Two halves to this one. The long middle of the game closes up, so everything you are ever given now arrives by level 500 instead of trickling out to 900. And the three berries stop being something you sell: blackberries feed the production buildings, raspberries buy copies, and grapes buy time.
- Everything you are given now arrives by level 500. Crops, islands, stations and keystone blessings all move down into the stretch where you are actually playing. Past 500 the game becomes mastery, prestige, Land Deed expansion and whatever gets drawn next, rather than a queue of things still being withheld.
- Five crops come forward. Melon now unlocks at 240, sugarcane at 270, pumpkin at 350, tomato at 400 and blueberry at 450.
- Sugarcane announces itself. It was the only crop in the game that unlocked in silence — the seed simply appeared in the picker one day. It now gets the level-up moment every other crop gets.
- The Cauldron moves to level 250. It is the single biggest lump of content in the game — an island, a Grand building, a Mini, nine recipes and its own XP ladder — and it now lands in what used to be the emptiest stretch. Strawberry Jam and Potato Soup are craftable the day it arrives.
- Two isles come forward. Vineyard Isle moves to level 320 and the second Homestead to 500. Both spawn smaller to suit the extra growth they will now see, so they still end up in family with the isles around them.
- The keystone blessings move with them. Cloudburst, Sage, Field Mastery, Cornucopia, Land Deed, Prospector, Second Harvest and Midas Reach all come forward, as do the three-way Path choices at what were levels 360, 520, 620 and 810.
- Farms already past these levels catch up on the next launch. Any island or station whose level you have already passed is granted when you open the game. Crops need nothing — they were always gated on your level rather than a flag.
- Blackberries fuel the production buildings. Stoke a furnace, mill, juicer or cauldron and it works 25 percent faster. There is no limit on how much you can put in, so a good harvest is never wasted on a full tank.
- Fuel is measured in cooking, not in clock time. A stoked building spends nothing while it stands idle, so a reserve you leave overnight is still there in the morning. It is drawn on when you queue a batch, in proportion to how long that batch takes.
- The Duplicator, at level 100. A three-tile machine that copies anything in your bag. The original stays where it is. What you pay is raspberries to the value of the item, so wheat costs five and a blueberry costs ten thousand.
- A copy takes a tenth of the time the thing takes to make. Wheat is three seconds, a blueberry forty-eight minutes. A crafted good counts everything that went into it, so a Blueberry Muffin takes rather longer than the fruit inside it.
- Rare berries go five times further, per tier. This holds wherever a berry is spent, and it is what puts the expensive end of the Duplicator in reach. Berry mastery does the work, not a bigger pile.
- The Reserve, at level 160. A two-tile cellar that lays down up to twenty of something and gives it back one rarity tier better, paid for in grapes. What you put in comes back changed rather than copied.
- Ageing costs grapes in proportion to what it creates. Twenty wheat to Uncommon is a single grape. Twenty jars of ketchup is a great deal more. How long it takes follows the item too, so wheat is a minute and sugarcane is days.
- Rarity continues past Dreamlike. Dreamlike+1, +2 and onward, with no ceiling. Nothing in the world drops them and no recipe cooks them. The Reserve is the only way one comes to exist.
- The Reserve reaches one tier past what you have earned. Below Dreamlike your mastery sets the ceiling and the cellar goes one rung above it. Above Dreamlike the item itself is the permission, so a Dreamlike+2 can only be made from a Dreamlike+1.
- Cooking times in the crafting menu are the real ones. The figure beside a recipe now includes your station's speed upgrades and whatever fuel is in the building, rather than the recipe's untouched time.
Tell me whether the berries feel worth holding onto now, and whether the Reserve's wait lands somewhere between an errand and an event.
— Dee