The Witch of Fern Island: Complete Beginners Guide and Tips

The Witch of Fern Island is a casual open-world life sim game where you play as Abrill, a young witch who has crash-landed on the mysterious Fern Island. You’ll need to use your magic to explore the island, solve puzzles, and uncover its secrets. Along the way, you’ll meet a lot of colorful characters, learn about the island’s three magical cultures, and master the art of witchcraft.

Developed by Enjoy Studio, this PC game is designed to be relaxing and fun, and there’s no pressure to complete any specific tasks. Thanks to its non-linear gameplay, you can explore the island at your own pace, and focus on the activities that you enjoy. Whether you want to spend your time fishing, cooking, or casting spells, there’s something for everyone!

If you have just started out playing, then our beginner-level Witch of Fern Island guide and tips will help you learn more about this game.

Basic Tutorial

We will begin our adventure with the basic tutorial. You can skip this section if you have already completed the tutorial.

I have covered the in-game tutorial in this helpful video walkthrough. Watch and then you may read critical pointers to get started with The Witch of Fern Island:

Getting started with movement and controls:

1. Movement: W – Move forward, S – Move Back, A – Move Left, D – Move Right.

2. While moving, hold press the Left Shift key to run. Press the space bar to jump.

3. Press “I” to open the inventory. Press the I key again to close it.

4. Move closer to an object. Press the left mouse button to interact when a green border appears around the object. Notice interaction hints on the bottom of the screen whenever Abrill moves closer to an object with a green border.

How to craft food

Food is required to regain stamina. Your character does not lose stamina while running. She will lose stamina every time she uses an axe to chop food, a pickaxe to mine stone and metals, and a shovel to dig.

Abrill’s stamina is displayed on the top-left corner of the screen, just below the date and time. To prepare food, unlock/learn recipes and then prepare them on the stove. It is located in the main room, in your mansion.

Once you have acquired all the required ingredients, you will unlock a new recipe. In the tutorial, the first recipe is the “Forest Stew”. We unlocked this new recipe as soon as we obtained two important ingredients to make one – horehound herb and oyster fungus. As you progress, you will unlock new recipes.

You will need 1 Horehound herb and 1 edible oyster fungus to prepare the forest stew. This simple recipe can restore 45 Energy points over 7 seconds.

To prepare food, move closer to the stove/oven inside your house and press the left mouse button to interact with it. The stove is in the main room in your house (witch’s mansion on the map).

In the “Oven” menu, click the Forest Stew recipe icon on the right side slot and press the stove icon on the screen’s upper-right corner to start preparing the food.

To eat food, hit the I key again, place the mouse cursor on the food item, right-click, and then left-click to eat it.

Finding and equipping tools

In the tutorial mode, you will find the axe in the chest. The chest can be found in the main room. To equip tools like the axe, you can:

1. Open the inventory menu. In the first section, press, hold, and drag the axe from the inventory slot to the “Hand” slot.

2. If you have not equipped a tool yet, then just move closer to an object. If you have acquired the tool and if the same tool can be used on that object, you will see a new interaction hint appearing at the bottom. With the help of the hint, just press and hold the left mouse button to equip that tool.

You will find new tools on the farm at the rear of your house. There are two doors in your house. The larger door opens to the backyard, revealing your farmland. Here are tools and their locations in your farmland:

These all are basic tools and can be upgraded later at Rogost’s workshop. After collecting all tools, you can equip them through the quick tool selection menu – This works as a shortcut so that you don’t have to go to the inventory again and again to equip them.

Before bringing out the quick selection menu, you will need to drag and drop all tools in the empty slots just below the “Hand” section. Under “Hand” there’s only one slot that can be used to equip your primary tool. Below that slot is the “Equipment” section which has several more empty slots. Just drag and drop all three new tools into those slots.

While playing, hit the tab key to launch the quick tool selection radial menu and click on a tool to equip it.

Inventory overview

Press the “I” key to launch your in-game inventory. There are six tabs in your inventory:

From left to right:

1. Bag – This is where all tools, blueprints, potions, food, and resources are stored when you collect/craft them. Click on an item to view its selling price, rarity, and brief description. You can also right-click on a particular item (Food) to use it.

