04: Being a Good Neighbor

Chapter 04: Being a Good Neighbor

This part of game play only has to be as complicated as you make it -- and making it simple is really just a matter of establishing a routine. Having said that, it should be emphasized that this is a very important part of game play in Farmville, as being a good neighbor pays major dividends because it also encourages your neighbors to be good to you!

Fortunately this is a mostly painless process -- in fact you can do it by the numbers below.

(A) The Art of Being a Good Neighbor

This is your daily routine for the Good Neighbor System -- once you get used to doing this on a daily basis it will become an automatic part of your regular play. You log into the game, you do your Good Neighbor tasks, and the benefits come flowing to you!

We have touched upon the various elements of this as part of the game and, while trying to be diplomatic, we have also briefly touched upon motivation -- now if you will excuse the following for its baldness and honesty, at the risk of appearing mercenary we need to specify the key issues that relate to this in order to emphasize the importance of this as a core element of basic daily play so that we all can agree why it is important.

In simple terms, while this game can be played solo, with no cooperative assistance from other players, the facts are that having the willing cooperative assistance of your friends and neighbors easily cuts in half (or more) both the time and the effort that is often required to reach goals in this game!

It may be a self-serving and selfish fact, but inducing your neighbors into assisting you by both offering them the same assistance and by smoothing the path for them through making the elements available on your farm that allow them to assist you is, simply put, mutually beneficial. In other words, why make things harder on yourself when they can be easy?

It is for that reason that it is a good idea to scan the feeds of your mates and your neighbors specifically to identify other gamers who are very active in game play. Yes, we are saying that you should send friend invites and then neighbor invites based solely upon the prolific game activities rather than the interest of being mates, mateship, or the fact that you know people in common. If it occurs to you that others may judge so mercenary a decision harshly it should not -- this is so common a strategy by top-level players that they don't even consider it worthy of comment!

If your plan is to climb into the top 10% of players in Farmville, then the bulk of the people who appear in your neighbor list at the bottom of the game play interface had better be hard core players, even at the expense of having people you actually know in the list!

And once you have populated your neighbor menu with that caliber of player, it should be clear to you that maintaining the Good Neighbor Tasks and facilities on your farm is even more important. Enough said on that!

Fertilizing the Five Crops

Good Neighbor Tasks

Each day when you sign in to Facebook you should do the following steps:

(1) From your Facebook Home Page click the link in the upper left-hand corner that is your name (below it is the link to edit your profile). On the left a bit way down the page is a partial list of your friends above which is a link titled "Friends" with the number of friends you have. Click on the Friends link to open the page that lists all of your friends.

Now go down the list, stopping when you reach a friend who is also one of your Farmville neighbors! Right-click on their name, and select 'Open Link in a New Window', which will cause your friends Feed Page to appear!

Now carefully check their feed for any assistance requests that they may have made -- Barn Raising requests, postings asking for certain items or resources, that sort of thing -- and help them out.

(2) Daily Visits with your Neighbors

On the very bottom of the game interface you will find the images of and a list of your neighbors. Note that this is not your Friend List, it is the list of the friends who you have specifically asked to be your neighbor or who have asked you to be their neighbor and you have accepted their request.

To start your farming day you want to visit each of your neighbors' farms and do -- at a minimum -- the following chores (assuming that they are a good neighbor and have provided you with the necessary buildings for the doing of it):

-- Fertilize Crops: You are provided by the server with 5 bags of fertilizer every 12 hours that you can use to fertilize five of your neighbor's plots -- and in addition to earning XP for doing so and the chance to find a bag of fertilizer you can use to fertilze all of your crops in one click back on your farm, you can also find collection items in the process of fertilizing their crops, and surplus cans of petrol!

There is a ribbon associated with fertilizing your neighbor's crops called 'Crop Whisperer' that is awarded for the number of times you have fertilized a neighbor's crops. The awards are made at Yellow (100), White (250), Red (500), and Blue (2,500).

Once you have earned the Blue Crop Whisperer Ribbon you should change to harvesting trees or animals as there are other collectibles that can be obtained for doing that and you are allowed five such actions in place of fertilizing crops.

Feeding Your Neighbor's Chickens

-- Feed the Chickens: You are provided with a bag of Chicken Feed every 12 hours for each farm that you visit that can be used to feed their Chicken Coop -- assuming that they have one -- and you should always do this because there is a random chance that you will find a Mystery Egg inside, and because you earn a small amount of XP for doing it! Note that this can potentially result in obtaining the rarer eggs...

Usually You Don't Find a Mystery Egg

-- Visit their Greenhouse: Visiting (clicking upon) your neighbor's greenhouse accomplishes several things all at the same time -- it earns you 20 seeds of a randomly selected hybrid plant, it earns you a small amount of XP, and it helps your neighbor by filling one of the "help" spots for one of their trays, shortening the time it takes for them to create a set of hybrid seeds! This will also add a post to your wall allowing your neighbors to obtain the 20 seeds as well.

-- Visiting their Animal Trough: this not only helps them to fill their Trough but randomly can obtain two scoops of feed for you to take with you, as well as a small amount of XP and potentially some coin! It will also add a post to your wall that will allow them to obtain extra scoops as well!

