Thread:Nuicakes/@comment-27948648-20150918030028/@comment-26722955-20150918175351

OK, here goes...

There are several ways to obtain Collection Items - from searching a photo that has that collection item available, as a random drop when charging Friend's pictures, a random drop from the Collector icon on your desktop, and as a gift from a friend. (Only the collection items with the green plus sign in the upper right corner are giftable though.) The ONLY way that a Collection Item counts towards a quest is if the quest for that item is active when you receive it. You can have 5 Blue Pencils in the Colorful Set, but when you get the quest for the Blue Pencil, you have to obtain another in from one of the ways I listed. As long as you get it with the quest active though, it does not matter how you actually obtain it. Most collections will have 6 quests involved - one quest for each collection item and then a final quest to combine the collection. (It is a good idea that when you are close to completing all the quests for a collection, check to make sure that you have all the combining elements that you need. If you don't, add them to your wish list so that your friends can gift them to you.) Occasionally, you will have one quest that requires you to find two of the collection items to complete they quest. In those cases, you will usually find that each item can be found in maybe any picture in text mode, or by bannishing an anamoly. In any case, you just need to find both of them to complete the quest. Also, the quests will sometimes bounce back and forth between two collections. For instance, on the current event, there is a collection for Meditation Aids and the next one after it is for Set of Amulets. I got the quest yesterday for Gotu Kola, the first item in the Meditation Aids collection. When I got the item and completed that quest, the next quest that popped up was for "Wood" Sign, the first item in the Set of Amulets collection. So this is a case when the quests will bounce back and forth between two collections. DO NOT combine these collections until you get the actual quest telling you to do so.

A good way to know if you have previously completed the collection's quests is to check the right side of the collection to see if it says "Complete" and you will have at least 1 of the items the combined collection created. (So when you combine the Banker's Treasure - the very first collection listed - you create the Coin Collection.) The exception to this is for collections you may have accidentally combined before you got the quest. Also, some of the items that are created when you combine a collection can then be used to create an artefact. If you have done that, then it will again look like the collection has not been completed. ( If you use that Coin Collection to create the Money Tree artefact, the collection will show that you have not completed it and that you have zero Coin Collections even though you have completed the quests.)

I hope this clears some stuff up for you. Any questions?