Four Precious Stones
| Four Precious Stones | |
|---|---|
| Type | Special Order |
| Board | Mr. Qi |
| Giver | Mr. Qi |
| Time Limit | 28 days |
| Repeatable | Yes |
Mr. Qi asks for four prismatic shards in his collection box, and a month to find them. Shards are among the scarcest things in the valley, so the order is really a test of how deep a farm can dig and how often it is willing to go. The month is generous for a farm with elevator access to the deepest floors and a pocket full of staircases, and hopeless for one that has only just reached the desert. It repeats, which turns it into a standing arrangement for anyone who has finished the game's long collection goals, since a certain statue in the walnut room produces a shard a day for nothing. Weighing it up matters, because four shards handed over are four shards not spent on a sword or an enchantment.
The board reads: Find 4 prismatic shards. Place them in my collection box.
Requirements
Shards found before the order was taken do not count. A chest with three already in it is no help, which is the single most common disappointment this notice causes. Four fresh ones have to come out of the ground, the water or a monster while the order is live.
A Mystic Stone is the best thing to swing at, since roughly every fourth one breaks open on a shard. Those stones keep to deep ground: the lowest reaches of the mine shaft, the Skull Cavern, the old quarry and the dungeon inside the volcano. Of those, the shaft is the only one with a lift, which is what makes it the right place for a month of short trips. A meteorite that drops onto the farm breaks open on the same odds, but no plan can arrange for one.
Below that, the Skull Cavern's treasure rooms pay out now and then, and iridium nodes a little less often, which is why a deep dive with bombs is the standard approach. Omni geodes and mystery boxes each carry a thin chance, so a farm that cracks dozens of them a week collects shards passively in the background. Every monster in the game joins the drop pool once the bottom of The Mines has been reached, at a very small rate, and serpents and mummies in the Skull Cavern do a little better than that. A pond full of Rainbow Trout turns one out occasionally, and so does a fishing Treasure Chest.
Daily luck leans on almost all of this. It raises the chance of gem nodes and Mystic Stones appearing underground, the chance of a treasure room in the Skull Cavern, and the chance of a Treasure Chest while fishing, so a day with a good forecast is worth saving for the dive and a bad one is worth spending on the farm.
The order asks for every item in this table.
| Item | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Prismatic Shard | 
|
4 |
Rewards
Forty gems is a solid payment for a month that a farm was probably going to spend in the Skull Cavern anyway. It covers a Deconstructor and a Hopper together, or most of a Galaxy Soul, or two Junimo Chests and change.
The sum deserves a moment's thought all the same. A Prismatic Shard sells for a great deal of gold, and it also makes a Galaxy Sword at the desert, enchants a tool at the Forge, buys Magic Rock Candy from the Desert Trader, fills a slot in the museum and dyes clothing in a Sewing Machine. Four of them in Qi's box is a real cost for a farm that has not yet claimed its galaxy weapon, and the order is better taken once that is done.
Since it repeats, the calculation changes completely later on. A farm with the perfection statue in the walnut room collects a shard every morning for free, so four days of walking past it finishes the order, and forty gems a fortnight becomes an annuity.
Strategy
Pick the method that matches the farm. With the lift unlocked to the deepest floors, the fastest route is repeated short trips to the bottom of The Mines, scanning each floor for a Mystic Stone and leaving at once if there is none; floors rebuild on every entry, so the scan can be repeated endlessly in an afternoon.
For a Skull Cavern dive, prepare the day properly: a stack of staircases to skip floors, bombs to open the stone quickly, speed and luck food, and a Warp Totem to reach the desert without spending the morning on a bus. Staircases are cut from stone, or bought from the Desert Trader for jade on Sundays, and the trader sells ordinary bombs daily for quartz. Iridium nodes thicken as the floors go by, so depth pays twice.
Leave a Geode Crusher running on the farm while all this happens. A sack of omni geodes opened over a month is a free extra roll on the fourth shard, and the minerals pay for themselves regardless.
The usual way this fails is the counting rule. A farmer who already owns shards takes the notice expecting to drop them in and finish, loses several days to the discovery and then has to dig for four in the remaining weeks. The other way is bad luck with nodes: a month of mediocre forecasts and shallow trips can genuinely come up short, and the only answer is more trips.
Notes
Twenty-eight days sounds like a month, but the count begins when the paper goes up in the walnut room rather than when it is taken down. A board visited late in a week loses those days outright, which on a hunt this thin can be the difference between three shards and four.
A crystalarium will not copy a Prismatic Shard, so shards cannot simply be duplicated. The reason given in an old technical report found underground is that the stone interferes with the machine.
Emily sells shards during the Desert Festival for a great many calico eggs, which is a route worth knowing for a farm that spends the festival playing the games rather than foraging.
A week that runs out need not waste the shards. Goods handed over on a failed order turn up in the lost and found box at the mayor's house, so a month spent digging is recoverable even when the order itself is not.
All Special Orders
Every special order from both boards, with who posts it and how long it runs.