The end of the story in Yonder came rather quickly. I didn’t quite feel finished with the game once the credits rolled. There were some leftover quests I hadn’t done yet, spirits I hadn’t found, and a pesky murk or two left on the map.

The end of the main story does unlock some post game quest lines. There is the Master Crafter quest line that opens up the Master Crafter Crafting recipes. These are a lot of shampoos and backpacks. All of the shampoos I had found along the way but the backpacks are unique crafted items.

Then there was a quest line to bring peace to Gemea. This involves getting each region to 95% happiness. I had this mostly completed already as I made it a priority to complete as many quests and clear the as much murk in each zone as I could before moving on. In the zones that I was missing, setting up a farm with a few animals seemed to add a ton of happiness to the region. Once all of the regions were happy I was able to find the last animal in my journal: The mythical Kirin.

With these completed, I still wanted to keep playing so I took a look at the achievements I had yet to complete. I’m not typically an achievement chaser. Steam says I have 6 perfect games and 4 of those are games that give you all the achievemnets by the time you reach the end. But I only had six to finish ad none of them looked all that hard:

A Spritely Adventure – All Sprites Found

By the time I had reached the end of the game I had found 24 out of 26 sprites. The two I missed were both in the Radiant Sands. The first needed an offering of 3 sunglasses before they would come out and join me. The second was hiding in a breakable rock in the northwest corner of the zone. It took me a couple passes of the entire zone before I found it.

I’m Board – Complete 10 Quest Board Missions

Board missions have you gather certain goods and turn them in to a person for 1 old kingdom coin. The reward isn’t great. There are tons of other ways to earn or find Old Kingdom coins. The shops you can spend Old Kingdom coins in have very few items that can’t be aquired another way. It’s no wonder why only 3.1% of people have this achievement.

Critter Crazy – Adopt every type of animal in the game.

This is one of those achievements that made me engage in a system I hadn’t spent much time on. I had adopted a couple animals on my first farm but didn’t pursue it much on the others. Animals produce trade goods that range from high value (Groffle Mil) to very low value (rocks).Planting berries turned out to be the better option economically and used less materials to craft than the animal shelters and food stations.

The hardest part of this achievement was getting animals on farms that lived in regions without farms. Each animal has something it preffers to eat and once fed will follow you for a little bit. They are basically escort quests where the NPC your escorting gets bored with you and wanders off.

The problem becomes, when there are long distances between habitat and farm I needed multiple items to keep them interested. This wasn’t so bad for animals who ate simple resources like fodder but was an issue for animals eating complex crafting recipes like Poutine.
There is also the matter of animals migrating throughout the season. Some animals disapear completely during certain seasons or move around the zone. So it could be a challenge to track down the one I was looking for before they moved again.

Cat-tastic – Completed The Cat Lady and Her 55 Cats

This is the achievement for finishing the quest “the Cat Lady and her 55 Cats” in which you scour the island looking for lost cats. As it turns out, there are more than 55 cats around Gemea but she only wants 55 of them back. The rest of them must be someone elses who hasn’t put up a quest yet.
The cats are sorted into category? Breed? Species? one of those. So it’s easy to see which ones you still need once the quest is activated.

By the time I got to the end of the game I had about half of these cats. They make a very distinct meow when you’re close to one. Even so, there were some that I hadn’t found any or very few of like the Snowy Milk or Summer Longtail.

I ended up using the Yonder wiki to track them down and it’s a good thing I did. Certain cats only appear in certain seasons. The Summer Longtail appears only in summer and the Snowy Milk only appear in the winter.

This lead me to go after other achievements while waiting for the seasons to change. Once the correct season came I would hike back to the correct zone to find the cats.

A Fishy Collection – Catch all types of fish.

This was another achievement I wiki’d my way through. I had about half of the fishing journal completed by the time I finished the story.

The Trader in Mocha Bay sells just about all of the fish except the Gigalev Fish. So really all I needed to do was keep trying my luck on the Gigalev and check back at the Trader everyday to see if a fish I hadn’t caught was in stock.

