Pao Pao Walkthrough: Every Main Story Quest in Order

Pao Pao’s story is a chain: almost every quest starts the next one, either directly, through a letter in your mailbox or through a new option in someone’s chat menu. Follow this page in order and you’ll never be stuck wondering who to talk to. The side quests that branch off along the way, such as Croc’s fishing lesson and Haze’s gardening tutorial, are on the side quests page.

Quest List

The table lists the main quests in play order. How It Starts is what puts the quest in your journal, and Reward is what the quest itself hands you, including coins and items from letters it sends.

How Quests Work

Three things move the story forward, and it helps to know them before you start.

• Talk options named after the quest. When someone has something for an active quest, their chat menu gets an option with the quest’s name, such as The Fastest Mail in Town in Nancy’s menu. Pick it to advance the step.
• Letters. Many quests start or finish with a letter. Letters usually arrive the next day or two days later, so sleep and then check your mailbox. A quest letter starts its quest the first time you open it, and any coins or items in it are yours at the same moment.
• Restaurant goals. Some steps ask you to earn restaurant stars, serve a set number of one dish or work a shift in a costume. Put the dish on your menu as soon as a step asks for it. The restaurant stars guide explains every star requirement.

Almost everyone lives in the City. The exceptions are Haze, whose farm is in the Forest, and your own house in the Outskirts (the Village on your map).

Arrival in Town

Arrival

The story starts the moment you step off the train. If you ask Gray at the station for directions, he sends you north toward the sea, up the main street.

1. Get to the restaurant. Follow the main street north and try the restaurant’s front door. It’s locked, and the note on it tells you to pick up the keys at the post office.
2. Find the post office. Talk to Nancy at the post office and choose Arrival. She won’t hand the keys to a stranger. Instead she opens the restaurant herself tomorrow and asks you to prove yourself by serving at least 5 customers. Until then, you’re sent to the staff house on the hills east of town.

Finishing the quest starts New Home, New Job, New Life.

New Home, New Job, New Life

1. Find the passage to the Outskirts. Head east out of the City. The step completes as soon as you reach the Outskirts, where your new house sits on one of the hills. Min’s letter How to Open the Restaurant goes into the mail at this point and arrives the next day.
2. Spend the night in your house. Go to bed and sleep until morning.
3. Check the mailbox. Open Min’s letter. It lists the opening routine and includes 500 coins, which covers most of the shopping in the next step.
4. Buy ingredients and put them in the restaurant fridge. You need 10 Catfish, 10 Carrots and 10 Tomatoes. The Fish Shop sells Catfish for 20 coins each, and the Vegetable Shop sells Carrots for 15 and Tomatoes for 20 (see the shops guide). Store all 30 in the fridge in the restaurant’s kitchen.
5. Prepare the daily menu. Pick the dishes you’ll serve today. Your starting recipes are listed in the recipes guide, and all three ingredients you just bought go into Catfish with Vegetables.
6. Open the restaurant.
7. Serve customers. Serve 5 customers.
8. Meet with Nancy. Go back to the post office and choose New Home, New Job, New Life. Nancy is convinced, hands you the Restaurant Key and sets your first big goal: a star from the Guild of Restaurateurs.

Rising Star

1. Meet the requirements for 1 restaurant star. Star 1 needs a total rating of 500, 10 servings of Catfish with Vegetables and 5 successful orders in a row. The restaurant stars guide explains each task. The star arrives on its own once everything is met.
2. Wait for a letter from the Guild. Sleep, then read First Star! in your mailbox. It carries 750 coins, and reading it finishes the quest.

Earning the star sends three letters. First Star! and Nancy’s The Fastest Mail arrive the next day, and Haze’s A Little Secret arrives the day after that with 5 Simple Garden Beds and 25 Carrot Seeds. Reading them starts three quests:

• The Fastest Mail in Town (Nancy’s letter), the next main quest.
• Legend Reborn (First Star!), a side quest about reaching more stars. See the side quests page.
• Putting Down Roots (Haze’s letter), the gardening tutorial. See the side quests page.

