GIRL’S STORY GUIDE

Welcome to Skye Mode, or what I like to call Deserted Island Housewife Simulator, where you play as the female protagonist Skye. Your experience here is going to be radically different compared to Keith Mode, which isn’t exactly for the better. To put it bluntly, it’s boring as hell. Skye can’t do any climbing, nor can she cross over the stepping stones to reach the second beach. You’re literally stuck with the cave, the small section of the Plains, and the first beach. Keith is now the NPC that needs to be taken care of, which you’ll have to do with cooking and foraging for anything you can, plus assisting with other tasks that gradually open up. The rate that he progresses his exploration can get so monotonous that I wouldn’t blame you for wanting to quit partway through. It took me just under an entire week IRL to clear Skye Mode, so expect to endure this for quite a while.

Aside from assigning a button for the NDS’ microphone, you also need another button for closing the NDS’ lid. I personally assigned the microphone to L2 and the closed lid to R2. This is incorporated into the cooking minigame, where after you do the stylus inputs, you need to hold down the closed lid button for the specified number of seconds – anywhere from 3 to 10 seconds - before the dish is finished. Considering that you need to do this every single time you cook, this can get irritating very quickly.

So what’s the point of playing this mode if it’s so uninteresting? Two reasons – adding all of the cooking recipe entries for the Scrapbook, and unlocking Challenge Mode. There are also a couple of Scrapbook entries in the Etc. category that are exclusive to this mode. It’s annoying, but if you want to 100% this game, you have to suffer through this. The mode sounds simple at first glance, and it really is. However, there are plenty of little things I noticed during my run that I feel need to be pointed out if you want to make the most of this chill but mind-numbingly repetitive playthrough.

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GAMEPLAY ANALYSIS

Basic Gameplay

Keith can manage his own Thirst Meter and Hunger Meter a little bit while out exploring, although you would want to give him Bottled Water before he goes to sleep if his Thirst is below 50%. Your primary job is to manage his Hunger Meter, and let him rest in the cave at night to restore his Stamina Meter rather than force him to explore when he’s tired. You also want to boost his invisible friendship value by giving him Lunch Boxes and special presents, tending to the fire, cooking good meals and completing his requests. Skye also has a unique field action called Daydream, which allows you to pass time faster. You can press the Y button at any time to do this – the button can be held down rather than having to mash.

The real way to make progress with the story however is to not request him to gather anything, allowing him to go exploring on his own. He will come back asking you for suggestions on a problem he’s having, and you want to answer him correctly according to how you had to do the story in Keith Mode. He’ll only make such progress if his friendship with Skye is high, so you’ll need to make lots of Lunch Boxes in the beginning, as well as tend to the fire as best you can. Don’t be surprised if it takes you a couple of in-game weeks before you’re in a good position to let him explore.

If Keith’s Stamina Meter is dangerously low and he wants to go exploring to a further location, tell him not to go and he’ll explore the local beach instead. While he likely won’t bring anything back, he’ll restore his Stamina much better than if he is exploring further away. This situation will improve once the ability to upgrade the beds is available.

One thing you have to worry about is keeping the fire going by feeding it twigs once in a while. If you don’t, Keith will get agitated with you, affecting your friendship with him. There’s no indicator of how low the fire is or when you need to tend to it, so I generally wait a set number of hours before checking in and using the Daydream option to watch the fire go down. After some experimenting, I figured that from 8 am, the fire will start to die down anywhere around 2 pm to 4 pm. Tend to the fire during that approximate time range, again at about 8 pm to 10 pm, and once more at around midnight or 1 am if Keith’s Stamina is decent enough. If the fire does go out, Keith will rekindle it automatically if he’s in the cave.

There are some twigs around the cave, and they respawn pretty frequently. If you run low though, go ahead and ask him to gather some. Keith will go to bed at around 11 pm to 1 am when he’s in the cave, but you’ll want to stay up just a little bit later to add a twig to the fire before going to bed yourself. This may not always be possible depending on your circumstances, so have some Lunch Boxes to counteract the small dip in friendship. There is a chance for Keith to keep the fire going himself if he’s about to go to bed while you’re still up.

