Harvest and Halloween Update/Harvest Festival Timed Challenges

The Harvest Festival Timed Challenges are the first of 2 sets of Timed Challenges added to the game by the Harvest and Halloween Update. This update was released on the 5th of September 2016 for iOS players; with release still pending on all other platforms.

Harvest Festival Event
The Harvest Festival timed challenges begin when a player reaches game level 7 in the game (or automatically after downloading the update if the player is already above level 7).

The Harvest Festival timed event contains 3 challenges. Players had a set number of days to complete the following tasks:



For the duration of the Harvest Festival challenge, Harvest Basket special items are required in addition to energy points to play Farm. Harvest Baskets are given as rewards for every successful investigation for every picture, and as rewards for banishing anomalies, but not for playing puzzles. Harvest Baskets cannot be gifted between friends, however they are given as rewards for combining some of the new Harvest Festival collections, and they can be given as rewards by the Sphere of Miracles and Pyramid of Wonder.
 * Collect 500 Apples by winning games of Gem Match to win the new "Magic Cube" Desktop Award, which gives one random Anomaly bansihing tool every 24 hours.
 * Complete 30 holiday quests to win the once-off Harvest Talisman which increases the rate of energy restoration by 5 times for 24 hours. Upon completing these quests you will also be able to combine the Harvest Talisman Artefact, which decrease the amount of Energy required to play Pictures and Puzzles for24 hours.
 * Achieve 'Academician' level in Farm to win 2 unique avatars, one male and one female.

Important: The amount of time available for the Harvest Festival timed challenges will vary across platforms. It is important to note that the Challenge timer begins counting down from the moment the update is released in a device's app store, and not from the moment a player downloads the update. Delaying installing the update will not give you extra time to play the challenges.

The Gem Match Challenge - collecting Apples
Players win the new Magic Cube Desktop Award, which rewards items for banishing Anomalies every 24 hours once won, by collecting 500 Apples. Apples can only be won by successfully completing the Gem Match puzzle. For each successful win of Gem Match, you can potentially win between 2-5 Apples as one of the rewards for completing the puzzle.

When you open the Research Window for Gem Match by tapping on the Gem Match puzzle icon on your Home Desktop you will see Apples listed as the first item in the 'Can be found' list for the puzzle. Apples are available to win for every play of the puzzle at every puzzle level.

You must keep playing (and winning) Gem Match until you have collected 500 Apples in order to complete the challenge. Once you have collected all 500 Apples, the Magic Cube Desktop Award will automatically appear in the row of awards at the top of your Home Desktop.

The Magic Cube desktop award is located in the cenre (?) of the row of Awards at the top of the Home Desktop. You can tap on the Magic Cube at any time to bring up its information window.

Once the Magic Cube desktop award is won and appears on a Home Desktop, its reward timer immediately starts counting. Once 24 hours have passed, the timer will stop counting and the award will start to sparkle to indicate that its rewards are ready for collection. Tapping on the sparkling Magic Cube will release the reard - a random item for banishing Anomalies (e.g. the Hand Fan tool used to banish the Lost Time anomaly).

As soon as the reward is collected, a new 24 hour timer starts to count down before the next reward is ready for collection, at which point the next timer will start. Note that the timer doesn't restart until the reward is collected, so leaving the Magic Cube for more than 24 hours before collecting the reward does not change the rewards and delays collecting the next reward.



Note: Just because an item is on a picture/puzzles 'Can be Found' list, it is not guaranteed you will win that item every time you play that picture/puzzle. There is an element of chance in the game that determines what items you will win when you successfully complete a picture/puzzle. All items are weighted based on their value in the game. Higher value items, like the Apples needed to win the Magic Cube desktop award, are weighted in such a way that they are less likely to be won than low value items such as some low level collection items and most combining elements.

Since the mechanism that rewards Apples is set up so that they are always included as one of the rewards for winning games of Gem Match, it is the number that you win per play that is weighted (with low numbers more likely than high numbers). This means you will not win a high number of Apples every single time you win a Gem Match Game, often you will only win 2.

