In 2017 loot was x3 increase, which made pumpkin drops higher than what we're getting with x2. That combined with no low end adventures having a substantial drop makes this year a little harder. In 2017 Outlaws dropped 36 & 54, so with prem this was probably the absolute best adventure to be running. There is nothing like that this year, aside from ToW which is in an entirely different universe than Outlaws. The x2 XP doesn't compensate for the lack of pumpkin refills available this year because of x2 instead of x3 loot.
But don't forget that a few years back we got pumpkin fields that ran out and explorers did not bring back pumpkins. The only way to get pumpkins was to run a crapton of adventures. Which makes complaints about having to run so many adventures to get refills kind of superfluous. Now that explorers bring back pumpkins, having explorers makes a huge difference. If people don't have explorers, that's not BB's fault.
With that being said, so far I've been able to keep my nobles going without a lot of difficulty. I just put everything I can get into them and not worry about the others. I was out of town for 4 days last week with computer access for about 20 minutes in the evening 2 of those days and that's it. I already have the laboratory and just got the mad scientist this evening.
Bottom line is, I kind of enjoy the challenge of making the refills work. It's different than the other events and adds a little strategy combined with the dreaded...... "use of math skills".