This guide is NOT a walkthrough of each island challenge, but more like tips I have come to realize during the course of my HKIA run. I can give you some helpful advice, but it might not be what you're looking for, especially since I'm not using an official website.

If you find something that isn't helpful or if you want to fact-check me, please do! I will gladly give you credit when I edit this guide accordingly.

I also must warn you that this guide contains spoilers on top of spoilers. If you don't want to be spoiled on certain game mechanics and story elements, come back to this once you have completed a large amount or all of the story.

Without further ado....

Let's get started!

So, to begin this guide, I will tell you this: Pompompurin as a companion is a MUST for getting gold. His Slow and Steady companion ability gives you 5 extra seconds for each and every island challenge. It might not seem like a whole lot, but the extra 5-second cushion does wonders for your chances.

Pompompurin's other ability that makes you jump higher is helpful to jump over water in your way and lava on mount hothead. When I started getting gold, I already had full friendship, so I'm not sure how helpful his level 12 jumping ability is, but it still gives a little bit of a cushion so you don't go from land to water constantly. For those early in the game, you swim very slowly until a long while later, so you will want to jump higher!

Pompompurin's friendship has to be at least level 12 to unlock his Slow and Steady companion ability. It is definitely hard if you don't have his favorite gift unlocked. So, if you need to know his favorite gift, I will give you the way to get it.

First, the dessert machine needs an upgrade. Whether this happens before or after level 12 escapes me at the moment.

If the upgrade happens after level 12, Pudding is a good bet to get his friendship up. It's just cactus cream and coral milk.

If before, here are the ingredients to get his favorite: cactus cream, coral milk, and bananas. I'll let you see what it makes!

You can get cactus cream in the cactus patch south of the Oasis mailbox, and coral milk anywhere in the Rainbow Reef. Pompompurin gives you bananas after you give him gifts.

I hope this helps a little bit to getting Pompompurin's friendship up. As I said before, you MUST have him to get gold trophies. The 5 seconds he gives you might just be what you need to get that sweet, sweet gold.

The second thing you need is POTIONS! I suggest the Speedy Walking potion, the Deep Diving Potion, and the Speedy Swimming potion. Speedy Walking requires glowberries and tofu. Deep Diving, sugarkelp. Speedy Swimming, swampmallow. Pick a LOT of glowberries on your route to gold. Those run out the fastest.

When you get the Witch's Hut open with Kuromi(I think it's level 8 friendship), make many of these potions. Just remember: You can only have one potion effect active at a time! So, I'll let you know which ones are the most helpful.

So first, I HIGHLY recommend the Speedy Walking Potion. You'll be doing land challenges more often than not, so it's the most helpful to have. While aiming for gold, have at least 10 minimum on hand just in case you fail a few times. Trust me, I have failed a lot and gone back to the potion hut so many times.

The second is Deep Diving, but only for Rainbow Reef. You swim pretty slowly at first, so deep diving potions will help in that regard. You'll need to go through the story a bit to get to be in Rainbow Reef for a while, so I'd stick to land challenges at least until you get the mermaid outfit, which is pretty early game.

The last is Speedy Swimming. Now, you don't need this one as much. But there is at least one challenge that this is absolutely necessary if you're really far in the story(I'll get to it later).

These potions will make you go way faster, and with Pompompurin's Slow and Steady ability, you'll already be well on your way to gold trophies!

I'm pretty far in the story already(if you couldn't tell), but I had so much trouble trying to find the island challenges on my own. Luckily, you can actually see them on the map if you zoom in!

You can see that there are pink squares with little circles next to them. Those squares are the challenges and the circles are the flags. I chose a picture that doesn't have too many spoilers, but you can see a pink square next to the stone walkway in the middle next to a cabin AND one on top of the big hill at the bottom of the map. I sadly don't have the pointer on it nor have it circled(I'm not that good with electronics), so it might be hard to see. But, if you do see it, go to the location you saw. If you get lost, just keep on opening your map with the M key or through the menu and see where you are relative to the pink square.

Now, when you get to that square, and you complete the challenge at least once, you'll see that, on the post, there will be a flag. This lets you know the last challenge level you completed. Once it reaches a Gold Flag with the flower in the middle, you have reached the gold! ....for that spot. Keep on looking for those pink squares on the map. If you lose track on which ones you've completed... I'd say to go to each square individually or maybe have a copy of your map somewhere other than in-game and check off each spot. I don't know how to tell if you have completed a challenge completely without that.

To be completely honest, I don't remember how many island challenges there are in each area off the top of my head. But, I do know how to tell how many challenges you need to complete... by the blueprints you get!

When you first complete an island challenge in any area, you get a blueprint for a bronze trophy for the area. When you look at the crafting plans at the crafting table, the game will tell you how many pieces there are in total, which in turn lets you know how many island challenges you need to complete to get the trophy. You only need bronze for each area to tell since the amount of pieces remains the same for each trophy level.

The bad part is, that the blueprints don't tell you which ones you completed and need to complete, so you'll have to find them again on your map and look at the flag(if there is one yet)!

So, remember how I told you about the one challenge you'll definitely need the Speedy Swimming Potion for? Well, it's Caldera Plunge on Mount Hothead.

I got so far into the story when I started trying for the gold that I didn't realize the Caldera Plunge makes you swim in lava. Swimming in lava? IMPOSSIBLE!

Well, not quite! I JUST completed it when I started writing this guide, so, people who have lava on the mountain, you're in luck! ...somewhat.

In order to complete Caldera Plunge later in the game, you'll need Retsuko for Caldera Plunge. She lets you swim in lava. However, you'll need to get her friendship up to Level 19. Just one more level until best friendship.

