Gardenia Prologue: How to Unlock the Axe, Pickaxe, and Scythe

In Gardenia: Prologue, one of the critical aspects of the game is to harvest materials using a variety of different tools. You begin with a simple stick, but eventually, you can unlock the axe, pickaxe, and scythe to harvest more materials.

The stick can be used to bash the plentiful snail shells, clam shells, and the yellow dotted shrubs for resources. However, the stick is inadequate for other crafting items strewn about the land.

Each of the three unlockables is used to chop down different materials. The axe will work on trees, bushes, and logs. The pickaxe will work on mineral stones, which are larger than the iron ore pieces dotting the game. The scythe will work on grass and small shrubs.

Below, you will find how to unlock each item, beginning with the axe and pickaxe.

Obtaining and completing the quest from Moxie

The first thing you want to do is speak to Moxie, walking along the path between both of your huts. Agree to plant ten saplings around the land. She will then hand you a list of recipes that will turn seeds and fertilizer into saplings. What you now need to do is go and collect seeds, fertilizer, and pink stones.

Just above Mr. C on the hillside, you will find a garden where items have lights exuding from them. This little garden has many seeds for you to collect with a nearby crafting station. Make sure to grab at least ten seeds. If there are less than ten total, bash some shells until you find enough seeds.

Next, fertilizer is a large brown pile, usually with red lights exuding from the body. They are usually grouped in at least pairs, and can be found all over the place. Again, collect ten.

Pink stones are crucial items in the game, the last necessary component to craft items. You may find some around the island, and bashing clamshells is an easy – if sometimes time consuming – way to find a random pink stone. Once you have ten seeds, fertilizer, and pink stones, head to the nearest crafting station.

Make sure the items are in your visible inventory (your first ten items). Check your recipes to see what items you need, but for these, it’s one seed, one fertilizer, and one pink stone. Select the seed or fertilizer with L1 or R1 and hit Triangle to throw the item(s) on the crafting station. Do so for the other. Make sure it stays on the stone square!

Importantly, do not throw the pink stone until the end! If you do, the whole thing will explode and send your items flying, leaving you to retrieve them. It’s best to just follow the recipe. Remember, a number next to the item indicates how many need to be on the crafting square.

After throwing the pink stone to finish the crafting, you should have a sapling to collect. Hooray!

Place these in your main inventory and select them. You can plant them anywhere that shows up green as you try to place the sapling. Place it with Square. Do this ten times and return to Moxie.

Receiving the axe and pickaxe from Moxie

Moxie rewards you for planting the saplings with an axe and pickaxe! Now you can chop wood and break apart mineral deposits for those resources. If you speak to Moxie again, she will sell you different seeds.

While you’re going about bashing things with each item, pay attention to the blue bar underneath each item in your inventory. This is its durability meter. You can see a numerical value by pressing R3 and moving over to the item.

Importantly, you cannot repair durability. Once it reaches zero, it will be destroyed and removed from your inventory. Sticks have unlimited durability, so always use these to bash shells.

When using the axe, it is recommended to only chop logs into wood pieces. They take less chops than a tree or bush, and it’s best to leave the latter until they’ve reached the mature stage. You’ll know this is the case as mature will be in parentheticals when highlighting a certain tree or bush.

You can build another of the destroyed item if you have the requisite items and most importantly, the recipe for the item. Without it, you cannot replace your axe and pickaxe should they be destroyed. Be judicious in your use of them in this case.

Speaking of recipes…

How to obtain the scythe

The scythe is the last item needed to truly harvest all of the resources – that spawn within a few days – yet is not as easily acquired as the axe and pickaxe. First, you must find the recipe scroll for the scythe. These scrolls can be on the ground, in snail shells, or rarely in treasure chests.

Second, the recipe is one iron bar, five charcoal, two stonewood knots, and one pink stone. The last three resources you can find around the island. However, for the iron bar, you must also find its recipe scroll. The iron bar contains four iron ores, one stick, two charcoal, and one pink stone.

Because the order in which you obtain the 37 recipes is random, it may take some time until you unlock both scrolls. Either way, stock up on the items you know you’ll need so you can immediately craft the scythe.

With your scythe in hand, you now have all three tools to fully harvest resources in Gardenia: Prologue.

Each tool has two craftable upgrades

While difficult to obtain the items necessary to craft the upgrades – and again, needing the recipes – the axe, pickaxe, and scythe each have two upgrades crafted using a different main ore.

First, notable due to its purple color, you need to obtain geotyte ores. Rarer than iron ores, you will sometimes obtain these from using your pickaxe to cleave open stones; you’ll know which stones because they will say “Pickaxe Required” when highlighted.

Like with crafting the scythe, you will then need to produce geotyte bars similar to the iron bars crafted (recipe required). These become the base of creating the upgraded tools. Once you have that, you can then produce your upgraded tools, though it is recommended to begin with the pickaxe to harvest more minerals.

Geotyte tools will be purple just like the base ore.

The second upgrade is even rarer, wolfram. It is a green ore that, even though the skystone is described as the rarest item, is much more difficult to obtain than any other item in the game. You will also need the wolfram bar recipe, just like the getotye and iron bars. Again, target the pickaxe first.

The upgrades increase the durability of each tool. While numerically it will still be on a 100 scale, it will take longer for each upgrade to whittle down the durability, allowing you more harvesting before needing to replace a tool. It’s also aesthetically nice having tools colored in different shades.

Now you know how to unlock all three tools to truly harvest resources. Find those upgrade materials to make your tools last even longer!