Special Orders
| Special Orders | |
|---|---|
| Type | Special Order |
| Board | Outside the Mayor's Manor |
| Unlocked | Fall 2, Year 1 |
| Orders | 28 |
Pelican Town gains a special orders board outside the Mayor's Manor during Fall of the first year, introduced by a short cutscene. The jobs pinned to it are much larger than the errands on the Bulletin Board, and they pay in gold, machine recipes and furniture rather than pocket change. Each posting carries its own deadline, and the board swaps its offers for fresh ones every Monday. Mr. Qi keeps a second board of his own inside his room on Ginger Island, where the tasks turn punishing and the pay arrives as Qi Gems. Between them the two boards hand out machine recipes that cannot be bought or found anywhere else, which makes reading the board a progression habit rather than a side activity.
Overview
The town board shows two postings at a time and allows one of them to be taken in a given week. Taking one leaves the other pinned up until Monday replaces it. Passing on both is often sensible, because a posting that does not suit the farm comes round again later.
The clock is the part that catches people out. A deadline counts down from the day the posting appeared, not from the day it was accepted. An order with a week on it that went up on Monday still ends on Sunday night, so accepting it on Friday leaves two days of work instead of seven. Checking the board first thing on Monday buys the longest possible window.
Several orders run side by side quite happily. One fresh order can be accepted each week while older ones are still open, so a month-long Crop Order can tick away underneath two or three short jobs.
Most postings only count goods gathered while the order is live. Where the order asks for items to be left in a container, a stock held in advance can go into that container, but the same number still has to be gathered afresh before the counter fills. Twenty-four eggs from a chest will sit in the Stardrop Saloon fridge without moving the count an inch.
Once an order is taken it cannot be dropped. The journal gives no cancel button for it, and the remaining time simply has to run out. Failure costs little in the long run. The posting returns to the board on a later week, and anything already handed over can be fetched back out of Lewis's lost and found box.
Town Orders
Townsfolk write the Pelican Town postings, and each one reads like the person behind it. Clint wants cave monsters thinned out, Demetrius wants fish numbers brought back under control, Robin wants raw material in bulk for a new bed or a promotion of her own, Gunther wants bone for the museum's shelves, and Willy wants bug guts for crab bait. Linus asks for rubbish fished out of the water, Emily for crystals to channel the right energies, Evelyn for leeks to cheer George up, and the Wizard for the rarer sort of monster remains.
A few postings wait on something else being true first. Gifts for George and The Strong Stuff only go up in Spring, Island Ingredients and Tropical Fish wait on Ginger Island and the Island Resort, and Rock Rejuvenation waits until Emily's Sewing Machine can be reached. Crop Order stays off the board through Winter, since nothing in its list grows then.
Repeatable postings keep paying their gold every time, but hand over their machine recipe or their furniture on the first run only. A small checkmark under the timeframe marks a posting that has already been finished, which saves guessing at a board seen many seasons ago.
The counting rules reward a little preparation. Wood from a Wood Chipper counts towards Robin's resource rush, and so does material pulled back out of a Deconstructor, which makes crafting and then breaking down chests a fast way to pile up wood. Linus accepts rubbish from crab pots, from the town's bins and from fishing. Gus takes eggs of any animal, size and colour, including those a coop's auto-grabber picks up. Ginger dropped by Tiger Slimes counts towards Caroline's shipment. Pierre's gold-star vegetables are looser than they look: the twenty-five harvested and the twenty-five deposited need not be the same items or even the same vegetable, though iridium quality is turned away and Fiddlehead Fern does not count at all. Produce that Junimos gather only counts once it has been taken out of the hut.
Shipping orders have a display quirk worth knowing. The progress bar counts only what was shipped on previous days, so a bin filled on the final morning looks as though it has done nothing, yet the order still completes overnight.