Nancy’s Letters

The Fastest Mail in Town

Read Nancy’s letter The Fastest Mail to start this quest.

1. Talk to Nancy. Choose The Fastest Mail in Town. Her pigeon mixed up the mail again, and she hands you a Letter to Croc.
2. Deliver the letter to Croc. Croc’s shop is right next door: step out of the post office, go up the stairs and look for the house with a huge fish. Choose The Fastest Mail in Town in his menu.

Croc pays you back with the Beginner’s Fishing Rod and two recipes: Salmon Sashimi and Carp Sashimi. He also gives you his fishing guidebook, which starts the side quest Fishy Business (see the side quests page). The fishing guide explains what you can catch with the new rod.

Not the Fastest Mail in Town

This one starts as soon as Croc has his letter, and it runs alongside Lord of the Books: Return of the Beaver below.

1. Talk to Nancy. Choose Not the Fastest Mail in Town to get the Letter to Sedric. Sedric is the librarian, and the library is to the left of the post office.
2. Get to the library. Sedric isn’t there. Talk to the Beaver at the library and choose Not the Fastest Mail in Town. Sedric left town until the Beaver & Beaver crew repairs the library, and the crew is short a carpenter. This starts Lord of the Books: Return of the Beaver.
3. Complete Lord of the Books: Return of the Beaver. Finish that quest (next section) so the library gets repaired.
4. Deliver the letter to Sedric. Once the library is open again, talk to Sedric and choose Not the Fastest Mail in Town. The letter is from Min, and Sedric promises to look into his disappearance.

Sedric suggests talking to the Beavers about expanding the restaurant, which starts The House That Pao Built. Two days later his letter Something About Min arrives and starts Book, Cash, and Two Flowers. You can work on both at the same time.

Lord of the Books: Return of the Beaver

Big Beaver, the crew’s carpenter, is a foodie who left town. He’ll only come back once your restaurant has good reviews.

1. Serve dishes in a single shift. Serve 10 orders in one day.
2. Return to Beaver. Talk to the Beaver and choose Lord of the Books: Return of the Beaver. Big Beaver is back, and the crew asks you to bring the building materials.
3. Give Beaver the necessary resources. Choose Give resources in the Beaver’s menu to open the library repair. It costs 500 coins, 10 Granite and 10 Oak. Buy both at the Resource Shop for 50 coins each, or gather them with the basic Pickaxe and Axe from the Tool Shop (400 coins each). The two tools cost less than buying all 20 materials, and the restaurant expansion asks for another 10 of each soon after. The Outskirts have plenty of Oak Trees and Granite Rocks.
4. Wait for the library to be restored. The repair takes one day. Sleep, and the library is open the next morning.

The quest wraps up when the repair finishes. Go back to Sedric to finish Not the Fastest Mail in Town. The crew’s thank-you flyer reaches your mailbox two days after you hand over the materials.

A Bigger Restaurant and a Missing Book

The House That Pao Built

Sedric starts this quest when you deliver Min’s letter. You need this expansion for Star 3 anyway, so it’s worth doing early.

1. Talk to the Beavers. Choose The House That Pao Built. The estimate is 10 stones, 10 logs, 1,500 coins and 2 stars.
2. Order the restaurant upgrade. Choose Upgrade Restaurant in the Beaver’s menu and order the Small Restaurant. It needs 2 stars, 1,500 coins, 10 Oak and 10 Granite, and the coins and materials are spent when you order. See Restaurant Expansions for the bigger layouts that follow.
3. Wait for the construction to finish. The work takes two days.
4. Check the mailbox. Two letters arrive when the restaurant is done: the Beavers’ The Restaurant Is Ready! and Min’s short Last Letter From Min. Open the Beavers’ letter to finish the quest.

