Hay Day Derby: Choose Tasks You Can Finish Without Wasting Your Allowance

The best Derby task is not always the quickest one on the board. A fast, low-point task can waste a scarce task slot; a high-point task can waste that same slot if its timer runs out. Good selection means matching points, preparation and your next few opportunities to play.

Start with your Neighborhood's goal: maximum race points, enough points for agreed rewards, or a special Derby objective. This guide uses the normal Derby as its baseline, then explains the changes that matter for Mystery, Blossom, Bunny, Bingo and Chill weeks. It does not assume that every farm owns every machine its level has unlocked.

Your task allowance is a budget

In an ordinary Derby, the League determines the standard task allowance:

Special Derbies can replace these limits. Treat the allowance as a limited number of scoring opportunities, rather than an unlimited stream of jobs. Only one task can be active at a time, and a failed selected task still uses an allowance slot.

For a Champion player completing nine 320-point tasks, the total is 2,880. Nine tasks worth 300 each produce 2,700: 180 fewer points. But eight successful 320-point tasks and one failure produce only 2,560. The maximum-point plan is strongest when the player can actually finish it.

This does not mean everyone should take lower-point tasks. If your Neighborhood agrees on 320-only play, choose a different achievable 320-point task rather than quietly changing the target. If the group is casual or the Derby is almost over, a finishable lower-value task may beat leaving the last opportunity unused.

Calculate what your remaining slots must earn

Suppose your agreed personal target is 2,400 points, you have 1,800, and two task slots remain. You need 600 more, so the required average is 300 per remaining slot. A 320-point task leaves 280 for the final one; taking 250 first leaves 350, which is beyond a normal 320-point task.

The useful calculation is: remaining target divided by remaining task slots. It tells you whether an attractive easy task still fits your plan. This is a planning example, not a universal horseshoe threshold; Neighborhood reward targets vary.

Separate an unwanted board task from a failed personal task

A Leader, Co-leader or Elder can remove an unclaimed task from the board and wait for a replacement. Taking a task and then abandoning it is different: you have committed one of your own opportunities. Do the feasibility check before accepting, not after you discover a missing machine or a full queue.

Board clearing also has a Champions League complication: Supercell states that tasks trashed from the general board reduce the Neighborhood's weekly global leaderboard score. That is not the same measure as the points awarded for your completed race tasks. A leaderboard-focused group should agree on its clearing policy rather than treat unlimited trashing as consequence-free.

For ordinary task selection, use four questions:

• Can I perform the required action with buildings and areas I already own?
• Do I have the ingredients, tools, visitors or help opportunities needed to finish?
• Will my actual login times let me complete the final collection or delivery?
• Does the task meet the group's point or special-objective target?

A task may be selectable at your level even when you have not bought its production building. Eligibility is not proof of readiness.

Plan around the action that earns progress

Owning an item and performing a task's required action are different things. For a production task, buying finished goods does not replace producing and collecting them yourself. For a delivery task, bought goods can be useful because they supply an order. Do not spend Coins on a shortcut that answers the wrong requirement.

Community-documented Derby preparation includes making production goods in advance and collecting them only after taking the matching task. Keep that distinction clear: finished goods waiting at a machine are useful preparation; the same goods already collected into your Barn are not new production-task progress.

Preparation has a cost. Reserving a machine for one possible task prevents it from serving other orders, and the matching task is not guaranteed to appear. Keep flexible ingredient stock first; commit a large production queue when it supports a task your group intends to leave for you or products you can use afterward.

Worked production schedule: queue slots do not run in parallel

Consider a hypothetical task requiring 12 items. Four are already finished and uncollected. After accepting and collecting those four, the remaining eight each take 30 minutes on one machine, with all ingredients available and no unrelated products ahead of them. The machine needs four more hours of processing.

If you can queue four items, the first batch takes two hours. You must return to load the next four unless they can already be queued. Eight queue slots can hold the entire four-hour run, but they do not turn it into a 30-minute job. More slots reduce the number of visits needed; they do not make one machine produce several items simultaneously.

Now suppose you can play at 18:00 and 22:30, but not between. With only four queue slots, loading at 18:00 produces four items by 20:00; the other four cannot start until your 22:30 return. They finish at 00:30. A plan that simply adds eight times 30 minutes and promises completion at 22:00 misses the queue refill gap.

You have three sensible choices: arrange another visit, choose a task whose remaining production fits the unattended queue, or finish more preparation before accepting. Buying speedups is not the default repair for an avoidable scheduling problem.

These times are illustrative, not a recipe's current duration. Apply the same structure to the machine's displayed time after mastery or other active effects. Include any products already ahead in the queue and the time when you can actually collect the result.

