Journey of the Prairie King - Stardew Valley Guide 

imagine making a game and being like oh yeah let me put two full other games in it, as a one-man dev team. insane

I'm so bad at this that I didn't even knew there were multiple worlds

Remember to stay close to the middle of the map for the later stages, enemies can sometimes fly at you from any side of the map even if there is a wall there and it is annoying as ever. There is also a way to get the deathless achievement without sinking dozens of hours into the game. After beating it once at the saloon you will be gifted your own prairie king arcade machine to use in your house, it comes with a new game plus and a 'save game' feature. Beat one level and then save your game, then the next day beat another single level and save, repeat this until you beat each level once without dying and you will still get the achievement.

This run was freaking lucky. Getting three extra lives in the first level is very rare.

Deathless run: 1. Get the key to the town using qi gems on ginger island or earn the arcade game to put in your house so you can start a run at 6:00am-6:30am. 2. Only do one level at a time and leave the game after moving to the next map. The game will save your progress as long as you move maps after the level. 3. If you get less than 10 coins in any level exit the game and restart the day of the actual game stardew valley and try again. Your progress will reset to the last level you got to before. 3. If you die, restart the day and try again. It will no longer remember your death. 4. Same progression of upgrades but by ensuring you get 10 coins per level or more you should have enough for better. Just make sure you end with two gun speed and two power upgrades. 5. Make sure you enter the final boss level with either the sheriff power up or the machine gun power up and just start firing down without moving using the power up to kill the final boss before he changes up his attacks. He will die if you have the power ups and the 4 upgrades. You might have to retry levels up to 5 times a level for the coins but the whole thing shouldn't take longer than 2-3 hours.

I have no idea how anyone could do this without dying. BUT... Unfortunately, I hate myself by being an achievement runner and completionist. So I'm gonna. Eventually. May take me 20 years but I'm GONNA FRICKIN DO IT.

I don't know if this is a thing or not, but they could make real life arcade machines on this minigame!

The Bullet powerups will actually 'overflow' damage. If you shoot an enemy with less health than your damage, it will penetrate them, then subtract the damage they absorbed. (ie. you can kill two goblins with one lvl. 2 bullet)

