Rocks are Ruining My (Farm) Life

[Ruuk]

EDIT: This bug is now outdated, and has been patched out as of March 6th, 2016. Any problems with rocks spawning on crops or otherwise is an intended feature brought about by an earthquake or other natural disasters. The bug listed below was an unintended problem brought about by using Rock Walls, which caused unreasonable numbers of rocks and debris to spawn and decimate the farm.

Is there a way to prevent or at least mitigate the potential damage caused by rocks and twigs spawning in crops and on other misc. farm equipment? I had over 10 beekeeping hives, and over the course of three days I've been reduced to a measly 2 because of the rate that rocks and sticks keep spawning in my farmland. I've walled the area off, I've cleared out the farmland significantly thinking it would keep the spawning rate contained to one side of the farm, but I can't seem to offset the damage they keep causing.

I've lost at least a dozen or more crops, a fruit tree seedling, an ancient seedling and 8 beehives to this, and I'm moving my item chests indoors before I find out the hard way whether or not rocks and sticks can spawn on those, too.

Is this an unintended bug or a planned feature, and if so, is there a way to mitigate or prevent the damage? As a long-time fan of the Harvest Moon series I'm absolutely in love with this game, but this problem is driving me up a wall and I'm getting close to dropping this game until it's patched or modded out if there's no way to prevent it, because while I can handle the occasional natural disaster causing problems, I'm not keen on every single morning being an RNG roll that decides what I lose, today.

[FluffyGuy]

Originally posted by Gooble:

Originally posted by Ruuk:

It does happen with less frequency, now. I've made it through most of summer and more than half of Fall without it happening more than maybe three or four times. It's still a bit bothersome and I'm dreading it hitting something like a sprinkler, but so far the only thing I've lost to it has been four corn stalks.

F̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶t̶h̶:̶ ̶G̶a̶r̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶c̶o̶m̶m̶e̶n̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶p̶u̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶r̶t̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶g̶s̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶s̶t̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶h̶i̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶t̶o̶p̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶"̶f̶l̶o̶o̶r̶s̶"̶ ̶l̶i̶k̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶b̶b̶l̶e̶s̶t̶o̶n̶e̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶w̶h̶e̶t̶h̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶t̶'̶s̶ ̶b̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶l̶u̶c̶k̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶f̶u̶n̶c̶t̶i̶o̶n̶,̶ ̶I̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶l̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶h̶i̶v̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶s̶i̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶I̶ ̶f̶o̶l̶l̶o̶w̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶a̶d̶v̶i̶c̶e̶.̶
Nevermind. I just lost two Preserve Jars to a stick even though they were on cobblestone.

Looks like I'm going to have to keep all of my stuff indoors...

am scared

[Taumpy Tears]

Just played a session today, and the weed creep has killed multiple seed machines, a preserve barrel, and 2 kegs on me. All of these items were on Stone floors so it doesn't seem to be fixed. Also, all of the items were surrounded by stone fences, so that didn't help either. I'm just going to move everything inside for the time being, as I can't trust that I won't lose everything over time.

[Ottofyre]

I just had a rock destroy a tilled square directly inside my fenced area. The squares near the one where the rock spawned were all either tilled or stone walls.

I thought I should mention that I've never had "creeping weeds" events until after building fences. In two games so far this has been the case. Before building my first fences all that ever happened was the tilled tiles eventually becoming untilled.

This has made it seem to me like the walls are what spawn the weeds. Not sure if it's just a coincidence or part of the bug.

[Benjinx]

Sadly this still seems to be an issue. Hiirazz might be onto something though as I destroyed all my fences (besides my coop fence way out to the upper left of the farm) and I don't seem to have had an issue since mid summer(18?) and it is now almost winter in my game.

[Galdr]

This is happening to me, debris had destroyed almost 25% of my fully fenced in, scarcrowed crops in just 3 days... I'm gonna stop playing until the next update... this hurts my heart too much :P

[kalietha109]

Originally posted by Hiirazz:

I just had a rock destroy a tilled square directly inside my fenced area. The squares near the one where the rock spawned were all either tilled or stone walls.

I thought I should mention that I've never had "creeping weeds" events until after building fences. In two games so far this has been the case. Before building my first fences all that ever happened was the tilled tiles eventually becoming untilled.

This has made it seem to me like the walls are what spawn the weeds. Not sure if it's just a coincidence or part of the bug.

Well, this just made my decision for me...I'm in summer year two and was debating whether I should get around to building fences because my husband keeps complaining that there aren't any to fix, guess he'll just have to survive without for awhile.

[Ansalem1]

There's a bug with stone fences that's supposed to be fixed in tonight's patch.

[KatherineOfSky]

I've been through 2 years of gameplay, and have yet to have this happen even once. I have all machinery outside, except preserve jars and kegs. (Those are inside). I've never had anything get destroyed.

[Elegant Caveman]

Seconding Benjinx on this, it seems Hiirazz might be on to something.

I don't have walls, only walkways (wooden around my crop fields, cobble elsewhere for general paths) and I've never had any debris intrude on my crops.

I sometimes see stuff spawn close-ish to where my crop fields are, a few tiles away at most, and I destroy those as soon as I see them.

Just finished Summer of year 1, so that's two full seasons without any issues.

[Ruuk]

I've made it largely into the second year by now, closing in on fall soon, and I've not seen the bug resurface on that same file, yet. It's worth noting that the only thing I really changed over the winter was to switch out all of my stone walls for Iron walls, since they were falling apart anyways. Maybe I've just gotten extraordinarily lucky, or the stone fences have something to do with the rate the rocks and sticks are spawning. I'm not certain what the case might be, but as of Day 18 of Summer into the second year, I haven't had trouble with rocks destroying my crops or machinery since Fall of the first year.

[Elegant Caveman]

Originally posted by Ansalem1:

There's a bug with stone fences that's supposed to be fixed in tonight's patch.

Originally posted by Ruuk:

I've made it largely into the second year by now, closing in on fall soon, and I've not seen the bug resurface on that same file, yet. It's worth noting that the only thing I really changed over the winter was to switch out all of my stone walls for Iron walls, since they were falling apart anyways.

Hopefully the patch takes care of this.

[XT]

It wasn't much, but I still have a lot of fenced in area getting destroyed by random rocks when the area around the fence is cleared out by a huge margin.

[WarWise]

Never hapened with me in 30 hours. There is a storm in the game that can destroy some stuff.

[captainshar]

My fruit sapling died the day of the earthquake between spring and summer. Is that supposed to happen? Is this a related issue?

[Ruuk]

Ever since the 1.03 or 1.04 patch I've not heard a peep about the Rockpocalypse, so I'm more than willing to say the problem's been fixed. When it comes to natural disasters, though, I'm pretty certain that's going to cause some kind of damage, but for some odd reason or another I've yet to experience any myself, so I can't say first-hand!