I was playing through Okami this weekend when I heard of a special treasure area called “Moley’s Treasure Trove.” My source told me to look for “a large, circular slab of rock at Taka Pass.” Sounds easy enough, right?

Apparently, you had to use the Digging Champ (advanced digging) ability to find this. I looked at the large, circular slab of hard ground by the moles (thinking the name implied that it would be close to Moley, the mole leader). I dug and dug, but the ground yielded nothing but a couple of inkpots and some food. I was disappointed, but I still held out hope that this treasure would prove easy money and be just a few footsteps away.

I ran around Taka pass, gradually exploring a wider and wider radius. I dug around every rock that was remotely circular. After finding no treasure troves, I went back to a side area of Taka Pass (accessible through a cave) where a I had bloomed a guardian sapling. I found a couple of clovers to bloom but, once again, no treasure trove.

In desperation, I looked to the internet for help. While a web search for “Moley’s Treasure Trove” yielded few results, I did find one clue. It appeared that one of the digging champ spots WAS in Taka Pass by someone/something named Bingo. I was very excited, despite the fact that I was not sure who Bingo was. I assumed that it was the little dog I fed and went back to the game.

Once I found the little dog, I ran around and around but to no avail. I was so thoroughly disappointed by what I had hoped would be a simple treasure hunt that I quit for the day. I had spent nearly an hour running around looking for something that definitely wasn’t worth the time.

As I look back, I can see how I was sucked into what was perhaps an unintentional addictive game element. While extras such as this treasure trove are meant to be somewhat elusive (if not time-consuming), I had taken on the typical addict’s view of “it’s just around the next corner” or “just one more try.” I hate that part of myself sometimes, because I lose sight of what’s really important (in terms of the game and my life in general) and become focused sometimes to the point of hindrance. On certain memory mini-games, for example, I could not try more than ten times at once because I would no longer be able to keep track of all the elements. One such games involved remembering the order in which I had to kill the five thieves, and after ten tries, I had been holding the order for fifty separate thieves in my short-term memory.

In the end, I left Moley’s Treasure Trove alone and decided to move on. Even if I had stupidly missed something, it was not worth my time anymore. I shut off the game in my frustration and took a break.