Luckily with the speedy swimming potion and/or the fast flippers, you can complete gold even without Pompompurin. Heck, I did it on my first try, and I was prepared to do a completely new save JUST to get that achievement.

So,getting Caldera Plunge's Gold Trophy Piece IS near impossible after you revive the volcano, but not completely impossible. I'm actually not sure if it's impossible even before then, so if it is, new players, please don't be discouraged. Getting gold on Mount Hothead just might have to come way later.

~This entire section refers to a setback using Pompompurin. If you don't use him, you'll avoid this problem entirely. I still recommend using him, but it'll provide just a little more of a challenge in the clouds.~

So, after completing more Island Challenges, I realized that certain Cloud Island Challenges are harder to do than I thought.

Remember how I said Pompompurin's jumping ability is pretty helpful?

....I was wrong, at least in Cloud Island Challenges.

Pompompurin is still helpful with slow and steady, but you have to do something more to get the gold in the Clouds.

So, what I figured out is that holding down your jump key with Pompompurin at high jumping ability makes you unable to use the balloons on the air lifts. I mean, when you jump high and when you activate your balloons, you don't go anywhere. You just stay in the same spot until you inevitably go down because you were in the air too long. By the time you get back, the island challenge time runs out.

So, how I got around this was to short jump and then balloons. In other words, you don't hold down your jump key right away, you tap and then hold it. It's pretty hard to do if your reflexes aren't good or your typing speed isn't fast. It took me many tries to get it down, and even with the 5-second cushion, I barely completed one of them. I think the island challenge in question the one near the Candy Cloud machine. I know there are 6 challenges in the Cloud area, but I think 3 I had trouble with because of the high jumping with lifts.

SO, if you go to Cloud Island to get the gold trophies with Pompompurin, just be aware to tap and then hold your jump key with the air lifts. I'd also recommend you practice the trick a little on the lifts before you go for cloud gold with Pompompurin's jump ability activated. I should have practiced myself but I learned the hard way.

After completing the Meadows Gold, I had another note I needed to make about Lumber Leaping.

When you leap from the lumber, even with Pompompurin's jumping ability at max, if you miss a flower jumping down the lumber, you can only get the last one from the jump. If you miss any more than that, you need to cancel because, unless you go back to the mailbox, you will not be able to complete the challenge at all.

Lumber Leaping is the challenge that I think is the hardest since you need to be precise with your jumping. Now, you may disagree. Sandbar Dart is also pretty difficult seeing how you only have 7 seconds to get the Gold difficulty done. However, there are ways to get around that: either you have 2 players complete the challenge by having one player at each end, or you can use Pompompurin AND the speedy walking potion, which is still pretty difficult if you miss the jump at the 2 sand islands, especially without fast flippers. Lumber Leaping, on the other hand, if you are doing this alone and you miss any flower jumping down, you have to do it all over again, sadly.

EDIT 4: During a challenge you CAN go to a mailbox.It seems like a very good thing for Lumber Leaping because the mailbox is right on the lumber you need to jump from.

NOPE!

If you open another window like the map or inventory, the timer still goes on. So, by the time you get back to the mailbox on top of the lumber, you have little to no time left in the challenge. So, if you're trying to get gold ASAP, you should just cancel your challenge and redo it all.

I originally said that the timer can be stopped in EDIT 3, but I was wrong. I deleted the entire section because it wasn't accurate information. I'm truly sorry about that.

Sometimes editing doesn't help as much as remaking the entire thing. Lumber Leaping is a case where remaking is better than editing.

I'm not going to remake this guide, though. Editing it when I get new information is just fine for me.

New Players, you got lucky!

"The Biggest Challenge" update added something very helpful, yet very frustrating if you've completed the island challenges all the way through: You no longer have to do the challenge 3 times to get Gold.

As long as you're in the time frame for Gold you get all 3. You can tell by the time marker. When you get to the end of the Gold time, the timer turns Silver. I bet it's the same for Bronze, but I didn't get that far down.

HOWEVER: If you have done at least Bronze time for a challenge before the update, you still have to complete it 3 times.

I only was able to find this out due to me not completing the Snow trophy yet but getting Bronze for 2 of the challenges.

I'm glad this is implemented, but for players who have done the challenges 3 times to get Gold already, it's extremely infuriating because it means we wasted time.

So, is this guide completely useless now?

Not necessarily!

The overall timer remains the same now no matter what level you're on, but it doesn't mean that you can relax. The Sandbar Dart Gold Challenge still only gives you 7 seconds to get. The challenge just won't end right after that 7 second mark passes but you will only get the Silver trophy piece.

Though, I might make a new save just to see if this is the case. But, if you try this and see it's NOT the case, PLEASE let me know.

So, we've reached the end.

To recap:
Things you absolutely need:
Pompompurin as a companion with at least level 12 friendship
Speedy Walking Potions(tofu) for Land Challenges
Deep Diving Potions(sugarkelp) for Rainbow Reef

Things that are helpful:
Speedy Swimming Potions(swampmallow) for Caldera Plunge
Retsuko with level 19 friendship for Caldera Plunge
Fast Flippers for Caldera Plunge and Rainbow Reef
Pompompurin's jumping ability at a higher level EXCEPT IN THE CLOUDS


I know this guide contained spoilers galore, and I'm sorry for that. But the things I told you will allow you to get gold island challenge trophies much more easily than if you didn't know these things!

I hope this helped you figure out how to complete these challenges. If you need more help or if I missed something, let me know!

Thank you for reading~!