However, all of the Timed Challenges are designed to be completable within the given time limit, so it is possible to collect 500 Apples well within the time given. The task is designed to be challenging, but it is not impossible!

Hints/Tips for Collecting Apples
Although it will take many plays of Gem Match to win 500 Apples, there are things you can do to make the challenge easier:
 * 1) Read the Gem Match article on this wiki for tips on playing Gem Match, including how to make special gems and combine them to create special moves to clear the board faster.Seekerseye_inventory.png
 * 2)  Use tools when playing Gem Match. You can use Seeker's Eyes and Time Machines when playing Gem Match. Using a Seeker's Eye will remove one yellow border from the game board at random. This can be particularly useful for tricky corner pieces. However, since you cannot control which border is removed by the Seeker's Eye, it is better to wait until you only have a few left to remove to increase the chances of it removing the difficult one. Time Machines add 45 seconds to the puzzle timer, which can be a great help for the more difficult board configurations. Use the List of Collections, List of Collection Items and List of Collection Item Locations pages here to find out which collections give out these tools when combined, and where you can find the items needed to combine those collections.
 * 3)  Don't just play Gem Match over and over again; try to play a variety of pictures and puzzles as much when possible. The more you play a single picture/puzzle repeatedly, the worse the rewards for each win gets. In order to keep your chances of getting many Apples per play high, try mixing other pictures/puzzles into your playing rotation. Perhaps rotate trying to get the lunch chest with the other challenges in the Harvest Festival event (playing Farm and completing the 30 challenge quests). This will also help avoid feelings of frustration with the game and challenge.
 * 4) Don't rely on Luck Talismans/Artefacts. Luck talismans (e.g. Horseshoes) and artefacts (e.g. Symbol of Success) do not increase your odds of winning a particular item, such as Apples, i.e. they do not change the weighting of items. However, they do increase the number of items you will win for each successful play of a picture/puzzle. Because you can win more items for each play, you essentially get more rolls of the dice each time you win. Since Apples are rewarded using the same mechanism as Christmas balls/Pumpkin Lanterns/Tokens special items etc during holiday themed timed challenges (i.e a number of Apples are awarded for each play, it is the amount you win that is weighted not whether or not you win them) instead of using the same mechanism as collection items/combining elements (i.e. you may or may not win the item each play, it is whether the item will be won or not that is weighted), Luck talismans and artefacts will not affect the number of Apples won per win of Gem Match. Since the game is coded to give out Apples for each play, increasing the number of different items won per play, by using luck talismans, will not change anything. The number of Apples given is also based on chance, with higher numbers weighted to appear less often than lower numbers, but Luck talismans/artefacts cannot help with this since they do not affect weighting.
 * 5) Use the Time Talisman artefact. If you are struggling to win Gem Match in the time given (particularly at lower puzzle levels, where less time is allotted to each play) then try to use a Time Talisman artefact. Once activated, this artefact adds 1 minute to every picture/puzzle for 24 hours.

The Unique Avatars - Getting Farm to Academician Level
Players can win the Unique Avatar by playing the new picture, Farm, until they increase its scene progress level up to Academician Level during the Harvest Festival Update's time sensitive challenge.

For the duration of the Harvest Festival update, Harvest Baskets special items were needed for each play of the Farm picture.

While the Timed Challenges are active (before you complete all three, or the timer expires, whichever happens first), Harvest Baskets were given as rewards for every successful investigation for every picture in the game (except Farm itself). At least 2 Harvest Baskets is given for every game you win, but winning up to 6 at a time is also possible.



Harvest Baskets are also given as rewards from banishing anomalies, but not for playing puzzles. Harvest Baskets cannot be gifted between friends, however they are given as rewards for combining some of the new Harvest Festival collections. Players with the Pyramid of Wonder or Sphere of Miracles also have a 1 in 6 chance of receiving Harvest Baskets from these Desktop Awards when collecting their rewards every 12 hours. The number of Harvest Baskets needed for each play of Farm increases as you increase the Picture Levels of Farm (+5 Harvest Baskets per Level increase), starting at 5 Harvest Baskets per play when the picture is opened at Novice Level and increasing to 40 Harvest Baskets per play when the picture is at Professor Level.

