The Water Sawmill is a new place Joe can visit to help you get lumber without using Power. This update brings:
- the Water Sawmill
- 5 new Botanical Plates for Joe to study and unlock new foraging areas
- a new buyable plot of land, that you can use though only for one thing
To get to the Water Sawmill, you have to first use Joe and travel to the Factories area. When you get there, you will see a message at the lower right side of the game informing you there are new Botanical Plates in the area, and a quest related to it.
Look around the Factories area and see if you can find the plates. If not, the next time you return there you will get some stronger hints. It’s possible a certain plate will require Joe to enter the Factories area from a certain alpaca-populated place in your farm. 🙂
The are 3 Botanical Plates in the Factories area and 2 in the new Water Sawmill area.
How do I get to the Water Sawmill?
In the Factories area, head north with Joe and go past the Furniture Factory and the Factory Office. Then, hover over the highlighted area below and click the ‘Go to Water Sawmill’ button.” Going to and from the Water Sawmill area uses 3 Energy.
Alternatively, if you bought Bellflower Meadow, you can use Joe to go down the road the truck came on and click the “Go to Water Sawmill” button.
When you first get to the new land you will notice it’s covered by clouds. Use Joe to explore the area until you find the abandoned Water Sawmill and a Botanical Plate.
Click the “For Sale” sign in front of the Sawmill to check the price: 4,500,000 coins + 20 Purple Vouchers. At this time, the quest “The Water Sawmill” will also pop up.
When you buy the Sawmill, you will get a Shovel (lower quality than the one from Bellflower Meadow, but enough to harvest Orchardgrass, and 1 Green Voucher, useful to upgrade Joe’s storage from his Hat to the first Backpack. This should ease things for you if you haven’t bought Bellflower Meadow. If you did buy it, you already have the much better tools.
After you buy the Water Sawmill you will have to clean up the area (clear bushes, vegetation and the fallen tree) before repairs can start.
Pretty soon, Joe’s Backpack will fill up. To empty the Backpack, you can either:
- if you bought the Jolly Junkyard lot and built the Conveyor Belt, get Joe back to the Factories area inside the Junkyard fences (walk through the gate, like below), open his Backpack and move the Bush Wood and Grass directly to the Barn (since Factories and your main farm share the same Barn).
- if you didn’t buy the Jolly Junkyard lot and didn’t buy Bellflower Meadow, you need to go with Joe all the way back to the farm to unload his Backpack, each time his Hat or Backpack fills up.
- go to Bellflower Meadow and add the Bush Wood and Orchardgrass to the Old Shack.
You will see that you have plenty of ways of moving around to accomplish your goals, and you can use your creativity to find the best strategy for you.
Once you clear the area, open the quest and click the green “Call” button to call Sarah about repairing the Water Sawmill. Get through the dialogue and at the end decide if you want to hire her now or later when you have the 325,000 Coins. If you decide to do it later, when the moment comes, open the quest and call Sarah again.
The repair will take 72 hours. You can either wait, or skip the wait using RC.
Now, click on your restored Water Sawmill and make 5 lumber of any kind.
Attention! The Water Sawmill Storage only accepts Logs and Lumber!
You will notice that making lumber will take around 15 – 30 minutes. The time varies, depending on the wood type. The little creek powering the Water Sawmill is not as powerful as the electricity powering the sawmill from your farm’s Craft Shack, therefore cutting logs will take longer.
The intended use of the Water Sawmill is to allow you to get lumber over time without using Power. So, you can leave 50-100 Logs at the Water Sawmill and return the next day to collect all that lumber.
How do I add wood to the Water Sawmill?
Easy, first move wood to Joe’s backpack from either BfM or from the Jolly Junkyard inside the Factories area. Then, take Joe to the Sawmill area, open his backpack, and click “Move” to move the wood to the Water Sawmill Storage — that can accessed from the menu at the bottom.
How do I reach the clouds below the river?
You have surely noticed there are still some clouds left to clear below the river. How to reach them? Just head back to the Factories area, follow the road down with Joe, cross the bridge, and go in the direction the arrow is pointing.
Once again, explore the area with Joe to clear clouds and you will discover a fenced area.
There doesn’t seem to be a clear way to get inside the fenced area, so might as well clear the American Snowbells in front. Might lead somewhere :).
Of course, during this process Joe’s backpack will fill up and you will have to go back to the Factories area to empty it.
Once you get inside the fenced area, clear the remaining clouds and click the land sign to get more info about the lot.
To actually buy the Lot, you have to call the owner and go through a lengthy conversation. Once that’s done, click the land sign again to Buy it.
You will find that this particular lot grows… Orchardgrass.
Orchardgrass and ‘Orchard’ Grass are two separate things!
Orchardgrass is a nutritious type of grass, and ‘Orchard’ Grass is normal grass, but Tyrone thinks it is a superior variety. Oh, dear.
Then, clean up 18 bushes inside the fence and collect 20 Orchardgrass. When you finish doing this and complete the quest you will get notified to take the Orchardgrass back to your farm and feed it to an animal with lots of melanin. Hmmm…
Go back to your farm and you will get a new quest with more information.
That’s all there is to know about this new land!