Seasons, resets & what carries over

Seasons are what make HarvestSeason a competition rather than an endless grind. Here’s exactly what happens when one ends.

The season-end sequence

At season end, the server runs a careful, ordered sequence — each step happens in a specific order to ensure nothing is lost before it’s recorded:

1. Recompute the final leaderboard and capture the Top finishers into a snapshot.
2. Distribute rewards and record the Hall of Fame from the captured snapshot.
3. Render the champion podium from the same captured standings.
4. Wipe season scores and reset the competitive Farming level.
5. Reset and unassign islands, and rotate the mythic secret.
6. Enter intermission or start the next season.

The champions are immortalised in steps 1–3, before anything is wiped in steps 4–5. The order is deliberate: a player who finished #1 can never be retroactively removed from the Hall of Fame by the wipe, because the capture happens first.

What resets

These things wipe completely at season end — everyone starts the next season from zero:

• Season score → wiped to zero. No score carries from one season into the next.
• Competitive Farming level → reset. The Farming skill you grind each season is earned fresh; it’s an in-season progression track, not a career stat.
• Islands → reset and unassigned. Your floating farm is cleared and returned to the pool; you claim a fresh one with /farm next season. This ensures fair, equal starting conditions — no carry-in structural advantage.
• Mythic secret → rotated. The per-install anti-forgery secret stamps each Mythic Crop; rotating it voids every mythic minted in the prior season. Any mythic hoarded across the reset can’t be cashed into the next season’s score. This is by design — the anti-forgery rotation is step 5, after podiums are rendered and rewards distributed (step 3a in the sequence), so authentic mythics cashed before season end still work.

What carries over

These things persist through every reset, forever:

• Lifetime mastery — your cumulative Farming mastery level is a career stat. It only ever grows.
• Prestige — your badges, derived from championships, podiums, and mastery. Permanent.
• Hall of Fame records — every past champion is recorded forever. Browse with /halloffame.
• Cosmetics and mastery perks — earned cosmetics (titles, trails, hats, the champion crown) and mastery perks persist. Vanity you’ve unlocked stays with your account.

The distinction is intentional: the competitive slate wipes so every season is a fair race, but your legacy and identity persist so long-term players are recognised across the server’s history.

Between seasons: intermission

After the wipe, the server may enter an intermission — a gap between seasons where players can socialise, explore, and prepare for the next race. During intermission, competitive systems (leaderboard, Farming skill, island farming) are offline or minimal. This is a good time to check /halloffame, plan island layouts, and browse the shop for upcoming purchases.

When the next season starts, everyone begins with zero score, a fresh island, and a reset Farming level — equal footing regardless of how the last season ended.

The mythic rotation in detail

The mythic secret rotation deserves special attention because it affects your sell strategy near season end.

Mythic Crops use a per-install, server-side secret to authenticate. When you sell a mythic, the server checks the tag against the current secret. If they match, it pays the score bonus. At season end, the secret rotates — any mythic minted with the old secret becomes unauthenticated.

What this means practically:

• Cash mythics before the season ends. Don’t stockpile them hoping to use them next season. The rotation intentionally voids cross-season hoarding.
• Deleting the KV key meta/mythic_secret mid-season has the same effect as a rotation — any existing mythics become invalid immediately.
• The rotation happens after rewards are distributed (sequence step 5), so a mythic you sell in the last minutes of a season still authenticates normally.

Strategy & use-cases

Plan your end-of-season push around the wipe timeline. Season score wipes on a fixed schedule. If you’re within striking distance of a podium finish, the final days of a season are the highest-value time to farm. Every harvest in those final days contributes to a permanent Hall of Fame entry; after the reset, that same effort goes into a fresh slate.

Treat island reset as a feature, not a bug. Every season you start with a clean, flat island and full freedom to lay it out however you want. Use the intermission period or the first hours of a new season to plan your island layout before planting — a well-optimised layout compounds over the whole season.

Lifetime mastery compounds across seasons. Because mastery persists and unlocks perks, players who’ve run several seasons arrive at the start of each new one with accumulated mastery — even though season score wipes. Veterans have mastery-gated perks and a higher prestige profile, but the leaderboard itself is always a level playing field on score.

Use end-of-season balance on shop upgrades, not savings. Balance is not explicitly listed as resetting, but your competitive gains from spend (tier unlocks gated by permissions, tool upgrades) should ideally be purchased before season end so they’re in place for the next season start. Check your tool and seed tier state before the reset window.

Common mistakes

• Hoarding Mythic Crops across the reset. The secret rotation is specifically designed to prevent this. Sell your mythics before the season ends.
• Thinking mastery resets. Farming mastery is lifetime. The Farming level (the in-season competitive track) resets; mastery does not. They’re two different numbers — check /mastery vs the Farming skill display to see both.
• Not claiming outstanding pass tiers before the wipe. Check /pass in the final days of a season to ensure you’ve claimed all earned tier rewards. Unclaimed rewards from a past season may not carry forward.
• Assuming island layout transfers. Your island resets completely. Any special arrangement you built this season needs to be rebuilt from scratch. Take notes on layouts you like so you can rebuild efficiently next season.

What’s next

Explore the social side: Visiting farms.