Definitive answer to the 80 hardwood quest problem

[Adeptguy]

I spent quite some time writing this but I hope it was worth the effort. To sum it up, here's the definitive answer to an issue that shouldn't even be an issue but it is for a portion of the playerbase...

The hardwood quest is fine, get real. This is my advise to everyone having this problem. Here's why:
First off lets assume you are able to chop hardwood in the first place, you have an upgraded axe strong enough to go to the Secret Woods. Opening this area is generally easy and should not pose much of a challenge to the majority of players. You will open this very likely in your first year, if not then in the second guaranteed.
Second, lets say you didn't pick up the perk that makes regular trees also drop hardwood from chopping. Which is a large part of the players, im not going to claim its the majority but definitely a large portion of players pick the gatherer route because it is very tempting.
Third, your only source for hardwood is Secret Woods, you do not have any hardwood trees/stumps/logs on your farm. You also do not have any other extra resources/means of acquiring hardwood on your farm(type).

With all of these things kept in mind, this is the worst case scenario to get this quest. And yet its still possible to complete it, no matter your skill level, be a casual or hardcore gamer. A sweaty tryhard or grandma level bad. Doesn't matter. Some extremely simple math:
Weekly quests reset on Monday, when you receive this quest you have 7 days including the day you picked it up. If you're smart you will check the weekly board every Monday to keep in mind the timer you're on from that moment on. Secret Woods gives 12 hardwood every day. 7*12=84. Case closed. In the worst case possible* to receive this quest, you can still complete it.

However some may say "But what about festivals?!?! IMPOSSIBLE!!1!1!". Once again, its possible. After you teleport back to your farm after a festival you have enough time, without any speed boosts, to go and gather 12 hardwood. Even if sometimes you teleport back at 12 am to your farm, it should still be possible. At worst you may not have enough time to get back to your house before passing out at 2 am. This is fine because the cap on money lost from this situation is 1k. That amount of gold should not be hard to come by for anyone. One such festival that teleports you back to farm at 12 am is the Moonlight Jellies at summer 28. Since Special Orders unlock only after year 1 fall 2 the only technically possible way for the quest to coincide with the Moonlight Jellies festival is at earliest in year 2 summer 28. By then 1k gold should be nothing. By then you will also most likely have at least 1 type of speed boost. Not to mention that that festival starts at 10pm at the BEACH, meaning you have all day to gather and complete the hardwood quest in the first place. Its practically impossible to fail at this point. You would really have to try hard to fail at this stage.

*Worth mentioning is people who get this quest after Monday who would technically be in an even worse situation than mentioned previously. I will be very clear about this.
If you don't take a look at the Special Orders on Monday and instead do it later then you have no right to complain about potentially missing out extra days to complete the quest and calling it impossible on the forum. It is your fault you didn't take the effort to simply walk to one spot, click the board and check out the quests available. This takes very little effort and you have all day to do this!
If you care about doing a Special Order you have to accept that the best time to do that is on Monday when it resets. If you do it later you also need to accept the consequences for your laziness/forgetfullness. Some quests, like this one, become a bit tougher to complete if you don't fulfill some requirements. But that doesn't mean you should go make threads on the forum calling this impossible and counting from 6 days or less, instead of the REAL time the game gives you which is 7 days.

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not targeting anyone for not playing the game perfectly. I make mistakes here and there as well. I sometimes flatout forget stuff that I planned to do the next day and later when going to bed I remember and regret it. I have those moments too. But I also don't go around on the forum making threads about the stuff I forgot or was too lazy to do and calling it impossible or unfair. Have a heart and think first before posting. :)

[FafnirChaos]

What you should really do is plant Mahogany Trees skip the quest till you have 8 of them, Once the quest comes back cut down those Mahogany trees then go to robins, Do it day one.

[Astral]

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

What you should really do is plant Mahogany Trees skip the quest till you have 8 of them, Once the quest comes back cut down those Mahogany trees then go to robins, Do it day one.

Big brain man over here.

[kingjames488]

or just wait til you get to ginger island since the reward isn't really useful

[Pixel Peeper]

What I currently do is deliberately leave Hardwood around on my farms instead of collecting it when I can, and grow some Mahogany trees in advance.

