Echoes of the Plum Grove: Custom Settings & Difficulty…

Echoes of the Plum Grove is a cozy farming where every decision counts. During their adventures, players will not only work towards a better life for their character, but also battle against threats such as sickness, death, food expiration, and more.

However, many of these mechanics can be toggled on and off in the settings menu, making the difficulty of your playthrough highly customizable and up to you as the player to decide. As this can have a direct impact on how cozy or stressful your gameplay experience becomes, understanding each setting will enable you to find what works for you best, both in the short-term and the long-term of your game.

A split image of cozy games on Game Pass (Unpacking, Coral Island, and Minecraft)

Best Cozy Games On Game Pass

The Xbox Game Pass has something for everyone, including a whole host of relaxing, cozy games. Here are the best of them.

Posts

By Megan Smith

All Custom Settings in Echoes of the Plum Grove, Explained

In Echoes of the Plum Grove, there are several different settings that can be toggled on or off in the options menu, therefore altering different mechanics for your gameplay to make the day-to-day life of your character significantly easier or more difficult, and changing how 'cozy' you wish your experience to be.

These settings are as shown in the screenshot below, and can be edited at any point during your playthrough, enabling you to adjust certain mechanics to give yourself a head start, a break from bad luck, or even more of a challenge from the average life sim, depending on what you would like. If you're curious as to what toggling each option on and off will do, a complete breakdown of each setting and what affects it has been included below.

echoes of the plum grove custom settings

Setting	Description
Clock Format	Enables you to toggle between a 12-hour or 24-hour clock format.
Language	Enables you to change the language you play the game in.
Fishing Game	Enables you to change the Fishing mini-game between a timed period, untimed, or off completely.
Aging	Changes the speed at which the characters of your playthrough age, and therefore die. You can choose between Fast, Normal, Slow, or turning off aging altogether to give yourself a head start.
Taxes	Enables you to toggle Taxes on or off. Keeping them on will provide more challenging gameplay, while turning them off can enable you to save more money and gain the upper hand when it comes to building up your resources.
Player Aging	Toggles aging effects for your player character either on or off. If it is on, your character will likely eventually pass away from old age, while having it off results in a much 'safer' gameplay experience.
Hunger	Enables you to toggle hunger on or off. As hunger is one of the core mechanics, this can be quite stressful to maintain, especially if food sources are low, and you don't have much money to spare. Turning this off can create a much easier playthrough for yourself.
Energy	In Echoes of the Plum Grove, you will have an energy bar that deteriorates as you go about your day-to-day work. Once this depletes, you will need to rest to restore this bar, therefore limiting the amount of activity you may be able to get done on a single in-game day. By toggling this option off, you will be able to get much more out of each day, so doing so can be handy as you get settled into your playthrough, with the option to toggle it back on once you are ready.
Diseases	With Diseases toggled on, there will be plenty of sickly threats that the characters of your playthrough, including your player character, may become exposed to. When they are, you will need to work to get them cured if possible, but certain Diseases can even result in death, so this is one of the biggest obstacles in Echoes of the Plum Grove. Toggling this option off will create a much cozier gameplay experience, if this is what you are looking for.
Tool Durability	Like many other cozy farming sim games, the tool that you use won't last forever, and will naturally wear down and break when Tool Durability is toggled on. Toggling this off will stop your tools from breaking down, and enable you to keep working away without these worries looming over yourself.
Item Decay	Much like the tool durability, many of the items you can acquire in Echoes of the Plum Grove will deteriorate over time, and therefore have a restricted lifespan in which they must be used. Toggling this option off will get rid of these timeframes, enabling your items to sit tight for as long as they need to, without perishing.