Book, Cash, and Two Flowers

Read Sedric’s letter Something About Min to start this quest. Bring at least 3,025 coins: 25 for seeds and 3,000 for a library fine.

1. Talk to Sedric. Choose Book, Cash, and Two Flowers. Before he vanished, Min borrowed a book he said would change everything, and the library cards say Rusty the raccoon has it. Sedric falls asleep before he can tell you where Rusty lives.
2. Find Rusty. Ask Croc (choose Talk, then Rusty’s Address): from Croc’s house, head due north, and across the bay you’ll find a beach with dumpsters that Rusty turned into a house. Talk to Rusty and choose Book, Cash, and Two Flowers. He won’t admit to having the book.
3. Find out how to earn Rusty’s trust. Talk to Sedric, choose Talk, then Rusty’s Trust. Rusty kept borrowing books about growing gladioli, so a gift of seeds should win him over.
4. Bring Rusty the gladiolus seeds. Buy Gladiolus Seeds from the seed merchant in the City for 25 coins (see the farming guide). Talk to Rusty and choose Give the seeds. Until you’ve talked to Sedric and have the seeds with you, Rusty keeps pretending to be his own twin brother. He takes one packet, admits he has the book and says he’ll return it once its 3,000-coin late fee is paid at the post office.
5. Bring the money to Nancy. Talk to Nancy, choose Book, Cash, and Two Flowers, then Pay the fine. You need 3,000 coins on hand, and they’re spent right away.
6. Talk to Sedric. Choose Book, Cash, and Two Flowers. Rusty returned the book, and tucked inside is a note in the secret code Min used for his recipes. Nobody at hand can read it.

Finishing the quest pays 1,000 coins. The next day a letter from Gray, Help, arrives and starts Min’s Six.

Min’s Six

Min’s Six

Gray, the apothecary, used to work with Min and offers to help. This is the longest chapter of the story, and the five friend quests below all run inside it.

1. Talk to Gray. Choose Min’s Six. Min split the key to his code into six parts and gave them to people he trusted. Five went to friends Gray can point you to, and the sixth went to his sous-chef, Finn. Gray warns that some of the friends moved away, so their homes may need rebuilding first; the town repairs are listed under Repairing Town Buildings.
2. Meet with Min’s friends and get their code keys. Talk to Haze, Brock, Toby, Milo and Zippy and choose Min’s Six in each of their menus. Each one starts a friend quest, and finishing it gets you their piece of the key. You can do them in any order:
   • Haze: Release the Kraken
   • Brock: The Mafia Is Immortal and Starving
   • Toby: Sponsored Segment
   • Milo: An Old Enemy
   • Zippy: Ready Player One
3. Meet with Sedric. With all five pieces, choose Min’s Six in Sedric’s menu. He copies them and insists you still need the sixth.
4. Meet with Gray. Choose Min’s Six. Gray thinks he can decode the note without the last piece.
5. Wait for Gray’s letter. His letter Decoded Note arrives the next day. Reading it finishes Min’s Six and starts On Min’s Trail.

Release the Kraken

Haze is sure a Kraken is prowling around her farm in the Forest. Talk to her, choose Min’s Six, and promise to help if it comes back.

1. Wait for news from Haze. Her letter It Came Back! arrives the next day.
2. Talk to Haze. Choose Release the Kraken. The creature left footprints.
3. Follow the Kraken’s tracks. Follow the footprints from the farm. They lead out of the Forest to the coast in the City, and the step completes when you reach the end of the trail there.
4. Ask the locals if they’ve seen the Kraken. The spot is in view of Nancy’s and Croc’s windows. Talk to Croc and choose Kraken: he saw a boat heading for Rusty’s beach early this morning. Nancy has a Kraken story of her own, but only Croc’s answer moves the quest along.
5. Talk to Rusty. Choose Release the Kraken. The “Kraken” was Rusty, sneaking over at night to leave Haze a bouquet.
6. Return to Haze. Choose Release the Kraken, then pick how to explain it: Defeated it. (keep Rusty’s secret) or It wasn’t the Kraken. (tell her the truth). Both answers end the quest and get you Haze’s piece of the key.

