Kupala Night is a Polish Midsummer Night Festival that has echoes throughout Europe. All the elements of the traditional Kupala Night, from floral wreaths to the search for the magical and very elusive fern 'flower' as well as the Bonfire are included in the traditional Kupala Night Quest sequence in Family Farm Seaside. A little section devoted to the actual festival is given at the end of this post.
A new Crop has been released in the form of the Fern Flower for this Mission.
Tip: If you cannot find the Fern Flower at first when you tap on a Plot to plant a Crop, go directly to the Market Screen and look under the Crops section.
As usual, there are two parts to this. The first is a Collections Mission and this incorporates the new Fern Flower Crop as follows:
Collect Wreaths in order to earn two special Rewards:
70 Purple Wreaths from the Fern Flower
50 Red Wreaths from Cherry Juice (Make in the Juice Maker)
30 Yellow Wreaths from Corn Bread (Make in the Baker)
10 White Wreaths from White Chocolate Trees
The two Rewards for the Collections Mission are a Hazel Tree and a Stone Bridge. Both will be needed for the traiditonal Kupala Night Quest sequence. You will need to complete the Collections Mission before you can complete Part V of the Kupala Night sequence of Quests. Note that you can purchase the Hezel Tree from the Market for 5 RC as well.
The second part is a traditional Quest sequence entitled Kupala Night.
Kupala Night I
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Felicia: I love June! It's geting warmer and I can already feel summer is in the air! Grandma told me that when she was young everybody celebrated Kupala Night. Let's bring these traditions back and plant some flowers for beautiful wreaths!
Harvest 40 Red Roses
Skip for 20 RC
Harvest 10 Cherries
SKip for 10 RC
Harvest 6 White Chocolates
Skip for 6 RC
Great! Now we have enough flowers to decorate the place!
Reward: 85 Coins, 10 XP
Kupala Night II
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Felicia: According to the legend, Kupala Night is the only time of the year when ferns floom. Prosperity, luck and power would befall on whoever finds the flower. So why don't we all go and search for it? Let's prepare for the trip!
Collect 20 Flashlights from your Neighbours
Skip for 20 RC
Prepare 8 Cheese Beef Sandwiches
Skip for 8 RC
Produce 40 Beef Salami
Skip for 20 RC
Thanks! We're almost good to go!
Reward: 50 Coins, 12 XP
Kupala Night III
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Felicia: We surely won't be hungry now! But the forest is quite far from our farm. Shall we prepare some drinks in case we get thirsty?
Prepare 40 Cherry Juice
Skip for 20 RC
Note: The Cherry Juice is one of the four Items that randomly yield the Wreaths required in the Collections Mission. You therefore may wish to wait to complete the Collections Mission, at least as far as the Red Wreath requirement is concerned until you reach this step in the Quest.
Prepare 20 glasses of Kvass
Skip for 20 RC
Prepare 20 Orange Smoothie
Skip for 20 RC
Now we're ready to go!
Reward: 100 Coins, 12 XP
Kupala Night IV
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Felicia: Actually, the forest is a bit scary! We've been searching for hours and still no sign of the precious flower... Wait! I can see something behind a tree... THERE IT IS! I found it!
Harvest 50 Fern Flowers
Skip for 25 RC
Note: Fern Flowers are one of the items that randomly yield Purple Wreaths required to complete the Collections Mission. By this time, you should have completed all the other Wreath Collections and if you are fortunate, you will complete the Purple Wreath Collection now, obtain the Rewards and be able to place the Hazel Tree as required in one of the tasks here.
Fertilise your Neighbours' Farms 40 Times
Skip for 40 RC
Place a Hazel Tree on your Farm
N.B. This is one of the two Rewards from the Collections Mission
You can purchase the Hazel Tree in the Market as well for 5 RC
Felicia: I can't believe I found it! Now we can go back to the farm and celebrate!
Reward: 100 Coins, 14 XP
Kupala Night V
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Felicia: Grandma once told me that girls would go out on Kupala Night and set flower wreaths afloat on the river believing that it would grant them good fortune in their relationships. So let's go on our bridge and float some flower wreaths!
Good idea, hihi!
Place a Stone Bridge
N.B. This is the other Reward from the Collections Mission
SKip for 10 RC
Harvest 50 Daisies
Skip for 25 RC
Harvest 6 Jasmine
Skip for 6 RC
Felicia: Oh no! My wreath sank! Hopefully it's not a sign of bad luck!
Reward: 110 Coins, 14 XP
Kupala Night VI
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Felicia: Kupala Night is traditionally the first time of the year when you can go for a swim! Let's get some healthy snacks so we look good in our swimming suits!
Prepare 6 bowls of Nut Mix
Skip for 6 RC
Prepare 6 Nut and Sorbus Crepes
SKip for 6 RC
Produce 10 Banana Ice Cream
Skip for 10 RC
There is nothing better than a good swim on a hot day!
