Mystery Box
| Mystery Box | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Collection |
| Location | Fishing; Mining; Artifact Spot; Panning; Combat; Mayor Lewis' Prize Machine; Desert Festival; Trout Derby; SquidFest; Trees; Bookseller; Giant Stump |
| Sell Price | 0g |
Mr Qi flies a plane over the valley once farm life has settled into its stride, drops a load of crates, and the Mystery Box is what starts turning up afterwards. A short scene announces the delivery, and from that night the boxes appear in fishing chests, in panned shingle, under the hoe at artifact spots, in the rubble of smashed barrels and in the pockets of dead monsters. Nobody in town can open one except Clint, who cracks them at the blacksmith for the same small fee he charges for a geode. What comes out is a lucky dip of farming supplies, cooked dishes, seed packets, rings and the occasional Prismatic Shard, and the dip gets better once a few boxes have been opened. The crates are also the raw material for the golden grade, since the raccoons at the Giant Stump will take three plain boxes in exchange for a single golden one.
Overview
The delivery is not something to hurry. Fifty days of farming brings it on by itself, and pulling a second Prize Ticket off the billboard brings it on sooner. Mr Qi turns up, explains that his boxes are now scattered about, and the drop tables change from that point on.
Fishing is the steadiest supply. Any Treasure Chest reeled in alongside a fish can hold a box, and the golden chests that come up on lucky days hold them more often. Panning a shimmering patch of river is next best. Shaking a tree that is carrying seeds sometimes knocks one into the grass, and every swing of an axe at a trunk has a slim chance of its own, which makes a day of clearing woodland quietly productive. Monsters drop them rarely, as do the crates and barrels in the Mines, the Skull Cavern and the Volcano Dungeon, and both of those improve as daily luck does. The present-laden train cars that roll through in Winter drop nothing else, so a box is the only thing worth waiting on the tracks for.
Behind every one of those rolls sits a second, hidden check, and it fails a third of the time. The Book of Mysteries fixes most of that. The book comes out of the boxes themselves, and handing it to the Bookseller grants a permanent power that lifts the success rate sharply, so a farmer who has read it sees noticeably more crates from exactly the same day's work. Claiming Foraging Mastery changes the arrangement again: from then on the same rolls produce Golden Mystery Boxes instead, which is a straight upgrade.
Several sources skip the hidden check altogether. The Calico Egg Merchant at the Desert Festival sells them outright. The Trout Derby and SquidFest hand them out as prizes. The prize machine in the Mayor's Manor coughs one up now and then, digging artifact spots pays out on a good-luck day, and the treasure rooms of the Skull Cavern stock them for anyone who has not yet claimed Foraging Mastery. Working through the raccoon family's requests past the fifth one brings more, and boxes themselves frequently contain two or three further boxes, which keeps a session at Clint's anvil going longer than planned.
Two of the sources are jokes rather than farming. Chopping down a giant Qi Fruit while Qi's Crop is not an active quest leaves a single box behind in the clearing. Better still, leaving Milk or Cookies out on a table on the night before the Feast of the Winter Star gets the plate swapped for a Mystery Box by morning, in the manner of a child leaving a snack for Santa. Laying several tables makes no difference, since only one helping is taken.
The contents are weighted towards useful bulk rather than treasure. Stacks of Quality Fertilizer and Deluxe Speed-Gro come up most often, along with Coffee, Bombs and a Warp Totem back to the farm, and cooked dishes of every kind fill out the middle of the table. Seed packets are tied to the calendar, so cracking boxes in Spring tends to produce Spring seeds, and Winter thins that part of the table right down. Once more than ten boxes have been opened, a second tier switches on and the crates start earning their name: a Prismatic Shard, Magic Rock Candy, a Pearl, a Golden Pumpkin, a Treasure Chest, the Ossified Blade, an Emerald or Ruby Ring, a Quality Sprinkler, Mega Bombs, Triple Shot Espresso, the Mystery Hat and Shirt, and the run of skill books. Tackle such as the Dressed Spinner and the Cork Bobber waits until the fishing skill has reached its middle levels. Holding the first few boxes back until that tier is live is not possible, since the counter only moves when boxes are opened, so the early cracking is simply the price of entry.
Notes
Clint keeps shop hours and shuts on Fridays, so a satchel of boxes usually waits for a convenient morning. Batching them into one visit is far less tedious than walking into town with each new find, and the fee is small enough that a dozen at once barely registers.
As a present a Mystery Box goes down badly with every villager, which is reasonable enough given that none of them can get it open. It does work as a blue dye at the pots in Emily's and Haley's house, and as a dark cyan in the spool of the Sewing Machine, although spending an unopened crate on the colour of a shirt is an expensive bit of fun.
All Collections
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