Key To The Town
| Key To The Town | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Collection |
| Location | Qi's Walnut Room for 20 |
The Key To The Town takes the clock out of shopping. With it in hand, the doors of Pelican Town open whenever the farmer arrives, so a seed run at midnight or a visit to the blacksmith before dawn both work. Mr Qi sells it in the Walnut Room for a modest handful of Qi Gems, which means it only turns up late in a save, long after the days of waiting outside Pierre's for nine o'clock. It is not quite the universal pass its description promises: a few doors stay shut and festival days ignore it entirely. Even so, for a farm running at full speed it removes one of the last daily frustrations.
Overview
The key sits on Mr Qi's shelf in the Walnut Room on Ginger Island, the shop that opens for a farmer who has tracked down a hundred Golden Walnuts. Of everything he sells, this is among the cheapest, so it is often the first purchase after the room itself is reached. Gems for it come from his quest board, from the monsters that drop them once the Shrine of Challenge is lit, and from handing over walnuts that have nowhere else to go.
What it opens is most of the town. Every home in Pelican Town becomes enterable at any hour, which matters for gift-giving on a busy day, and the shops that sit in those homes come with them. Outside the town proper the key also works at the Adventurer's Guild, the Carpenter's Shop, Marnie's Ranch and the Wizard's Tower, which together cover almost every errand a farmer runs in a week.
The exceptions are worth remembering before a long walk. Leah's Cottage and Elliott's Cabin are homes outside the town and stay locked. The Movie Theater keeps its own hours, and so does the Oasis out in the desert. On any festival day the key does nothing at all, since the valley has already decided where everybody should be.
In practice the key changes the shape of the day rather than the shape of the farm. Watering and harvesting can run until the light goes, and the shopping that used to need an early start can happen on the way to bed. It pairs well with the obelisks and the Horse Flute, which solve the travelling half of the same problem.
Notes
The key lives in the Special Items And Powers tab of the player menu rather than the backpack, so it costs nothing to carry and cannot be lost or sold once bought.
Shops still run their own stock cycles. Walking into Pierre's General Store at two in the morning gets the door open, but the shelves hold whatever they would hold that day, so the key saves time rather than changing what is for sale.
All Collections
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
