Errands when NPC is off-island

[novel lintel]

I don’t think this is relevant to any specific platform, but I can’t see anywhere else to report this other than bug report channel.

I’m on PS5, and I recently took an errand for Ben during fall. I finally grew the required item on the last day of the errand, but I actually can’t complete it because Ben is off-island for the entirety of Fall.

I’ve seen others post about this for over a year. Can something be done about it please? Even if we can complete errands through the board, that would solve the problem.

It’s super frustrating going through all the work to complete an errand, only to find the NPC isn’t available and you won’t get any reward for it.

I’m also in Year 1 and I get errands only around once a week, so it’s frustrating when the only errand I can do turns out to be impossible to complete 🥲

[lilac fjord]

He will come back right before or during the spooky festival

[novel lintel]

yeah unfortunately it’s still outside of the quest time, I failed it already 🥲 had 8 days to complete it but Ben wasn’t on the island on the final day.

[lilac fjord]

It never announces when he’s back but I promise if you ever get that quest again he’s there on the spooky festival because I was annoyed at that too the first time

[novel lintel]

I haven’t got to the spooky festival yet, it was an errand from the board outside the General Store, and Ben was off-island for the entire 8 day period 😅

[lilac fjord]

The spooky festival is the last or second last of fall, did you get a letter? I know the letter is from the errand board from Sam’s but you should be able to complete every errand

[novel lintel]

I haven’t gotten that far yet, I’m on Fall 18 currently. The errand I got on the board for Ben was near the beginning of Fall, and it ended just after the Harvest Festival I think. If Ben doesn’t come back until the spooky festival, he definitely wasn’t around for me to complete my errand. Other people have posted on other platforms about this happening with multiple NPCs, maybe you’ve just been lucky enough not to have experienced it ☺️ thanks for your help though!

[frank summit]

Hello everyone. Thank you for bringing this to our attention 🙌

Do you happen to remember the specific time and in-game date when you picked up the quest from the board, @novel lintel ? That information would really help us investigate the issue more accurately. Also, thank you for your help, aquarius005!

Thanks so much again!

[novel lintel]

Ah sorry, I don’t remember the exact time and date. I know it was the beginning of Fall, and the errand timed out just after the Harvest Festival, so probably 8 or 9 days before that? The errand had an 8 day time limit and it was the “Grow Me Something” errand for orchids. I don’t know when Ben leaves the island, I just realised I couldn’t find him to complete the errand, and when I tried to search for him on the relationship page it said “this person isn’t around”