Something else you want to do ASAP is to check the back of the cave to unlock the first five slots of the shelf. More slots will eventually be added as Keith unlocks new furniture for you, but you’ll want these first five to hang on to valuable ingredients. It will take an absurdly long time for the shelf upgrades to occur, so any extra space will be extremely valuable early on.

Anytime Keith returns with his spoils, regardless of what you requested from him, he will hand them to Skye’s inventory automatically. If she doesn’t have enough space, he will hang on to them until she does. You don’t need to fuss around with asking Skye to cook something just to retrieve items from her inventory like in Keith Mode. Unfortunately, you can’t take items directly from Keith, which I found to be a huge detriment for Skye Mode. Approach the upper right section just above Keith’s bed to go into the cooking menu, or alternately tell Keith that they should eat.

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Managing Ingredients

You’re able to duplicate rare ingredients using an exploit in the cooking menu. I’ll quote from GameFAQs and other sources that use this info:

STEP 1: With only one (1) food item (doesn't matter what kind) in your bag, approach the cooking area and press A

STEP 2: At the preparation selection screen, select whichever method you wish to use (Raw, Bake, Fry, etc. it doesn't matter)

STEP 3: At the ingredient selection screen, all spaces except the first should be blank. HERE’S THE IMPORTANT PART: Select the single food item with the A button. Now unselect it with the B button. IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS YOUR GAME WILL CRASH.

STEP 4: Using the DIRECTIONAL PAD, move the cursor over to the next sequential empty item space (in this case SLOT 2)

STEP 5: Using the STYLUS, highlight the food item you previously selected, and then unselected (In this case the item in SLOT 1)

STEP 6: Now simply press the A button.

WHAT HAPPENS: Now, the empty space in SLOT 2 will get a red check mark as if there was an item there to select and a copy of whatever item is in slot one will be placed onto the used ingredients list on the upper screen. Ta-Da! You've mastered duplicating food.

This will cause some wacky results where you’ll make a carrot dish that restores a ridiculous amount of Hunger Meter. From looking at the recipes, you’re going to need a lot of Egg, Chives and Boar Meat, along with a couple of other uncommon ingredients like Salmon and Burdock, so dupe those if possible.

If you would prefer a more legit method, then manipulating Keith’s spoils is the way to go. You can make a Quick Save while he’s out exploring, then go to bed and wake up to see what he brings back. If his haul isn’t ideal, reset and reload the Quick Save, repeating this process until you get the items you want. His spoils are always randomly generated, so this is a good method for getting any of the rarer ingredients without wasting too much time.

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Cooking & Scrapbook Recipes

You have the option to make a Lunch Box. If you say yes, you can cook these and hand them over to Keith so he’ll like Skye more. I haven’t seen him actually consume them, so I believe this is just to improve his friendship value. You can give them to Keith anytime he’s in the cave or is about to depart on an expedition. Skye can also consume them to replenish her Hunger Meter, especially from ingredients that can’t be eaten raw. This is excellent to do with mollusks and seaweed from the beach.

If you say no, you will make regular meals like how Skye normally does in Keith Mode. I strongly suggest looking up the recipes and making anything you can to fill in the Scrapbook’s recipe entries, and use the remaining food either for Lunch Boxes or random meals. You can also give Keith raw vegetables or fruit directly, or eat them yourself. You always need as much space in your inventory as you can for when Keith returns with his spoils each day. Naturally, you want to do regular cooking when Keith is present in the cave so he can also enjoy the benefits.

The items that Keith brings back each time will not be very impressive at the beginning. This is akin to Skye’s cooking being rather pitiful in the beginning of Keith Mode, but she gradually improves as she keeps doing it. Likewise, Keith’s findings will eventually get better as he’s allowed to make progress with exploring the island. Concern yourself with the vegetable recipes first, then you’ll be able to do the fish and meat recipes. Hold on to any valuable ingredients until Keith brings back the items you’re looking for to complete a difficult recipe.