A little guide on Journey of the Praire King strats my main hint that I can give (when you're not going for deathless) is: don't be afraid to die to get a coin even a single one, coins are MASSIVE, and getting even just one can help out a lot to get those upgrades faster, burning an item is a viable strat to get them too, principally if there's multiple coins on the ground and you can't afford to die (since, you'd lose all of them), just don't go for it if you have 2 or less lives, then yeah, be careful, and don't get scared to burn an item to get a coin. Whenever you get all permanent upgrades, you unlock the triple gun (or, how I like to call it, the ultragun), which just makes you invincible (shotgun shots with no firerate penalty), so getting all the ups the earliest possible is the main objective (generally you'll get after 1 or 2 resets), if you're deathless, then instead use your items to get the coin the corner is a good place to stay when you can afford it, otherwise, stick to the middle, it is the safest, most reliable way to defend yourself. Although yes, you can be attacked by every side, you also have a lot of time to respond (also because in later levels/after 1 reset, flying enemies will appear everywhere and they REALLY punish who stays too much in the corners). The only exception to this rule is 2-3, which I consider one of, if not, the hardest level, ouchers Move and shoot diagonally, grounded enemies are more likely to walk in a straight line, so you can get farther from them if you walk two directions at the same time, just be careful with flying enemies, they do not follow this rule, they are built different If you are going after an item dropped just outside an enemy spawn, shoot straight to the spawn to avoid any unfortunate accidents so, for the items the best itens (that you should ALWAYS store for getting out of a sticky situation or getting a coin) -Sherif badge: no secret, it's just that great, gives you the shotgun, coffee and bullet belt in a single package (although the speed and firerate up are in weaker forms) -Bullet belt: turns your gun into a frickin' laser beam, can really help you out when cornered or when a lot of enemies come up to you -Wheel: It's good, REALLY good, basically makes you invincible for it's duration, you'll generally need to choose between storing the sherif badge or this one good itens (that you'll generally burn quickly or trade to get a coin or one of the above) -Smoke bomb: it's solid, can get you out of weird positions in exchange of being unreliable, good nonetheless -Grave: makes you literally immortal for a few seconds, but doesn't really help to kill enemies much better like the 4 big ones (sherif badge, whell bullet belt and shotgun), it takes you out of any situation tho -Shotgun: really good to push enemies back, but lowers you firerate, use it cautiously, could be one of the best but the firerate penalty is really sad niche -Coffee: it makes you zoom, I generally take when I have no other item, and almost always go after it when I see it dropped, free speed is always good to have don't -Nuke: It seems good, it just clears the screen for free... right? Yeah it totally does clear the screen but for a big price, any enemy killed through it will NOT drop ANYTHING, which is really big, not getting any coins or another item from a wave is really sad (Imagine the scenario: You are surrounded, and stored a sherif's badge, you activate it, and kill everything onscreen with little effort, and even get the chance of getting another one of them, coins, or another good upgrade, looping the situation to get you to a better position later. With the nuke, all of that goes to trash: You activate it, kill the entire wave, and still get clapped because you got no upgrade to get you out of another similar situation), most of the time I activelly avoid getting the nukes, it is not worth it bad guys that you shoot: the enemies are simple to get In world 1 we have: Orcs that walk towards you, they are kinda slow and have the lowest HP, but they can swarm you, since you would be underpowered in the first levels Spikeballs are weird, they walk randomly untill they get to a spot and transform, I leave them alive as long as they don't get into the middle zone, because they are good to mess up with enemies' abillities to get to you, limiting their ways to get to you (just be careful cuz these guys are FAST). They have 2 HP unplanted and require a lvl2 ammo to be 1shotted, I like to let them die by stray bullets when planted Ogres are the tank of this world, they walk slow and have the biggest health pool of this world, but since they are slow and kinda rare, you can just let them be a secondary task, and be ignored for the most time (they'll end up dying anyway through stray bullets anyway), also, the ogres can destroy planted spikeballs by walking over them In world 2: Butterflies, the first flying enemy, it moves kinda slowly but can realistically corner you and put you in a bad spot, kill them as quickly as you can Mushrooms (or how I like to call them, MOTHER[nope]ERS) they move FAST, have 2 hp, AND ARE THE MAIN SWARM ENEMY OF THE WORLD, you WILL get overwhelmed by them really easily, it's even worse because the droprate for items in this world is still kinda low, so you have to be REALLY careful to not just end up burning all of your lives in world 2 World 3 there's only 1 enemy that is a war criminal, and an enemy that exists: the mummy is tanky but really slow, it can overwhelm you but since it's so slow, you can deal with it, burn an item to get out of a corner if you get into a situation like this, but in the end, you can just keep your ground with lvl 2 ammo and pistol and wait for an item drop, they also have the biggest health pool in the game, having 6 at the first time the imp is a war criminal, he can swarm you very easily and from any direction, they can fly over obstacles but not enemies, so it can be a strategy to let some mummies live and surround you so you have some protection from them, just be careful, it is risky as hell, tried it already and got deservedly clapped, prioritize those critters as if they killed your dog Bosses are really easy, but if you want to make them easier, have a few tips: stand as close as you can, yeah, you read it right their barricade can also protect you, and even work better than standing on your 1 block barricade (which you should never go to, except if you're a coward), you can still get shot if you hide there (since the cowboys' bullets can have a slight angle, it's kinda rare but you'd hate to see it), standing near their barricade protects that. You can cheese their standing still shooting as Sal showed off, but you can also react to their back and forth shooting and just track them and diagonal shoot while moving, and when they stop, just clap them, really easy The final boos is painful if you're going for deathless, but on normal plays, you'd have a billion lives lying around so you can mash your head agains the wall till you kill him BUT, if you want, or end up there with few lives, here goes some strats stay as far as you can from him, so you can react to his bullets, only go for attacking him when he stops at the middle, and even then, stay fullscreen away from him, since he can randomly shoot you, the best attack you can get from him is his enemy summon, since you can pump lead in him while he does nothing but summon melee oriented foes (which, for a big surprise, you have bigger chances to 1shotting them anyway, or even pierce them into the boss), these are the main strats that I use on him, stay far and safe and focus on dodging, defense and attacking as a secondary objective Map specific strats (I'll jump over unremarkable maps that you just imply normal strats): 1-3, the 4 fences that block your straight shots while in the middle can be annoying, but if you move around and go after the kills, this can get easier, just don't get greedy and try to rotate your shooting spots accordingly to the current situation, don't let one side of the screen have too many more enemies then the main one 1-4 you just do what Sal did, stay inside your cube, shoot who gets inside, live the american dream and apply self defense, just get out to get upgrades and coins 2-2 this is cursed, it's a really weird layout, you cannot shoot through stumps but you can shoot through trees, position yourself on the top left area so you can hit the right spawn zone more easily, but not so much that you can't react to the butterflies, really tricky 2-3 I hate this, stand in some corner and pray for no butterflies, this might be one of the maps that I recommend you to not go after EVERY coin you see, since you can get clapped very easily by random mushrooms spawning at the middle zone, you should burn items very frequently here since you can get easily overwhelmed World 3 universal mechanic is that you can shoot through the graves, which is very useful, but... 3-1 don't go between the graves, not worth it except if you have nowhere else to go 3-2, don't stay inside the 4 graves but retreat to them when you need, they block enemies and since you can shoot through them, they make good cover, just don't get cornered there, it will be a hard time pushing enemies back, go to the middle if you are getting cornered by just 1 side and retreat to shoot them 3-3 is the big hitter, every single world 3 level before this is kinda chill, this one can break you if you come unprepared, you get swarmed from every side from the war criminals and mummies spawn non-stop, always go after the imps first and move constantly that's it, if you (the total of 2 people who read this) have another strat or idea just pop in