As a guide, in order to reach Academician Level on Farm, and win the new Avatar, you will need to play the picture approximately 150 times, which will require approximately 3,285 Harvest Baskets! (or 2,628 Harvest Baskets if using the Amulet of Santa artefact).

You will win an average of about 3.5 Harvest Baskets for every play of other Pictures during the challenge so will need to play roughly 940 other pictures to collect enough Harvest Baskets (or 750 other pictures to collect enough if using the Amulet of Santa when playing Farm). This works out at 34 plays of other Pictures per day over the 28 days of the challenge. A simple way of looking at this challenge is to aim to play all non-special item pictures (33 total) 2 times each day, if possible, which will allow you to win the challenge with plenty of time to spare even if the drop rate of Harvest Baskets in your game falls below the 3.5 average.

As soon as you return to your Home Desktop after playing Farm for the 150th time, a notification screen will appear to say that the avatar challenge is complete and you have won the unique Avatars.

Both avatars will automatically go into the Avatar section, but will not automatically replace your current Avatar. To use either of the new Avatars, you must tap on your current Avatar to bring up the Avatars window and scroll to the end of the list to find the new Avatar. Tap on the Avatar to select it.

Hints/Tips for Winning the Unique Avatars

 * 1) Try to play a variety of pictures as much when possible when playing, instead of just playing Farm over and over again. The more you play a single picture/puzzle repeatedly, the worse the rewards for each win gets. Additionally, the bigger variety of pictures you play, the bigger variety of collection items you can potentially win. This will greatly increase the number of regular collections you will be able to combine, which will potentially give you more tools, energy items, talismans and artefacts that will all help with completing the quest.
 * 2) If you are low on energy, but close to leveling up (at which point your energy will restore), play Buddha's Square until you level up. At higher picture levels Buddha's Square potentially rewards a cappuccino for each successful picture investigation. Cappuccinos restore 30 energy points when used, and Buddha's Square only requires 31 energy points at most to play (at professor level). This means you can play for free or next to free if you have a good success rate of winning Cappuccinos. Using Luck talismans and artefacts, like horseshoes, while playing Buddha's Square will increase your odds for winning Cappuccinos. This also means that Buddha's Square is a great picture to play when collecting Harvest Baskets, as by winning cappuccinos and restoring the energy you are using to play, you are basically collecting Harvest Baskets for free in terms of energy costs.Santa_amulet_2014.png
 * 3) If you are low on energy, avoid playing the newest pictures in the game too often (Tavern, Treasure Island, Theater, Forest House, Excavations, Winter Street, Flower Shop, Observation Deck, Banquet Hall, Spooky Yard, Wonder Shop, Mountain Resort, Rock Stage) as these pictures do not reward combining elements and usually have a high energy demand (except for Forest House and Winter Street). Although some of the collections rewarded by some of these pictures (especially Tavern) are tempting, the lack of combining elements means you will struggle to combine the collections they reward, and the majority of collection items they reward are for collections with lesser rewards than the original pictures in the game.
 * 4) Use the Amulet of Santa artefact to decrease the number of Harvest Baskets needed to play Farm. The Amulet of Santa artefact reduces the number of Special Items needed to play paid scenes like Farm by 20% per 24 hours once activated. Using Amulet of Santa artefacts when playing Farm could potentially reduce the total number of Harvest Baskets you need to find to reach Academician level from 3,285 to 2,628. Artefacts_portal.png
 * 5) Use the Valentines Amulet artefact to decrease the amount of energy needed to play every picture/puzzle when you are ready to play Farm a number of times. The Valentines amulet reduces the amount of energy needed to play by 10% for 12 hours, so will enable you to play Farm (and other pictures) more times with your available energy.
 * 6) Use luck talismans and artefacts, such as horseshoes, in conjunction with the Valentine's Amulet, and make sure to play Tree of Dates in rotation when you are playing the pictures. This will increase your chances of finding all the collection items needed to combine another Valentine's Amulet as you play.
 * 7) As you play through the 30 challenge quests to win the Harvest Talisman, you will be able to combine 5 new collections added as part of the update. These quests will reward Harvest Baskets once combined, and the HArvest Talisman itself helps with energy consumption while playing.

