Palia: Up The Hill Quest Guide

Nai’o’s follow-up to Through the Woods asks for almost no travel and a lot of crafting. Up the Hill hooks your housing plot into the Kilima Stables network, and the entire quest hinges on one buildable item: the Stables Board. Everything else is material math.

Quick answer: Get 30 Ancient Wood Planks and 7 Whitestone Slabs, craft the Stables Board at a Worktable, place it anywhere on your housing plot, then speak to Nai’o when he appears there.

How to unlock Up the Hill from Nai’o

Up the Hill is a Guide quest that only becomes available once the Through the Woods quest is finished. Nai’o hands it over in conversation at the Central Stables, and starting it immediately drops the Stables Board recipe into your crafting list.

If Nai’o has nothing new to say, open your journal and check the Completed section under Guide quests. Through the Woods needs to sit in that list before the next quest will trigger, and that quest chain runs through the introductory Elderwood content.

Stables Board materials: 30 Ancient Wood Planks and 7 Whitestone Slabs

Both materials are refined goods, not raw drops. The quest consumes all of them when the Stables Board is built, so there is no partial credit for holding onto extras.

Material	Amount	How it is made
Ancient Wood Plank	30	1 Ancient Wood each, refined at a Sawmill
Whitestone Slab	7	2 Whitestone each (14 total), refined at a Smelter

Palia quest tracker showing Up the Hill with the Whitestone Slab objective still incomplete — The pinned tracker keeps Up the Hill visible while you work through the Whitestone Slab count. Image: Singularity 6

Refining either material requires the matching recipe. The Ancient Wood Plank recipe comes from Ashura’s Foraging Guild Store, and the Whitestone Slab recipe comes from Hodari’s Mining Guild Store.

Recipe	Vendor	Cost
Ancient Wood Plank	Ashura’s Foraging Guild Store	500 Gold
Whitestone Slab	Hodari’s Mining Guild Store	300 Gold

Route 1: Gather in the Elderwood and refine at your plot

Head into the Elderwood with an axe equipped and chop Ancient Trees until you have 30 Ancient Wood. The conversion is one to one, so the raw count matches the plank count exactly.

Swap to a pickaxe and mine Whitestone nodes in the same zone until you hold at least 14 Whitestone. Nodes drop Whitestone alongside regular Stone, so check the running total in your Backpack rather than counting swings.

Palia Backpack tab of the inventory screen showing equipped tools and gathered materials — The Backpack tab is where you verify your Ancient Wood and Whitestone counts before heading home. Image: Singularity 6

Return to your housing plot and load the Ancient Wood into a Sawmill to produce Ancient Wood Planks. A Heavy Sawmill will chew through the full batch without you needing to reload it as often.

Palia quest tracker showing 30 of 30 Ancient Wood Planks collected and Whitestone Slabs still pending — The plank objective ticks over to 30/30 as the Sawmill output lands in your inventory. Image: Singularity 6

Queue the Whitestone into a Smelter. A Heavy Smelter turns two Whitestone into one Whitestone Slab in roughly two and a half minutes per slab, while a Basic Smelter takes closer to four minutes.

Tip: Start the Smelter first and the Sawmill second. Slabs are the slower half of the order, so the wood will finish while the stone is still cooking.

Route 2: Buy the planks and slabs at the Kilima Village Blacksmith

If you would rather spend Gold than time, the Blacksmith register in Kilima Village stocks both finished materials under the Builder’s Starter Kit listing. Buying them outright skips the gathering trip, the refining wait, and the recipe purchases entirely.

Travel to Kilima Village and interact with the register at the Blacksmith. Scroll to the plank and bar section of the shop stock.

Palia quest tracker in Kilima Village showing an active Elderwood investigation objective — Other tracked objectives stay pinned while you shop in Kilima Village. Image: Singularity 6

Buy the quantities you are missing. Ancient Wood Planks cost 8 Gold each and Whitestone Slabs cost 70 Gold each, so a full purchase of both runs 730 Gold.

Item	Unit price	Cost for the quest
Ancient Wood Plank	8 Gold	240 Gold for 30
Whitestone Slab	70 Gold	490 Gold for 7
Both	—	730 Gold

Mixing the two routes works fine. Chopping the wood yourself and buying the seven slabs is the cheapest way to avoid the long Smelter timers, and it costs 490 Gold.

Craft the Stables Board and place it on your housing plot

Interact with a Worktable on your plot and find the Stables Board in the recipe list. Searching for the sign by name is faster than scrolling past the Barn Bell and camping decor entries.

Craft it once. The board consumes all 30 Ancient Wood Planks and all 7 Whitestone Slabs, and the tracker immediately switches to the placement objective.

Enter build mode and drop the Stables Board anywhere inside your plot boundaries. Position does not matter for quest credit, though putting it near your front gate keeps the fast travel point convenient later.

Palia quest tracker instructing the player to place the Stables Board on their housing plot — The tracker updates to the placement step once the Stables Board is crafted. Image: Singularity 6

Talk to Nai’o on your plot to complete Up the Hill

Nai’o walks onto your plot once the board is set down. Find him near the front of the property and run through the dialogue to close out the quest.

You will know it worked when the completion banner reads “Up the Hill Quest Completed!” and the objective clears from your tracker. The Stables Board stays on your plot as the reward, letting you reach the stables network without leaving home.

Why the quest stalls

Nai’o offers nothing new because Through the Woods is not yet marked complete in the Guide section of your journal.
The Sawmill or Smelter shows no matching option because the Ancient Wood Plank or Whitestone Slab recipe has not been bought from the guild store.
Nai’o has not arrived because the Stables Board is still sitting in your inventory rather than placed on the plot.

Once the board is up, the riffrocs handle the rest of the connection and your plot behaves like any other stop on the network. It is a small quest with an outsized payoff, since every trip back into the Elderwood afterward starts from your own front yard.