Harvest Festival Timed Event

The Harvest Festival Update was released on the 5th of September 2016 for iOS players, the 9th of September 2016 for Android players, the 4th of October 2016 for Windows players, with release still pending for Mac players.

When the update was released, the Harvest Festival Update triggered automatically.

Although there is no mention of the Halloween 2016 Event in the release notes, all the content needed to create the second set of timed challenges exist within the original install file for the update. This means that when players install this update, they are installing both sets of challenges and all content needed for them.

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 Update introduced 2 new pictures - Curiosities Room and Farm; and 23 new collections.

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


 * Collect 500 Apples by winning games of Gem Match to win the new "Magic Cube" Desktop Award, which gives one random Anomaly banishing tool every 12 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 for 24 hours.

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.
 * 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.

Changes Made by the Harvest Update
At the beginning of the Harvest Festival Update, any remaining Dandelions and Sunglasses in a player's Inventory are converted into equal parts Fireflies, Ladybugs, Carrots, Cupid arrows, and Tokens, the 5 main special items needed to play the regular paid scenes in the game.

New Picture Level - Grand Magister
Exactly 24 months after Professor Level was added to the game by the Treasure Island Update, a new Picture Level for progress above 100% Professor has been added to the game by the Harvest Festival Update.

Grand Magister level is represented by an ornate gold frame around a Picture or Puzzle on a Home Desktop. Once a player reaches 100% progress in Professor Level, then the next level in that Picture/Puzzle will be Grand Magister Level. The rate of progress for playing a Picture or Puzzle that is on Grand Magister Level is 1% every 8 plays. This means it will take 800 plays to reach 100% Grand Magister.

Once a player reaches 100% Grand Magister on a Picture or a Puzzle, they will receive a Lunch Chest as a reward.

For Pictures, the energy required to play at Grand Magister increases by 3 energy points from Professor Level, and the Experience points and coins earned for completing the picture increases by 10 (just like with any other picture level increase). For Pictures that require Special Items, e.g. Fireflies for Night Garden, 45 of the Special Item is required, in addition to energy points for each play of the Picture at Grand Magister Level.

Just like when Academician/Magister and Professor Levels were introduced in the past, no new collection items are retroactively added to existing pictures at Grand Magsiter Level, however new Pictures do have new items in their rewards list once Grand Magister level is obtained.

Once the Harvest Festival Update is installed, any Pictures and Puzzles that are already over 100% progress in Professor level will not automatically complete. Instead, the Picture/Puzzle must be played one time to trigger the conversion to Grand Magister level.

The conversion is not seamless, like the conversion to Professor level when it was introduced (all progress above 100% Magister at release of update being converted to Professor progress) during the Treasure Island Update. Instead it behaves like the conversion to Acadmecian level when it was introduced (all progress above 100% High Explorer at release of update being completely lost).

This means that any progress above 100% Professor level on a Picture or Puzzle will not be converted into progress at Grand Magister Level. All Pictures and Puzzles will start at 0% Grand Magister Level once converted, regardless of their original progress (above 100%) in Professor level. For example, see the image above of Tavern at 415% Professor becoming 0% Grand Magister Level.

Male Avatar Reward for Timed Challenges
For the first time since the game introduced Timed Challenge Events, two Avatars are given as the reward for completing the Harvest Festival Event. One male and one female.

Seeker's Eye renamed Explorer's Eye
The Harvest Festival Update brought a number of name changes to the game, centered around removing the word "Seeker" from the game and replacing it with the word "Explorer". This may have been related to the game developer's (MyTona) second Hidden Object game, which was named Seeker's Notes: Hidden Mystery (previously titled Seeker's Notes: Mysteries of Darkwood), although the change in the Secret Society game was only implemented a year after Seeker's Notes was released.

As part of this "Seeker" purge in the game, the Seeker's Eye Tool has been renamed "Explorer's Eye". No other changes have been made to how the Tool works, the change is just a cosmetic change to the name.

High Seeker level renamed High Explorer
Similar to the Seeker's Eye tools, the word Seeker has been replaced with the word Explorer for this Picture level. No other changes have been made to how the High Explorer Picture level works, the change is just a cosmetic change to the name.

Top 1000 list Top Seekers renamed Top Explorers
The Top Seeker section of the Top 1000 list, which lists players by their total number of completed Quests has also been changed to 'Top Explorers'. Of all the "Seeker to Explorer" name changes spotted so far, this is the one that is most likely to cause confusion for players as the term Explorer does not easily translate to "quests completed" in most people's minds.

Diary Seekers are now Explorers
Any reference to the word Seeker in the Diary pages have now also been changed to "Explorer". For example, see the Diary entry for Throne Room or Tavern.

Quest Seekers are now Explorers
Any reference to the word Seeker in the Quests titles and instructions have now also been changed to "Explorer". For example, see the One-off Item Quest "The unknown Seeker" to find the "Parchment from the papyrus" one-off item, which is now called "The unknown Explorer".

Award Seekers are now Explorers
Any reference to the word Seeker in the Award titles and instructions have now also been changed to "Explorer". For example, the "Silhouette-Seeker" Award, which asks players to win 50 Pictures in Silhouette mode, is now called "Silhouette-Explorer", and the "Lucky Seeker" desktop award has been renamed the "Luck Explorer" desktop award.

