No, I'm not a die hard gamer, and sometimes I really need all the help I can get. Although that's sometimes also because I genuinely don't have the patience anymore to figure things out quietly on my own in the game.
If I were starting Disney Dreamlight Valley now, I would have done some things a bit differently. I can now also share what, in my view, are important things to do daily, or specifically not to do.
I bought the game as soon as it came out. Right now the game is only available in the E-shop and not physically. At the moment this is referred to as the Early Access period. If you don't want to buy the game, you can just wait, since it'll eventually become available for free in 2023, with in-game purchase options through moonstones.
My very first tip
Get more storage space! There's a chest in your house, and you can store the items you collect in this chest. There's not much you can store in the beginning, right. Once you start expanding your house, this storage space will also get bigger. Once you've saved up some money by selling things, empty this chest out, put it in your "pocket" with your other furniture. Then go to Scrooge McDuck's shop and let him know you want to order furniture. You'll see that you can order/buy as many storage chests as you like, as often as you like. Once you have multiple chests, you can place them all around your own Dreamlight Valley. It doesn't matter where you open your chest, you can always access the things you've put in it, no matter where they are.
After that you can also craft chests at the workbenches using collected materials. These aren't the magic chests, like the one above. These are "regular" chests you can store things in. What did I do? I had at least 1 chest per category: so one for ingredients, materials (wood, stone, etc.), gemstones, and so on. That way I could easily find things back whenever I needed to complete a quest.
Collect first in Disney Dreamlight Valley, sell only after!
It's really tempting to sell as much as possible as fast as possible. I've been there. Try to first build up a small stock of wood and also gemstones. You'll come across plenty of quests like: 'Give Scrooge a blue gemstone' or 'Collect hardwood and stones'. It's really nice then if you can just walk over to a chest and grab those materials out of it. Woppa, another quest completed. As you get closer to finishing your quests, you'll also need a lot of certain materials. In the beginning I really wouldn't sell wood, stones, clay, etc., not until you've completed all the quests! At the end of Minnie's quests, for example, you need 200 pieces of clay...
Are you having trouble collecting things, and are certain parts of your Dreamlight Valley still not accessible? Then you can decide to cheat just a little bit. If you go into 'build mode', you can also move things out of inaccessible areas. Like flowers you need, or that damn hardwood. I hadn't collected and stored enough to easily get through those quests.
Never alone in Disney Dreamlight Valley
Once you reach friendship level 2 with a resident, you can choose how you want to make use of that resident. What becomes their specialty? I have a resident for every activity: fishing, gathering, mining, digging and growing vegetables, to do that activity together with.
It really pays off to always do activities together with a resident. You get more, and your friendship level rises, and as your friendship level rises you eventually unlock new quests. How do you do this? You talk to a resident and ask if they want to come along with you.
Definitely invest in Ursula and Ariel. You can't ask these two residents to come along, so their friendship level rises slowly. Still, you do need this to progress further in the game! Talk to Ariel and Ursula every day, and your friendship level will rise. Also give them gifts! If you go to your menu, then to collection, then to characters. Then, by hovering over the character you want, you can see what their desired gifts are for that day. You can then go out and gather these gifts, or cook them. Give all three to them in 1 day, and your friendship level rises the fastest.
My final tips
Do you play every day? Then also try, every day, or at least every time you play, to collect everything that grows (fruit, flowers, plants, etc.) and to mine all the stones too. It's also good to go looking for the green or blue treasure chests that get placed somewhere in your Valley every day. These usually contain money, but the blue ones contain moonstones.
On top of that, I'd also make sure as quickly as possible to fully upgrade Moana's boat (if you've already unlocked Moana) and Wall-E's garden too. It takes a bit of investment, but without any further effort you'll receive a lot of fish and fresh ingredients every day.
Want to know more or stay up to date? They also have a nice website.
Oh, and by the way, the game is entirely in English, and so is most of the online information. You could join certain Facebook pages for tips and tricks in Dutch if you want to.
