Wild Garden: 7.1 and Beyond

7.0 has been out for two weeks, and we’ve read every thread, review, ticket and Telegram message about the new Wild Garden. Thank you for the detail. The long breakdowns, profit tables, layout guides and branch charts you made showed us exactly where things broke, and they shaped everything below.

What we got wrong

Each change in 7.0 had a reason. Together, though, they added up to one thing: the garden became more work for less reward. Timers got longer while returns went down. The Wildlife tree turned your harvest into long crafting chains. Visitors started asking for more and paying less. And the garden stopped being the quick, relaxing check-in that so many of you loved before heading into a match.

Wildlife was meant to be an extension of the garden: something new to grow into once your plots were running smoothly. Instead it landed as busywork on top of the garden you already had. And because we evened out the rewards at the same time, it looked like we were asking more of our gardeners while giving less back. That was never the goal, but we completely understand why it felt that way.

We also removed gems from relic chests without saying so clearly in the patch notes. That’s on us. You deserved to hear it from us first. Relic chests were never designed with the garden in mind, and together they had become a shortcut to gems that went far past anything else in the game. More on that below.

What’s changing in 7.1

Target release: Monday, October 12.

7.1 is what we can fix right away, without waiting for the bigger rework. Nothing in it will be taken away again when that rework arrives.

• Your basket doubles. Every basket upgrade now holds twice as much: you start at 50 instead of 25, and the last upgrade takes you to 400 instead of 200. Prices don’t change. If you’ve already bought upgrades, your basket simply doubles.

• Every visitor pays the best rate. Until now, visitors with small orders paid fewer Wildflowers, and visitors with big orders paid less XP. From 7.1, every visitor pays the top rate on both, whatever the size of the order. No order pays less than today: small orders pay up to twice the Wildflowers, and big orders up to twice the XP.

• Shiny visitors. Roughly 1 in 20 visitors now turns up shiny, and pays double the XP and Wildflowers. You’ll know one when you see it:

  

• Confirmations before you spend gems, unlock a shop slot or upgrade your basket.

• No more visitors asking for things you haven’t unlocked.

• Quality of life: a basket list that scrolls, plant connections shown in both directions, swiping up and down between Wildlife branches, tapping other plots while you plant, your seed inventory right in the Garden Shop, notifications when new visitors arrive and free boosts recharge, a Harvest All that tells you how many plants fit in your basket, and smoother planting and harvesting.

7.1 makes the garden pay better straight away. What it doesn’t fix is why the garden feels like so much work: the long chains, the big orders and the timers. That’s structural, and we’d rather build it properly and test it than rush it out. That’s Season 8.

Wild Garden: New Leaf, coming in Season 8

The rework arrives with Season 8, targeted for November 23. Our goal is simple: the garden should be a quick, relaxing check-in again, and its deeper parts should be there when you want them, not a chore you have to keep up with. Here’s the direction:

• A smaller, simpler Wildlife tree. Fewer critters, shorter chains, and every recipe takes a single ingredient. The tree gets four tiers: Roots, Bark, Branches and Treetops. The higher a critter lives, the more it’s worth, and you’ll be able to see that at a glance.
• Crafting becomes optional. Your plants grow the bottom two tiers of the tree alongside their usual harvest, so you can keep your visitors happy without crafting at all. If a visitor asks for something you’d rather not make, send them on and a new one arrives. Wildlife becomes the place to turn extra harvest into something worth more, not something you have to do to keep your visitors moving.
• No more waiting on the tier below. Every tier has a recipe that starts straight from something your garden grows.
• Smaller orders that pay more. Visitors ask for fewer different things, pay much more for refined critters, and stop asking for bigger and bigger piles as your garden levels up.
• Fewer visitor spots. You’ll have 5 visitor spots instead of 8. With smaller orders, fewer spots keep the whole visitor list on one screen and easy to clear in a single check-in.
• Apex visitors. Once a day, you have a chance of a special visitor turning up. They ask for one of the best critters in your tree and pay properly for it, gems included. Apex visitors don’t leave, so you can take a few days to get their order ready.
• Basic seeds that never run out are back. A handful of basic plants go back to how they worked before 7.0: no seeds to buy and no seed count. You just pay a few coins each time you plant one. They don’t take up space in the Garden Shop, which is kept for the rarer seeds, and they yield a bit less than those. But you’ll always have something to grow.
• Plant timers you can plan around. Timers snap to a few set lengths, so you can plant a batch together and come back to all of it at once. The longest timers come down, too: no plant will take more than a day to grow.
• Heroes that help more broadly. Today most hero bonuses are narrow: one plant or one critter, a little faster. We’re reworking how heroes work in the garden, so their bonuses are easier to understand and easier to get value from.
• Less fiddling with time, more yield. Right now nearly every garden bonus is a speed-up, so each plot ends up on its own odd timer, and keeping up means checking in every few minutes. We’re doing our best to move away from that. The heroes will still speed up your whole garden at once, so your plots stay in step. Beyond that, we’re looking at heroes giving you more yield and power instead of shaving minutes off a single plot. That way you can plan your garden around a few fixed check-ins in your day.
• Nothing you’ve built is lost. Critters that stay in the tree stay in your stock. Any critter that leaves the tree is automatically turned into Wildflowers when you update to Season 8, so the work you put into it still pays.
• The small stuff, too. Alongside the big changes, we’re going through all the smaller tweaks and quality-of-life fixes that make the garden nicer to spend time in. Plenty of the 7.1 list came straight from your suggestions, and there’s more to come. If something small annoys you every time you open the garden, tell us.

The numbers aren’t final yet. We’ll share the details before Season 8 ships, and we’d love your feedback while we’re still building it.

What isn’t changing

Relic chests won’t pay gems again. The garden → pickaxes → relic chest → gems loop let the garden outproduce every other gem source in the game, which wasn’t how it was meant to work. We know that hurts, especially for free-to-play players who relied on it. That’s why, in Season 8, the apex visitors pay gems: a source you earn by growing your tree, limited to once a day so it can’t run away again. The Gemtooth Truffle keeps its gems, too.

Also in 7.1

Card packs: more cards for the same price. We’ve heard your feedback: the new card packs didn’t feel worth it, and you were right. Flash Sale card packs now hold around two and a half to three times as many cards, at the same price.

Undying Infestation: a smoother climb to the Rat King’s Crown. Event milestones now come much sooner, and many rewards along the way got bigger, including more Rat King’s Crown cards and more wild cards. The early Rat Cultists are a little easier to beat, and the later ones come better equipped, so the challenge ramps up more steadily.

Lanterns from PvE events. During the Halloween event, leaderboard chests in The Undying Infestation, Enduring Evil and Spore Wars also give Lanterns on top of their usual rewards. The better the chest, the more Lanterns: 5 from Bronze, 10 from Silver, 20 from Gold, 50 from Emerald, 100 from Ruby and 250 from Diamond. So climbing a PvE leaderboard now also gets you closer to the Halloween shop rewards.

For everything else in 7.1, including Guilds and Treasure Hunts, see the full 7.1 patch notes.

Keep the feedback coming

The garden threads in Discord have been incredibly useful. Please keep it coming, after 7.1 and as Season 8 takes shape.

Thank you for sticking with us,
Nicki & the Backpack Brawl team