The Missing Bundle

The Missing Bundle

Type	Bundle
Location	Community Center
Bundles	1
Reward	Movie Theater

The Missing Bundle is the last golden scroll in the game, and it does not hang in the Community Center at all. Once the Junimos have finished the Center and said their goodbyes, one of them is left behind in the ruined Joja Mart across town, and the building has no way in. On the night before the first rain or storm after the ceremony, lightning strikes the derelict shop and splits its doors open, and the scroll inside asks for one more set of offerings so the stranded Junimo can go home. The items it wants are the hardest in the valley: aged wine, a gem that only the deepest mines hold, fruit from a plant grown from an artifact, and a fish that bites only in a witch's swamp. Finishing it turns the old shop into the Movie Theater, which is the only building in Pelican Town that exists purely to spend time with the neighbours.

Overview

This scroll sits outside the ordinary run of play, because it cannot be touched until the Community Center is already restored. Everything in the Center can be done in the first year by a determined farm, but the Missing Bundle is end-game work by design. Casks only exist in a farmhouse cellar, which is the last and most expensive upgrade Robin sells. Ancient Fruit comes from seeds that are either traded for by chance or earned by donating an artifact to the museum, and the plant then needs the better part of a month in the ground before it bears anything. The Witch's Swamp is only reachable through the Dark Talisman errand, which itself comes long after the Wizard's first favour.

What makes the room gentle in spite of that is the lack of a clock. The scroll waits indefinitely, so its items can be gathered at any pace. The sensible approach is to treat it as a shopping list to be filled slowly across the second and third years, rather than as a task to be started after the Center closes. A farm that plants Ancient Fruit in the greenhouse early, keeps its first Prismatic Shard in a chest and stocks a Fish Pond with a sturgeon will find most of this scroll already done on the day the lightning falls.

Bundles

There is only one scroll here, and it is deliberately overfull. The Junimo lists more items than the bundle has room for, so one of them can be left out entirely, and choosing which one to drop is the single most useful decision on the page. The usual answer is the Dinosaur Mayonnaise, because the Dinosaur Egg behind it is the rarest input in the whole list and the only one that depends on a monster drop.

Everything else is reachable through a process a farm will want anyway: a cask in the cellar, a Fish Pond, a Preserves Jar, a greenhouse bed and a deep mine run. Ranked by how long they take to arrange rather than how hard they are to find, the gold-starred Ancient Fruit is the longest job, the Void Salmon is the fiddliest, and the caviar is the one most often forgotten about because the pond takes days to produce anything at all.

The Missing Bundle

The wine has to carry at least a silver star, which means ageing. Fruit goes into a keg and comes out as ordinary wine, and only a cask lifts it a grade, which takes a couple of weeks sitting still. Casks only work in the farmhouse cellar, so this item quietly depends on the third house upgrade, and that upgrade is a very large sum from Robin. Any fruit makes wine of the same grade, so there is no reason to age an expensive melon when a cheap berry will star just as well. Caviar is a chain rather than a find: a Sturgeon goes into a Fish Pond, the pond produces Sturgeon Roe after a few days, and the roe goes into a Preserves Jar. The Sturgeon itself is a mountain lake fish with its own narrow seasons, so catching a spare and dropping it in a pond early is the move that saves the most time.

The Prismatic Shard is the item most likely to be already spent. It comes from the mystic stones of the deepest floors, from iridium nodes, from omni geodes and from mystery boxes, and it is also what the dwarf's forge wants in exchange for the Galaxy Sword. A farm that put its first shard into the sword has to find another, and that can take a long run in the Skull Cavern. Keeping the second one in a labelled chest is the simplest insurance. The Void Salmon is the fiddliest requirement, because it must be caught at gold quality or better and it only swims in the Witch's Swamp, which opens through the Dark Talisman errand. Quality is a matter of fishing skill and tackle rather than luck: a better rod with a bobber that holds the bite, a food buff that lifts the skill for the day, and the Quality Bobber earned from a special order all push the star upward.

