Museum
| Museum | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Location |
| Address | East side of Pelican Town, south of the Blacksmith. |
| Open Hours | 8:00am to 6:00pm |
| Closed | Town Festival days |
| Residents | Gunther |
The Museum stands in the south-east corner of Pelican Town, just below the Blacksmith, and it starts out completely empty. Gunther keeps the desk and asks for help filling it: every artifact dug out of the ground and every mineral cracked out of a geode has a place on his tables. Donating is a one-way trade, since an item handed over never comes back and only one of each is wanted, but the rewards strung along the way make it the most generous long project in the valley. Seeds come early, furniture and paintings in the middle, the Rusty Key that opens the Sewers arrives at sixty items, a Crystalarium is the prize for minerals, and a Stardrop waits for whoever finishes the whole collection. The other half of the building is a library, where the Lost Books are read and Penny teaches the town's two children.
Area
The building is split between a gallery and a library. The gallery is a set of tables that fill up slowly over a save, and the library is where Lost Books go once they are found: each one is read for a tip, a tutorial or a hint rather than for an item.
Donating is done at Gunther's desk, and so is rearranging. Items can be moved around inside the donation screen, or at any time by clicking the small paper to the left of the desk, which matters more than it sounds for anyone who wants their collection sorted. A donated item can be read by right-clicking it, and that is the only way to see the description the game writes for it. Until an item has been handed in, its entry says that Gunther could tell more about it, which doubles as a reminder of what is still missing.
The tables have more spaces than there are items to fill them, so there is room to arrange things rather than cram them. Six spaces in the middle of the largest table cannot be reached once something is standing on them, which makes them a bad place for anything worth reading again. Players on a controller have the same trouble with awkward diagonal positions.
Residents
Gunther is the curator and the only person who works here. He takes the donations, hands out the rewards, and posts the Rusty Key rather than giving it over the counter, so the sixtieth donation is followed by a delivery at the farmhouse door the next morning.
Penny uses the library as a schoolroom. She tutors Vincent and Jas there on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, which makes those three mornings the easiest time to find all three of them in one room.
Notes
The headline rewards are tied to the running total rather than to any particular item. Five donations pay out in Cauliflower Seeds, ten in Melon Seeds and fifteen in a Starfruit Seed, which is a serious gift that early in a save. Paintings arrive at twenty and twenty-five, a large plush bear at thirty and Pumpkin Seeds at thirty-five. Forty items brings a Rarecrow and the Treasure Trove achievement with it, fifty a Bear Statue, sixty the Rusty Key, seventy a few Triple Shot Espressos, eighty a handful of Warp Totems and ninety a Magic Rock Candy. The ninety-fifth and final donation hands over a Stardrop and the achievement for a complete collection.
The Rusty Key is the one reward that changes how the map works. It opens the Sewers, which puts Krobus and his shop in reach and eventually leads to the Mutant Bug Lair, so sixty donations is a real progress gate rather than a trophy.
Minerals have their own ladder of rewards running alongside the total. Eleven brings a Standing Geode, twenty-one a Singing Stone, thirty-one an Obsidian Vase and forty-one a Crystal Chair. Fifty earns the Crystalarium, which is the most useful single item the museum gives, since it copies a gem overnight and turns a Diamond into an income. The last mineral is not needed for it, so the Crystalarium can be running well before the collection is finished.
Artifacts pay out both by count and by item. Fifteen artifacts bring a Skeleton Statue and twenty a second Rarecrow. The Dwarf Scrolls are the ones worth hunting on purpose: handing in all four earns the Dwarvish Translation Guide, which makes the Dwarf in the Mines intelligible and lets the gravestone outside the Mayor's Manor be read, and that stone is the clue that leads towards the Galaxy Sword.
Several artifacts pay out for themselves. An Ancient Seed turns into a planting seed and its crafting recipe, which is the start of Ancient Fruit and one of the better long-term earners in the game. An Ancient Drum brings a Drum Block and a Bone Flute brings a Flute Block, each needing a few artifacts donated already. A Chicken Statue comes back as furniture. The prehistoric bones come in three sets, and each complete set produces one piece of a Sloth Skeleton, so a collector who keeps digging ends up with the whole animal standing in the gallery. The Burnt Offering is the fussiest reward on the list, needing the Rare Disc and the Dwarf Gadget among at least ten other artifacts before it will appear.
All Locations
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
