This post will get a full rewrite this week.

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Welcome to Homestead's Claire's Picnic. This event is depressing; it doesn't make your farm better. It is not a hard event. The main reason people are doing it is that the game is so monotonous, any change of pace is a ray of sunshine. (The next major event should be worth doing because it will make your farm better.)

To do this event, you need to take production away from core buildings to fulfill event orders that give some decent rewards, I won't lie, but at the expense of materials and coins. When the reward milestones are this much better than other events, it screams they have to incentivize a damaging event. So, you get to pick between County Fair Tournament (which now has filling event orders as a task), doing the event, or building your farm. (You can build your farm and do CT at the same time.

This time around, building level upgrades increases the amount of production and the orders now offer coins.

I said last week that the only reason this event may be worth doing is if the coins are blow your cowboy hat off. The first order I studied when you look at the equivalent production of the buildings needed, pay less than 5% the value of a market contract and no materials. They 'fixed' the no coins problem with a slap in the face. Skip this event. That is the only way they will smarten up and start adding value to the product.

I will adjust this page throughout the day.

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Claire's Picnic ads 11 new products to your farm in your existing buildings. The event comes with minimal instructions. The new items are:

• Cheddar - Cow Shed - 1 hour - this is the raw resource for half your recipes.
• Blackberries - Berry Grove - 2 hours - this is the other key raw resource with dismal yields. It is hard on fertilizer. The game's 'buy a solution packages' are not event resources, but instant fertilizer. These are the true bottleneck of the event.
• Cheddar twists - Bakery - 30 mins - takes cheddar and flour
• Strawberry biscuits - Bakery - 40 mins - takes flour, sugar and strawberries
• Blackberry muffins - Bakery - 30 mins - takes flour, eggs and blackberries
• Cheddar chili - Chili Kitchen - 30 mins - takes cheddar and canned beans Hard on beans and cheese
• Poppies - Copper Ridge Field - 3 hours - sells for less than half of other field crops, so if you think grow them and sell them because your barn is full, don't
• Cheddar veggie bake - Food cart - 1.5 hours - takes cheddar, carrots and canned corn
• Cheesy fritters - Food cart - 2.5 hours - takes cheddar, blackberries and canned corn
• Honey candy - Sugar refinery - 30 mins - takes sugar
• Blackberry pancakes - Pancake House - 45 mins - takes milk, eggs and blackberries

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The rewards are scaled back due to the event being 1 week long vs V-day. And it's really hard to make a stock table because the milestones, tasks, and rewards vary based on your player level.

We have learned that after Claire's 6 tasks, there are some hefty bonus tasks that pay large amounts of gems (250 gem range.)

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History

The first time they ran this event on Sunshine Island, they promised to never do it again. They did it on Homestead instead, which was Hearts and Harvest at Valentines. It was still a bad event. They are currently running a revamp on Sunshine Island which I am not enjoying, and I think we have to assume when they say Claire’s Picnic, it is going to be another round of Hearts and Harvest.

A recap (if you are new)

Picnic adds 11 new products to your existing buildings that compete with production time. You can either grow strawberries or blackberries. The new items are funneled into an order delivery system that gives you event tokens for the standard delivery station rewards (think Heart of the Herd). To get the event rewards, you have to give up ~30-40% of your marketing ability. Since 99.9% of players say they need more materials or more coins, dampening your material and coin making ability is brutal. It took players 3-5 days to realize the event wasn't good.

Good game design is Additive, where you build special events to add on top of the current game mechanics and allow the player to add to their progression. Claire’s Picnic is a subtractive design. The fundamental flaw with this event is it slows down your progression, and you have to choose whether you hurt your progression, ignore the event, or pay to maintain your progress. It takes farm resources and redirects them to small rewards and lowers your market throughput. You lose both coins and materials to run the event. Smart farms ignore this event. If they don’t fall for the trap, they won’t be tempted to buy their way out.

Now, in fairness, and giving me a little sliver of hope - I gave feedback before and on the second day of Hearts and Harvest. The Dev team did pivot mid event and at least make the items free to produce so you didn’t have to pay to make them and then sell them for nothing.

The redesigned event?

It's not hard. Many players are saying it is easier, but our farms are also 4 months old instead of 2 months, so we have upgraded silos and multiple strawberries.

I have learned that the bonus quests after Claire's initial 6 have good rewards. If there wasn't the bug for not being able to clear expired contracts (next button not working), I would almost be tempted to take a run at it.

The revamp has coins with offers (news says XP, but I'm sure that is wrong, again, I can't test it.) The coins are less than 5% of what the market would pay.

I will not recommend players do something that I wouldn’t be willing to do myself. I would consider it because I can take a week off farm building.

-------- From Vday -------

The first task is to collect creamy cookies, creamy chili and roses.

• Cookies are made in the bakery, but you need to make cream at you cow sheds first.
• Just pick the cow and select cream. It takes an hour.
• After this, you can make creamy cookies in the bakery, and creamy chili in the chili kitchen.
• Roses are planted in Copper Ridge fields and take 3 hours.

Once you have some products to 'sell', there is a dining tent icon beside your festival icon (bottom left of your screen) and you will find guests with orders to fill.

*** It is hard to get your first stock, and the second task is filling orders, so it may be wise to wait until you can fill 2 orders ***

• You can trash up to 10 guests per day. There is a forced ad to trash the contracts.
• You get no coins or materials for filling guest orders. It costs coins and building time to make the products.
• Valentine products will not show up in market contracts or barge and train crates.

After you finish the '30' tasks, there are 5 looping rewards like exactly like Heart of the Herd.

Should you do it?

See above section.

The final question

I know a few players that have finished the event. Most of them said they did it for the challenge and really noticed the impact of less coins and materials. I am very thankful to them for providing the data for these tables. Most players I know are picking away at it when they have excess capacity because they have goals that this interferes with.

I've been picking away at it when my barn was full. Strawberries, even with an extra grove, have been brutal this week. I won't finish it, because I want to get 3-4 expansions on Sundale (after I expanded Golden last week.)

You will need to ask yourself if you willing to trade 50% of your farm market and farm building power for the rewards offered.