Disney Dreamlight Valley patch fixes a quest that cursed me

polygon.com:

Disney Dreamlight Valley’s biggest problem was its Dream Shards — a resource so scarce that lots of players, including me, were getting soft-locked out of the game for days on end. However, developer Gameloft says it’s fixed the problem by tweaking the game’s resource balance issues and fixing other problematic bugs.

Dream Shards, a key resource, will now spawn more often — as a reward for feeding animals, clearing thorns, and digging up sparkling dirt.

Dreamlight Valley is an early access game, and there are technical problems that have just recently hindered some of that enjoyment. I’m playing on Xbox Series X via Xbox Game Pass, and based on what I’ve heard and read, it’s in much better shape than the Nintendo Switch version, which is apparently constantly crashing or glitching out. I haven’t experienced technical snags more often than once or twice in the 19 hours I’ve played, which doesn’t feel irregular to me. But I have been held up by that imbalanced resource spawning.

I’ve reached one quest line that unleashes a curse onto the village — one that locks all the villagers inside their houses, except goddamn Kristoff, Merlin, and Rapunzel’s mom. To progress, I need five Dream Shards, which are incredibly rare. For reference, after 19 hours, I have none. You need to clear thorns for a chance at finding them, and only a few thorns spawn a day — unless you’re unlocking a new area. The respawned thorns have provided no Dream Shards for me, so I grinded cooking and fishing to unlock Dreamlight points to open a new area instead.

See above: My house is filled with cooked fish and fruit cups. (With everyone locked in their houses, I couldn’t sell any items either, which means I had to drop everything on the ground.)

After a