Reward: 110 Coins, 15 XP
Kupala Night VII
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Felicia: We still have some time left before sunset and all these activities made me really tired. Maybe we could go to the seaside and relax an bit while catching some tasty fish? What do you say?
Fish 10 Times with Bone Fish Hook
Skip for 10 RC
Produce 20 Smoked Yellow Croaker
Skip for 20 RC
N.B. It takes almost 10 minutes to smoke each Yellow Croaker.
Produce 50 Veggie Burgers
Skip for 25 RC
Felicia: it's getting darker! Get ready for the big celebration!
Reward: 110 Coins, 15 XP
Kupala Night VIII
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Felicia: The sun finally went down. Let's release some paper lanterns into the sky to mark this amazing night on Summer Solstice! What a breathtaking view!
Collect 20 Paper Lanterns from your Neighbours
Skip for 20 RC
Produce 60 glasses of Apple Juice
Skip for 30 RC
Produce 10 Maple Sugar
Skip for 5 RC
The lanterns lit up the sky in an amazing display of glowing dots!
Reward: 120 Coins, 16 XP
Kupala Night IX
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Felicia: At the end of the night we will have a huge bonfire! We will dance, sing and tell stories around the bonfire! Oh, and eat of course! Let's go to the kitchen and prepare more food!
Prepare 6 Nut Cheesecakes
Skip for 6 RC
Produce 40 Black Forest Cakes
Skip for 20 RC
Produce 60 Champagne
Skip for 30 RC
Felicia: Thanks for spending this shortest night of the year with us!
Reward: 120 Coins, 16 XP
Congratulations! Check out your special reward in your gift box!
FINAL REWARD: Bonfire Decoration
The Bonfire Decoration is cleanable and produces a Purple Cleaning Gift Bag
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Three new Recipes have appeared in the Kitchen and will be used during the course of the Quest:
Nut Mix: 143 Coins, 1 XP
Ingredients: Hazel Nut, Candied Walnut
Nut and Sorbus Crepe: 725 Coins, 1 XP
Ingredients: Sorbus Crepe, Nut Mix
Nut Cheesecake: 370 Coins, 1 XP
Ingredients: Cottage Cheese x 2, Nut Mix
Strategies for Mission
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As always, there are ways to prepare in advance for the various tasks that are required in these Missions. It always is a good idea to complete the Collections Mission first as the Rewards usually are required to be placed on your Farm in one of the tasks in the traditional Quest sequence. In this Mission, you must place both the Stone Bridge and a Hazel Tree. You can purchase a Hazel Tree in the Market for 5 RC but you cannot purchase a Stone Bridge. Hazel Nuts are used in the new Kitchen Recipes and these are requirements in the traditional Quest sequence as well.
Possibly the most difficult part of the traditional Quest sequence is the consuming need for Power. You only are allocated 30 Power maximum and each Recipe you make in the Kitchen uses 1 Power. Where a Recipe calls for Ingredients that are the product or products from OTHER Recipes, you can use up to 3 Power to complete a single Dish! If you clean Neighbours' Decorations regularly or keep your own cleanable Decorations on your Farm, you should have a regular supply of Gift Cleaning Bags that randomly may contain 1 Power. I tend to save my Cleaning Gift Bags until a Quest like this appears and then open them in the hope that they will contain some Power.
Part III of the traditional Kupala Night Quest alone requires a minimum of 40 Power to complete as two separate Recipes are requested. You must make 20 of each. It is here that the wisdom of regular cooking is revealed. The ingredients to make an Orange Smoothie are Condensed Milk and Orange Jam. I consider both to be 'staples' in the Kitchen and whenever I remember to do so when there is no Quest on the screen, I try to make a few of each. Other Items that are needed in the Kitchen regularly include Cake Flour, Batter, Cornmeal and Soft Dough. Now Cottage Cheese can be added to that list as it is used in more than one Recipe, icnluding the new Nut Cheesecake. In fact, you will need to make Nut Cheesecake in one of the later steps in the Mission.
Another task that you can perform regularly when there are no outstanding Quests is fishing. More and more, you will find that Items caught when fishing are needed for time-restricted Quests and Kupala Night is no exception. In this case, you will need 20 raw Yellow Croaker in order to complete Part VII if the Quest. Refer to my recent post: 'To Smoke or not to Smoke' for the pros and cons of processing your fishing catches. In many cases, it is better to leave them unprocessed in the Barn for use in a case like this. On the other hand, some of the Daily Orders require the sale of Smoked Seafood and it is a slow process so if you have considerable amounts, you always can smoke half and keep the other half raw.
Other items that can be useful if made in advance include the various types of Bread. Wheat Bread is a required Ingredient in any Burger made in the Burger Machine. In fact, you will need it for this Quest. Black Bread is required as an ingredient to make Kvass. You will need to make 20 Kvass in the Kitchen in Part III of the Kupala Night Quest. Finally Cornmeal is the one type of Flour that is not made in the Mill any longer but is made in your Kitchen. The Collections Mission requires Yellow Wreaths randomly found in Cornbread. Although Cornbread is made in the Baker, the Cornmeal must be produced in the Kitchen. Having a stock of this in advance can prove very useful.