The table lists every order the town board can post.
| Name | Giver | Time | Reward | Repeatable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Island Ingredients | Caroline | 28 days | Gold equivalent to 50% of the base crop price Tiller profession bonus applies... | Yes |
| Cave Patrol | Clint | 7 days | 6,000g (each time) Geode Crusher recipe After the first time: Letter with 10... | Yes |
| Aquatic Overpopulation | Demetrius | 7 days | Gold equivalent to selling the fish (includes quality prices but not profession... | Yes |
| Biome Balance | Demetrius | 7 days | 1,500g Farm Computer recipe | Yes |
| Rock Rejuvenation | Emily | 7 days | 1,000g 250 Friendship points with Emily Sewing Machine "Rock Rejuvenation"... | No |
| Gifts for George | Evelyn | 28 days | 2,000g Coffee Maker "Leek Surprise Gift" cutscene at George's House. | No |
| Fragments of the Past | Gunther | 7 days | 3,500g Bone Mill recipe | No |
| Gus' Famous Omelet | Gus | 14 days | 3,000g (each time) Mini-Fridge (only the 1st time) "Giant Omelet" cutscene at... | Yes |
| Crop Order | Lewis | 28 days | Gold equivalent to 50% of the base quality crop price (Tiller profession bonus... | Yes |
| Community Cleanup | Linus | 7 days | 500g 250 Friendship points with Linus Fiber Seeds recipe "Community Cleanup"... | No |
| The Strong Stuff | Pam | 14 days | 3,000g 250 Friendship points with Pam "Potato Juice" cutscene in Trailer... | No |
| Pierre's Prime Produce | Pierre | 28 days | 2,500g Cutscene at the General Store Mini-Shipping Bin by mail the day after... | No |
| Robin's Project | Robin | 7 days | 2,000g 250 Friendship points with Robin "Robin's Project" cutscene at Robin's... | No |
| Robin's Resource Rush | Robin | 7 days | 2,500g Stone Chest recipe | Yes |
| Juicy Bugs Wanted! | Willy | 7 days | 3,000g Quality Bobber recipe Cutscene at The Beach | No |
| Tropical Fish | Willy | 7 days | 2,500g Deluxe Fish Tank | No |
| A Curious Substance | Wizard | 7 days | 2,500g Mini-Obelisk recipe | No |
| Prismatic Jelly Special Order | Wizard | 7 days | 5,000g Monster Musk recipe | No |
Mr. Qi's Orders
A hundred Golden Walnuts open the door to Mr. Qi's room, tucked away in the west of Ginger Island, and his board hangs inside beside the perfection tracker and his vending machine. The machinery is familiar: two postings, a Monday refresh, a deadline on each. What changes is the scale. Qi pays in Qi Gems, and his board never retires anything, so every task comes round again in time whether it was finished or fumbled.
The jobs themselves are written for a farm with its best gear on. One asks for floor one hundred of the Skull Cavern with nothing eaten or drunk inside, which leaves rings, a vampiric blade and the hearts that Big Slimes drop during the order as the only way to stay alive. Another gives three days to land the younger relatives of the legendary fish, a task that needs fishing level ten before the last of them will even hook. Qi's Crop wants a shipment of five hundred fruit, grown from beans he has scattered for the farmer to stumble across. Let's Play A Game is blunter still: a score of fifty thousand on the arcade cabinet in the Saloon, in the mode that never ends.
Gems spend in the same room on goods that gold cannot buy, including a key that opens most of the town's buildings at any hour. Golden Walnuts beyond the hundred also trade across the counter at two gems each, which gives late-game walnut hunting a point.
