Village in the Shade Guide: How to Increase Your Max HP

Village in the Shade doesn’t punish dying with a harsh game over, but losing all three hearts to an aggressive forest deer is still deeply annoying. Fortunately, you can permanently increase your max hp by gathering special items and offering them to a hidden deity. If you are tired of getting knocked out constantly, follow this breakdown to boost your survival.

This walkthrough covers everything from finding cursed seeds to paying the exact crop costs for all eight heart containers. I had to learn the hard way that missing Konno’s crucial dialogue will completely lock your progress, so make sure to check off every step in order.

Before you get started, make sure you know where the Waterfall Fishing spot is and keep a few inventory slots open for nighttime gathering. Grab your farming tools, wait for sundown, and let’s get those health upgrades sorted out right away.

How to Increase Your Maximum HP in Village in the Shade

Wandering around the settlement will eventually lead you past the Waterfall Fishing spot located at Okami Pond. A wooden sign right next to the water instructs you to bring any malformed crops or fish directly to Konno. This is your first official hint toward boosting your health pool, but you need to harvest the right items first.

Growing cursed crops requires you to hunt down dorotabo seeds scattered across the ground during the night. These strange seeds also drop in bundles of 10 when you defeat the exact same yokai multiple times in a single season, such as beating the Daruma doll four or more times during spring.

Planting dorotabo seeds on your farm makes them sprout into unpredictable random crops, so get them in the dirt early in the season. Plucking them once fully grown turns them into Cursed crops, which sting you for a quarter of a heart of damage the moment you pull them up.

Cursed fish operate under a different set of rules compared to mutated vegetation. Casting your line at any fishing spot after dark yields mostly trash instead of normal catches. However, every single fishing location in the game holds a small chance of reeling in one unique Cursed Fish.

Stashing at least one cursed crop in your inventory allows you to approach Konno in the village for vital advice. He reveals that tossing these hazardous crops into Okami Pond after midnight triggers a supernatural event. This conversation acts as an absolute trigger, so do not skip it.

Hold onto your harvest until the next nighttime haunting rolls around, then sprint straight to Okami Pond. Reaching the water’s edge after dark reveals an interaction prompt that lets you feed your cursed crops to the depths as an offering.

Pro tip: Make sure you speak with Konno first because the pond interaction simply will not appear if you try to make offerings prematurely.

Sacrificing enough crops summons a massive fish deity who rewards your tribute with a sacred scale that permanently expands your health bar by one heart. Pushing this mechanic to its absolute limit grants you a total of eight hearts, though each new scale demands a larger batch of offerings than the last.