2. Map (Shortcut key “M” ): Shows the map of fern island. Hover your mouse cursor over the symbols in a particular area within the map to know more about them. You can also scroll the mouse wheel backward to zoom out of the map or forward to zoom in.

Stickers Basic Set for setting Waypoints: In The Witch of Fern Island, you can set waypoints and even mark certain locations using icons. Make sure you pick the stickers basic set from the main room in your house to use on the map. Once collected, hit the M button to launch the map, right-click on any area within the map to bring out the sticker/icon set on the bottom of the screen, and then left-click on any icon to set a waypoint. Once you have set the icon as a waypoint, close the map. The same waypoint icon will appear on the top of the screen, assisting you to find your location and the distance covered so far. To remove a waypoint from the map, just left-click on it.

3. Quests (Scroll Icon):

In the Quest menu, there will be three more tabs under it. The spiral icon tab houses the main quests. The checklist icon tab provides a list of side quests. Tap on a quest name on the left section and then tap the “Follow” button on the top-right corner of the screen to make it your current quest. Exit the inventory and you can see your current active quest and the list of requirements on the top left corner of the screen.

Each quest has a set of requirements/sub-quests. When you complete one requirement, a green tick appears suggesting the completion of a subquest. Finish all subquests within a quest to fully complete it.

4. Calendar/Seasons

The fourth tab displays your calendar. On the left-hand side is your current in-game season and the days left to begin a new season. Below the current season is the current phase of the moon. You can view the number of days on the extreme right side of the calendar.

The calendar also provides a glimpse of key events. Visiting NPCs on certain days may also grant gifts. Tap the small arrow on the top of the calendar to know the different seasons. There are six seasons: Bloom, Storm, Bask, Harvest, Reverie, and Frost.

Knowing the current in-game season and the moon phase in the Witch of Fern Island is crucial as you may find certain plants on a particular season and moon phase. For example, The Mirage Agrimony, a yellow-flowered plant of meadows is a herb that grows only during certain seasons, such as the “Bask” season. The best moon phase to harvest this herb is the full moon.

5. Residents: Shows a list of residents you have interacted with. Make sure you visit them at regular intervals to know the gifts they like, dislike, and hate. The more you talk to residents, the more hearts you will earn. The heart meter is displayed on the right side beside the visitor’s profile in the resident’s section of your inventory. Along with “preferences”, you will also know other information, such as birthday, culture, etc.

6. Compendium (Book Icon): Under Compendium, there are four more tabs on the right side:

Lore: Contains tutorials.

Recipes: The recipes that you have unlocked so far. Under it, click “Food” and then click on the recipe name. In the information screen, you can view the ingredients at the bottom of the screen. Hover your mouse cursor over the ingredients to know more about them. Food is prepared in the oven/stove. It can be found in the main room of your house.

Magic: List of unlocked potions. Click on the potion and a list of ingredients to concoct it will be displayed on the bottom of the info screen. Potions are prepared in the cauldron, which can be found in the main room of your house.

Resources: Under resources, you will find a list of materials/ingredients that you have collected or foraged – These are: Animal Products, Herb, Mushrooms, and others. Click on these tabs to find more info about all materials.

When you click on an ingredient, don’t forget to click on the arrow button on the top of the resources page to move to “Discovery”. The discovery page displays various mini-quests relevant to that particular herb or mushroom for unlocking new recipes, discovering the best moon to harvest, the season to grow, the chance of double harvest, and the additional chance to collect seeds when harvested.

Example: When you collect four oyster fungi, you learn a new recipe – forest stew.

Repair the witch’s stall

Fixing the witch’s stall should be one of your first important quests. If the stall could be fixed, you can sell potions, amulets talismans, and other items to the residents of the fern island.

Drops, the in-game currency, play an important role in purchasing items such as edible items, rare materials, tools, seeds, etc so you will need a lot more drops if you want to purchase additional items to continue your adventure.

The broken stall can be found on the right side of the mansion as soon as you exit your mansion from the front door. Move closer to the broken stall and left-click to investigate. Your familiar, the cute black cat, (I named him Mr. Paws), will then provide a vague hint to repair the stall.

Go to Rogost to repair the witch’s stall. You will find him standing near the quest board. Make sure you go to the quest board in the morning to find him standing beside it.

