head-snuggle, and talk to your goat twice a day. Keep it fed at all times. If the weather is good, keep it outside. Washing it periodically when its dirty may help but I doubt it. Eventually, probably in about 2 to 3 seasons, you will get good goat milk. This stuff looks exactly the same as regular goat milk except the stripe on the neck of the bottle is colored pink. Unlike the cows, you cannot force the quality of milk to improve by feeding it good fodder. Q: Can I make good goat cheese and good goat butter? A: Yes. The good goat cheese sells for 355 G. Good goat butter sells for 350 G. Q: Should I get a goat? A: Like leg hair and Crisco, getting the goat is a personal choice. Economically, it's a poor bet. If you sell everything you get from the goat you will make a profit on it. But not a huge one. It would probably be wiser to store the milk, cheese, and butter in your fridge in case a need for it comes up. Some people (myself included) got the goat to see what it looks like and to see what its milk, cheese, and butter looked like. Some get it for the sake of completion. Others because they have a thing for goats. Keep in mind that getting rid of your goat isn't easy. However, keeping it alive isn't hard either, since all you have to do is plop some fodder in its feed box. Q: Are there any recipes that *require* goat milk, goat cheese, or goat butter? A: None that I know of. I *think* you can substitute goat milk for cow milk in many recipes. Q: Are there any villagers who like goats milk? A: Most of the people like that cows milk will also like goat's milk. Romana seems to like it quite a lot so goat milk be useful in befriending her in order to obtain the cat. Q: If I do kill my goat, can I get another goat from Van to replace it? A: No. You can only get one goat. After your goat has died Van will no longer be selling goats next Spring. Summary of selling prices for goat products: Goat Milk: 115 G Good Goat Milk: 300 G Goat Butter: 150 G Goat Cheese: 155 G Good Goat Butter: 350 G Good Goat Cheese: 355 G This ends the goat FAQ. Once again, thanks for Shatterpated for giving me the prices on goat products. And thanks to Flamebeamer and Sillygirl for telling me the goat could be bought for only 2,000 G. And my huge thanks to all the users of the Wonderful Life message board who have helped me with this game. And, of course, thanks to CJayC and Gamefaqs for hosting it, assuming they do. This work is copyright 2004 by Nick Crait. It may not be reproduced in any fashion for any reason without express permission of the author. Only www.gamefaqs.com is authorized to display this FAQ. Last modified 4/1/2004.