Golden Mystery Box
| Golden Mystery Box | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Collection |
| Location | Fishing Treasure Chests; Mining; Monsters; Panning; Trees; Giant Stump |
| Sell Price | 0g |
The Golden Mystery Box is the better grade of the crates Mr Qi scatters around the valley. Claiming Foraging Mastery is what puts them into the drop tables, and from then on fishing chests, panned shingle, felled trees and dead monsters all have a small chance of producing one. Clint opens them at the blacksmith for the same small fee he charges for a geode, and the contents cover everything a plain Mystery Box can hold with two additions that appear nowhere else in a box: the Golden Animal Cracker and the Auto-Petter. Three ordinary boxes can also be traded up at the Giant Stump, which gives a hoarder a way to convert a pile of the common kind into the good ones.
Overview
Nothing golden drops until the Foraging altar has been claimed, and a short scene with Mr Qi follows to say that the boxes are now out there. After that there is a hidden second roll on every drop: the box only materialises part of the time, and reading the Book of Mysteries lifts that chance considerably. A farmer who has the book will see noticeably more boxes than one who has not, from exactly the same amount of work.
Fishing is the most productive source by a wide margin, and the golden treasure chests that come with high fishing luck are better again. Panning a shimmering spot has a reasonable chance, chopping trees pays out on the odd axe swing, and shaking a seed-bearing tree sometimes drops one into the grass. Below those sit thin chances from killing monsters and from smashing crates and barrels in the Mines, the Skull Cavern and the Volcano Dungeon, both of which improve as daily luck does. The treasure rooms of the Skull Cavern are the jackpot: a chest down there occasionally hands over five golden boxes at once.
The raccoons at the Giant Stump run two trades worth knowing. Three plain Mystery Boxes buy a single golden one, which is the steady way to upgrade. Much later, once the family has worked through six of its requests, the Raccoon's wife will take twenty golden boxes for a Magic Rock Candy, and that sweet is otherwise one of the hardest things in the game to come by.
What comes out is a lucky dip with a good floor. The common results are useful stacks rather than junk: Quality Fertilizer and Deluxe Speed-Gro by the score, Mega Bombs, Life Elixirs, Triple Shot Espresso, Warp Totems for the farm, Lucky Lunch and a Quality Sprinkler. Seed packets appear too, weighted to the current season, which is a reason to crack boxes in Spring if Spring seeds are wanted. The rarer end is where the boxes earn their name: a Prismatic Shard, a Pearl, a Golden Pumpkin, Magic Rock Candy, the Ossified Blade, an Emerald or Ruby Ring, the Mystery Hat and Shirt, the skill books, and the two island-grade prizes in the Golden Animal Cracker and the Auto-Petter. A Dressed Spinner or Cork Bobber only shows up for a farmer who has reached the middle of the fishing skill.
Notes
Opening boxes is best saved for a quiet morning in town. Clint keeps shop hours, so a backpack full of boxes often has to wait for the blacksmith to open, and the walk is worth batching rather than repeating.
As a present a golden box goes down badly with everyone, which is fair enough since nobody in town can open it. It does work as a gold dye in the spool of a Sewing Machine and a yellow one at the dye pots, although spending a box on a shirt colour is an expensive sort of joke.
All Collections
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