Collection Name Changes
As part of the big "Seeker" purge, a number of Collections and Collection Item names have also been changed to replace the word Seeker with the word Explorer:

1. The rules of the Order

The one exception to the "Seeker" purge noted so far is the item "Set of rules of the Seeker", which is the item created when The rules of the Order Collection is combined. This item still has the word Seeker in its name.

New Artefacts
Two new Artefacts have been added to the game by the Harvest Festival Update. These can be seen in the Artefacts tab of the Collections Window (at the bottom of the list if sorting is disabled), and, once combined, can be activated from the Talismans tab of the Inventory Window.

The Farmer's Amulet, which players will combine and win as they work through the Harvest Festival Timed Challenges, increases the amount of rewards when visiting friends by 50% for 48 hours when activated.

This Artefact works exactly the same as all Talismans/Artefacts related to visiting friends (e.g. past time challenge reward Artefacts and the current Talismans available to buy in the Shop). The 50% increase only applies to the coins and the experience points awarded, both from daily visiting bonuses and from charging items on Friends' Home Desktops whilst visiting them.

Special Items (e.g Ladybugs for the Mill) that are awarded as part of the daily bonuses while visiting friends do not appear to benefit from the amulets 50% increase. Collection Items that "drop" while charging items on Friends' Home Desktops may also not be affected, though this is open to additional analysis.

The Photographer's Amulet, which players can win by combining non-challenge related and giftable collections added by the update, increases rewards items after completing Pictures and Puzzles by 50% for 24 hours when activated.

Witch's Talisman Artefact Updated Again
Just like during the Halloween 2014 Update and Halloween 2015 Update, the Halloween 2016 Timed Challenges change the collections required to combine the Witch's Talisman Artefact. The collections that must now be used to combine the Artefact are the 5 new Collections used as part of the Halloween 2016 Timed Challenges. These collections are hidden in the game until the Halloween 2016 Timed Challenges are triggered, and so the Witch's Talisman Artefact also does not change to the new collections until this event in triggered in a game.

Problems with the Harvest Festival Update
Server Problems Gifting and Visiting

As with all large updates released for the game, the Harvest Festival update will cause an overload in the games servers during peak times for a couple of days immediately following the release of the update on any platform. During this time players may encounter problems visiting and gifting, and be given a "Failure to connect to the servers" error message when trying to interact with the Friends portion of the game. The servers normally go back to normal after a couple of days once all players on that platform have downloaded the new update.

Glitches fixed by the Harvest Festival Update
...tbc...

Gifting Counters
First introduced by the Celebration by the Bonfire Update, a number of small issues in the Gifting mechanism have not been fixed by the Harvest Festival Update. The main impact of this is inconsistencies with how the numbers appear next to items in a Friends Wishlist. These problems do not effect all players all the time.

One issue with the Gifting Mechanism removes numbers next to items in Player's wishlists. Once a player reaches their maximum Collection Item gift limit for the day (has sent 10 Collection Items to Friends), then all the numbers will disappear next to all items in the wishlists of their Friends, even the numbers next to Free Gifts. You can still send Free Gifts to the remaining friends (through either the wishlist or the Free Gift tab) by tapping on the item that you wish to sent until you reach your limit of Free Gifts (1 per Friend, up to 50 Friends maximum). However, the lack of numbers next to items in all remaining Wishlist can be confusing when attempting to figure out who you can still send a Free Gift to and who you cannot.

Conversely, another issue in the Gifting mechanism adds numbers back to wishlists. If a player opens the gifting window for a Friend and sends them a free gift, then all free gifts in that Friend's wish list will change from having a 1 next to them (indicating that 1 can be sent) to not having a number next to them (indicating that the 1 free gift has already been sent to that Friend that day). Some players have reported that once they close the gifting window for that Friend, if they reopen it, then all the numbers reappear next to the Free Gifts in that Friend's wish list. A second Free Gift cannot be sent, but the number 1 next to the items remain. This makes it very difficult for players to track who they have sent Free Gifts to already that day, and who they haven't, since all wishlists will show the 1 indicating that a gift can be sent, but some may be 'fake' indications as those Friends have already been sent a Free Gift.

Anomalies Restricted
This change was also made by the Celebration by the Bonfire Update, and has seriously reduced the amount of Anomalies in the game.

Originally Anomalies could appear in 'any' game mode (Text, Silhouette, Night, Pairs, Pieces, Morphs, Curse). The Christmas 2014 Update changed what modes Anomalies could appear in - from this Update onward, Anomalies could no longer appear in Pictures in Night mode. However, they could still appear in every other game mode.

The Celebration by the Bonfire Update further restricted Anomalies, so that they can now 'only' appear in Pictures that are in Text mode. Anomalies will not appear in Pictures that are in any of the other 6 game modes. This makes it very difficult to get anomalies in the game, as Pictures must be played repeatedly until it enters Text mode and then left alone as other pictures are played to trigger an anomaly in the Text mode Picture.

The Harvest Festival Update has not fixed this major problem in the game.

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
 * Halloween 2016 Update
 * Quests
 * Collections
 * Artefacts
 * List of Artefacts
 * Farm
 * Curiosities Room