10 Disney Dreamlight Valley tips to help you get started

These Disney Dreamlight Valley tips will help you clear up your village, complete quests, and start filling it with iconic Disney characters. There are quite a lot of systems to be aware of in the game, and you'll need to know the basics before you can start levelling up, adding new villagers, and unlocking plenty of furniture items to construct your dream Valley. Our pointers should get you off to a good start in Disney Dreamlight Valley and will help you understand how to farm resources, cook recipes, and make the most of friendships. Here are 10 Disney Dreamlight Valley tips for beginners.

1. Track quests to easily find your way

If you're having trouble finding objectives for your current Disney Dreamlight Valley tasks, make sure you open up the Quests menu tab, select a quest, and then make sure you choose ‘Track Quest’. This’ll allow you to follow a floating beam of light to the location you need to visit next. You can also click on certain map icons, such as icons for buildings and Disney characters, to get a glittering trail showing you the path you need to take.

2. Carry some decent food and meals with you to recover Energy on the go

When you first start out with Disney Dreamlight Valley, you’ll be spending a lot of time exploring and carrying out some of the core resource-gathering activities – clearing Night Thorns, foraging, gardening, mining, fishing, and digging – but these consume a lot of your Energy. Make sure you save a few backpack inventory slots for food items to that you can eat as you explore to save you having to go home every few minutes to refill your Disney Dreamlight Valley Energy bar.

Apples are a good ingredient for starting out, but once you unlock cooking, the Fruit Salad, Veggie Pasta, and Grilled Fish Entrée meals are all easy to make a replenish a good chunk of your Energy. Overfilling your energy bar will also give you the Well Fed bonus, giving you a slight boost to your movement speed.

3. Check the Collection menus to learn about most items in the game

The Collection menu is an invaluable compendium of information on pretty much anything in Disney Dreamlight Valley. You’ll find the Memories you’ve collected in there, as well as all the crafting recipes you’ve discovered, which Disney Dreamlight Valley characters are currently living in your valley, and which clothing and furniture sets you’ve started collecting.

Clicking on any Collection entry also reveals crucial information that’ll really help you out too. You can find out how much certain resources, such as gems, will sell for and where they can be found, which really helps when trying to make more money. Look at the Characters list to see your Friendship Levels with each Disney villager, along with what their favorite things of the day are for bonus friendship XP. Finally, check out the Ingredients section to learn how long certain fruits and vegetables take to grow once planted.

4. Check your Disney Dreamlight Valley map often

Another great source of in-game information is the Disney Dreamlight Valley map. It shows you the locations of all Disney villagers in real-time, allowing you to easily find them if you need to give them a gift or have a daily chat. Characters will also have a little quest marker on their icon to let you know that they have new quests available or an active quest that you’re already working through. You can also see when crops are ready to harvest from the apple icon.

Make sure to use the Wishing Well and Dream Castle map icons to quickly get around with Disney Dreamlight Valley fast travel too.

5. Craft chests for your house to increase storage space

When first starting Disney Dreamlight Valley, storage space is a bit scarce. You have a chest in your house and 21 backpack inventory slots but upgrading them to get more storage slots is very costly for beginners. For some temporary storage space, you can craft a chest for 25 softwood and 25 rock, providing an extra 16 storage slots.

Use a chest or two to store things like food ingredients and crafting resources that you don’t urgently need on you all the time. When you craft or cook in your house, you’ll automatically pull those items from the chests, saving you having to lug around chunks of coal in your backpack if you need to cook, or piles of rocks for crafting.

6. Complete Dreamlight challenges and duties to unlock new Realms and Villages

Make sure you check you Disney Dreamlight Valley Dreamlight challenges often to see which objectives you’re close to completing. You’ll find these under the Dreamlight menu and each one will reward you with increasing amounts of Dreamlight upon completion. The Dreamlight Duties are also great for quickly racking up Dreamlight as they award a decent amount of Dreamlight for completing relatively quick and simple tasks.

Dreamlight is also the currency that’s used to unlock new Village biomes in Dreamlight Valley and new Realms in the Dream Castle. Unlocking these areas is also how you’ll get more Disney characters to settle down in your valley, so make sure you’re earning and spending as much Dreamlight as possible!

7. Hang out with your Villagers as often as you can

In Disney Dreamlight Valley, you can ask any of your Disney Villagers to hang out with you. This’ll allow you to earn XP (represented by pink stars) for not just your personal level but also your Friendship Level with the character you’re hanging out with. Increasing Friendship Levels for characters progresses a reward track giving you new items at each level – you can get a Fantasia fountain if you get Mickey Mouse to Friendship Level 10, for example. You’ll also be able to get new character-specific quests that award even more XP to boost Friendships further. Any of the core activities will get you XP, so go off on a mining, fishing, and digging expedition to power level your friendships.

8. Give your Villagers a variety of roles for efficient resource farming

Regarding leveling up Friendships, when you reach Friendship Level 2 with any character, you’ll be able to assign them a role that’ll allow them to help you with an activity – either digging, gardening, fishing, mining, and foraging. Whenever you hang out with a character with an assigned role, they’ll boost your chances of getting bonus resources from a particular activity.

For example, if you assign Moana the fishing role, she might be able to get you some extra fish or Disney Dreamlight Valley seaweed anytime you catch a fish while hanging out with her. However, you can only assign one role to a character, and it can’t be changed, so you should assign your first five villagers with one of each role so that you can hang out with one of them and efficiently gather resources while completing an activity. The effect of these roles also increases with each Friendship Level you gain, so the more you hang out, the better your villagers will become!

9. Complete Disney Dreamlight Valley character quests to get tool upgrades

You’ll bump into loads of Disney characters as you play through the Dreamlight Valley story, unlocking new Village biomes and Realms, and many of these characters can offer you essential tool upgrades that’ll let you break down new materials that you previously couldn’t. Although you’ll normally need to complete quest for the character to get the upgrade. For example, if you go to the Moana Realm and complete a quest for Maui, he’ll enhance your Pickaxe, allowing you to break certain pieces of coral that can be found on Dazzle Beach.

Later, you’ll need Elsa’s help to break down ice by giving your Pickaxe fire powers. You can also get Kristoff to boost your shovel’s capabilities, allowing it break down tree stumps, which you’ll have no doubt already noticed are very common in the Plaza starting area.

10. Disney Dreamlight Valley runs in real time, so check in daily and at different times to see what’s available

It’s no secret that Disney Dreamlight Valley takes a lot of inspiration from the Animal Crossing series, and that even extends to its real-time gameplay where your real-world time of day carries over to the world of Dreamlight Valley. Check into the game at different times of day to find unique critters to befriend, and log in daily to speak to your Disney Villagers and give them gifts to boost your Friendship Levels with them. Scrooge and Goofy’s shops will also have new stock each day, and there will be plenty of daily chores for you to complete, including clearing Night Thorns, finding chests, digging up hidden loot.