For the event to collect 30 Moon Flowers. 1.) When I talk to the NPC and hand in flowers, does handing in less than 30 flowers completely destroy progress? If it does then it's really annoying. 2.) There are 2 maps to collect the flowers and one of the maps sucks now because of the change to the map. I think the map was widened because of the 800x600>1024x768 update. I don't remember a gap on the left during the last event and the following video doesn't have the gap either. The gap makes it much harder than it should.
1) Nope, progress is saved. You can opt to hand them in each time you collect or hand them all in at once if that helps to reassure.