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Getting started
You get an egg, 1,000 rings and five fruit. What to do with the first hour.
Updated
A new garden gives you one unhatched egg, 1,000 rings and five Chao Garden Fruit.
The first four minutes
The egg hatches after four minutes of the garden actually running. It is the one stage that does not age while the app is closed, so leaving it overnight does nothing.
The garden runs a full day and night cycle every 24 real minutes.
Meeting your chao
Once it hatches you have a child. It wanders, swims, climbs the rockwork and sleeps without any input from you.
Three things you can do directly:
- Pet it. Tap or click the chao. Chao are never picked up. Petting adds happiness.
- Name it. Click its name in the panel.
- Whistle. Calls the focused chao to the front of the camera, which is how you get it to come to something you have put down.
Feeding it
You do not hand food over. Drop an item into the garden from your Bag and the chao comes to it.
Items can be dragged around the lawn once down. Fling one off either side edge and it returns to your inventory, so nothing is wasted.
The panel
| Tab | Contents |
|---|---|
| Stats | Five stats, grades, care, live portrait |
| Market | Where you spend rings |
| Bag | What you own, ready to drop |
| Album | Fish, bugs and everything else recorded. Appears where fishing does |
The Market has four sections: Food, Eggs, Items and Animals, plus a festival stall when one is running.
Spending the first 1,000 rings
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
| Chao Garden Fruit | 30 |
| Hero Fruit / Dark Fruit | 30 each |
| Round / Triangle / Square Fruit | 40 |
| Mushroom | 50 |
| Heart Fruit | 60 |
| Most animals | 60 |
| Tasty / Strong Fruit | 80 |
| Rarer animals | 120 |
| Chao Fruit | 150 |
Hats run from 1,500 to 12,000, so they are not a first-hour purchase.
A reasonable opening spend is a few animals in whatever direction you want, plus two Hero or two Dark Fruit if you have an opinion about alignment. That is under 400 rings and settles both decisions that matter.
Favourite fruit
Round, Triangle and Square Fruit can each be a chao’s favourite. Eating a favourite gives bonus happiness and multiplies the stat gain by 1.5. It costs no more than the others.
The two decisions that matter
Almost everything raises a chao’s numbers. Only two things decide what it becomes, and both happen during the 24-hour child stage.
What it grows into is decided by the animals you give it, not by fruit (except one) and not by anything it earns in a mini-game.
Its alignment is decided by Hero and Dark Fruit and nothing else. Two of either is enough.
Playing the mini-games cannot change what your chao becomes. Racing makes it faster. Only what you hand over steers it. See the earned-vs-gifted rule.
Earning rings
Rings come from the modes, launched from the panel: Board, Race, Karate, Arena, School, Clash and Quest.
The Chao Board is the most direct: seven downhill courses paying 500 rings for a race win, rising to 2,000 on the last, plus triple whatever rings you carry over the line.
Race, Karate and Arena pay prizes per tier. Everything feeds one wallet, which the Market and the festival stalls both spend from.
Quest is not part of the desktop garden edition.
Your first hour, in order
- Wait out the four minutes and let the egg hatch.
- Pet your chao, name it, drop it a fruit.
- Decide on hero, dark or neutral. If you have an opinion, buy two of the matching fruit and drop them.
- Decide what you want it to be: swimmer, flier, runner or powerhouse. Buy animals that lead with that stat. See animals.
- Take it to the Board or a Race for rings. This cannot undo steps 3 and 4.
- Let it grow. It evolves after 24 hours of age, at a quiet moment.
You can keep up to 12 chao in the garden.
Next
- Life cycle: stage durations and what a rebirth keeps.
- Stats and grades: what a grade multiplies.
- Evolution: aiming at a specific chao.
- Animals: all 21 and what they graft on.
- The garden: day cycle, seasons, festivals.
- Chao Board: the fastest way to earn.