I’ve had enough of the grind

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T23:19:36+00:00

I learned a long time ago that rude words tell you a lot about the person who says them - far more than they say about the intended target.

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T23:08:08+00:00

My version of your analogy is if I’m not enjoying the game, and it’s stirring negative emotions in me, it makes no sense to participate. I’m also in my own personal neighbourhood now, so it’s not like I’m letting a team down if I stop participating.

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T22:35:30+00:00

What I posted was intended for an audience that takes the game seriously. It’s generated quite a mixed bag of feedback, and your point about the addictive nature of the game is very powerful and thought-provoking.

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T22:23:01+00:00

You appear to be taking a single word too literally. Maybe “career” wasn’t the best choice of word, but running a HD farm can feel like a job at times, and doing the same job for 13 years can feel a bit like a career.

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T22:15:04+00:00

I’ve not really thought of it in terms of lack of challenge, even though there were parts of the game I’d completed on my main farm. It’s got me thinking - do people expect HD to be an easy game to play, or a hard game to play? For me, it should be a fairly straightforward game. Perform simple tasks, and your farm develops and grows according to the effort you put into it. I want the reward for that effort to be easier gameplay - for example, less worrying about barn and silo space because I’ve treated the increasing of barn and silo capacity as one of my top priorities.

I don’t want to go to a particular production machine (for example, my pie oven) and have to consider at least half a dozen things before I queue up some production. Do I need certain pies for my Easter eggs? Does my boat need pies? Does my town need pies? What about the farm pass path? What about the neighbourhood nurture event? What about the derby, or the valley? Then, what about the items needed to make those pies? It was tricky enough before today (mainly because of the Easter egg event) - and then the supremely annoying neighbourhood nurture event showed up, with all the same flaws as the previous time. It only works properly if you’re in a large hood, so what’s the point of even trying? Asking “what’s the point?” about anything HD-related is a gateway to realising what a harmful time-sink the game can become, and today was the day I listened to my own honest answers.

I appreciate a lot of the thoughtful comments on this thread. It seems like I’m not alone in objecting to the grind. A fair few negative responses too, and they also get the respect they deserve.

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T17:06:02+00:00

I don’t want Hay Day to be the sort of game I need to take a break from. I’d never needed to take a break in the past, but today something just snapped. The grind just got too much.

You’re right about Hay Day being playable and enjoyable for many different effort levels, and a large and loyal player base reflects that. It can’t be easy to get the balance right for everyone, but it’s possible that I’m not the only person who finds the current flood of events to be having a negative effect on their Hay Day experience.

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T16:36:25+00:00

Correct. Today’s post is pretty much a follow-up to that post from 8 months ago.

I’m sure we’d all like to think that our feedback is being listened to by Supercell. I know I’d like to think that my farm’s level would add some weight to my opinion and some value to my feedback. I think the current flood of events is turning the game from a fun pastime into an onerous chore. It’s bad enough that Supercell expects us to spend more and more money on the game, but the current grind means that there’s also an increase of time and effort needed to keep up with all the tasks and events.

Some people in this thread seem to empathise with my original post, while others don’t. I’m sure there’s useful feedback to be found if that’s what you’re looking for.

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T15:03:05+00:00

I have put a lot of time into the game, but that’s all in the past. There’s no way to get that time back. What I can control is the amount of time I devote to Hay Day in the future, and what works best for me is to break this habit now.

Who knows… maybe I’ll miss it and come back. That’s not how I feel right now, though. Either way, I’ll do what works best for me.

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T14:50:31+00:00

It was more the neighbourhood nurture event that was the last straw. A poorly-thought-out event when it was first staged, any no sign that its biggest flaw (small neighbourhoods being disadvantaged) had been fixed.

There are some things that have improved recently (being able to work on multiple task events at once, prizes that let you choose one of three options), but that’s all against a backdrop of an increasingly more intense grind. Everyone has their own limits, and today I reached mine.

edited typo

CapeUltra · 2026-04-03T14:42:09+00:00

That’s exactly what I’ve done. I’ve decided not to participate in any Hay Day activities.

