In each real-life day your residents would give you a new unique recipe that cannot be obtained elsewhere. It can either be a Request Recipe or House Recipe - The former one can only be obtained from completing requests from any island residents, whereas the latter can only be obtained from a resident who is in a a Crafting Life AND have a house assigned.


If you want Request Recipes, don't assign a crafter to any house, then keep completing requests.

If you want House Recipes, give a house to only 1 crafter, then fill the vacant houses with non-crafters. At the start of each real-life day, make sure there are 2 UNACCEPTED requests from non-crafter residents (but if it's your crafter having a pending request, accept & give it up via menu.) From there, keep sleeping in your crafter's bed until they stand in front of their workbench of their house, at which point talk to them for the recipe.

1. Make sure you have talked your crafter at least once since they moved in
   
2. Make sure you have not obtained a Request Recipe or House Recipe that day yet
   
3. Make sure your crafter is not having a request

The rest of the guide goes through my setup in more detail. Usually it should take only a handful of resets for a recipe to show up, so if you find yourself resetting many times to no avail, you may read on to follow along.

Quick reminder - You can reset in-game day by sleeping or entering Hagram mode.

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During each in-game day, the game would randomly pick 1 of the following to happen:

• Islander gives you a random gift
  
• Islander gives you a random unobtained emote
  
• Resident gives you a random unobtained Request Recipe
  
• Resident gives you a random unobtained House Recipe

Usually, you want to take the free gift & emote as they appear, then reset the in-game day for next event to appear. Say you are getting recipe but it is not what you want, either reload your save for a different recipe within the same group, or reset the in-game day for a different event to happen instead.

Please refer to a later sectino for notable recipes to look out for.
Also attached at the bottom is a reference table for all obtainable recipes from islanders.

As previously stated, only ONE recipe can be obtained per real-life day. This section talks about how to force either a Request Recipe or House Recipe to appear.

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To force a Request Recipe to appear, simply make sure none of your residents has crafting Life.

Forcing a House Recipe to appear is trickier. Simply obtain all the possible Request Recipes beforehand, which should make all subsequent recipes be House Recipes. This might be preferrable in the long run if you are planning to obtain all recipes eventually. But if you just want a specific recipe, I recommend referring to the optimal setup & step-by-step guide below instead.

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If neither recipe is showing up, even after resetting many times, make sure to talk to the crafter inside their house at least once since you first moved them in. It might help to walk around your island to see if one of your islanders is trying to give you a free gift or emote as well. Or perhaps you have accidentally already obtained a Request Recipe without realising?

I already talked about how to easily force a Request Recipe to appear, so I assume you are hunting for a House Recipe if you're still reading.

• House only 1 crafter, then fill the other 5 houses with non-crafter residents
  
  • Again, make sure to talk to the crafter in their house at least once since they move in, otherwise a House Recipe would not be able to appear there
    
  • You may house 3 crafters instead, but that just means you have to enter 3 houses to check for recipe each time, which I wouldn't recommend
• You may put fence around houses to ensure residents would not wander far, but it shouldn't matter too much
  
• Doesn't matter at all whether you have a Gallery, or whether some of your islanders are fishing, sitting, or staring at furnitures. Previously I mentioned about avoiding these but it doesn't actually prevent recipes from appearing, sorry for the confusion

1. At the start of a new real-life day, go to Base Camp
   
2. Make sure your crafter does not have a pending request.
   
   • If they do, accept and give it up via menu
3. DO NOT accept the 2 requests from non-crafters
   
   • Usually there are already 2 pending requests from islanders. If not, simply keep resetting the in-game day
4. Enter your crafter's house, talk to them if a recipe is available
   
5. Otherwise, keep sleeping on their bed until they begin working on their workbench
   
   • A new recipe should appear within a few sleeps
6. If you want to get more recipes immediately, you can change the system clock to go to a new real-life day, then repeat from Step 1
   
   • I have heard time-traveling forward would mess up Ginormosia (namely Don's stock and veggie stalls), so it might be best to only change your system date backward