I like the implication that the evil necromancer also has a gun

When you get 8 hearts with Abigail next day you'll enter in peirrs you'll get a cut scenes where Abigail is constantly losing in journey of the prierr king and then you can help her win by playing multiplayer with her, this is probably best cutscene in the game for me.

For the deathless run, you can save progress by leaving the game and going to sleep. If you die, you can just reset, and you won't have died.

You can cheese 1-3 by standing in one of the corners of the barricade. The enemies won't be able to path to you, since they'll keep pushing each other to the side, so none can slip through the gap. There will only rarely be some that get through and you should be able to deal with them easily, just by shooting at the opposite corner, diagonally across. Just wait until no more spawn in, and then shoot out of one gap, until the path is clear to either get an item, or to clean up the rest of the enemies.

This run is insanely lucky.

When you get the upgrade that makes you invincible, you can walk into the enemies and it'll kill them, I'll do that paired with shooting if there's a lot of them

So much fun listening to you play! The only achievements I haven't managed (on Xbox) are the two Prairie King achievements.

I've only gotten past the second stage once, and that was with, like, one life. I gotta hand it to Eric Barone, he designed a game that's almost unbeatable. Then again, I'm very bad at twin-stick shooters. And Junimo Kart, forget about it. I can't even get more than a few seconds into the game. I've tried both probably a hundred times, I just can't do it. The two Journey of the Prairie King achievements are the only two I don't have in the whole game, and I've been playing since 2019.

This was my "Getting over it" :')

He mentioned touhou, I'm legally obligated to give this video a like now. Oh and also, maybe this was just due to my circumstances, I always found the smoke bomb to be the worst power up in the game and coffee right above it. The movement speed can help a lot later, but the smoke bomb while it stuns every enemy, it allows a lot more to spawn and group up, which more often killed me than helped me.

I wish I got luck this insane when doing this

An easy way to beat Fector is to just stand at the top and just right or left of Fector's fire where you can still hit him. From here don't move and he won't fire all over the place as far as I can tell. When the enemies he spawns get close to you shoot them diagonally and revert back to firing at Fector, never moving. Simple.

I didnt even know that there where other worlds 😂 Its a very nice video to watch. Super relaxing. Nice detail that you just play the game soundtrack over it so it keeps playing normal even when you speed up the game footage.

Journey of the Prairie King is my favorite season.

