For festivals I think there should be a cut off date where you can't plant new pets after but one where they will have time to finish naturally.

I don't log in every day and only got my maj essences a few days ago and am stressing out about if I'll be able to finish them in time because I'm almost out of agents and they're so expensive now. I think it would be better if there were a stop date (like the first 'end of fest' type date) where you can't plant new creatures after and they would all have time to grow.

and if you're impatient you can still put agents to be faster but then everyone would know 'can't plant after the 1st' or whenever and we wouldn't have to stress about finishing so expensive pets.

or second suggestion make agents cost less tokens an the shop. when it's 40 that's the same as 20k each. 20 or 15 would be better because right now it's way too high.

One issue with this is that expedients are a thing.

Instead of a lock, perhaps have a message come up 'if you plant this pet, you MUST use an expedient on it in order to complete it in time' (or a simpler 'this pet won't complete in time without using an expedient'), but still allow players to plant the pets.

That way they will know that the pet won't be completed in time, so they can decide against planting it, but they can still plant them if they are planning on getting expedients for their pets.