Town preparation: save the right finished visitors

For tasks asking you to fully serve Town visitors, prepare their requested stops but leave their final reward uncollected until the task is active. A visitor-type task needs the named type; a general Town visitor task accepts the broader group. Building-specific tasks have different requirements, so do not treat all Town icons as interchangeable.

Use the Town Hall's Ready tab to select individual finished visitors. This avoids releasing a prepared visitor you meant to keep for another task. Finished visitors waiting outside a building no longer occupy its service slot, but they still occupy Town capacity until released.

That creates a real trade-off. Suppose you hold six finished visitors of a type you hope to use later, while a current task could use them now. Keeping all six preserves the future option but prevents those six Town places from admitting fresh visitors. If the matching future task never appears, the reserve has delayed other work for no Derby return.

Keep prepared groups that match a concrete Neighborhood plan. When the Derby is nearing its end, favor completing an available useful task over protecting a speculative perfect one. The Town is a preparation area, not a warehouse with unlimited capacity.

Rose and Ernest do not complete your Derby work

Supercell explicitly excludes Rose and Ernest's actions from Derby progress. Adjust their settings and quotas before animal or production tasks so they do not collect the items you intended to collect yourself.

Their stored ingredients can still be part of your farm's wider supply plan. The important distinction is who performs the action that the task counts. Hiring or activating a helper should not be treated as a way to automate a Derby requirement.

Likewise, a task timer ending normally awards no points. If you have the Farm Pass Reactivate Derby Task perk, it can revive an expired task once per Derby. Even unlocking the perk after expiry can work, but only if you have not committed to another task in between. Before accepting a replacement, decide whether you intend to use that recovery option.

Special Derby weeks change the best choice

Mystery: a larger reward does not remove the readiness test

A Mystery task hides its requirement until you take it and awards 400 points when completed. It can ask for a machine your level has unlocked even if you never purchased it.

Compared with a 320-point completion, the gain is 80 points. One failed Mystery attempt earns nothing, so a hypothetical pair of attempts with one success produces 400, while two completed 320-point tasks produce 640. This is not a predicted failure rate; it shows why an unbuilt machine is a material risk rather than a minor inconvenience.

Choose Mystery tasks when your farm can cover the unlocked activities and your schedule can absorb an unknown assignment. A known task is the more controllable choice when you have one remaining slot or little time left.

Blossom: plan a relay, not four separate starts

A Blossom task can pass through different players for 320, 350, 375 and then 400 points. The same player cannot repeat that task, and its shared three-day timer begins with the first acceptance rather than resetting for each participant.

Four different players completing that same task earn 1,445 points. Four separate first completions earn 1,280, a difference of 165. The extra value comes from completing the relay, so select a task that several neighbors can realistically finish and agree on who takes it next.

Do not give the first position to a player who is about to disappear for most of the shared timer merely because they are online when the task appears. Put a ready player first, let later players prepare, and leave room for handoffs. A high fourth-completion value is irrelevant if the first three cannot happen in time.

Bunny and Bingo: leave room for the shared objective

Bunny credit depends on accepting a Bunny task during Bunny Time and then completing it. Finishing a task during the window is not a substitute for the correct acceptance. Because the three Bunnies appear over the course of the Derby, spending every task slot immediately can leave you unable to contribute to later catches.

Bingo rewards come from completed horizontal, vertical or diagonal lines on the shared 4-by-4 board, with at most three extra prizes. Pick the lines your group can finish and assign their difficult squares before taking unrelated easy tasks. A small point sacrifice may be deliberate if it completes an agreed line; make that a group decision rather than assuming race points are the only objective.

Chill: plan around two different resets

Chill Derby has five standard tasks per day, with 50 points per completion, and no competition between Neighborhoods. The personal daily quota resets at 00:00 UTC, while the board resets at 08:00 UTC. Those are separate events.

A player returning shortly after midnight UTC has a fresh personal allowance, but the board has not yet reached its daily reset. Plan the tasks available during that interval rather than waiting for a board refresh that comes eight hours later. Do not apply the ordinary nine-task Champion calculation to Chill week.

A practical selection order

First protect the task slots needed for a Neighborhood objective. Next remove tasks your farm cannot perform, then tasks your schedule cannot finish. Among the remaining options, prefer the highest useful points with supplies already secured and the fewest uncertain dependencies.

Before accepting, finish the sentence: “I will complete the last required action at ___, using ___ that I already have or can produce in time.” If the answer depends on a lucky shop search, an absent neighbor or a machine you do not own, choose another task or prepare first.

This approach preserves both kinds of Derby efficiency: points per task slot and time spent actively playing. A prepared task can score well without demanding constant logins; a rushed high-value task can consume the week’s most limited resource for no return.