The table lists every order Qi posts.
| Name | Giver | Time | Reward | Repeatable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Qi's Crop | Mr. Qi | 28 days | 100 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Let's Play A Game | Mr. Qi | 7 days | 20 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Four Precious Stones | Mr. Qi | 28 days | 40 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Qi's Hungry Challenge | Mr. Qi | 7 days | 25 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Qi's Cuisine | Mr. Qi | 14 days | 25 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Qi's Kindness | Mr. Qi | 7 days | 40 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Extended Family | Mr. Qi | 3 days | 20 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Danger In The Deep | Mr. Qi | 7 days | 50 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Skull Cavern Invasion | Mr. Qi | 7 days | 40 Qi Gems | Yes |
| Qi's Prismatic Grange | Mr. Qi | 14 days | 35 Qi Gems | Yes |
Rewards
The gold on these orders is useful early and forgettable later, so the recipes are the real prize. A Solar Panel makes batteries from daylight instead of waiting on a storm, which quietly removes the worst bottleneck in Iridium-era crafting. A Geode Crusher opens geodes on the farm rather than in a queue at the blacksmith, and a Bone Mill turns the museum's leftovers into fertiliser. A Farm Computer reports on crops, animals and machines each morning, and a pair of Mini-Obelisks makes a short warp across the farm. Monster Musk raises monster numbers for anyone farming drops, Fiber Seeds grow fibre on ordinary soil in any season, and a Quality Bobber lifts the quality of the catch.
Household rewards are gentler but handy. A Mini-Shipping Bin saves the walk to the main bin, a Mini-Fridge adds cold storage next to the stove, and a Coffee Maker hands over a free coffee every morning for the rest of the run. Emily's order leaves her Sewing Machine available for tailoring, and Robin's puts a Deluxe Red Double Bed on her shelves.
Several town postings also build friendship. Emily, Linus, Pam and Robin each add a full heart's worth of points and play a scene afterwards, which is a painless way to reach the hearts that gate their events. A box beside the board holds a Prize Ticket after each completed order, and tickets feed the prize machine in Lewis's house. Special orders count towards the help wanted achievements as well, so the board doubles as a shortcut to the hats that those achievements unlock.
Strategy
Read the board on Monday and decide before accepting anything. The long postings, the ones that ask for a hundred crops or a hundred bone pieces, are worth taking the moment they appear so the whole month is available. The seven-day postings are better judged against what the farm is already doing that week: Cave Patrol fits a mining week, Aquatic Overpopulation fits a fishing week, and Robin's Resource Rush fits a week with a Wood Chipper running.
Prepare the ground rather than the stock. Since most goods have to be gathered after the order starts, the useful preparation is tools, bait, bombs and empty chests. Targeted Bait aimed at the named fish turns Aquatic Overpopulation from a long grind into an afternoon. A stack of Staircases turns both Skull Cavern postings into a single determined run.
The common way an order fails is a late acceptance on a short clock. The second is a seasonal trap: a Crop Order taken near the end of its season leaves no room for a second planting. The third is handing goods to a shopkeeper instead of the bin, since sales to Pierre never register for a shipping order.
Notes
Prismatic Jelly comes from a Prismatic Slime that only wanders the mines while that order is active, so the hunt cannot be done in advance and cannot be finished after the clock runs out. Danger In The Deep resets the mine elevator and the Adventurer's Guild stock as it begins, which is worth knowing before spending heavily on gear the week before.
Not every posting pays a flat fee. The two crop shipments pay out as a share of what the harvest was worth, so a hundred Pineapples are worth far more than a hundred Green Beans for the same work. Demetrius pays what the fish would have fetched at the bin and leaves the catch in the bag, which makes his order one of the few that pays twice.
Each order names its own drop-off point, and walking the wrong goods to the wrong building wastes a day. Gunther takes bone at the Museum counter, Linus takes rubbish at the train platform bin, Willy takes bug guts at a bin beside the Fish Shop, Pierre takes vegetables in a bin inside his shop, and Gus takes eggs in the Stardrop Saloon fridge. Evelyn's leeks go onto her stove and Pam's potato juice goes into her kitchen, both inside the homes rather than handed over in the street.
All Special Orders
Every special order from both boards, with who posts it and how long it runs.