Things to discover

Something around every corner

Walk out of the village or any town and you'll soon come across a place worth stopping for. They are thickest round the towns and along the roads, and thinner deep in the wilds, where the rarer ones hide. Every land has its own, and everyone playing a world finds the same places in the same spots.

What you find is yours: when you read a note or dig up a treasure, it's done for you, and your friends can still find it for themselves.

The kinds of places

• Explorers' camps. A tent, a campfire and a crate, left by a traveller who is out exploring. Press E on the note on the crate to read their story. They usually leave a little gift for whoever reads it first.
• Buried treasure. Look for disturbed earth and small tracks on the ground. Take out a shovel and dig right there: a pouch, a little chest or, far from towns, a heavy old chest.
• Fossil digs. A roped-off dig with brushes and crates. Press E on it again and again, slowly and gently, to brush the earth away. Too fast and you have to wait a moment. When the fossil comes free it joins your collection.
• Nests. Heron nests, turtle nests and otter dens by the water, frog ponds in the woods, and dinosaur nests on the Primeval Isle. Stand a few steps away and watch quietly. Come too close and the little ones hide.
• Lookouts. Climb the platform (a double jump gets you onto the deck) for the view. You learn something about the land, and you spot places you haven't found yet.
• Dawn and dusk blooms. Some flowers open only at dawn and others only at dusk, and some views only glow then. At other times of day they're just green buds.
• Rain finds. Mushrooms, desert flowers, washed-up shells and fossils the rain uncovers only show in the rain and for a little while after.

Every nest, lookout, bloom and rain find teaches a true fact about nature. You can read them all again on the NOTES page.

Named places

Every land also has a few named places, built a little bigger: Wren's Riverside Camp, the Otterbank Fossil Dig, Kingfisher Lookout, Turtle Sands and more. Walking into one counts as a discovery for your journal. Many have a notice board. Press E on it to read its story and start its storyline.

Storylines on the notice boards

Each land has a few storylines told by its notice boards. The notice board on every town's plaza lists the storylines of its land: where each one starts, how far along you are, and it pins the nearest unfinished one on your map. The storylines are a birdwatcher's heron count, a professor's fossil hunt, a snowed-in explorer who would love a warm meal, a caravan guide who steers by the stars, and more. Each step asks you to do something out in the land (watch a nest, brush fossils, climb a lookout, bring a gift) and teaches a real fact when you do it. They are gentle stories about kindness, courage, patience and caring for creation.

Mending wells and bridges together

Some named places are repair projects: a well that has fallen in, or a bridge that washed away. Everyone playing the world helps mend them. Press E on the project's sign with planks, stone, rope or whatever it asks for in your satchel, and it takes what it still needs. When it's finished, everyone who helped gets a thank-you gift:

• a mended bridge is a new way across the river,
• a mended well gives a cool drink of water (very welcome in Survival worlds).

The travelling merchant

Each week the travelling merchant's wagon stands beside a fork in the road in each land with towns, and it moves somewhere new the next week. The merchant is out gathering, so you pick from the crates and pay into the honesty box. One crate holds a treasure map that pins buried treasure nearby. Each crate sells to you once a week.

Lost pets

Now and then a townsperson's pet wanders off. The town's keeper will tell you whose pet is missing and which way it went, and the owner will ask you too if you talk to them. Find the pet, press E to call it, then go back to the town and tell its owner (the townsperson, not the keeper). They'll hurry off to bring it home, and thank you for your help.

Fossils

There are real kinds of fossil to find in every land, from a fossil fern leaf and a crocodile tooth by the river to a mammoth tooth in the snow and a raptor claw on the Primeval Isle. Each one comes with a true story. Your collection fills the Fossils part of your Discovery journal.

Some towns have a Fossil Museum. Talk to its curator and every fossil you've found goes on the museum's shelves with your name on the label, for everyone in the world to see. You keep your own journal page.

This week's field tasks

The DISCOVERIES page of the character menu shows three small field tasks for the week, like reading explorers' notes or finding the travelling merchant. They pay coins and some experience. New ones come every week.