But when the patch dropped, everyone had already gathered all available Hardwood on their farm because they had no idea they would have to harvest some. No one knew requests would reset on Monday, no one knew you would have to gather the Hardwood, everyone thought it would be fine because they already have 300 Hardwood in a chest somewhere. And we still don't know why Robin won't just take existing Hardwood and why she wants you to gather some more.

It's perfectly understandable that most players would have had problems with this quest. Now that we know about it, we can deal, but hindsight is 20/20.

[Adeptguy]

Originally posted by FafnirChaos:

What you should really do is plant Mahogany Trees skip the quest till you have 8 of them, Once the quest comes back cut down those Mahogany trees then go to robins, Do it day one.

Nice idea. This thread was made largely in response to the "omg its impossible to finish this in 6 days1!1!1!!" threads popping up lately. Obviously there's multiple solutions to this problem and if you get creative you will come up with your own! Honestly its not even a problem, but seeing so many ppl struggle with common sense I had to step in here I feel...

[Adeptguy]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

What I currently do is deliberately leave Hardwood around on my farms instead of collecting it when I can, and grow some Mahogany trees in advance.

But when the patch dropped, everyone had already gathered all available Hardwood on their farm because they had no idea they would have to harvest some. No one knew requests would reset on Monday, no one knew you would have to gather the Hardwood, everyone thought it would be fine because they already have 300 Hardwood in a chest somewhere. And we still don't know why Robin won't just take existing Hardwood and why she wants you to gather some more.

It's perfectly understandable that most players would have had problems with this quest. Now that we know about it, we can deal, but hindsight is 20/20.

Okay but look the thing is, you would have noticed a pattern if you saw the board reset every couple of days... At some point you would've figured it out on your own. Its not really rocket science if you ask me. All it takes is a bit of reading and a bit of logical thinking and common sense. The reason why these "problem" threads pop up is for a long time now gaming society has been lacking in the previously mentioned department. To put it bluntly, ppl become lazier and dumber as time passes, with every new generation of gamers born worsening the situation. Its just facts, no hate. Thats why its a good idea to sometimes help them refresh their memory a bit. in how to think logically and have some common sense again. Sometimes they need to be reminded in a helpfull way.

Personally I have not received this hardwood quest immediately and by the time I did get it as an option I already figured out mostly how the board works, on my own. Its just the same as clint's ore inspection and we have had that type of quest a long time now in the game. I dont think its fair to complain about a system that has been in place for over a year, its just packaged differently with a few words moved here and there. In the end its a very similar quest.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by Adeptguy:

Okay but look the thing is, you would have noticed a pattern if you saw the board reset every couple of days...

Personally I have not received this hardwood quest immediately

My very first time seeing the Special Orders board, the two requests posted were the 80 Hardwood one and a Fishing one. I was planning on taking both and doing the Fishing one first, putting the other one off for later as I had more than the necessary 80 Hardwood in my chests.

As it turns out, the Hardwood one was on the left, so I took it first, which disabled the Fishing one. This prompted me to look at the quest text earlier than I would have, which informed me that I had to gather the Hardwood and not just provide it. Fortunately I hadn't already visited the Secret Woods that day because that's just another thing that would have ensured automatic failure.

It was only by a series of very lucky events that I was able to complete this request the first time I saw it. A lot of reasonable and intelligent players will naturally fail it the first time they get it, through no fault of their own.

I don't think it's totally broken, of course, but there most certainly are flaws with the way this request was implemented.

The text should be much clearer as to the gathering requirement, and should include a reasonable cause for this requirement. My suggestion was that Robin would specify that the wood has to be dried a very particular way for her project, which requires her to be provided with freshly cut Hardwood.

[Adeptguy]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

The text should be much clearer as to the gathering requirement, and should include a reasonable cause for this requirement. My suggestion was that Robin would specify that the wood has to be dried a very particular way for her project, which requires her to be provided with freshly cut Hardwood.

Yes I have read this response from you before as well in other threads and I do fully agree with that explanation. I stand by the implementation of this piece of text crammed in somewhere, either the board or the journal. I do think that would be a good idea to add in some next bugfix patch.

[Holo]

Why does everyone keep saying 7 days
It gave me 4 days