1. sometimes when my chief is pointing out a rare collectible, I can't, for the life of me, find it. It leads me to suspect that perhaps he was trying to point out a piece of the tablet that I had already gotten, but since they never show up more than once after being collected, no collectible shows up. Does that make sense?

2. Takes forever to make a Master parent, it seems. It also seems like male Adept Parents slack off quite a bit. Both of my tribes have been at least 20 away from max population for a while.

3. Builders do nothing once everything is built. It's as if there is no need whatsoever for that skill. Even trainee builders don't really do any work. Ever.

4. What happened to all the epidemics? In VV2 it seemed every other day at least there was some sort of mass illness. My doctors do a lot of studying and laundry, but rarely do I see any healing (or sick people for that matter).

5. Why can't children chiefs teach other children? Maddening is what it is.

5. Children Chiefs have to be old enough to teach Children.
4. I think they would heal Villagers on their own....
3. Builders would do something. They would work on the Huts or Excercise.
2. My way of becoming a Master Parent is to constantly put a Male Villagers on a Female 50/50+ so she won't get a Baby.
1. You have to look for the Collectible in the direction he/she points. LadyCFII edit: This is not correct - the chief does not point to the collectible.

Ok, I guess I already knew those the answers to those questions. It was more of a "why is the game like this?" question.

5. Why does age matter? if this is a "divine right of chiefs", it shouldn't make any difference how old the chief is. After all, a chief with no skills can teach others.

4. I'm sure they do heal them, but I rarely see a sick villager, unlike in VV2 when I would get epidemics on a regular basis.

3. Builders do not work of their own accord as in VV2. Once you have everything built and completed, they don't do any builder work unless you tell them to.

2. Yes, I have done that as well. But it takes forever for the parent to become master on their own, even with a good head start.

1. The direction thing only works a small percentage of the time for me. The chief will point toward the water but it is a turtle shell.

1.The pointing is random. He/SHe doesn't actually point to the collectable. You just need to look REALLY hard.
2.If you want babies, then just drop the man onto the woman aand they should "Kiss" if not, try again. He gains experience. The best way would be making a younger woman kiss an older man or a younger man kiss a older woman. You just keep doing that and you should eventually get the Master Parent. Also, an adult (not the Chief) will gain parenting experience if they tell a story to a child. Just drop him/her on a kid and they should be "Telling a Story".
3.Yes, that is a problem. If you are sure you have EVERYTHING built, then you could set them to another task. You should have someone with building expirence in case your huts need working on...
4.I haven't played VV2, actually. I think you should be glad that there aren't any epidemics. xD
5. I don't think children chiefs have that much wisdom to teach. xD They can teach at 14 (or is it 18?). CHildren can't really teach other children.

1- There are some collectibles who are very hard to find because they are the same color than the background or/and they are hidden behind a tree or something like that. You must look for the little sparkles. And they are not in the direction pointed by the Chief, he always point at the same direction! You must search every where!

2- It is the one who kiss the other who gains parenting skills. If you constantly put him/her on the other without let them going in the love-shack, again and again, it will not be too much long!

3- You may try to re-put them on fixing hut constantly, but you must have the time for that!

4- The epidemics in VV2 were an event or a gong's effect! If you want to increase your doctors' skills, just put them in the hospital area (spoiler: as soon as you get the 2nd level of Medicine. End of spoiler) and they will learn by their own (if they are selected as healer) and so we don't need to have some sick villagers!! I love this improvement!!

5- It's 18!
I think that the Chief must have a minimum of experience of the life to be a good teacher!!

Remember - don't pause to look for the collectible. The collectible can take a minute or two to appear - if you're paused when it is supposed to appear, it will be just plain lost.

Also, many people advise you to point, so I'll back up Laurence - the chief never points at a collectible. He just points, and sometimes maybe a collectible happens to be in that direction. You'll have to look for it, and it can be anywhere collectibles normally appear. (Which is almost anywhere, for feathers.)

I tallied this the other night after I got my lv3 leadership and had the chief point. I picked up 5 commons and 7 uncommons of variety, but NO rare. I painstakenly searched for over 10 minutes with no rare showing up anywhere. I run my searchs grid-pattern with overlaps. Are you absolutely sure the chief will out a rare? So far, this one has not.

