Harvest Sprites (FoMT)

The Harvest Sprites are magical sprites in Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town.

They resemble little elves in colorful, pointy hats. They live in a little hut behind Carter's Church, and you can visit them any day during the year (their hut is closed on holidays, however), and either ask for assistance, give them gifts or play mini games with them to raise their farm work skills. There are 7 sprites total, and their names are Chef, Nappy, Hoggy, Timid, Aqua, Staid and Bold.

Appearance
The Harvest Sprites are identical and only distinguishable by the clothing they wear. Each sprite wears a different color hat and shirt.

Raising Affection
Before you can ask them to help you on your farm, they must have at least 3 hearts of affection for you, or else they will state that they don't really know you, and refuse to help. You can make them like you by giving them gifts, like other villagers.

There are many ways you can get the heart meter high enough to get the Sprites to work for you. You have to get at least three hearts to have them play or work with you. The most you can have is ten hearts, but there isn't any reason to get it this high unless you just want to. To check the heart meter go to earnings, then press right or left until you see the Sprites. You will see the head shot of each of them, as well as a line of hearts. And the last thing you will see are three little bars, one with a watering can, one with a turnip, and one with a brush. Each of those are the "skill" meter. The fuller they are the better they will be at that skill.

Gift Preferences
Every sprite is partial to Grass of the color they wear. These are the easiest and cost-free gifts, as you can pick them from the mountain, however, they are only seasonal. Other things they like are flour, apples, honey and bread.

Interestingly, although there are two blue sprites: Aqua is supposedly 'blue', and Staid is supposedly 'indigo', if you give Aqua Blue Grass or Indigo Grass, he responds with "Thanks! This is great, budum!", which is the response you get for giving him a gift of his secondary liking, as opposed to the "Yippee! I'm so happy! Thank you!" response you get for giving them the gift they love most. This suggests that Aqua's color is neither Blue nor Indigo, as neither grass is his favorite. The best alternative gift to give him, in this case, is Honey, since it's free and it's available all year long.

Similarly, while Aqua accepts neither, Staid accepts both Blue and Indigo grass as his favorite. This is possibly a mistake on the developers' part.

Birthdays
Like other townspeople, giving them gifts on their birthday will raise their affection by a significantly greater amount than usual.

Requesting Assistance
Once the sprites like you enough (you can check by looking through your Memo pages, or simply talking to them), you can start asking them to help you out on the farm. They will help with three things: Animal care, crop watering, and harvesting. Each sprite can only do one of these things a day (i.e. you cannot ask the same sprite to water and harvest on the same day), and you can request one to work for 1, 3 or 7 days at a time. They will not come to your farm during a hurricane or blizzard.

Animal Care
If you ask a sprite to take care of your animals, they will feed, milk and shear your animals as needed, and ship all the products collected instantly, so if you want to save certain items to gift or put them through a Maker, you'll have to beat the sprite you hired to the barn and collect these items yourself, because they do not know how to use the Makers or save up items for you. They also do not know how to "love" your animals; if you want to continue raising affection, you still have to talk to them personally.

Crop Watering
A sprite hired to water your crops will do just that; they will water every square that a growing plant is on. If you have a crop that needs to be harvested, but is renewable (meaning they will regrow once harvested), the sprites will not water them until the mature plant is first harvested.

Crop Harvesting
Similar to the animal products, Harvest Sprites will instantly ship the crops they harvest.

For both harvesting and watering, Sprites can do a better job than you do because they "float" instead of walk; this means that they can reach certain areas that you normally don't (i.e. crops surrounded by more crops) because they can't be blocked by solid objects. If you hire Sprites to water and harvest, you can basically ignore the "leave the middle square untilled" rule or whatever tilling method you usually follow in order to be able to reach every crop you plant.

Minigames
There are three minigames you can play that will boost the effectiveness of the Sprite's work, one for each of the tasks they can do for you.

Animal Care
In this minigame, you are to control a sprite as he aims to feed as many chickens as he can in one minute. All you have to do is keep refilling the feed bins as the chickens eat. You are penalized for feeding a chicken before they finish the current feed in the bin, and also if a chicken has to wait too long for you to refill their bin.

Crop Watering
The watering minigame is a memory game of sorts. In a field, three squares will be watered in a demonstration every round, and you must memorize the location and order of the watered squares. You get a point for each location you get correctly, and you get another point for each spot you get in the right order, yielding a potential 6 points per round.

Crop Harvesting
In this minigame, you control a sprite as he aims to harvest turnips in a minute. Basically, you must keep a steady pace; you are to go as fast as you can, without going so fast as to overwork the sprite. His face will turn red when you are going too fast, and if you do not slow down, he will fall over, and you get penalized each time that happens. Each turnip takes around 20 pulls to harvest, so pace reasonably.

Trivia

 * The Harvest Sprites of Harvest Moon: Friends of Mineral Town may be a parody of the dwarves in Snow White.
 * Aside from Aqua, each sprite is named after a characteristic trait: Nappy, Timid, etc., just like the dwarves: Sleepy, Bashful, etc.
 * There are seven of them, like the seven dwarves.
 * Each sprite's color corresponds to a color of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, indigo.
 * When you give perfume to Nappy he will display a text box with Japanese kanji in it. This must be an error of translation.

Events
Tea Party

If you get your affection high enough you will receive the invitation to their tea party. It is hard to get it high enough for all the Sprites in the first year because the only time a tea party is available is the first season. In the second year it should be high enough to get them to. You should check your mail box everyday in Spring if you have three or more hearts for all the Sprites. But make sure you take the invitaion you get from the mailbox to the hut on a day none of them are working.

After the tea party  you will receive relaxtion tea leaves. It is important to make sure that you go to their hut as soon as you can once you get the invite, for it may be too late if you wait much longer. The tea party ends at 6pm.