Once you find Rogost, move closer to him to talk. Keep talking to him (left-click to talk) until the yellow exclamation mark disappears above his head. As you talk, you will also raise your friendship with him. Rogost will also give spare nails, which can be used to craft the chest. You will find the chest blueprint while destroying crates in tutorial mode. More on this later.

While talking to Rogost, select “I would like you to fix something” from the list of conversations. Continue your conversation and he will help you repair the stall without charging a drop, although he will need 20 pieces of wood.

Collect 20 pieces of wood from the farmland – your backyard. You can chop wood from tree stumps, or collect wooden planks scattered on your house and on the outskirts of your house.

As soon as you collect 20 pieces of wood, head straight to Rogost’s Workshop. You can find it on the map.

Find the open book, also known as the “Order’s List” near Rogost’s workshop. There will be an exclamation mark above the open book.

Moving near the book, left-click to open the “Service” Page. You will find a list of repair and upgrade work on the right side of the service page. Scroll down until you find “Fix Witch Stall”. Click on it to repair the stall. Note that the charges for repairing it will be zero.

The service list in Rogost’s workshop also lets you upgrade tools, such as sickle, axe, and pickaxe, expand a witch’s house interior, repair the old broken bridge near the farm, and many more.

Now use the Birch Grove key to teleport back to the witch’s mansion. You will see a fully repaired stall near your house. Move near the stall and left-click to interact with it. A new “Stall” page will pop up on the screen. To sell an item, drag and move it from the left to the right empty slot. You will see the total selling value once the item has been dropped into the empty slot on the right section.

Money earned from the sale in your stall can be collected the next day by clicking on the money box. To sell your items fast, make sure you establish friendly relations with the residents. It all depends on how popular you are with locals, so try not to be rude to them. While conversing, you will see multiple conversation choices – choose the one that is more helpful and polite in tone. The higher your friendly relations with a resident, the higher the chance of sale of items displayed at the stall. You can also expand the stall to sell more items. Also, while talking to them, you will know their likes and dislikes, including their favorite items, ingredients, etc. This way, you can keep those items in your stall for sale to earn more drops.

How to find softwood

In The Witch of Fern Island, players can find softwood in two locations – the logging site, near Siemibor’s House, and the farmland, behind the witch’s mansion. The location of the logging site is shown in the screenshot below.

When you reach the logging site, you will find a red flag close to it.

Find tree stumps that are redder than regular tree stumps and then use a better quality axe to chop them down to obtain softwood. You can upgrade your primitive axe at Rogost’s workshop. You might obtain soft wood using the primitive axe if the stumps are smaller in size.

Seek Cassandra’s help to know more about the crystal ball

After fixing the witch’s stall, head straight to Cassandra’s flower shop, the “Flower Bee”. Locate her shop with the help of the in-game map. Press “M” to open your map. The Flower Bee shop is close to Rogost’s workshop.

Cassandra will be either outside her shop or inside the shop. Once you find her, talk to her and she will give you a primitive watering can as a gift. You can use it to water your crops on the farmland behind your house.

Continue your conversation with Cassandra. You should talk to her until the yellow exclamation mark above her disappears.

In your second conversation, Abrill brings up the topic of the crystal ball. Cassandra tells her that there’s someone named “Frita” who lives outside the city, in the forest. Frita may know how to craft one.

Blueprints: Where to find them

With blueprints, you can build furniture, a beehive, weapons, and tools. You can purchase blueprints at Rogost’s workshop. Go to his workshop. You will find a cash register near the open book outside his house. Move closer to the cash register and left-click to open his shop.

In the shop, click on the blueprints tab and purchase the one you need.

Spend drops to purchase blueprints. You might find free blueprints by opening certain chests or destroying crates. You might also get them after completing certain quests.

Before building an object/furniture using a blueprint in the Witch of Fern Island, make sure you have all the necessary materials. To know the material requirement, hit the “I” key to open the inventory and then click on the blue piece of paper.

Materials needed to build an object of that blueprint will be displayed at the bottom of the inventory menu.

Once you have the required materials for a furniture blueprint, open the inventory again, and drag and drop the blueprint from the inventory to the slot under the “Hand” section. Exit the inventory, and move to a place where you can place the furniture.

