If you’re not on Facebook, or you have no interest in FarmVille games, then you can look away now. What follows is a selection of hints and tips for getting ahead in FarmVille – one of several farming games on Facebook. There are no cheats here – just things I’ve learned from playing FarmVille for a couple of weeks that might help you on your way to success.
When you start your FarmVille farm, you get a tiny patch. You can plough, sow and harvest a limited range of crops. You need to coins to buy seeds in the market, and to pay for the ploughing, and when you harvest your crops you get more coins. You can spend those coins on ploughing and planting more ground, planting trees or raising animals. Anytime you spend coins you get experience points – and as you gain experience points you rise through the levels. A new level opens up new opportunities – more crops, trees and animals to farm, or more buildings and decorations to add to your patch.
Make sure you choose the right crop at the right time to get the most return. There are no seasons in FarmVille, and no pests to speak of, but each crop costs a different amount to plant, takes a different time to grow and gives you a different reward. And crops wilt after the same amount of time it took them to grow – so if you plant a crop that takes 4 hours to grow and you can’t check your farm again within 8 hours it will wilt and you’ll get nothing. Generally speaking, the longer a crop takes to grow, the more money it is worth and the more experience points you rack up for planting it.
Animals and trees also take different amounts of time to be ready for harvest (and don’t worry, FarmVille is vegetarian! You don’t have to slaughter your animals), but they’ll wait until you get back, they don’t wilt or die in your absence.
To help your farm grow, you need neighbors – your Facebook friends who are also playing FarmVille. Certain upgrades, such as expanding your farm, are only available when you have a certain amount of neighbors. You’ll also get a FarmVille dollar for each new neighbor, and you can save those up to buy certain things that aren’t available for coins.
You can send gifts to your neighbours, and receive gifts from them, and there are several animals and tree species that are only available as gifts. You can help out on your neighbor’s farms – pulling up weeds, raking up leaves or scaring away crows – and in return you will receive coins and experience points. You’ll also be working your way to winning the ‘Good Samaritan’ set of ribbons. And if you take a photo of their plot you’ll be working towards your ‘Shutterbug’ ribbons as well.
Winning a ribbon
Ribbons are extra prizes – every time you meet the requirements for a new ribbon you’ll be given a reward of coins and/ or something for your farm. You can publish the news to your Facebook Wall, and it’s worth doing so because your neighbors can get a bonus from it as well – it’s called ‘Share the Wealth’ and your neighbors will love you for it.
So it’s worth checking your Wall regularly to see what bonuses are on offer, but you may also find that a neighbor has found a stray animal – a lost sheep, a brown cow or an ugly duckling – that needs a home. Click on the link to adopt the animal, and if it hasn’t already found a home then you can give it one. Click on the link even if someone says they have adopted the animal, because sometimes there is more than one available.
If you find a stray animal wandering around your farm, then publish the news to your Wall. One of your neigbors will adopt the animal, and you might get a bonus from them – check your Notifications to see if you do.
Facebook Notifications
Adding buildings and decorations gives you experience points and helps you move up the levels. You can also buy farm machinery to give you a hand, but you’ll need FarmVille dollars to pay for the fuel.
It’s perfectly possible to play FarmVille for free and work your way up through the levels, but if you’re in a hurry or you have spare dollars sitting around in your PayPal account then you might like to invest them in a booster – you can buy coins, or FarmVille dollars (which can compensate, to a certain extent, for a shortage of neighbours). You can also take advantage of affiliate offers to gain those things instead. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to, but any money you do spend is supporting the game developers, Zynga.
FarmVille is in beta, and new things appear constantly. Today’s revelation is that the Ugly Ducklings that have been adopted mature into swans! No one knows yet what you harvest from swans when they’re ready, but we will find out soon enough.
In the meantime, if you’ve got a FarmVille hint of your own, leave it in the comments :D
Great summary, I didn’t realise you got FarmVille Dollars for getting neighbours, I only knew about getting one every time you level up.
This might be a really obvious tip, but you can plow the grass up to create more fields and allow you to plant more crops, just select the plow tool and click on a square of grass. This costs 15 coins and you gain 1XP the same as plowing after harvesting a crop.
I only worked this out after getting my first farm upgrade but farm upgrades increase the total size of the farm (The green square with neighbours names around it) not the number of fields you have.
Hmmm…maybe you’re right Rachel, and the FarmVille dollars come from moving up a level and not getting a new neighbor. I will try and keep better track!