I dont wanna play another game in a game for a game achievement

Gotta respect the calmness throughout the video and rarely breaking train of thought despite playing friggin prarie king🤣

Abigail Thanks You For Your Informative video. She Will Now Beat This Game Whilst Eating Quartz And Amethyst

2 years later and i still havent beaten this game

Sal got a new stamp on his gamer card. This was great!!!

i was struggling so much on the last boss fight just for u to show how easy it is T_T I got it right after watching your vid so thank u dear :3

I never even made it past the second stage and it felt like it took so long already, I didn't wanna do more 😂

I've never ever seen this many lucky ass drops and I have over 2,000 hours in this game and still havnt beat patients king

Thank you very much. Today I finally finished the game :)

if you didn’t know when you have the gravestone you can run into enemies (it’ll kill them)if you need to clear out an area

in the box stage at like 4 minutes its way easier to be in a corner of the map and shoot the monsters coming from two sides than being inside the box and having them come from all sides while youre trapped in the center, and also the monsters tend to get bottled up in the box anyway and try to go through the corner walls to get you so they just trip themselves up and its pretty easy clean up. also if you save the nuke until the boss then it takes out a good chunk of their health

This video helped me beat it. Though, world 1 stage 4 is much easier if you stay inside the barriers and just stay still in one corner, since the enemies block each other.

You almost certainly played this on a "Good Fortune" day! You (obviously) get better Prairie King luck on these days!

Rapid fire for final boss is basically needed for a deathless run.

Woa you got so much luck. I never get this amount of money and lives. Especially with the final boss. When I get there, he keeps shooting me, and with you he was just chilling. lol

The last stage before the boss in world 1 is super easy if you just stand in the corner of the structure. The enemies' pathfinding does not understand how to get to you properly, so you can have the screen full of enemies and still be chilling

For anyone who can mod their game and likes to play journey of the pairie king I recommend getting the prize token mod for it. Basically the farther into the game the more tokens you get (at the final boss but don’t beat it gives around 100 token) then you can invest those tokens into either basic prizes (10 token per prize) or premium prizes (50 per prize) for random rewards. Got the Legend from a premium as well as other rare goodies

Thank you for the the thumbnail :)

I don't like shooting on console because you need to use both analog sticks and sometimes i mess up which is movement and shooting. So I end up walking into enemies.

I see in The achievement of the game "Defeat journey of The prairie king", i was thinking about like something in the skull cave or something like that, but NOT AT ALL it's just a mini game in the saloon 💀

wow that's a lucky play!

After you beat it there’s an option to do a harder journey. I beta that one but it took me about a week. You need some insane coin luck to do it

you can just hug a corner for the first stages (until flying enemies come in later stages), enemies have collision with each other so they can't swarm and kill you once you're in the corner

Sometimes i get wheel with ammo with triple shot, its op

Wow I'm playing Stardew Valley for nearly 6 years and this is the first time I ever see the different levels and the hole minigame. To be honest, the only time I play journey of the prairie king is with Abigail in her heart event 😂😂

just. just go to the lower left corner and shoot diagonally. for some odd reason the enemy pathfinding makes them walk right into your line of fire

"yeah this stage isn't too hard" Me who has never reached the first boss: :(

“Ok we’re playing touhou” hilarious line

I wish I knew all of these things before I went in as a young child oblivious to the hell that I will soon see

My keybord isn't "WASD" it's "ZQSD" and i lost in abigail's 2 heart event and i couldn't find a way to change the controls :(

this almost looks modded with how good the drops and spawns were😭

You: “Demons? Bats? I don’t know if they even have a name.” Me: “Oh I’ve called them PLENTY of things.”

Greatest tip you can have for this mini game now is that it saves progress if you cancel out (PlayStation middle button) so finish a lvl with the right power up saved, exit and go home and sleep then repeat the next day. If you die save scum and load the day again to be at the start of that lvl again, the devs put it in for this exact reason so don’t consider it cheating as you still need to beat each lvl without dieing for the achievement.

TIL you can shoot diagonally in this game... I was wondering why I couldn't make it past the first two levels. Also I thought coins were useless.

But how do the controls work!? And which hats do you get?

Oh yeah! a tutorial for a game in a game!