By far the hardest to catch was the Gigalev. The wiki says that it can be caught in the ocean in Crestfall Coast, Hearthwind Vale, Radiant Sands, and Shivering Plains in any season. Well I fished in Crestfall Cove through summer and fall and didn’t find one. Once winter came, I was spotting them every other cast. The Gigalev is giant, it takes up most of the fishing area which means it’s hard to see all the other fish. A few times I thought I had it on the line only to watch it swim away as a smaller fish took the bait.

I’m Your #1 Fan! – Violet Finds her Epic Joke

Violet is an NPC who appears in each town. Every time you talk to her she has a joke to tell. Once you talk to her in every town. I tried to find her in between waiting for the correct season for fishing and collecting lost cats.

Chasing after the achievements added a whopping 10 extra hours on to the game. By the time I caught my last fish I felt ready to put this one away. Not because I was sick of it but because my save reads 100% and I don’t think I have anything else to do!

I have one more quest to complete in the Grasslands area. A sailor is looking for his missing crew and he’s given me some hints as to where they could be. Surprisingly, they are not marked on the mini map or glowing off in the distance brighter than the sun so it appears I’ll actually have to look for them. I’ve run around the area a few times and come to the conclusion that they aren’t in the Grasslands and I’ll need to venture out to a new zone.

Yonder has quite a few boxes to tick for each zone. The main ones tracked on the map are mist cleared, farm progress, Sprites found, quests completed, and trees planted which increase the happiness of the region. The happier the region the more bonuses for that region. Every region seems to have the same bonuses: 1.5x harvest, 1.5x animal sightings, and 1.5x faster farm production. I’m already past the 75% happiness for the last bonus in the Grasslands so it’s probably time to move on anyways.

But where to go? I intended to follow the main story and I did for a time. I ended up  in the town of Wimblewick where Rex, the Ferryman was looking for some help to fix his ferry. He sent me to the Carpenters Guild to get some supplies for the repairs. Instead of pointing me in the right direction for materials Agatha Woodgrain inducted me in to the Carpenters Guild with quite a few wood related puns. Then told me to go make the materials myself. Lucky for me, I had most of the raw materials I needed and any extra bits were all readily available at the trader close by. Like I mentioned last time, I had to do one quest to go from novice Carpenter to Master Carpenter so now I’m an expert. Materials in hand, I made my way back to Rex to fix the boat.

With the ferry fixed, Rex can take me across the way to the Old Kingdom in the Radiant Sands. This is where the next step of the main quest line lies. But I somehow ended up wandering down south to the Hearthwind Vale and doing some exploring instead.

I arrived in the town of Bobbintoff, which is just a fantastic name for a town,  as the sun was setting. Upon entering, Kit, one of my collected Sprites who looks like a stylized Baby Yoda, let me know that it was Halloween. It’s currently Fall on the Island so this seems to be a seasonal event of some sort. I had a choice to make: dress as up as a Witch or a Vampire Butler (seems oddly specific. I had to go with the Vampire Butler to see what that was about.

Once I donned the costume, I went to each door to trick or treat. Some of the residents were confused, some gave me mysterious candy, and some just weren’t home to celebrate. There were also some green jack-o-lanterns that gave out mysterious candy as well. Having knocked on every door and found every jack-o-lantern I had around 50 mysterious candy rattling around in my backpack. I found a vendor in town who trades candy for some spooky accessories. 50 it seems was not enough to purchase everything so it looks like I’ll need to stop in Bobbintoff next Fall to collect the rest.

During the day, Bobbintoff is home to the Tailors Guild. I became a novice Tailor by inquiring with the Guildmaster. It looks like these recipes will be a bit harder to make since they require different color dyes. The trader in town sells only one of each dye so I’ll have to stop back when their inventory refreshes. Whenever that might be. I put all of my collected resources into crafting Tailor’s Kits and Leather Straps which put me around 700 Value, I’m holding out for buying more dye so I can craft some more fashion items. If I’m going to be a Master Tailor after this I have to look good after all.
  
I think my next stop will be popping over to the Radiant Sands and picking the story back up to see where that leads. Hopefully I’ll have enough Sprites to clear out some murk over there and keep the story going. If not, I’m sure I’ll find myself back in Hearthwind Vale before too long!