Incidentally, for those players who wonder WHY they should upgrade the little 'special' buildings to Level 5 in Quests such as the recent World Cup Mission, it is not really for the sake of the final 'Reward' in the form of a Decoration, whether cleanable or not but rather for the ancillary Rewards that could be redeemed such as Thunderstorms, Rain, Organic Fertilisers or even Rainbow Rain. The Thunderstorms I redeemed really helped considerably with the Collections Mission in THIS Quest, where I was able to speed the growth of all the Fern Flowers on my Farm to complete the Collections far earlier than I otherwise would have been able to do so. Fern Flowers ordinarily take 8 Hours to mature. I do have sprinklers throughout my farm as well as one Greenhouse, both of which reduce growing time but it was the Thunderstorms that really aided me today. If you wonder why you ought to consider upgrading a building like the Soccer Stadium to Level 5 (being forced to spend a little RC in order to do so), this is the primary reason.
I do not think you can store a special time-restricted Collections building unless it has been fully upgraded. That certainly was the case in the past. If you do not like the building, then you always can sell it instead of storing it but if it is a beautiful building like the Ice Lantern Castle, you may with to upgrade it fully for future use.
A final point: Although there are free gifts worth more than Milk and Wheat Flour, I tend to request these most often when no quests or missions are outstanding as they are Ingredients that are required in so many Machine Productions and Kitchen Recipes. Wheat Flour is used to make Cakes In this Mission sequence alone, a vast quantity both of Milk and of Wheat Flour was needed. You need Wheat Flour to make the Wheat Bread used in the Buger Machine for Veggie Burgers as well as the Cake Machine for the Black Forest Cakes not to mention the Batter used in the Kitchen. Milk is used in the Ice Cream Machines as well as in the Kitchen to make Condensed Milk, Crepes and Cottage Cheese, inter alia. The Holstein Cow, like the Limousin Cattle and Buffalo takes up considerable space on a farm that no longer can be expanded. Although Clover matures quickly, the Holstein Cow is a nuisance to place now, so I prefer to request Milk from my Neighbours. Wheat Flour is easier to produce in the sense that I keep a Mill always on my Farm but even so, I would rather make Oat Flour and Rye Flour for Cake Flour than spend my time making Wheat Flour I easily can obtain from my Neighbours. There may be Free Gifts that are worth more but few have as many uses as Milk and Wheat Flour.
Finally, time is saved if you have more than one Machine of any given variety. With three Juice Makers, three Jam Makers and three Wine Makers, the time needed to produce quantities of Juice, Wine or Jam is lessened considerably. They are small Machines as well, which makes it fairly easy to place more than one when needed.
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Kupala Night, a Midsummer Night Festival
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Kupala Night is a Polish version of the traditional pagan European Midsummer Night Festival. When I was a little girl, one of my favourite books was 'A Wonderful Garden' by E. Nesbit. In this book, the children had a Victorian book about the 'Language of Flowers' that included some of the old magical associations with various flowers and plants. They read that, on Midsummer's Night, if one could find a fern seed, one could smear it upon the eyes to be able to see all that otherwise would be invisible. This notion excited me and I searched (in vain) for the fern seed... The Polish custom of searching for the 'fern flower' on Midsummer's Eve is very similar. No such flower exists! It is a magical construct but the search is part of the ancient journey into the forest to collect plants and flowers to make blossoms and crowns, often for a statue or figure of a Goddess.
Kupala may be derived from the old Polish word for 'bath' or 'bathing'. It is, however, the name of an old pagan Slavic Goddess as well. Kupalnocka or Kupala Night is celebrated with a number of rites, including dances round abonfire or leaping over the flames and a charming ritual wherein maidens weave garlands of fresh flowers and hay and, placing a candle in the dentre, float them on running water. The way that the garland floats is a form of fortunetelling, and will tell the maiden whether she is to marry soon or remain single.
In ancient Northern Europe, a statue of the fertility Goddess often was transported through the land to a sacred river or lake where she was bathed ritually before being returned to her 'home'. Midsummer does mark the first night of the year in ancient Poland where bathing was considered safe and the waters blessed by the old God of Thunder.
Midsummer is a Festival of Light in the sacred pagan Wheel of the Year. It is a time when fires are lit and the old ritual of leaping through or over the flames not only purifies and blesses but is considered sympathetic magic to cause the crops to grow stronger and higher.
There are many lantern festivals throughout the world, both in the East and West. Lanterns of course imitate the great Lantern in the Sky in the form of our Sun. Worship of the Sun is an ancient part of the Midsummer rites.
It is interesting how the ancient custom of throwing plants into running water in order to 'kill' or defeat Winter changed into a fortunetelling rite involving floral wreaths with candles in the centre. Originally, the wreath was made with hay interwoven with fresh flowers. Now flowers often are used exclusively to make the wreaths.
