Sun Haven 1.4 Update: Solve an Underwater Mystery, Peruse the Black Market and Disown your Newborn Child at the Wishing Well

Warning: Spoilers for story content ahead.

The Sun Haven 1.4 Update is here, and I am kicking myself for starting a new game only a month ago. I recently did the same thing with one of my other favorites, Fallout 4—I started a new playthrough in anticipation of the show coming out, only for them to announce the release of the next-gen update shortly afterwards. By the time I got the news, I was halfway through Nuka World and had no plans to start from scratch only a few weeks later.

 I was a little bummed that the same thing happened with my beloved fantasy farming sim, but according to the devs and beta players, the update wouldn’t negatively impact my current save. Still, I decided to put the game down for a few weeks. When I received word on Wednesday that 1.4 was finally live, it was go time. After several solid days of playing, here are some highlights from the update:

First of all, I’m obsessed with whoever did the writing for this update, because I feel like we would be best friends. Despite some of the dialogue options making me feel like I’m doing a low-intelligence run of Fallout: New Vegas, it felt very human. I liked that it was silly and offbeat without feeling tonally incongruous with the rest of the game.

The basic premise of this section is that the residents of the town have been acting strange ever since Boss Jabbu's new advisor showed up and forced everyone to wear his jellyfish-shaped "hats." There are a small handful of residents that have refused to wear the hats, including the suspiciously buff shark Amari named Karish that you befriend upon entering the zone. You both begin to suspect that these "hats" are being used as an apparatus to brainwash the residents of Brinestone Deep, a theory that is confirmed once you finally meet the boss's mysterious new advisor.

C'mon, this guy is a full-blown mind flayer. He even refers to you as a thrall by accident. As a DND nerd and Baldur's Gate enthusiast, I absolutely loved this revelation. I won't spoil any more of the story, so if you want to know how you free the city from Illithid parasites (it involves filling your pockets with 400 rocks), then you'll have to check it out for yourself.

This area is a treat! You can access it if you keep walking east past the cafe and hardware store. Enter the sewer and it's time for crime, baby. There are a few vendors, but in order to buy anything from them you need currency--and the only way to get that is by talking to Paulie in the northwest corner of the market. The Black Market deals in black bottle caps, which you can receive from Paulie by selling him the items that residents of Sun Haven seem to lose pretty regularly (Reading Glasses, Sun Haven Library Book, etc.). You can find these spread out all over town. I sold him the items I had randomly accumulated over time, which turned out to be four Lost Toys and Topi's Notebook. You get ten black bottle caps for every item you sell, along with an incredibly cryptic message:

This terrified me, but apparently not enough to keep me from doing it several more times (I had to buy eggs from the cat until I got the knockoff Charmander pet for my farm). Here's to hoping the town doesn't find out I sold a child’s diary to a demon on the black market for ten dollars. 

I have hundreds of hours in Sun Haven, but I still haven’t worked up the nerve to marry anybody despite having 15 hearts with multiple NPCs (I’m a player, what can I say?). I understand you’re allowed to court, marry and divorce romance candidates at your leisure, the game even having a “memory loss” function at your disposal so that you can 50 First Dates your romantic interest into forgetting you’ve been married for the last several years. However, I have a strange attachment to inanimate and fictional objects. I make sure my stuffed animals get equal amounts of time on my bed so that none of them feel left out and once cried when a spoon got misshapen in the garbage disposal (I am 25 years old).

Anyways, I simply couldn’t stand the thought of divorcing a resident and brainwashing them for my own hedonistic convenience. No--I did the adult thing and dated every single character up to the point where marriage became an option, but never went through with any nuptials. Since the 1.4 update included enhanced marriage vows on top of the ability to have children, I figured it was finally time to commit. 

After a brief period of debate, I decided that the love of my life current save was Darius. I'm a sucker for an enemies-to-lovers kind of dynamic, and I've always wanted to be a queen. Plus, his passion for his city gives me big Rhysand energy (the girls who get it, get it) minus the wings. I also love that he gifted me a statue of himself to place outside of my house. We are going to rule the Court of Nightmares Withergate together someday.

Although I have nothing to compare them to, the updated vows were really sweet and the entire wedding was lovely. Not everyone was supportive of our union, but I don't blame them seeing as they basically had to witness the person they were in a serious relationship with get married to someone else out of the blue.

Now for the part we've been waiting for--the baby, and the eventual sacrifice of said baby into the Great Unknown. Remember how I mentioned how attached I get to fictional characters? Well, I've decided to set aside my feelings in the pursuit of science. That's how committed I am. After a few more days of exhausting every dialogue option with my new husband, he finally brought up the idea of having kids. That was my cue to go to the wishing well.

Darius randomly appeared next to me at the wishing well, and a disembodied voice informed me I would have a child by the next morning. The Demon Prince of Withergate works fast, I guess.

The voice was right, because when I awoke the next morning, my house had a whole new room with a whole entire baby in it. Although I knew the baby wouldn't be staying long and I didn't want to get attached, I named it Tav, because duh. Darius had already proved himself to be an absent father and was gone by morning, leaving me to deal with the baby I only wanted to have for experimental reasons. I was not only doubting my newfound position as a mother, but my marriage as well. Maybe I had the baby for a reason; maybe it would occupy the void of loneliness that I thought a husband would fill. I found myself wanting to abandon the experiment and keep baby Tav. Perhaps I would just get a divorce instead.

I went to check on the baby and see what it needed.

The baby proved to be increasingly needy, demanding more from me every day. I was barely able to tend to my farm, constantly running between realms to collect and create items to fulfill Tav's preposterous desires. On the final day before becoming a toddler, the baby required 32 bottles of baby food, 50 mana-infused bottles and 12 diapers. It felt like I was being tasked to babysit Godzilla's brother named Bigger Godzilla. It was in that moment that I decided I had enough of being a parent, and I made my way back to the wishing well. 

I wish I could say I felt bad, but I was showing visible signs of stress and I would have done anything to go back to my normal routine. What first seemed like a coldhearted option proved to be an incredibly valuable feature for me, and likely for others who regret taking up the burdens of in-game parenthood. 

Overall, I think the update has absolutely been worth the wait. On top of a ton of entertaining, well-developed new content, a variety of old features have been improved including a functional map and controller support. The Sun Haven team continues to stay active in online communities, constantly using player feedback to make improvements. While the next update plans to add support for the Nintendo Switch, I can't wait to see what else the devs have in store for us.