Ye Olde "Dont lay a finger on my Sheepies!!!" Bug

[strictlySpeaking]

I started playing about 2+ years back, and although I was able to finish Goldric's quest-line on 4/9 of my characters , I recently came back to the game to find that the quest is perma-bugged on the other 5. I can forfeit the quest on all of my characters that need it, leave the map, reload the entire game, and no matter what? Accepting the quest automatically causes me to fail, starting with 0/6 Sheepies (rather than 6/6, which is "Success" for this one) before I've even moved.

I'm running out of ideas. I even waited a few days to see if the bug would clear itself up. Has anybody found the solution for this one? None of the reports I've found online ever actually found a cause or a solve. Missing out on 5/9 Desert trophies and 120 hours worth of time candies is kind of a bummer.

Edit: Still having the issue. Went through all 5 of my characters who don't have the quest finished, made sure they had all forfeited the quest (so it wasn't active), restarted the game, swapped from PC to mobile (and back), and tried killing sandcastles inbetween reloading the map and trying to accept the quest again. So far, not a single thing has caused the quest to start normally, and it cannot currently be completed.

Edit2: For 120 hours worth of time candies, I went as far as uninstalling and reinstalling from scratch. Still no luck, quest automatically starts off with 0/6 Sheepies. (Both on PC and Mobile.)

[strictlySpeaking]

SOLUTION FOUND!

Someone on the Discord discovered that by equipping the Sheepie companion, this breaks the Sheepie-unharmed requirement for this quest. If you're having the same problem I am, MAKE SURE YOU DON'T HAVE THE SHEEPIE COMPANION EQUIPPED. Restart the quest like usual (by forfeiting) and it should progress like normal. Hope this helps anyone else having the issue!