Five gold-starred Ancient Fruit is the requirement that sets the pace. The seeds arrive either from the Traveling Cart on a lucky day or by donating an Ancient Seed artifact to the museum, and the plant needs most of a month to mature before it starts fruiting, after which it gives fruit about once a week. Gold stars are not guaranteed, so one plant producing one fruit a week will not fill the slot in a season. The answers are to grow several plants, to put them in the greenhouse where they fruit all year rather than dying off in Winter, and to lay the best fertiliser available into the soil before planting, since fertiliser applied afterwards does nothing. A Seed Maker fed with Ancient Fruit turns one vine into a whole bed of them, which is the standard way players go from a single lucky seed packet to a greenhouse full.

Dinosaur Mayonnaise is the item to skip unless a Dinosaur Egg has already turned up. The egg comes from artifact spots, from fishing treasure chests and most reliably from the Pepper Rex lizards on the prehistoric floors of the Skull Cavern, and then it goes into a Mayonnaise Machine. There is a pleasing circularity to it: the crane game inside the finished Movie Theater can hand out a Dinosaur Egg, which is of no help at all for the bundle that opens the theatre.

The bundle has five slots, and any five of the six items below fill it.

Item	Amount	Location
Wine	Silver or better quality	Cask, Ginger Island resort
Dinosaur Mayonnaise	-	Mayonnaise Machine
Prismatic Shard	-	Mining
Ancient Fruit	5 Gold quality	Crops
Void Salmon	Gold or Iridium quality	Fishing in the Witch's Swamp
Caviar	-	Preserves Jar product from Sturgeon roe

Gold or Iridium quality Void Salmon

Rewards

There is no small reward for this scroll. The building itself is the prize, and the ruined shop becomes the Movie Theater overnight. A ticket is bought at the booth outside, and a second ticket given to a villager works exactly like a gift, inviting them along for the day. That invitation only holds for the day it is handed over: walk home without going inside and the arrangement is forgotten.

The friendship is the real value. Villagers have opinions about films and about the snacks bought at the stand, and matching a neighbour to a show they like is worth far more goodwill than an ordinary present. The theatre also makes a reliable rainy-day activity out of a part of the calendar that otherwise has little to offer, and the crane game inside hands out small prizes, tickets among them. Tickets even turn up in the old shop's bin once the building is converted, which is worth a glance when passing.

Strategy

Work backwards from the longest lead time. Ancient fruit is the item to start first, long before the Community Center is finished: get a seed from the cart or the museum, plant it in the greenhouse, and feed every harvest through a Seed Maker until there is a bed of vines rather than a single plant. Lay fertiliser before planting, not after.

Then set up the slow machines. Catch a spare Sturgeon in the right season and give it a pond of its own, so the roe is accumulating while the rest of the list is gathered. Get the cellar built when the gold allows, and keep a cask ageing permanently so there is always a starred bottle on the shelf. Do the Dark Talisman errand whenever it becomes available rather than leaving it, because the swamp is the only water the Void Salmon lives in and it is easy to forget the quest exists.

The common way this bundle stalls is not difficulty but bookkeeping. A Prismatic Shard goes into the Galaxy Sword, the starred wine gets drunk before a hard mine run, the caviar gets shipped with the morning's produce, and the gold Ancient Fruit goes into a keg because wine pays better. One chest kept only for this scroll prevents all four. Since nothing here expires, the only real risk is spending an item on something else.

Notes

The doors only open on the night before rain or a storm, so a dry stretch after the reopening ceremony simply means waiting. The weather forecast on the television is the fastest way to know when it is coming.

A farm that took the Joja membership instead never sees this scroll, because the Junimos leave the valley on that path. The theatre is still reachable, bought like the other improvements through the development form rather than earned from the Junimo.

The Junimo guarding the scroll is blunt about what it is asking for, introducing it as the hardest bundle yet. That is a fair warning. Three of the items have to carry a quality star, and quality is the one thing a farm cannot buy its way around, which is what makes this scroll feel different from everything that came before it.

All Bundles

Every room of the Community Center, with the number of bundles it holds and what finishing them repairs.

Name	Bundles	Reward
Crafts Room Bundles	6	Bridge Repair
Pantry Bundles	6	Greenhouse
Fish Tank Bundles	6	Glittering Boulder Removed
Boiler Room Bundles	3	Minecarts Repaired
Bulletin Board Bundles	5	Friendship
Vault Bundles	4	Bus Repair
The Missing Bundle	1	Movie Theater
Joja Community Development Form	5	Bought with gold