For the Scrapbook recipes, you need to use a particular type of cooking plus specific ingredients and spices. I’ve covered what all of the recipes are in the Scrapbook Entries section of this guide. Due to a glitch in the game, the recipe for Mackerel Sashimi is not needed to get the Raw Recipes Complete achievement. From my own experimenting, even if you only make that dish during a cooking session, the Scrapbook entry will not appear since the programming for it is bugged.

So now that you get the gist, it’s time to work on those recipes. You’re absolutely going to need a guide for them due to the complicated array of ingredients you need. I cover them in the Scrapbook Entries section of this guide as well. In the beginning, your primary job should be looking for spices, since that’s the one thing Keith cannot find. Press A over the beach to find Rock Salt, and over the grass to find all of the other types of spices. Any Coconuts you can get will be worth their weight in gold in the very beginning.

You will also find an additional item on the beach – Beautiful Shells. Collect 50 of these and Skye can make a Charm Bracelet. Collect 100 of these and Skye will be able to a necklace for the I Was Super Bored achievement. I’m not sure if you’re forced to make the Charm Bracelet before the Necklace. If not, save the shells only for the necklace. This is because if you have 99 Rock Salt, you cannot pick up neither salt nor shells until you have space. If this happens to you, you’re able to use two of the same spice when cooking, so use up the salt in random recipes.

Since you have access to Brown and Orange Mushrooms, find out what their effects are as well, hoping that at least one of them is safe. The most ideal situation is if one of them is the infinite stamina mushroom. Anytime Keith brings back any of the other six types of mushrooms, experiment with those as well and write down all of their effects. These will be randomly generated separately from your Keith Mode run, so you need to figure them out all over again.

The good thing about Skye Mode is that you can turn any bad mushrooms into Lunch Boxes instead of disposing them, which contributes to improving Keith’s friendship value. Don’t consume these Lunch Boxes yourself – you’ll still suffer the effects of any bad mushrooms. Conversely, Keith will never consume them, which means he won’t experience the effects. If you have any infinite stamina mushrooms, make regular meals with them, not Lunch Boxes, allowing both characters to enjoy the benefit.

From there, it’s basically a routine of asking Keith to find food, scrounging around for spices and any ingredients nearby, and then cooking them. Not very exciting, I know. It might be a struggle to find food each day right at the beginning, considering that Coconuts take a few days to respawn. Not to worry – there’s always Clams and Crabs available. You know, the ones that appear on the beach randomly if you examine the ground with the stylus while on the beach. Even if you run out of the other items, there will always be access to these as long as you put in the effort.

A good recipe to rely on early on is Seaweed Salad. The more seaweed you use for it, the more the Hunger Meter will be restored. Since it’s such a common find on the beach, try to make one of these each day until Keith’s foraging abilities improve. It is a Raw recipe that calls for any number of Seaweed up to 4, a Purple Bean, and a Blue Seed. Since Keith returns with Potato and Carrot very frequently, either Baked Potato or Potato Salad are also good options. With Potato Salad, a Raw recipe, you can do 2 Carrot and 2 Potato plus Rock Salt and Pepper Seed to get double the amount of Hunger Meter restored compared to just doing one of each vegetable. Baked Potato is a Roast recipe that calls for up to 4 Potato max plus Rock Salt and Pepper Seed.

As far as finding rare ingredients goes, it is incredibly frustrating. The items that Keith returns with is pure RNG, with only a few factors you can control:

• his progress in exploration opening up new areas
• where his friendship value is
• whether you ask him to look for food, twigs or water

Obviously you want him to open up more of the island to expand his pool of ingredients. You’re never going to get anything except vegetables if he doesn’t learn how to fish or hunt, or find new areas. I tended to keep his friendship value high during my playthrough, but fellow player Hlover mentioned that this value could affect what ingredients Keith comes back with. I thus lowered it on purpose by letting the fire go out a few times, and finally got some of the more difficult ingredients like Salmon and Onion to appear. Having it high does allow for Boar Meat to show up, which you’ll need for quite a few recipes. I suggest keeping it high for as long as needed until you’re done with Boar Meat, then lowering it enough to get anything you’re missing.

