Island Ingredients
| Island Ingredients | |
|---|---|
| Type | Special Order |
| Board | Special Orders board |
| Giver | Caroline |
| Time Limit | 28 days |
| Needed | Ginger Island unlocked |
| Repeatable | Yes |
Caroline wants to try her hand at tropical cooking and asks the valley for a bulk shipment of one island crop. The notice only goes up once the boat to Ginger Island is running, so it belongs to the later half of a run rather than the first few seasons. Its fee is worked out from what the harvest was worth, which makes the crop Caroline names the difference between pocket money and a serious payday. The lasting prize is the Solar Panel recipe, the only way to make Battery Packs without waiting on a thunderstorm. A farm that already keeps the island plot planted can usually fill the order without changing its routine, so this is one of the easiest notices on the board to say yes to.
The board reads: I want to experiment with tropical cooking, but it's hard to find any ingredients. If someone could ship 100 (Taro Root / Ginger / Pineapple), it might help!
Requirements
Only crops cut after the order begins register on the counter. Produce already sitting in a chest or a fridge can be shipped all month without the tally moving, and that misunderstanding wastes more attempts at this order than anything else. The useful loophole is the plant itself. A crop left standing in the soil counts the moment it is pulled, so a field sown weeks earlier and deliberately left unpicked fills the bin within a day or two of accepting.
Caroline names one crop and the other two are no help that week, which matters because the three behave nothing alike. Taro Root grows from Taro Tuber and needs no watering at all beside a pond or a creek, and that same position shortens its time in the ground. Pineapple takes the longest to reach its first fruit, then keeps bearing from the same plant every seven days, so one planted block can fill a large order twice over inside the window. Ginger is dug out of the ground with a hoe wherever it grows wild on the island and cannot be sown on tilled soil, so a ginger request cannot be prepared ahead at all. Ginger dropped by Tiger Slimes and Stick Bugs does count towards the tally, which softens that hunt a little.
Where the planting can happen depends on the calendar. All three crops live through every season on the island plot, while on the mainland they only survive Summer, so the island farm or the greenhouse is what makes an order taken in Fall or Winter workable.
The goods go into a shipping bin rather than over a shop counter. A bin loaded on the final morning still settles overnight, even though the on-screen tally has not caught up with it.
The order asks for one of these, and the board picks which.
| Item | Image | Amount |
|---|---|---|
| Taro Root | 
|
100 |
| Ginger | 
|
100 |
| Pineapple | 
|
100 |
Rewards
The fee is a share of what the shipment was worth at base price, so a hundred Pineapples pay several times what a hundred roots of Ginger pay for the same errand. Choosing Tiller lifts the payout on Taro Root and Pineapple, since both are graded as farm produce, while Ginger is foraging and sits outside that bonus.
The Solar Panel is the reason to take the order even when the named crop is a poor earner. Battery Packs are otherwise a weather lottery, collected from a Lightning Rod the morning after a storm, and they gate some of the most wanted late crafting on the farm: Iridium Sprinklers, Crystalariums, a Slime Egg-Press, lamp posts and the Farm Computer. A panel turns that lottery into a schedule, handing over a pack after seven sunny days where it stands. Sunny days are counted at the panel's own location, so a bank of panels in the Calico Desert or on the island keeps charging through a wet week in the valley.
Because the notice comes back, the gold can be earned over and over. The recipe arrives on the first successful run.
Finishing the order pays out all of this.
| Reward | Image |
|---|---|
| Gold equivalent to 50% of the base crop price | 
|
| Solar Panel recipe | 
|
Strategy
Treat this one as a standing arrangement rather than a sprint. A block of Pineapple on the island plot earns money while it waits, and a row of Taro Tuber along the creek bank waters itself. Leaving a batch unharvested whenever the board is due to turn over means the order can be filled almost as soon as it is accepted.
Ginger is the awkward draw. With no way to plant it, the answer is several island visits with a hoe, so a Warp Totem: Island or the Island Obelisk saves both the boat fare and the long walk. The Island Trader is worth a call either way, since Taro Tuber crosses that counter for Bone Fragments, and a Seed Maker turns a few spare pineapples back into seeds.
Two mistakes end this order. The first is stockpiling: a chest full of island produce feels like preparation, but the order ignores it. The second is a late acceptance, because the days tick away from the Monday the notice went up, so a board read in the last week of the month leaves only that week to work in.
Notes
Crafting a panel calls for Refined Quartz alongside iron and gold, and each piece of Refined Quartz is smelted from quartz with coal in a furnace. A furnace and a steady coal habit are the real cost of the reward.
Pineapple Seeds cross the Island Trader's counter for Dragon Teeth, which are also wanted for the Island Obelisk. A farm short of teeth is better off feeding one pineapple into a Seed Maker and growing the patch out from there.
A farm still working towards the island plot can take the order anyway and grow the crop on the mainland through Summer, with the greenhouse covering the colder months.
All Special Orders
Every special order from both boards, with who posts it and how long it runs.