itch.io

Hm...yeah that is a bit of a conundrum. I think people tend to assume patterns more often than not, so if there's one item that gives you more detail the more of them you collect, the player will assume there must be more. But since there's no way to tell from just looking at one of the item (or even multiples, neccessarily), and you don't want to miss out on any of the storylines, that paranoia just spreads to everything and leads to item hunting. (or it sorta did for me, anyway.)

So it might just be as simple as marking the items that you need multiples of? Not something as grotesquely obvious as a "1/20 TAPESTRY FRAGMENTS COLLECTED", obviously, but maybe just something subtle like a key phrase ("You wonder if there is something more to these...") or taking them to another screen when they examine the pieces. Then, as long as there are at least two examples, the player will be able to draw the connection and go "ah, ok, so that's how this works" and be reassured that they're not missing out by not hoarding 40 Slime-Covered Notes.

Granted, that does sort of gamify the experience in ways that aren't ideal, but I think that might just be unavoidable for any instance of "collect X objects to unlock Y story"? So it might be better to make that small sacrifice and confine it to an identifiable set of objects, rather than let that sort of item-paranoia leak out all over everything.

IDK, I'm just rambling now. You almost certainly know better than I do here.