Stuck on Ginger Island

[smellincoffee]

It's been close to a year since I tried exploring Ginger Island on my only save that has access to it, my original, and last night I went over to see what was up. I explored all around, but one path is blocked by a giant turtle, and while I can get into the volcano I can't make any progress. Another path is blocked by a boy with wild hair sitting on top of a ladder. No one will talk to me except for parrots who want to take or sell me golden walnuts. My only obvious path forward is paying the parrot who is blocking the westward path golden walnuts, but I've only found four.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Finding Golden Walnuts allow you to open up all of Ginger locations. So it's essentially a treasure hunt map. There are 130 of them so there are a lot to find. I didn't really "get" GI at first and how to look for Walnuts and I will recommend without any hesitation to look at the Wiki for Ginger Island South (the starting area) and the walnut hints. See how the mechanism works, how the hints work and maybe get a feel for how to find them. I needed that.

After finding a few and opening up an area or two you may find it possible to continue without too many trips to the Walnut Wiki. On my second playthrough in Ginger (my current one), I got hints from the Parrot and found all but 4 without needing the Wiki. And the best thing about that was they were easy, obvious ones. Not even any tricks or hidden behind other actions. I'd just forgotten to check the relevant places, lol!

 

[Jianadaren1]

Given that you've found four, that means that you have access to Ginger Island North.

There are about 10 walnuts that you can find there (or Ginger Island East, where you found the first one) without needing to fish or go into the Volcano. If you can't find those though, then either go fishing or go into the volcano and kill baddies, grab treasures, and mine rocks. You'll get 10 soon enough

 

[Draconifors]

Maybe you already figured it out, but you definitely can make progress in the volcano. There is a simple trick to it that's really obvious once you realize what it is.

The first time I entered the volcano, I had no idea how to make any progress (I tried everything I could think of), but I got an idea later and got past that initial hurdle.

PS. There is a hint on the screen when you enter the volcano. It's also something you may be familiar with if you've played a lot of different videogames. Minecraft and Terraria, for example, use the same mechanic.