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STORY PROGRESSION

It will be extremely slow, but Keith will be doing everything he did when you were in control of him. The biggest difference is that he’s essentially a lunkhead who needs to be given suggestions to be able to make progress with his gathering skills. The first suggestion is when Keith takes off without you asking him to do anything, and he’ll come back wondering about finding a higher location. Tell him to follow the river, and he will investigate. This happened to me on Day 15. If you know how to play the game, you could get this earlier.

The next event is Keith agonizing about not being able to get enough food just picking off the ground when he could fish from the ocean and river. Suggest that he makes a spear for fishing. He’ll come back another day and say he made a spear, which you should say is amazing.

Keith will then bring back bamboo, and Skye says she can make baskets out of them. This is when the Task menu becomes relevant, as he will ask you to make a number of items within a specified number of days. Approach the pile of bamboo next to Skye’s bed and decide on a number of baskets you want to make. I actually suggest doing them one at a time unless she’s in very good condition. Time will pass as you make these items, which means your meters will deplete while working. If you make too many at once, both of you might get exhausted. Doing them one at a time will help you judge if you can keep going or if you should stop for now. My estimate is that it takes around 2 hours to complete a single basket. It will take a while, but Keith will mention that he’s using them to make traps.

One incredibly annoying thing about making the baskets is that the bamboo pile is right next to Skye’s bed, meaning it’s too easy to accidentally choose to sleep when you wanted to make baskets. Make absolutely sure the option for Check Traps comes up on the upper right instead of Sleep.

Eventually, Keith will talk about exploring the river but being stopped by a boulder. Offer to help him push it. Skye is automatically brought to the boulder and back home in a cutscene, so you don’t need to worry about doing any sort of journeying in her mode. For Keith to explore further though, he will need to return from another day of exploration and mention the Waterfall Cave. From there, he’ll discover the Grasslands and the Jungle on separate days.

Now that Keith has access to more areas, it will take him longer to return with any food. You may need to make Lunch Boxes out of mollusks and seaweed for Skye to survive. Seaweed Salad is your friend here. Keith will say that he wants to explore the beach, so tell him to be careful. He will always ask about going out at 8 am if you’re both in the cave. If you’re out at that time and you haven’t given him any requests, he’ll take off on his own. After exploring the beach, he’ll bring back the Drum can to let you store water. If you have nothing else to do, you can spend some time stocking up on water since it will be needed for future recipes. You can ask Keith to gather water, but never use this option. The river is right there, so it’s easy for Skye to handle this herself.

Keith will do the same thing with asking to explore the Grassland. Tell him to be careful and wait for him to return. He’ll come back and say he will be gone for a longer time from now on, which unlocks the twig pile. You can finally be more liberal with asking him to gather twigs now that you have a place to store them. After another exploration of the Grasslands, Keith will wonder how to capture animals for meat. Suggest that he build a bow and arrow to hunt them. The next time, he’ll say he’s made a bow and arrow. Tell him that it looks nice. He’ll then ask to explore the Grasslands again, so allow him to do so.

Unfortunately, there is a chance for him to return without having finding anything, which is aggravating since he’ll be exhausted and not bring much food back with him. It’s supposed to reflect that he’s making the same mistakes you did with him when you were playing Story Mode. It’s annoying, but there’s nothing else you can do beyond letting him try again. He will eventually return with the Slate, finally allowing you to make Stir-Fry recipes. The recipe for Sate Mushroom (I think it’s supposed to mean Sauté) isn’t impressive whatsoever, but Butter Fried Clam isn’t too bad. It’s not as good as Seaweed Salad, but is a decent replacement if you’re in an emergency.

