Why Easy Rewards Are Getting Harder to Earn in New Gardenscapes Events

Before vs now comparison of Gardenscapes rewards, showing stronger starting boosters and faster rewards in the past versus more steps and fewer free boosters today.

How newer Gardenscapes events change the path to rewards through deeper progression, partners, competition, and changes to pre-game boosters.

Gardenscapes events have always offered more than just another activity to play. They have also provided rewards while players work through regular Match-3 levels. You did not necessarily have to finish the entire event or reach the Grand Prize. Even with limited playing time, you could usually pick up a few boosters, coins, cards, or tools along the way.

That has not disappeared. What seems to be changing in newer event formats is how much work now stands between normal gameplay and the next reward. In many cases, reaching the same kinds of rewards requires more progress, more intermediate steps, or help from another player.

For a highly active player, the difference may not feel especially significant. For a casual player, however, the important question is no longer just whether the Grand Prize is within reach. It is how many small and mid-tier rewards can be collected before the event ends.

Not All Events Belong in the Same Category

To understand what is actually changing, we need to separate different generations of events. This matters even more because events can vary from one player to another. Herbarium, Campfire Stories, and Treasure Hound come from a much earlier period of Gardenscapes, so comparing them directly with current formats such as Secret Passage is not especially useful after so many changes to the game.

A more useful comparison is between recurring events from the previous generation, such as Gnome Treasure, Gardening Duties, and Hit the Target, and the newer formats that appeared or expanded during 2026.

Generation	Examples	Basic Structure
Legacy events	Herbarium, Campfire Stories (Old), Treasure Hound	Simple progression with relatively direct access to rewards
Previous-generation recurring events	Gnome Treasure, Gardening Duties, Hit the Target	Stages and tasks with separate rewards throughout the event
Newer formats	Fancy Feathers, Frog Trail, BlackBerry Treasure, Stellar Race, Secret Passage	Larger progression systems, more requirements, and in some cases cooperation or competition

What the Recurring Events Did Differently

Gnome Treasure is a good example. Players earn pickaxes by completing Match-3 levels, use them to remove blockers, and move through a series of stages. Each completed stage gives its own reward.

That structure works well for someone who has no intention of finishing the entire event. You can play for as long as you have time and still come away with something. The Grand Prize may remain out of reach, but that does not necessarily mean losing all the rewards along the way.

Gardening Duties follows a similar structure, with different tasks leading to the prize for each stage. Hit the Target also uses individual tasks that build progress until the corresponding chest is unlocked.

These events are not necessarily easy to complete in full. The difference is that the progression is relatively straightforward, and the intermediate rewards sit at clearly defined points along the way.

Fancy Feathers

Fancy Feathers needs to be looked at a little more carefully. On the way to the third and final stage, there are already two smaller rewards. Completing the final stage gives the largest reward on that particular track, while completing all four birds leads to the Grand Prize.

So the early rewards have not disappeared. The difference is in how you reach them. Players collect beads from Match-3 levels and other events, use those beads in Plinko, earn feathers, and then turn those feathers into progress for the bird.

Fancy Feathers is also cooperative. An inactive partner does not technically prevent you from moving forward, but for a player with limited time, it increases the amount of personal effort needed to reach the next milestones.

Secret Passage and Shared Progress

The same idea becomes even clearer in Secret Passage. Each trail is played with a partner, and both players' Trail Points are added to the same progression bar.

There are intermediate reward milestones before the trail is completed. The basic path looks like this:

Match-3 gameplay → Trail Tokens → Wheel → movement → Trail Points → shared milestones → rewards → completed trail → Key.

Completing all four trails and collecting four Keys unlocks the Grand Prize.

For a casual player, how active your partner is can make a major difference in how quickly the next reward is reached. An active partner reduces the amount of progress you need to contribute yourself, while a nearly inactive partner leaves you responsible for a much larger share of the work.

BlackBerry Treasure Uses a Different Model

BlackBerry Treasure does not depend on a partner. Its basic structure is simple: play, collect Blackberries, and move along the reward track.

The early stages can be fairly accessible and can provide worthwhile rewards without requiring players to complete the entire event. As the track continues, however, the requirements increase and the larger rewards sit deeper in the progression system.

Rewards Also Need to Be Compared With Pre-Game Boosters

There is another factor that matters when evaluating BlackBerry Treasure. Around the same time the event became part of the game's newer weekly structure, the amount of power available before starting a level also changed.

Under the previous pre-game booster setup, players had:

one Rainbow Blast,
two Bombs,
one Rainbow Blast together with one Dynamite.

In the newer setup that appeared on our accounts, the corresponding choices became:

one Rainbow Blast,
one Bomb,
one Dynamite.

