Secret Medicine of the Forest


 * The name of this quest is alternatively translated as Herbs of the Forest (Yen Press, Progressive) or Forest Elixir (Yen Press, volume 8).

The «Secret Medicine of the Forest» (森の秘薬) is a quest available in the village of Horunka on the 1st Floor of Aincrad in Sword Art Online. The quest rewards the player with an Anneal Blade. The cooldown time for the quest is twenty-four hours.

Background
A Horunka village missus's daughter was stricken with a severe illness that was completely unfazed even when treated with medicine from the market. The only other way to cure her daughter was to brew a remedy from an ovule of a species of carnivorous plants inhabiting the forest further to the west. However, plants of that particular type were extremely dangerous and those that actually bloomed were rarely seen, resulting in her complete inability to obtain any. Thus, she offered a long sword handed down in her family to the swordsman who would obtain the ovules for her as a token of her appreciation.

Quest Details
When the player enters the missus's house, the Non-Player Character (NPC) offers the player a cup of water, saying that she does not have any food at the moment, despite something simmering in the pot, which is meant to be a slight hint to the player that something was wrong. If the player accepts the offer for a cup of water, the steady sound of a child coughing is soon heard from the other side of a door to the next room and the player can then offer their help to the NPC.

After accepting the quest and hearing out the NPC's story to the end, the player needs to travel to a forest to the west of the village, where they must find a plant monster called a «Little Nepenthes» that has a flower blooming atop its mouth, and kill it to get the item required for the completion of the quest: a «Little Nepenthes's Ovule» (リトルネペントの胚珠). However, as the spawn rate of Little Nepenthes possessing the flower is rather low, the player may boost their chances of encountering this specific Little Nepenthes by killing regular Little Nepenthes in the area and thus forcing the Nepenthes to re-spawn. Once the player has found and killed a Little Nepenthes with a flower and obtained the required quest item, they need to return to the village missus to turn in the quest item and receive their reward.

In the official release of the game, a cooldown timer was added to the quest. Whenever any player accepted this quest, no other player was allowed to start the same quest for a period of twenty-four hours.

Completed By

 * Kirito
 * Ryufior

Trivia

 * One month after the start of Sword Art Online's official service, it took a week on average for three people to complete this quest due to the amount of players aiming to complete it.
 * Kirito assumes that the spawn rate of the Little Nepenthes with a flower is less than 1%.
 * According to rumours during the beta test, a flowerhead Little Nepenthes may transform into a fruithead variant of the monster if not killed in a timely manner.
 * In the beta test, flowerhead Little Nepenthes never spawned together with fruithead Little Nepenthes. Kirito assumes this was changed in the official version of the game in order to surprise beta testers.
 * According to Argo, the Secret Medicine of the Forest is the most worthwhile of quests obtainable in Horunka Village in terms of rewards.

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Medicina Secreta del Bosque