Island Field Office
| Island Field Office | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Location |
| Address | North Side of Ginger Island. |
| Open Hours | Always |
| Residents | Professor Snail |
The Island Field Office is a tent pitched by the river on the north side of Ginger Island, south of the Volcano and east of the Dig Site. It stands empty and silent until Professor Snail is dug out of a nearby cave, and after that it becomes the island's natural history museum in miniature. The work desk inside takes fossils, and the professor pays in Golden Walnuts and fruit tree saplings for complete skeletons. A board at the back of the tent asks two counting questions about the island, worth a walnut each. Finishing every fossil and answering both questions is what earns the Ostrich Incubator recipe, which is the only route to keeping an ostrich on the farm.
Area
The tent sits in the open on Ginger Island North, within a short walk of the Dig Site and of the path up to the Volcano. Before the rescue there is nothing in it to touch: no desk, no board, no professor.
Freeing him comes first. Professor Snail is trapped behind a boulder in a cave on the east side of the Dig Site, and nothing but an explosive will move it, so a bomb or a round of Explosive Ammo needs to be carried over on the boat. The cry for help from behind the rock is the only clue that the cave matters at all. Once he is out he walks to the tent and stays there, and the office is open at any hour from then on.
The desk is where fossils are handed over. The board behind it holds the Island Survey, and both are used independently, so a farmer can answer a survey question long before the bones are complete.
Residents
Professor Snail is the office's only occupant and the only reason it works. He is after the preserved remains of two creatures and the full skeletons of two more, enough to build a display on the island's natural history, and his requests are permanent rather than a dated quest. The donation screen has a hint option, which points at the rough place a missing piece turns up and saves a great deal of aimless digging.
Notes
The large skeleton is the long job. Its legs come out of the bone nodes at the Dig Site, and two are needed rather than one. The ribs turn up in artifact spots in the southern part of the island, the spine from fishing the Dig Site river and the tail from panning the same water, so a rod and a Copper Pan both earn their place in the bag. The skull is the awkward one: it only ever comes out of a Golden Coconut, and only once at least one coconut has already been cracked open. Completing the set pays six Golden Walnuts and a Banana Sapling.
The snake is quicker. Its skull comes from artifact spots on the island's west side or at the Dig Site, and from fishing the western water, and two vertebrae come from artifact spots and broken rocks on the west side, mussel nodes included. That set pays three Golden Walnuts and a Mango Sapling.
The two single pieces are a matter of patience. A Mummified Frog drops from cutting weeds in the island jungle, which happens often enough while clearing ground. A Mummified Bat comes from breaking rocks in the Volcano Dungeon and is rare on any given swing, so it tends to arrive on its own schedule during volcano runs. Each one is worth a Golden Walnut on donation, and a farmer who has already had the Golden Joja Parrot gather every walnut in the save receives a Cookout Kit for the frog and a Tent Kit for the bat instead.
The Island Survey is the easiest walnut on the island once the answers are known. One question asks how many purple flowers grow across Ginger Island, and the answer is twenty-two. The other asks about purple starfish, and the answer is eighteen. Only one answer per question is allowed each day, so a wrong guess costs a day and nothing more.
Clearing all four fossils and both survey questions hands over the Ostrich Incubator recipe. An Ostrich starts as an egg found on Ginger Island, in a Volcano Dungeon chest or buried at the spot one of the Journal Scraps points to, and the incubator is what turns it into a bird. It goes in a barn rather than a coop, which catches people out. All of that makes the field office a gate on farm content rather than a side errand for collectors.
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