Phoenix Egg Shards

Introduction
A long time ago, the Nyms lived happily on the island with the Island Spirit. One day, the Nyms found a Phoenix Egg. For a while things were peaceful, but then the Nyms started to fight over who owned the egg. They ended up breaking the phoenix egg, and overcome with shame, they left the island and the Island Spirit fell into a deep slumber.

After a long while, the Nyms made peace with each other and wanted to return to the island. They built a boat and traveled back to the island, however, there was a great storm in the harbor that smashed the boat against the reef. The Island Spirit reawakened in her temple on the beach and saw the trouble that the Nyms were in. She came to their rescue and got them all back to shore.

Now that the Nyms are back, it's time for the Island Spirit (that's you!) to rebuild the Phoenix Egg.

Objectives
There are 3 main (mostly) independent objectives to the game:


 * 1) Rebuilding the Phoenix Egg The main objective is to piece the Phoenix Egg back together.  This can be done fairly quickly if you put your mind to it, maybe about 3 hours of concentrated play, or double that, at an enjoyable pace.  Once you put the egg back together, you get a beautiful action scene and the credits will roll, however, the game does not end here.  After the credits (or if you quit the credit early with the controllers) the game puts you back into the Town Hall area and you can play more.  If playing multiplayer, the person you're playing with will be kicked off your island and has to rejoin your game.  At this point, you can work on the second and third objectives.
 * 2) Clothing the Nyms You don't need to clothe the Nyms to rebuild the egg, so this is a side objective.  Each Nym has their own clothing / uniform which you can purchase from Dappy, the Tailor Nym, in the Highlands.  While you can build the Phoenix Egg pretty quickly, this objective takes a bit longer because you need to work on acquiring items to pay for the clothes, and upgrading stores.  Dappy needs special items to make and sell some of the clothes, so you won't be able to buy all the clothes without doing a bunch of side quests for him.
 * 3) Town Hall Exhibits Town Hall is a place where you bring requested items: the resources, foods, and decorations of the game. This is a very time consuming job, and will take longer and require more effort than the first two objectives put together.  This objective required real commitment, and is not for the faint of heart!  It can also be somewhat difficult.  It requires you, among other things, to get the Lunker fish the MAG fish.  When you turn items in to Town Hall, their picture becomes colourized, in theory.  In practice, there are some areas where it's difficult to see if the picture is in color or not, so sometimes you have to guess what you need to purchase / obtain.

So the when does the game end? Depends on how much of a "completionist" you are. Here is my own personal assessment:

Town Hall
This is the main area. It contains the Magic Fountain, the miner's shop (to be built), restaurant (to be built) Town Hall, the Phoenix pedestal, a gazebo, a stone bridge, some arable land (which increases when you upgrade the restaurant).

Mine
The mine is the largest biome. There are two raccoons and it's spooky!

Beach
There are two beach areas which I call Beach 1 and Beach 2. You start off in Beach 1, where your temple (starting point) is. Note that the scattered items and fish frequency are the same for both locations.

Volcano
Once the primary quest is complete, continue playing by completing these Sub Quests.

Multiplayer
There are some interesting things about multiplayer which, at first blush, are non-obvious. Unfortunately, they reduce the fun of multi-player game play. Thanks to Hannah Bear for teaching me some of these.


 * In multi-player, the person who joins your island cannot use the hearts they already have in their inventory. Likewise, they cannot pick up hearts in the host's game.
 * Any decorations picked up by one character (e.g. the braces, the goggles, etc) are actually given to both characters.
 * A slow or "laggy" network will cause the guest's game to crash.
 * In the restaurant the host and guest do not see the same recipes. This can be used to your advantage.
 * The guest cannot see the Nyms' requests; only the host can see these.
 * Annoyingly, the guest cannot fulfill quests. For example, if you're asked to upgrade a building and you need to deliver 10 Silver Ores, the guest cannot give the Silver Ore to the bucket.  At best, the guest needs to give the Silver Ore to the host, and then the host can deliver the Silver Ore.
 * The guest can't see prices of objects in the stores.
 * The guest can't purchase items in the store. This includes tools.  If the guest wants to upgrade their tools they need to purchase them on their own island.
 * The guest can't hear the narrator speak.