Pierre's Missing Stocklist
| Pierre's Missing Stocklist | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Type | Collection |
| Location | Qi's Walnut Room for 50 |
Mr Qi's vending machine on Ginger Island sells a sheet of paper that Pierre has apparently mislaid, and handing it back to him turns his seed rack into an all-year rack. From then on every crop seed sits on the shelf in every season, so Melon Seeds can be bought in Winter and Cranberry Seeds in Spring. Out-of-season packets carry a markup of half again on the usual price, which is a fair toll for ignoring the calendar entirely. For anyone running a Greenhouse or a farm on Ginger Island, where seasons mean nothing and seed supply is the only real limit, this is among the most useful things Qi Gems can buy. The paper does nothing sitting in a bag, though: it has to be put into Pierre's hands.
Overview
The stocklist is stocked in Qi's Walnut Room, the hidden room behind the blue door on the western edge of Ginger Island. Getting through that door takes a hundred Golden Walnuts, which is a long project in itself, and the currency inside is the Qi Gem rather than gold. Gems are paid out by the Special Orders board on the wall, in sums that vary with how punishing the order is, and they drop from the monsters that appear once the Shrine of Challenge has been lit. Once the parrots have no upgrades left to sell, leftover walnuts can be exchanged for gems as well, which is the usual way a late-game farmer funds a shopping trip. The stocklist can only be bought once, so there is no risk of wasting gems on a duplicate.
Delivery is the step that catches people out. The stocklist behaves like a present rather than a tool, so Pierre has to be found and given it directly, in his shop or wherever he happens to be standing. Handing it to anyone else in town produces a puzzled line and nothing more. Pierre's reaction is wonderfully ungrateful, since he treats his own missing paperwork as a poor gift, but the shop changes immediately and the new packets are on the shelf the same day.
What appears is the full set of crop seeds rather than everything Pierre has ever sold. The seeds he already stocks in all seasons keep their ordinary prices, and only the ones bought outside their proper season carry the extra charge. That charge is worth thinking about rather than ignoring: buying a season's planting while it is in season still costs less, so the sensible pattern is to stock the Greenhouse with Spring seeds in Spring and treat the stocklist as insurance for the crops that cannot wait.
Two limits remain in place. The seeds that Pierre only begins stocking in the second year stay that way, so Garlic, Red Cabbage and Artichoke are still out of reach for a first-year farm, and the stocklist simply makes all of them available from the opening day of the second Spring onwards. Strawberry Seeds are not part of the deal either and still have to be bought at the Egg Festival or from the Desert Festival stalls, which keeps the yearly scramble for strawberries intact.
On a shared farm the purchase is communal. One farmer spending the gems unlocks the full shelf for everybody, so one purchase covers every player.
Notes
The stocklist pairs best with the things that break the calendar. A Greenhouse full of Ancient Fruit needs no seeds at all, but a Greenhouse used for rotating cash crops lives on out-of-season packets, and the Ginger Island farm is the same case again with better sunlight. Cooking recipes and delivery quests that call for a crop from the wrong season also stop being a problem, since the ingredient can simply be planted the week it is asked for.
All Collections
Every entry in this group, with its key details.
