How much of the side content is just RNG based fetch quests?

I'm new to the game, I played the original xenoblade and loved it but was frustrated by the quantity of boring side missions. I was told that this game's side content was better, but the first side quest I picked up in torigoth is the one where you have to find the woodworkers son. I find him and fight some monsters and I think "ok that was a fun short side mission" but it's not over because he wants me to find confusion ivy for him. I go around looking for tree collection points, I find 3, and I only got one confusion ivy. He needs 7. I don't mind normal "go here get this and bring it back" fetch quests but I cannot stand quests with no clear direction where numbers are what is determining whether you get to complete the quest or not. I want to do the side content, but the last thing I want to do is skip travel cycle to reset gathering points. How many of the game's quests are like this?