The Challenge Quests, the Harvets Talisman and the Farmer's Amulet Artefact
The Harvest Talisman can be won once a player completes all 30 of the special Harvest Festival challenge quests introduced as part of update. The quests must be completed within the time limit of the Timed Challenge in order to unlock the Talisman.

Once the quests are completed, the Harvest Talisman automatically goes into your inventory, and a new page of the Diary page will open.

A notification screen will appear to say that the 30 challenge quests are complete and you have won the Harvest Talisman, but you must go to the Talisman section of the Inventory itself to see and use the new Talisman.

Once activated, the Harvest Talisman will increase the rate of energy restoration by 5 times for 24 hours.

In addition to winning the Harvest Talisman, players will also be able to combine the Farmer's Amulet Artefact once they have completed the 30 challenge quests since the collections combined as part of the 30 quests create the 5 items needed to combine this new Artefact.



Once the quests are completed, players must manually combine the Farmer's Amulet Artefact. To do this, open the Collections Window and select the Artefacts tab. Locate the Farmer's Amulet artefact and press the green combine button.

You will need 25 each of the following combining elements to combine the Artefact - Second Hand; Minute Hand; Hour Hand; Clock Face. All artefact combining elements can be won by combining collections in the game. Every time you combine a Collection you will be awarded an artefact combining element at random. You can also be given these combining elements as Free Gifts by your Friends. Like Collection combining elements, Artefact combining elements are Free Gifts, and do not come out of your inventory when you send them as gifts to your Friends.

Once the combined, the Farmer's Amulet Artefact automatically goes into the Talisman tab of your inventory, where it can be activated.

Once activated, the Farmer's Amulet Artefact will increase the rewards for visiting friends (experience points and coins rewarded per charge and per daily bonus) by 50% for 48 hours.

Winning the Harvest Talisman
A special decorative border in the quest list marks the 30 quests needed to win the Harvest Talisman. Other quests added by the update, with regular gold borders, do not count towards the 30 when completed.



Note: the very first quest that displays the special decorative border is the quest to find the picture pieces needed to unlock and open the Farm picture. However, this quest does not count towards the 30 quests needed to win the Harvest Talisman. This means there are actually 31 quests that display the decorative border, but only the last 30 of them count towards the challenge. But importantly, you will need to complete this first quest in order to complete the challenge as the 30 quests that make up the challenge will not start until this quest is completed (there is only ever one quest with a special decorative border active at any one time) and the other quests require you to play the Farm picture (which this quest opens).

The special 30 quests that must be completed in order to win the Harvest Talisman consist of 5 collection sequences of 6 quests each. The first 5 quests of each sequence are to find each of the 5 items belonging to one new collection added by the update. The 6th quest is to combine the collection.

The 5 collections players gather as they complete the 30 quests are:

All the items that make up these collections cannot be gifted between friends (they do not have green plus signs to add them to your wishlist and they will not appear in the 'Send a collection item' tab when sending gifts to your friends.
 * 1) Happy farmer (combines to create "Farmer figurine" and rewards 10 Harvest Baskets when combined)
 * 2) Vegetable crop (combines to create "Huge pumpkin" and rewards 15 Harvest Baskets when combined)
 * 3) Abundant harvest (combines to create "Huge watermelon" and rewards 20 Harvest Baskets when combined)
 * 4) Staff of fertility (combines to create "Staff of fertility" and rewards 25 Harvest Baskets when combined)
 * 5) Harvest festival (combines to create "Pumpkin pie" and rewards 30 Harvest Baskets when combined)

They are all also 'Quest only' items, which means that they cannot be won normally by playing pictures/puzzles. They are only available to win in pictures while the quest for the particular item is activated and will stop being available to win in that picture once the quest is completed. They may also drop as random items when you are visiting your friends and charging their desktops; from the Collectors Desktop award when collecting its rewards; and from opening Pandora's Chests, however whether or not you get any of these items in those ways is completely up to chance.

