You could very well be right. I don't always micro-manage the game the way I have have been this one.

On a side note: I feel priviledged that you, arnie, answered one of my post. Thank you!!!

I was missing just one pebble that seemed to never come up. So I started timing how fast/long the collectables would appear.

The collectable itself (shell, pebble, etc.) remains on the board for 75 seconds (1 minute and 15 seconds).

The time in between when one collectable disappears and the next one appears is anywhere from 15 seconds to 3+ minutes.

I tried the "child on the island at the pond" idea, but I didn't see any real difference in how quickly the collectables appeared. The only thing that worked was when I had the kids actively collect any and all collectables when they appeared. That would trigger the next collectable to appear much more quickly.

After spending about 3 days doing nothing but waiting for that last pebble, nothing came. But within a few minutes of when I started having the children collect everything that appears, my long lost pebble finally appeared!

Eastcoastfan, I'm sorry your new tribe is having such a tough time. I started a new tribe last night with the setting on regular, but that tribe has had too much good luck. There was so much food available that they couldn't harvest it all before more came. There were something like 1,000 coconuts available. At no time did a fog or flood come. I even got the scarecrow up before the birds attacked the food!

Even now, with 11 people, there's still too much food to harvest. They don't have the time. They're trying to build and clear the brush away and do research to the point that harvesting the food gets put off! Just about everyone is a Master Farmer already.

I never thought I'd have the problem of having too much food when starting a new tribe!