Right-click to build it. Before placing, make sure the color of the object is green. If it’s red, then there’s some obstacle nearby or this is not the right place to build that particular object.

Crafting the Crystal Ball

After getting crucial information about the crystal ball, open the map and locate Frita’s house. It’s quite far away from the witch’s mansion. I have marked the house for you. See the screenshot with Frita’s house marked on the map below:

Once you reach Frita’s house, talk to her. She will be in her house or outside, near her garden. While talking to Frita, she will give you a note (check your compendium – I key- to know more about it).

Don’t stop talking to Frita, especially when there’s a yellow exclamation mark still above her head. Initiate another conversation by pressing the left mouse button. Ask her if she owns a crystal ball. She says she will craft a crystal ball for you but will need 1000 drops and 5 quartz. You can find quartz from “soft soil”.

You will need a shovel to dig soft soil, but make sure to dig only those that have an “X” symbol on them. One such soft soil with an “X” mark can be found near Frita’s hut. Others can be found near your house, the witch’s mansion.

Another way to find quartz is to crush rocks. You will need a pickaxe to break them and will need to break a lot to acquire quartz from them.

How to get honey

In The Witch of Fern Island, Honey is not that easy to obtain. You will need a tool to gather and harvest them. While there’s an easy way – you just need to purchase it, but if you want to harvest honey, then follow this guide:

1. Go to the fishing shop. You can find the location of the fishing shop on your map. I have marked its location for you. Check the screenshot:

2. Purchase the net from the fishing shop. It will cost 500 drops.

3. Move to your mansion to find bee hives. You can find them near your mansion.

4. Use the net to trap wild bees and get honey from them.

You may also have to craft a beehive (get its blueprint from Rogost’s workshop) to have bees in it and harvest it.

If you need honey without much effort, just go straight to the local market near the town hall and purchase it. Here’s the location of the local market on your map:

Tips to earn drops

Drops are the Island’s primary in-game currency. Starting out on your journey, you will have only 500 drops. You will need a lot of drops for purchasing new items and for crafting. For example, to craft the crystal ball, you will have to pay 1000 drops to Frita. Here are a few quick ways to earn drops in The Witch of Fern Island:

– First things first – repair the witch’s stall as soon as possible. Seek Rogost’s help. I have provided a detailed guide on how to repair the stall in this article – read the “Repair Witch Stall” section of this article.

Now click on the stall and put items in it. Just make sure you interact with residents as soon as you start putting items in the stall to increase the chances of selling items at a faster rate.

The best three low-effort items to put up in the stall are – forest stew, plant revival potion, and plain shell necklaces. By low effort, I mean you don’t have to search a lot for rare resources, and crafting them would be fairly easier than others.

Your first easy sale would be a shell necklace. To craft a shell necklace, you will need seashells and fiber. Go to Rogost’s workshop to purchase fiber. You will need at least 10 drops to buy one. For the shells, you can find them in plenty near the beaches. Just head straight to the beach located to the east of the town to find them. You can also find shells in the north-east of the town.

Get the recipe for a plant revival potion while talking to Cassandra at the “Flower Bee” shop. To craft one, you will need morel mushroom, clay, and honey. Check the honey section of this article to know how to obtain them. For the clay, look around to find soft mounds with an “X” mark or mole holes around your farmland in the backyard of your house to find them. To obtain the morel mushroom, search for them under the birch trees near your house.

Once you have crafted it, you can put the plant revival potion for sale and can easily sell it for 180 drops.

You can earn 20+ drops if you sell forest stew. This basic food can be crafted using 1 oyster fungus and 1 horehound herb. The horehound herb can be found in the bloom and storm seasons. You just need to explore the island to find them. You can also use other ingredients to prepare forest stew. These are mushrooms such as blackhat, Cuflowrelle, Indigo Milkcap, kite mushrooms, and herbs like clove, ginger, burdock, and typha. Basically, a mushroom + a herb is the only combo to craft forest stew.

You can also consider selling gold starfishes for 12 drops in your stall. You will find them on the beach, the same place where you found broken pieces of the witch’s broom.

Don’t forget to explore the island. You will find several chests, which may contain recipes and items.