Pre-game booster	Previous version	Newer version we recorded
Rainbow Blast	1 Rainbow Blast	1 Rainbow Blast
Bomb	2 Bombs	1 Bomb
Dynamite combination	1 Rainbow Blast + 1 Dynamite	1 Dynamite

The change means that players now start with less immediate power in two of the three options. That is why it is not enough to count only the boosters added through an event. The changes to the Bomb and Rainbow Blast also have to be taken into account when comparing what players can earn now with what used to be available before every level.

A reward that gives one Bomb has a different overall value when the standard pre-game Bomb booster has been reduced from two Bombs to one. The same is true when the Rainbow Blast + Dynamite combination is no longer available as a starting option.

This does not prove that BlackBerry Treasure is worse for players, and it does not prove that the booster changes were made because of this particular event. The changes did, however, happen during the same general period and affect the same overall pool of Match-3 power available to the player.

The same principle can be applied to Explosive Reward. The value of the explosives earned through the event makes more sense when they are compared with the immediate power that used to be available before starting each level.

Stellar Race Adds Competition

Stellar Race uses a different system. Players collect Telescopes by completing Match-3 levels and move through a series of stages, but their progress is also tied to how the other participants are performing.

For someone who plays only a little, that creates a different kind of pressure. In cooperative events, another highly active player can help move you forward. In Stellar Race, a highly active opponent can force you to keep up with a faster pace if you want to remain competitive.

Frog Trail Made the Change Even Clearer

Frog Trail is especially useful when looking not only at how many rewards are available, but also at the total amount of effort required to earn them.

In the recorded seven-day version, objectives required wins, first-try wins, Rainbow Blasts, cards, Expedition Energy, Blackberries, coins, and other activities. The event pulled several different parts of the game into a single progression path.

We also have a recorded comparison between the total rewards from Frog Trail and the combined rewards previously offered by Gnome Treasure, Gardening Duties, and Hit the Target.

Reward	Gnome Treasure + Gardening Duties + Hit the Target	Frog Trail
Cards	49	27
Coins	2,750	2,050
Rainbow Blasts	6	5
Shovels	5	4
Desk Fans	6	4
Darts	4	2
Kettlebells	4	2
Dynamites	3	1
Bombs	6	10

In this specific comparison, cards dropped from 49 to 27, coins from 2,750 to 2,050, Darts and Kettlebells were cut in half, and Dynamites dropped from three to one. Bombs were the main category in which Frog Trail offered more.

This does not mean every account will always receive exactly the same rewards. Rewards, requirements, and even the availability of certain events can vary between different groups of players and between different versions of an event.

What the comparison does show is that a larger and more complicated event does not automatically provide more total value.

The Real Question Is How Quickly the Next Reward Arrives

If we look only at the Grand Prize, we miss perhaps the most important part of the change. Grand Prizes have almost always required heavy participation. For a casual player, a more useful question is:

How much do I need to play before I get the first, second, and third useful reward?

Event	What Affects Access to Rewards
Gnome Treasure	Personal gameplay and stage completion
Gardening Duties	Personal completion of tasks and stages
Hit the Target	Personal task completion and progression
BlackBerry Treasure	Personal gameplay and rising requirements, with overall value also affected by changes to pre-game boosters
Fancy Feathers	Beads, Plinko, feathers, and shared progress with a partner
Secret Passage	Tokens, Wheel, Trail Points, and shared progress with a partner
Stellar Race	Personal gameplay and performance relative to other players
Frog Trail	Multiple objectives drawn from different systems across the game

From Independent Rewards to Larger Progression Systems

Easy rewards have not disappeared. What appears to be changing is how those rewards fit into the larger structure of the events.

In the past, many reward sources worked relatively independently. You could play a little in one event, collect something, then move to another without having to complete either one.

Newer formats lean more heavily toward larger progression paths. Depending on the event, reaching rewards may require more personal gameplay, an active partner, competition with other players, or participation across several different systems in the game.

At the same time, changes to pre-game boosters mean event rewards cannot always be judged in isolation. For players with limited time, that also affects when an event stops being worth the effort, because what matters is not only what can eventually be earned, but how much play it takes to reach the next useful reward.

Conclusion

The available evidence does not show that Gardenscapes has removed small rewards from newer events. In many cases, those rewards are still there and can still appear relatively early.

The main change is that access to a growing share of those rewards is tied to larger and more complicated progression systems.

Sometimes that means more personal progress. Sometimes it means relying on a partner, competing against other players, or participating in several game systems at the same time. For someone who plays only a little, the key question is no longer simply how many rewards an event offers in total, but how much work it takes to reach the first useful ones.