The Mafia Is Immortal and Starving

Brock, at the bathhouse, wants lunch from the fast food place before he’ll talk, and he can’t go himself because they know him there. Talk to him and choose Min’s Six.

1. Buy a disguise from Toby. Talk to Toby at the Clothing Shop and choose The Mafia Is Immortal and Starving. He talks you out of a firefighter costume and offers an inconspicuous one for 5,000 coins. Choose Yes. to buy the Passerby Outfit.
2. Put on the outfit and buy food from the local fast food place. Wear the Passerby Outfit and talk to the fast food seller in the food court. With the disguise on, the counter sells you a Combo meal for 300 coins.
3. Bring Brock the fast food meal. Choose The Mafia Is Immortal and Starving in Brock’s menu while carrying the meal. He gives you his piece of the key plus 1,500 coins toward Toby’s costume, and sends the food off to be tested.

Sponsored Segment

Toby wants his clothes seen by a famous designer who’s visiting town in secret. Talk to him and choose Min’s Six. He gives you the Festive Kimono.

1. Work a full shift in the Festive Kimono costume. Wear the kimono for your next full shift at the restaurant.
2. Return to Toby. Choose Sponsored Segment to collect his piece of the key. You keep the kimono.

An Old Enemy

Milo, the scientist, needs proof that you really work for Min. Talk to him and choose Min’s Six.

1. Cook Nasi Goreng and serve it to 10 people. Serve 10 Nasi Goreng. Only servings after the quest starts count. The recipe comes with Star 5 (see the recipes guide), so you’ll need five stars before you can make progress here.
2. Meet with Milo. Choose An Old Enemy. Milo hands over his piece and tells you a fast food owner had been at war with Min before he vanished.

Ready Player One

Zippy, at the arcade, found an old newspaper photo of the courtyard where the town’s first e-sports tournament took place. Talk to him and choose Min’s Six.

1. Find the courtyard from the photo. Search the City for the courtyard in the photo. This step has no map marker, so you’ll have to explore. The step completes when you walk into the courtyard.
2. Talk to the owner. The old champion there owns the last working dance machine from those days. Choose Ready Player One. He’ll move the machine to Zippy’s arcade overnight.
3. Wait until tomorrow. Sleep.
4. Talk to Zippy. Choose Ready Player One to hear the deal: beat the champion’s high score on the song “Evening Walk”, the first one on the list.
5. Beat the arcade machine owner’s record in the song “Evening Walk”. Play the dance machine at the arcade and score more than 2,000 points on Evening Walk.
6. Talk to Zippy. Choose Ready Player One to get his piece of the key.

Following Min

On Min’s Trail

Gray’s letter Decoded Note starts this quest. Min marked his path with paint you can only see under a UV flashlight, and Milo has one.

1. Get the UV flashlight from Milo. Choose On Min’s Trail. The flashlight is broken, and while Milo fixes it he’d like a Mango Cheese Pie, packed for takeout.
2. Bring Milo Mango Cheese Pie. The recipe comes with Star 6 (see the recipes guide), and its Cheese comes from a Cheese Dairy, which Milo sells (see the shops guide). Bake the pie and pack it at a Packing Station (1,000 coins at 2 stars; see the tools guide). Bring it to Milo and choose On Min’s Trail to trade it for the UV Flashlight.
3. Wait for nightfall. The paint only shows in the dark, so wait until evening.
4. Find out where Min’s trail leads. Min set off from the restaurant. Turn on the flashlight and follow his markers into the Forest until the trail ends. There’s no map marker for this part.
5. Find out what’s buried in the meadow. Bring a Shovel (250 coins at the Tool Shop) and dig up the spot in the meadow. Min left a chest there, too heavy to carry home and shut with a combination lock.

Digging up the chest finishes the quest.