• Request Recipes
  
  • Fruit Punch - best source of EXP for Cook
    
  • Giant Fried Egg - needed for a quest
• House Recipes
  
  • Crit Aid - most convenient source of EXP for Alchemist
    
  • Pumpkin Pie, Cabbage Rolls, Paralyzing Bomb - needed for quests
    
  • Royal Flan, Vegetable Stew, Golden Apple Pie, Creamy Curry - furniture ingredient
    
  • Angler's Goggles - tied as best Spec equipment
• Other recipes for requests that don't actually come from residents
  
  • Resistance Spray - Swolean Island shop
    
  • Long Cape, Magic Aid - Ginormosia settlement shops
    
  • Desert Headwear, Spraylixir - Ginormosia traveling merchant
    
  • Starry Night Mat, Starry Night Streetlamp, White Flower Vase - Marco's Shop (Dosh)
    
  • Pastel Low Table, Pastel Table - Marco's Shop (Celestia's Gift)
    
  • Hourglass - Marco's Surprise Box...

I have attached a reference table at the bottom of this guide but it's difficult to format them well using Steam's interface. As such, I recommend checking all the available recipes either from my compendium (Spreadsheet[docs.google.com]) or from this tracker (Spreadsheet[docs.google.com]) instead.

Fun Fact - There are a total of 20 Request Recipes, and 101 House Recipes, so it would take 4 months of playing every single day to get all the recipes without tinkering with your system clock. I absolutely hate this too!

You may also obtain the recipes for 6 sets of outfits that resenble your islanders. Most come from Tailor, with the exception of the Dragonslayer armor (which comes from Blacksmith instead.)

• Some people said they have received both a Request Recipe and a House Recipe within the same day. That never happened to me so I cannot verify
  
• I am also unsure of the effect of islander's affinity, like whether it affects the chance of recipes showing up, since everyone in my island already has max affinity
  
• I know I originally said the Request Recipe reward is pre-dertermined but I was wrong! Sorry for the mis-information, you CAN indeed reroll by simply reloading your save

While the daily free gifts from islanders oftne seem random and useless, a handful of them may actually give unique furnitures unobtainable elsewhere instead. This section is for those of you completionists who would like to collect them all!

Note that if an islander has max affinity with you, they would prioritise giving you the one-time reward, which can either be their respective Strangeling form, or unique furnitures for Edward and Flutter.


You can get the unique furnitures both as the "daily gift" and a "returning gift" from feeding them. However, the chance seems pretty low (about 1 in 25), so this can take between 10 minutes to half an hour of constant resetting.

Let's say you really want the Celestial Globe furniture, which is given to you by Colin. Optimally, you want to keep resetting the in-game day until he becomes the islander who offers you the daily free gift, then save. From there, accept the gift and feed him his favourite food, and reload the save to repeat until you finally obtain the Celestial Globe.
(Even a 5★ favourite meal does not guarantee a returning gift, and I am not sure what determines a returning gift appearing either...)

You may refer to the following compendium page for islander's favourite food.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BrBcKh3peA96u3EIj19QROujZLBC4d3ilW-KWyf7Anw/edit?gid=308823707#gid=308823707

Side Note - There are a total of 23 emotes available, including the ones available by default.

That's about it! Technically you only need to read the first section to get the gist of things, but I just want to be extra thorough when explaining the process, just so other players don't have to waste time resetting without knowing what went wrong.

If you find this guide help, give it a thumbs' up! You may also find useful stuff here as well:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484233912

https://youtu.be/gDxqaSJ95S0

The video demonstrates getting both recipes, be sure to turn on subtitle!

... That said, it was recorded a while back when I was unsure of the exact mechanics. While the method can still work, it is suboptimal compared to what is described abouve. I recommend using the video only as a reference of how the process looks like, and follow the optimal step-by-step guide above instead.

I have put together various other tips & tricks in this separate guide and the Compendium spreadsheet as well. You may find more useful information there, check it out!
Google Sheet[docs.google.com] | HTML View Mode[docs.google.com]
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3484233912
I have jotted down various Life-related tips, which you can see in this guide:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3500367872
This guide contains a quick summary on obtaining all achievements:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3505903847
This guide contains a quick reference for various not-easily-obtainable items:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3507324813
This guide covers 2 useful exploits that could be helpful in the end-game:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3510285845

Compendium Spreadsheet[docs.google.com] | Tracker Spreadsheet[docs.google.com]