Alright so I'm completely stuck in the enigmatic Grove and shockingly it's not because I'm losing battles. I just can't freaking move forward. I looked up what was supposed to happen next in case I was just doing something wrong so I know I'm supposed to find a loose pile of dirt and after literally 11 hours (spread out over the course of 2 days) I finally found one. But then I chose to dig a hole and everyone died. Now I don't play this game constantly but I do play between 6-8 hours a day. That was 2 days ago. I haven't found dirt since AT ALL!

Now maybe this event is just rarer than I expected and this is normal and it just so happens that every guide I find doesn't mention that fact but if someone could please tell me if this is normal then that'd be great. Also, I don't know if this changes anything but I've also been retreating from most battles and ignoring when Jinxie pops up and asks if I wanna reveal an object because I got bored after the first 100 of each.

Yes, retreating from battles rather than fighting makes a difference- in regions 1 and 2, the system determines how close you are to the next event by how many battles you've fought (it's silly really and it doesn't help that nothing tells you this or indicates it in any way.)
I don't know how many battles it is between any given events in those regions, but if you don't fight the battles it won't be able to progress.

(though if you've gotten the dirt-dig event the next one is a boulder, not more dirt)

Link: https://www.sylestia.com/forums/?thread=87830&page=1#2 Author: Scathreoite Time Posted: 4/9/2020 at 7:59 PM Yes, retreating from battles rather than fighting makes a difference- in regions 1 and 2, the system determines how close you are to the next event by how many battles you've fought (it's silly really and it doesn't help that nothing tells you this or indicates it in any way.) I don't know how many battles it is between any given events in those regions, but if you don't fight the battles it won't be able to progress. (though if you've gotten the dirt-dig event the next one is a boulder, not more dirt)

Thank you so much! That's really helpful, wish I knew that and didn't waste time like I have. Although I didn't get a bunch of chests and found the peddler a few times so I guess it wasn't that bad. I'll go accept all the battles I come across and let you know when it works. Thanks again!

Alright, so I got the boulder about 3 minutes after I started accepting battles. Wow, that's so much easier.