This means that the only way to complete these quests is to follow the quest instructions as you get the quests. This makes these 30 challenge quests slightly more difficult than the challenge quests in some other Timed Challenges, all of which could be gifted between friends or won in regular play of certain pictures.

The Challenge Quests
The 30 quests that are needed to win the Harvest Talisman are:

Hints/Tips for Winning the Harvest Talisman and Farmer's Amulet Artefact

 * 1) Use the strongest Luck Talismans/artefacts you have available whenever you are playing. This will increase the number items you win for each play, which will increase you chances of winning the quest item. Diamond_horseshoe.pngnd Horseshoe talismans (+90% chance of winning items for 120 minutes) and the Symbol of Success artefact (+50% chance of winning items for 24 hours) are the most powerful luck talismans available in the game, so when playing other pictures choose pictures which award items needed for collections that reward these talismans. You will need to play other pictures during the challenge anyway to collect Harvest Baskets to play Farm, so by making sure that Tavern (rewards items for collections that reward Diamond horseshoes) and Venice; Buddha's Square; Throne Room; Mayan Temple; Ghost Town; Joy Cafe; Amusement Park; Bungalow; Misty Shed (rewards items for collections needed to combine Symbol of Success) are in your rotation while you increase your chances of getting more of these powerful luck talismans to use for the quests. Note that using powerful luck talismans will not guarantee that you win the quest item on your first attempt, as all they do is give a percentage increase to the coded 'chance' of winning the item in the game. If an item normally has only a 10% chance of being won per play of the correct quest requirements, then using luck talismans that give you a 100% increase will not give you a 100% chance of winning the item. It will just increase the 10% by 100%, giving you a 20% chance of winning the item. Hard to get items will still be hard to get.
 * 2) Use your Magic Crystal Talismans during the challenge. The Magic Crystal Talisman works as a luck talisman (it increases your odds of finding objects by 12% when activated), and the Social Events Update has fixed the problem where no other luck talisman could be activated while using it, so now you can use them again together again. This means you can add an additional 12% increase in odds of finding objects to other Luck Talismans that you use during the challenge. You can only use one other Luck Talisman once the Magic Crystal Talisman is activated (as you cannot use more than one Luck Talisman at a time), but you can use one of any other Luck Talisman or the Symbol of Success Artefact at the same time as Magic Crystal Talisman again. The Magic Crystal Talisman lasts for 10 days.
 * 3) The Challenge quests usually ask for you to play Farm, so it is best to continue to work on Farm as normal when playing and not to worry too much about the quests themselves, they will be completed as you go. That is, it is better to concentrate your resources just working on the Avatar challenge - getting Farm to Academician level. You will complete the quests naturally as you increase the picture to Academician level. The hints/tips for that challenge will therefore also aide in completing this challenge.
 * 4) Read the quest instructions carefully. Most quests just ask you to play Farm, but some will specify a mode. The item will only be available to win when the picture is in the correct mode. Most modes cannot be 'forced', which means you cannot make them appear in rotation. However, 'Text' mode can be triggered by banishing (not playing) an anomaly in the picture. If the quest asks for Text mode in Farm, then play other pictures until an anomaly appears in Farm. You can then banish the anomaly, making the next mode Text mode. (Make sure the picture is not in Night mode while waiting for an anomaly, play it to change the mode if it is in night mode).
 * 5) The items needed to complete the quests cannot be gifted between friends. However they may drop as random items when you are visiting your friends and charging their desktops; from the Collectors Desktop Award when collecting its rewards; and from opening Pandora's Chests. Whether this happens or not will be completely up to chance, but in order to increase your odds it is a good idea to visit your friends every day when doing the challenge.
 * 6) Warning: If you combine the collection you are gathering items from before the 'Combine' Quest (the 6th Quest in each sequence), the game may glitch and not recognise that the collection is combined. If this happens you may be stuck unable to combine the collection again in order to complete the combine Quest and move on in the Quests, effectively ending this challenge for you barring finding the collection items a second time from random drops.