Mind you, I am not complaining yet as I have all the collectables for this village except for the tablet and that is by design. I think I got a good haul tech-wise.

I think you've asked this question elsewhere with similar results, Leo, but I may be mistaken who posted in that thread. If your rare was not hidden under a villager or a island feature (Like behind the statue) and you didn't pause to look for your collectible, then you probably have a glitch on your hands. I do know there are one or two people that swear up-and-down that the chief pointing doesn't work for them.

The collectible will always be rare. Villagers are a common source of frustration for a collectible-hunt, because their constant motion often has me overlooking sparkles that I would have seem on a still background. I often start a lecture, then drag the chief to the path before the villagers gather, to keep them out of the way. (Especially a problem with kids building sandcastles on top of my coral.)

I doubt that the collectible will remain for 10 minutes though; CFII has stated that it can take a couple of minutes to appear, but mine usually shows up pretty immediately after I get the sound effects and the "I used magic" rainbow over the chief's head. If you've been searching for 5 minutes, I wouldn't expect to find it at all.

Thanks everyone for their advice, but I've already completed the puzzles for 2 different tribes, and I'm aware of most of the old tricks (like the speed-kissing for parents). Most of this stuff I am asking is minutia that I've noticed after playing the game for so long.

1. My theory about the missing collectibles is this:
a. chief points out collectible
b. rare collectible is randomly chosen from the 16.
c. tablet collectibles only appear once.
d. If collectible is randomly chosen from the 4 tablet collectibles, and they have already been collected (or that particular one has already been collected) then no collectible will show up. I'd like to hear from one of the programmers to see if there is a backup plan programmed in.

2. When I make a male parent, I do the speed kissing until he is Adept. Usually he will start going on an "embracing spree" with the fertile females. However, sometimes I open up my game and see him doing everything BUT embracing, and the population is well below the limit and there are fertile females about.

3. In VV2, the builders would take to repairing the huts if that was the skill they had, and they would do that for the rest of their lives. I wish the builders in VV3 would do the same thing.

4. Regarding the teaching thing by the chief:
a. chief possesses magic powers (see creation of food)
b. Is it not also a magic power that enables the chief to bestow skills upon children?
c. Why should a child chief be deprived of that magical ability?

5. I have plenty of Master Doctors, and I know how to increase their skills. That's not the issue for me. The issue is people rarely seem to get sick. In VV2 there were the gong events, but there were also more crates with rats in them and stuff. It's just rare that I actually SEE a single sick person, much less a bunch.

6. One more thing, in the hints and tips for this game, it says that children can inherit some skill from their parents, but this is totally not the case. None of my babies were born with any skills and only got it from lecturing or from events. False advertising!

Lemon Curry,

1. Your theory may be correct, or, as others have said, the rare collectible is simply being missed. I doubt that LDW would consider this to be an important enough bug to correct in future versions, though.

2. I agree that when the game is off sometimes villagers set to parenting don't always seem to "perform" as well as they might. They do seem to be OK when the game is on, though. When I open one of my mature games where the population is maxed out, there tends to be a constant background fusillade of kissing noises. Again, LDW may not consider this important enough an issue.

3. I agree here, and it is something missing in VV3 that lots of people are disappointed about. If it's because of a bug, I hope LDW will release a fix in the next version!

4. At a guess, this is probably a programming limitation. Since only adults can "tell a story" perhaps the routine for that is hooked into for use with the "lecturing". I'm not a programmer, but I'd suspect that LDW would prefer to leave it alone; they don't want to rewrite the code and end up breaking some other part of the game, so they may not want to fix this, either.

5. I agree that we don't often see lots of sick people in VV3. It takes several days before my villages reach the "magic" 30 so that the "Doctor is In" Award is granted. Most of them must have been healed while the game is off. I don't really consider this much of an issue.

6. I'm pretty sure that I've seen kids appear with smidges of skills that they didn't get from the chief's lectures. It doesn't seem to be as common as in the other two versions, but then they didn't have the chief's lectures.

These are just my guesses and opinions and could easily be totally off-beam. About the only people who could answer for sure are LDW, and they don't usually comment in these cases, unless there's an obvious bug.