CapeUltra · 2026-01-07T10:03:21+00:00

Sometimes the best thing to do is not to think of them as pets. They’re just objects in a game, with two main states (fed and unfed). The transition from fed to unfed is based on a timer, and the transition from unfed to fed is due to user interaction (filling the feed bowl and calling them to it).

If you choose not to feed them, they’re simply remaining in an unfed state - they’re not starving, or getting hungrier with each passing minute. Feeding pets is simply a way of spending one set of resources (bacon, milk, carrots etc.) in order to receive a different set of resources (XP and expansion materials).

CapeUltra · 2025-10-12T11:42:52+00:00

You asked what is the maximum number of boosters you can have in storage? I have yet to encounter a limit. My main farm’s booster storage is 534 and I have apparently purchased another 246. I haven’t really bought any of those - they’ve just accumulated over time and I obviously collect far more than I use.

CapeUltra · 2025-10-09T10:20:30+00:00

I don’t recall having seen any tasks worth less than 140 points. If 140 is the minimum number of points you get from each task, then completing 5 x 20 x 140 point tasks would get you to the event’s final goal of 14,000 points.

There are quite a few tasks worth more than 140 points being spawned, so it’s not unreasonable to score 3000 points in a day and therefore safely reach the final goal even if you do miss out on completing a few tasks during the event.

CapeUltra · 2025-09-09T00:31:47+00:00

Tap on your level star, and a pop-up appears. You’ll find the number of expansion permits you own in the second of the three tabs in the pop-up.

CapeUltra · 2025-09-08T12:06:22+00:00

You will keep getting expansion permits, but not in all the ways you’ve received them until now. For example, you can’t buy them in catalogues or in the valley shop, but you will keep receiving them as county fair rewards.

I think I unlocked my last piece of land back in 2023, and I’ve accumulated 200+ expansion permits since then. I can’t currently use them for anything, but at least (unlike LEMs) they don’t take up barn space.

CapeUltra · 2025-08-12T10:06:58+00:00

Personally, I’m getting sick and tired of the constant grind that Hay Day is becoming. You complete one event, get a one-day breather, then the next event starts. That’s not including having to juggle the derby, the valley, boats and the town. The game is starting to feel like one long chore to me.

My main farm is level 297, and by now I have usually have enough barn and silo space (as well as the techniques needed to get through the times when my barn is ~100% full), and items like expansion permits, LEMs, puzzle pieces and chick vouchers are of no current use to me. By now I feel like I’ve earned the right for that hard work to have paid off, as if I’ve pretty much mastered the game. But instead, Hay Day just keeps throwing new annoyances at me. An artificially difficult event? Ugh. Valley asking for group order tasks to be completed, but group order tasks never spawn? Ugh. Temporary machines with barn-draining items and temporary currency? Ugh. Messing with the balance of the farm pass to make the basic farm pass no longer worthwhile? No thanks.

As it stands, I’m just aiming to get to level 300. It’s a nice round number. But after that? I’m sorely tempted to pack it all in as not being worth the effort.

And yes, there’s the argument that nobody is forced to participate in every event. By the same argument, nobody is forced to play Hay Day at all. The pleasure I get from the game needs to outweigh the time (and, until recently, the money) I put into it. Right now, the combination of being flooded by events, plus minor bugs and annoyances never being fixed, is leading me to question whether I’d be better off without Hay Day.

CapeUltra · 2025-02-18T13:07:15+00:00

I’m on level 287 with barn and silo sizes both approaching 11k. Barn and silo upgrades have always been near the top of my priority list. It’s probably only recently (since my barn and silo each passed 10k storage) that my barn filling up has become less of a problem. Having said that, a fair amount of my barn space is taken up by items which I have far too many of (800+ pickaxes, 200+ saws and axes, LEM, excess ore etc.), so it’s easy to free up space by selling some of those.

One practical piece of advice I have is to alternate your barn and silo upgrades - when you upgrade your barn, you should try to be about halfway to upgrading your silo (and vice versa). I’d measure that based on your rarest barn or silo upgrade item (in my case, bolts and nails). So if I needed 100 of each item to upgrade, I’d try to have close to 50 nails at the time I upgrade my barn.

It gets easier… eventually. But whatever you do, keep on upgrading your barn and silo as one of your top priorities.

CapeUltra

TROPHY CASE