This is correct.
It's also the main reason most of my posts were flailing about Hammer collections. We have to craft all 3 Repaired Helms to progress, it'll take most people let's say an obsessive 5-6 days+ (or a sleepless 4 which is very unhealthy) and we'll need another 4-5 days (we have to craft them first!) of every 2 hour collecting from our 3 Fire Pandas on top of another round of Xiang Pu fights at the end of the event to make the final items.
I paid for the packages in part because I wanted to breathe for hammer collecting (bonus, the Expansion Permits were a deciding factor! 😊 ); if it takes too long for the stones at the beginning, things start getting really REALLY tight.
At this point the forums are pretty spread out as well- we have people who zoomed ahead still worrying and calculating (personally i'm just calculating my buffer zone, or how many collections I can comfortably miss), and people who haven't purchased/gemmed realizing and sharing what's coming.
Guaranteed Hammer drop would have been lovely, but then we'd all just be frustrated at another short timer. (Better than this for those who couldn't speed ahead though!) Two Sparkling Mines are required for this event's timing to even begin to work since we seem to be settling in to receive 1 Hammer every 2 collections from Sparkling Mines, and they're anywhere from the ~4 hours you're using to as low as 3 hours if someone had fully-upgraded mines.
So many 2 hour timers, even if they are guaranteed drops, is just.... not very fun.
The art's lovely and soothing, so it's just a shame the gameplay is a little irritating.
Even if I like to check in every 2 hours or so to take full advantage of my natural energy refills, I don't like feeling "forced" to or "i'll pay for it later", and since the timers are a little out of synch i'm pretty much constantly checking in.
And that's WITH paying for packages to zoom ahead to the middle roadblock, Hammer collecting! 😣 To be fair I did purchase myself some leeway, so I should be able to finish before the end of the event even if I do go out for a day (missing a few collections and energy refills) or actually sleep (i'm repairing a sleep schedule that started waking me after a rem cycle due to the every-2-hour pattern during the day). I didn't want the ridiculous stressed out nervous flailing of "I have to check my game NOW or I can't finish!!" and getting irritated if Real Life has the audacity to exist at the same time as my schedule check-in for this game.
Sanity, please. Sanityyyyy. 😂❤️
But shiny. 👀💗