So if I'm almost done with spring.. do I just keep at it and try to get summer done or do I start a new game? 😅

Doing deathless run: 1) Beat the regular game and get Arcade send to your home. 2) Wait for a Lucky day (Fortune Teller) 3) On lucky days, try to beat levels without dying, grab coins and Upgrades (Ammo & Gun upgrades are the best ones.) 4) After making progress, exit the Arcade and go to bed. This will save your "progress" on your deathless run. 5) Final boss can be easily cheesed with Sheriff Badge. Shops sell these for 10 coins, your last chance of buying this power-up is 3-3. I recommend you save your progress at the final boss, so you can quickly restart if you fail. This worked for me, and this should work for you too.

Ngl the final boss crushed all the runs where I got to world three. I honestly struggle with the bosses mostly cause I am better at handling enemy spam over what the bosses require

I’ve resigned myself to the reality that I’ll never beat this 😢 I didn’t know the game was that in depth!

If someone told me this was a real classic and beloved NES game I would totally believe them. It certainly plays better than a lot of actual NES classics lmao

Beating this normally for the first time wasn't that hard, but ohhh boy deathless?? that's gonna be something

I was today years old when I learned you could fire at a 45 degree angle in this game wtf

THERES A CONTINUE GAME OPTION??? HOW AM I JUST NOW FINDING OUT ABOUT THIS

Thanks for the guide! Not sure if you've left it that way intentionally, but there is an "i" missing in Prairie in your title...

Does luck days effect your run (including luck ring and luck charm)

me when i die irl: uh oh salmence when he loses 1 of 12 lives in journey of the prairie king in stardew valley: *sudden brain cancer*

the only problem im having with the game is that the shoot button is not configurable, if it was it would be 10x easier

I have a ancient computer so I play on my TERRIBLE switch and I can only shoot left. Can't play untill wheel D:

Bro this dudes coin luck is unbeleivable

2:54 TOUHOU MENTIONED!!!

Im on the final boss with three lives and a coffee power up on deck 😅 I keep getting SO CLOSE but it’s been an hour and I can’t get it yet

The amount of luck you got on this run was frustrating. Good for you, though. I'm on what 100 tries and have never once received more than 3 extra 1-Ups

How exactly do you use/store an upgrade like the sheriff's badge?

I always lose all of my lives to the first two boss stages lmao

after figuring out the diagonal shooting it was easy. ı can get out of the hardest situations

Both the Prairie King achievements and the JoJa achievement are ones I'll just never get. I've literally never beaten the first level of JotPK. I just consider those three achievements fake!

THATS A SHOP?!!!

Idk what's happening but none of the buttons I press work, I can only run without shooting 😭 but like, I bought this game on a really good sale and also I love the fishing (and Shane) so idc if this tiny part of the best game I have ever played doesn't work UuU

The 2 achievements I'm never gonna be able to get

Awesome

i managed to get to the boss in a deathless run, but then died three times, havent touched the game since ;-;

I play stardew on a 60% keyboard and I cannot shoot 😢😢😢😢 any solutions?

So whenever I get items, I dont know how to save them, they just go off immediately - how do you choose when to use the items and when to hold it?

I'd buy that game if I could. I beat it twice and (almost) no hit the second run. Edit: The nuke also doesn't drop any item. Death also adds some time to the timer. Speed upgrade will help in the forest as mushrooms go extremely fast.

There's other levels? I haven't beaten the first level.

The PK guides: *gets 10 extra lives and best power up in game in the first stage. Me playing PK: *get 1 extra life on stage 2 and no power ups spawn at all.

I really wish this stuff wasnt random cuz id prefer to plan and route than play thru and get barely any coins and no lives. Its basically like, well i got like 2 coins on the first state, might as well trash the run Other than that its an enjoyable distraction from the base game and i play it when i want to reset my brain

Isn't beating this also how you get a stardrop?

How do i even play this game, i cant shoot and idk how(im on mobile)

Ah, so the secret to beating Journey of the Prairie King is "Be good at Journey of the Prairie King," got it.

fectors challenge when

If I never win this mini-game, does that mean I will never complete 100% of the game?

NOOOO I WAS IN THE LAST STAGE WITHOUT EVEN REALIZING BUT I HAD 1 LIFE LEFT SO I DIED 😭😭😭 FUCKKK-

i can't even get past the third stage and you are telling me that there are multiple worls?? man i'm never getting this achievement 😭

I got all the gears I can do this without cheeseing it

27 coins and an upgrade before the first Boss..... No wonder I cant beat this game