Once he’s found the Slate, he’ll finally start exploring the Jungle. He’ll report that he found Tree Vines, so you can finally start making Rope if he requests for it. Now that he has access to vines, he will eventually make a fishing rod on his own, so remark that it looks nice and he’ll be able to get more varieties of fish. Have him explore the Jungle again, and he’ll come back saying he can make traps out of the baskets you’ve been making. Remark that they were useful, which allows him to trap more animals.

Keith’s next exploration into the Jungle has him talking about Lard, which you can’t do anything with without the Clay Pot first. His next outing has him making a torch, which you should tell him was resourceful of him. His next expedition is him discovering the Volcanic Lake, so tell him to make something to float across it on. This allows you to make ropes for him on a more regular basis. His next outing has him bringing back the Clay Pot, so you’re finally able to make Fry, Steam and Boil recipes, thus unlocking all of the available cooking procedures. Hooray! Now you can really get to work on finishing those Scrapbook entries! You will most likely complete the entries for the Steam category first since there are only three recipes for it.

Just note that Steam and Boil always consume 1 liter of water, and Fry consumes 1 Lard each time. Hope you’ve stocked up on plenty of water to this point – the Drum can store up to 30 liters. Steam Recipes don’t fill much Hunger, but restore quite a lot of Thirst. For Fry recipes, you need Lard in your personal inventory, not just on the shelf. Be sure to do Fry recipes more frequently if you need to offload some Lard, or else you’ll be swamped with the stuff and thus not have many spaces for the food that Keith comes back with.

Keith’s next journey has him bringing back a chicken, which you want to say that you’ll keep it. He’ll ask you to take care of it, so say it’s no problem. You need to give the chicken bottled water once a day for it to give you a single egg. Giving it any more than that will produce nothing, so be patient. From my experimentation, it will reset at midnight. Quite a few recipes call for the Egg as an ingredient, so be diligent with this. If you feel you have enough eggs and want to get rid of the chicken, just neglect to give it water and it will die in a few days’ time. You will want the space for when Keith brings the goat later. He may come back with another chicken, so if you don’t want it, keep choosing the negative options until he lets it go.

There’s a duplication trick for getting eggs from the chicken, as well as milk from the goat. Credit goes to spyke252 for this, and I’m quoting Parrotboy_1230 from GameFAQs’ forum, with punctuation cleaned up:

“This glitch is only if you want more bottled milk. This is only in Skye Mode, after you have successfully milked the goat and received the bottled milk. Just Quick Save after you have milked a goat, then turn off your DS (reset the game in the emulator), then play the Quick Saved game, and you’ll be able to milk the goat again by playing the ‘milk the goat mini-game’ without waiting the next day. You also must have empty extra bottles to get more milk.”

For the chicken, give it bottled water and collect the egg, make a Quick Save, reset and go into that save, and another egg will spawn when you load in.

Anyway, Keith’s following excursion has him talking about finding logs in the jungle, which means he can at last build some much-needed furniture. The option to ask him “How are you doing?” finally becomes useful, since it allows Keith to suggest building furniture. Instead of going out to explore, he will stay in the cave and do his building for a few hours. Keep asking him how he’s doing after he’s done each project and he’ll gradually install new furniture each day. Of course he only does one project per day, so send him out to find food when he has free time. Overall, you’ll have a much better time keeping Keith’s Stamina up, as well as storing valuable ingredients for harder recipes.

His next project is a table and chairs, which will be useful for making baskets and rope faster, so let him make this. He breaks this down into the table on one day and the chairs the on a different day after asking him to make them (seriously, dude?). He’ll also talk about building a jerky shelf, which will be another item that can potentially show up on your to-do list if he makes a request. Whenever he requests jerky, you need to check the jerky shelf once a day until the task is complete. This will be essential to letting him feed himself whenever he’s out on a long expedition. From there, it’s just upgrading the beds and shelves until he’s completely done. After that, you no longer have to ask him how he’s doing.

