Welcome to Elderfield Getting Started in Elderfield

You wake up in a small house at the edge of a town that does not want you to leave. Welcome to Elderfield is a single-player cozy horror farming RPG by Chris Cote, published by Kwalee, built in RPG Maker MZ with hand-drawn horror manga art and a dark lofi score by Dated. The full PC game is dated September 10, 2026 on Steam. Until then, the free Steam demo — a vertical slice of about one-sixth of 1.0, usually 10–20 hours — has been playable since October 2024 and sits at about 96% positive across 500+ reviews. This page is the first-hour checklist. Pair it with the demo walkthrough and the first-week planner once you know the rooms of your house.

Confirm Windows 10, a keyboard or full gamepad, and disk space on the system requirements page, then pick a difficulty. Cozy mode trivializes fights so you can farm, cook, and talk. Normal keeps enemy stats at 100% and, on death, takes 5% of your gold, sends you home, and resets enemies and mysteries. Nightmare rolls you back to the last manual save. If you are new, start on Normal unless combat is the reason you opened the game; read the combat guide before you lock Nightmare.

Your house is the whole HUD

Interact with everything. The bed is a manual save and, after 6pm, an optional sleep that rolls a luck die — details live on sleep and curses. The bathtub restores full HP and MP, strips most blessings and curses, and respawns monsters and mysteries in the world. A weekly bath also regenerates forage nodes and mine layouts, so bathing is not only hygiene; it is a reset button you should press on purpose. The kitchen is your real health bar: food, not potions, keeps you alive in the mall. The living room television carries local news that flags the day’s mysteries. The radio plays tapes you find. Storage chests at home and on the farm hold seeds, balms, and ore. Klaus handles house upgrades when you can pay. Bindings are covered on the controls page if Z, X, or the analog stick feel wrong.

There is no stamina meter. You can hoe, water, mine, and fish until the clock, the crows, or a curse stop you. Time still moves. A day lasts about 20 minutes of real time and the date rolls at midnight even if you never sleep. Plan a loop that hits the farm before the sun goes, not a sprint that forgets water.

How to Play Welcome to Elderfield

Tanner, then west to Hans

Step outside and talk to Tanner, a school friend lingering near the gate. He does not want the fields himself, but he points you west to the abandoned farm. Walk that road before you poke the mall. Farmer Hans — the skeleton who shed his skin and still talks like a neighbor — lets you use the plots. Ghost tentacles occupy the soil. Use a Cleansing Balm on a tentacle, hoe the cleared tile, plant a seed, then water. Unwatered crops pause; they do not wither and die. Hans starts you with enough gold and a few balms to buy wheat and a watering can from the farmhouse shop. Show him harvested wheat to finish The Farmer’s Path, which opens the grinder and Chef Elroy’s recipe counter. That is the first real unlock in the farming loop.

Plant wheat first. Seeds cost 5g, take four nights, and sell for 12–24g. Keep six wheat in a chest for the Tax Man; sell the rest or grind it for cooking. Radish (10g, four nights, 40–80g) is the cash crop that funds balms. Pumpkin (20g, eight nights, 90–180g) waits until Hans asks for a Giant Skull Chalice. Put a scarecrow down early. Crows can eat a growing tile; they skip fully grown crops. Check the crop tier list when you have extra gold for Eyeleaf, Toothbush, Wormsprout, Hay, Corn, or regrowing Beans.

Eat, bathe, then decide whether to sleep

Food is the primary HP source in battle. Cook what you grow before you walk into a dungeon; the cooking and crafting page lists why a sandwich beats raw wheat. Bathe when you pick up a curse you do not understand, when HP is low, or when you want the overworld to reshuffle. Sleep is optional after 6pm. A good luck roll can gift gold, skip an encounter, push crop growth, or raise a stat. A bad roll can put rats in the bed, raid 5% of your gold, or cut a stat. Staying up stacks Heavy Eyelids, Slow Reflexes, and worse. Moon events — including Pale Moon and Tax Fog — still fire at midnight whether you are in bed or wandering. Do not treat sleep as a free Stardew skip.

The Tax Man arrives about every two weeks with Pale Moon and Tax Fog. He waits at the farm. Pay the listed crops or pay another price. Your first bill is often six wheat and two radishes, so plant those on day one instead of filling the field with novelty seeds. The townsfolk page tracks Hans, Molly, Abby, and the rest of the task board.

When to enter the mall

The local mall is the demo’s first dungeon, not a shopping trip. Encounters are Pokémon-style: walk close, fight, no running. Bring cooked food, a real weapon, and at least one ritual. Hall Monitor sits at 150 HP. Mall Administrator has 250 HP and drops the Skull of the Mall. Denizen of the Deep-Fryer in Burgers Burgers has 200 HP for Hans’s Fast Food Fiend task. If you die on Normal you lose 5% gold and wake at home with enemies and mysteries reset — devastating after a deep mine run, cheap if you were only scouting. Use the mall dungeon guide for layouts and the fishing and mining page before you buy a pickaxe for Molly’s copper ore and Elder Gem.

Early town tasks worth grabbing once the farm is watered: Molly wants mall-mine materials; Abby wants a Shopper-Bopper; Sam’s Cryptic Note reads 43_81, which opens Dave’s door with code 43681. Romance, gifts, and Old God offerings can wait until you have surplus food — see romance, gifts, mysteries, and the Old Gods.

A clean first week

1. Save at the bed, bathe, cook anything in the fridge, and walk outside to Tanner.
2. Reach Hans, cleanse a handful of plots, plant wheat and radish, water, drop a scarecrow.
3. Finish The Farmer’s Path with one wheat, then keep six wheat and two radishes tagged for tax.
4. Watch the news, forage near home, and only then poke the mall with food in the bag.
5. Sleep when you want a luck roll; stay up only if you understand the curse stack.
6. Return to the guides hub for combat, farming, and sleep pages instead of improvising in the food court.

Elderfield is not a race. The demo is already a long vertical slice, and 1.0 is still dated September 10, 2026. Learn the house, the west road, and the watering can before you chase a 250 HP administrator. The rest of this wiki — updates, demo notes, release date, tools, and official links — exists so you do not have to die twice for the same lesson.