After the Challenge is complete
Once you complete all three Harvest Festival Update Challenges, or after the challenge timer expires, whichever happens first, Harvest Baskets may be restricted so that they will only be won in a couple of Pictures (instead of in all the Pictures like during the Timed Challenges).

This restriction of the challenge quest special items after completion has been a feature of the last few timed update challenges (e.g. Christmas2014, Halloween2014), Travel Time Update, Mountain Vacation Update) and is designed to allow players to collect enough to complete the challenge within the short time frame but not amass a large quantity after the challenge is over in the months leading up to the next update. The game does not want players to have an excess of these items as they would give an big advantage in the game after the update.

Typically, one of two things may happen to the Harvest Baskets when the next update is released:


 * 1) The Harvest Baskets may be removed from the game by the future update, and any remaining in the player's inventory could be converted to other special items (such as Fireflies, Ladybugs, carrots, cupid arrows and tokens). In this case, keeping the number of Harvest Baskets a player can accumulate down will keep the number of other special items the player can win down, since these items are meant to be rare.
 * 2) The Harvest Baskets could be kept in the game as a requirement for playing SFarm, like the Cupid Arrows were kept in the game as a requirement for playing Tree of Dates after the Valentines Update and Tokens were kept in the game as a requirement for playing Observation Deck after the Travel Time Update (which introduced them in an identical quest). In this case, the game would want to keep the number of Harvest Baskets a player can win down after the challenge so that Farm would work the same way as any other picture with a special item requirement - where the special item is rare and can only be won in a few pictures.

Either way, players being able to accumulate a large amount of Harvest Baskets (by winning them in every picture) after the challenge is over but before the new update arrives would give them too large a boost in game resources compared to what would normally be accomplish-able in the same time period, which is why recent updates have introduced the restriction after the challenge quests are complete or the timer expires (whichever happens first).

It is worth noting that some of the regular quests that were introduced with the update require you to play Farm (including some of the very last quests of the new crop you will work through). In order to maximise how many Harvest Baskets you can earn to aid in these quests, it is best to not complete all 3 of the timed challenges until the challenge timer is nearly finished. Keeping one of the 3 challenges incomplete for as long as possible will keep the time period that Harvest Baskets can be won in every picture in the game open as long as possible.

Normally, the best Challenge to leave incomplete is the Gem Match challenge of finding 500 items by winning games of Gem Match (in this case Apples). However since this particular Challenge gives the Magic Cube as a reward, most players will probably want to complete it as quickly as possible to get the coveted new desktop award.

Alternatively, players could opt to complete the Gem Match challenge in order to win the Magic Cube and instead leave the final challenge quest (to combine the Harvest festival collection) incomplete by simply not combining the collecton. However, by using this approach players must remember not to combine the collection, which they may do by accident whilst combining other collections.

It does not matter which challenge is left incomplete, Harvest Baskets will still be available to win in every Picture in the game (except Farm itself), as long as one part of the timed challenges isn't finished. Players opting to leave one challenge incomplete in order to more easily collect Harvest Baskets should remember to keep an eye on the challenge timer if they do wish to complete the final part before the event ends. If players do want to finish the part of the challenge they have left incomplete to collect Harvest Baskets, then they should be particularly cautious around extensions added to the challenge as these have ben known to be inconsistent (some timers unexpectedly ending early during the extension period).

Related

 * SS Home
 * Updates
 * Holiday Updates
 * Halloween Update
 * Christmas Update
 * Valentines Update
 * Tavern Update
 * Treasure Island Update
 * Christmas Update 2014
 * Valentines Update 2015
 * Spring 2015 Update
 * Travel Time Update
 * Social Events Update
 * Halloween Update 2015
 * Christmas Update 2015
 * Mountain Vacation Update
 * Spring Festival Update
 * Celebration by the Bonfire Update
 * Quests
 * Collections
 * Artefacts
 * List of Artefacts
 * Farm
 * Curiosities Room