Upon another trek into the Jungle, Keith will return with a goat. You must have gotten rid of the chicken first so you have space for the goat. Keep it so you can get milk from it. You need to give it water each day just like the chicken, and you need an empty bottle to play the goat milking minigame. I really struggled with this until I watched this video of how to do it. Basically, you keep alternating the stylus between the two teats, gently pulling down and aiming for the bucket. A meter will fill if you hit the bucket correctly, and you want it to reach the top before the goat kicks you in anger. There’s no way to calm the goat in this installment, so you need to be both quick and accurate. Luckily, you only need the Bottled Milk for one recipe, which is Clam Chowder.

So now Keith is able to make progress on the raft, and lord almighty, this takes fooorrreeevvveeerrr~rrr. He has to build it in multiple steps, just like you had to in Story Mode, but he has to do each step one at a time. He won’t forage for much, if anything at worst, so your food situation can get dicey if you keep letting him make progress every day straight. You need to give him a day off to explore the beach so he can recover his Stamina. He also takes an incredibly long time to return during a building session, so he’ll get tired very easily. He’ll return from the raft each time saying he hasn’t found anything, but he is making progress with his project. You just have to be patient and manage his time out versus letting him rest and eat.

Keith will finish the raft, I promise you! Once he declares he’s finished and ready to cross the lake, have him do so when he’s rested up enough. He’ll cross it, then return and say he needs help with pushing two switches. Offer to assist him, and you’ll be brought to the switches and back to the cave automatically. It will take multiple trips of him going to the lake and not coming back with anything, but he will talk about finding the Wasteland Maze and wonder how to advance. I actually wasn’t positive on what the correct answer was, so I told him to get used to it. Turned out that was the wrong choice because a cutscene occurred of Keith saying he got sick. Oh well… Try the other option and see what happens.

Here's where the game starts to dramatically increase in difficulty. Keith will find the Ruins and explore inside it, which is going to take a massive toll on him. He doesn’t take care of his Stamina and Thirst Meters very well, so it’s pretty much guaranteed that his Health Gauge will go down quite a bit. Make sure he’s topped up as much as humanly possible before sending him out, because this is easily the longest excursion yet. If you’re at this point and you haven’t done the furniture upgrades, they pretty much become mandatory from this point forward, or else Keith will not be able to survive for so long.

It was at this point that I finally started seeing him returning with Boar Meat, but not Salmon yet. It also doesn’t have to be nighttime for him to find it, unlike in Story Mode. I had to lower Keith’s friendship level a little before he finally brought back Salmon. So his next journey to the ruins has him wondering how to make progress. Tell him that he’s forgetting he can get on top of the box, which will help him solve the puzzles. He’ll eventually say he’s solved all of them and will investigate the outside the next time he goes. When he returns, he’ll say he’s found other people, but that they seemed to be bad people. He will snoop around the Hideout to look for a means of escaping the island.

This is where Keith’s exploration time starts to take a serious toll on him. Make absolutely sure he is at top condition as much as possible, including having 100% Thirst. Even with that, he may likely come back in poor condition. You also don’t want the fire to die out on you since it takes so long for him to return. You also don’t want either the goat or the chicken to die since that will cause Keith to waste time looking for another one. He’ll sneak into the Hideout and bring back a uniform he stole. A bunch of more failed expeditions later, he’ll talk about the identities of the three leaders of the criminals. Come on, man, enough putzing around already!

After an eternity of him venturing out, he’ll come back and offer two suggestions for escaping – sneaking into the container, or using the lifeboat. I chose to use the lifeboat since it was the fastest method of beating the game in Store Mode. I don’t think it matters which one you pick, since he’s going to take such a long time that you might be tempted to ragequit at this point. I assure you, he will come back with good news. In my case, he said he found the Flare Gun. He’ll ask what you want to do, so definitely go with him.

The cutscene will play out automatically, and that’s it! Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed one of the most arduous modes in all of gaming history! Give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back for surviving Skye Mode without losing your sanity! You’ve now unlocked Challenge Mode, so go back to the guide for Story Mode if you want more details about it.