-- Holiday / Event Buildings: Visit any Holiday or Special Event Buildings that are active on their farm. During holidays and special events certain buildings can be clickable -- for instance during Valentine's Day the Valentine Castle gave you Valentine Cards and XP for visiting it, while St. Patrick's Day gave Gold and XP for visiting the Leprechaun’s Tree House. Sometimes clicking the special event buildings has a beneficial effect on your neighbor as well. You should always try to do this!

(B) Building the Good Neighbor Farm

Now that you are familiar with the numbered list of all of the things that a good neighbor does daily, we need to talk about the Good Neighbor Farm -- think of this as the other side of the Good Neighbor Coin -- which is literally the infrastructure that is required for your friends and neighbors to do their own daily list of tasks. These are the elements that you need to have on your farm so that your neighbors can do their good turns for you!

(1) The Minimum Buildings

-- The Chicken Coop: Open the Marketplace and select the Building Menu and then purchase a Chicken Coop for 5,000 Coins and place it on your farm. It should be placed in an obvious and easy to spot location and not hidden by trees or other buildings as you want your friends and neighbors to be able to quickly find it and feed your chickens in it!

-- Fishing Hole: Placed and then upgraded to the cap this pond delivers free Special Delivery Boxes to the neighbors who visit you and click upon it.

-- Greenhouse: Purchased for 5 Coin in the Building Menu, you will place the Greenhouse in an easy to spot location and then begin expanding it to increase the number of trays inside. You will want to get it to its largest size as quickly as you can.

-- Holiday/Event Buildings: During Holidays and Special Events the buildings that are part of these events are usually an important element for completing the quests or missions for that event, and both you and your neighbors benefit from your having the buildings built -- and improved to their highest level.

-- Water Wheel: placed and upgraded to the cap this building offers your visitors a chance to receive a Watering Can for their efforts of clicking on it.

(2) Advanced Buildings

In addition to the basic buildings above, the following buildings provide additional benefits for you and your neighbors though for the most part the benefits are largely passive with respect to your friends and neighbors -- still it is important to have them, for the reasons noted in each listing below.

-- Beehive: Constructing this requires you to purchase the kit from the Marketplace and then place the kit and begin adding the required resources. Once all of the building materials are added, you will then need to obtain a Queen Bee from a neighbor’s feed and as many worker bees as you can managed. You can obtain more worker bees from Special Delivery Packages and you will be adding more as time passes -- the importance of the worker bee population is more because it increases the chance of pollination during harvesting than in increasing the size of your beehive.

Beehives grow larger as worker bees are added

Once you have the beehive in place and functioning, you will be harvesting it once a day for the chance to obtain a bag of fertilizer that will fertilize your entire farm in one click, which is the main benefit for you -- and as mentioned above, the presence of the beehive provides a random chance that you will obtain pollinated seeds during crop harvesting.

Pollinated seeds significantly increase the chances of obtaining bushels from each harvest of a crop, which is a very useful element when you are working towards crafting projects. Additionally when you find pollinated seeds that fact is posted to your feed, where your neighbors can share in your good luck.

-- Dairy Farm: In addition to providing you with a place to store your cows and obtain dairy-related collectibles, the Dairy Farm allows you to breed cows -- which in turn allows you to share baby cows with your friends and neighbors, and that increases their ability to do the same.

-- Horse Stables: In addition to providing you with a place to store your horses, the Stables allows you to breed horses -- which in turn allows you to share baby horses with your friends and neighbors, and that increases their ability to do the same.

-- Market Stalls: The base storage in a Market Stall is 100 Bushels -- but this can be expanded to 200 Bushels by adding an additional four Stalls (25 more storage per Stall) with the added benefit of allowing you to sell 5 crops at any time, which is a major element in your Good Neighbor efforts!

-- Orchards: In addition to providing you with a place to store your trees, the Orchards are a constant source for saplings and Watering Cans -- which you share with your neighbors via your feed. The Orchards are one of the best sources for new trees and so having several and using them to share these resources is considered to be a very important element in being a good neighbor!

-- Pigpen: In addition to providing you with a place to store your pigs and obtain truffles that can be traded for prizes, the Pigpen allows you to breed pigs -- which in turn allows you to gift baby pigs to your friends and neighbors, and that increases their ability to do the same.

-- Primary Crafts Building: Adding a Bakery, Spa, or Winery to your farm significantly expands the crafting opportunities for you and your neighbors, stimulating the crafting economy and giving both groups the ability to make and sell craft goods, buy craft goods, and trade them for fuel. These are the starting point for entering the crafting system, and encourage participation in the Co-Op Farming projects. All in all it is an incredibly valuable building for several reasons and should really be a primary requirement.

(C) Farmer Traps

Setting up a Farmer Trap literally means blocking off the plot that your Farmer spawns in when you enter the game, the same plot being where your neighbors will spawn when they visit your farm. This plot moves when you expand your farm size, which means that each time that you expand you will have to reset the trap, but doing this is, despite ominous sounding name, actually a good thing.

First though, if you are worried about this being illegal or considering a cheat, it is not. You will not get into trouble with Zynga for doing this -- it is a perfectly accepted practice because it saves time and is much appreciated by other players.

Setting the Trap

To trap a Farmer you first must buy four or more objexts to use for the trap. We say four or more because in theory you could just use four objects that you place at the cardinal points of the compass directly adjacent to the very spot where the avatar enters your farm, and they are trapped. Some players actually do this -- but most prever to block the entire plot by placing eight objects around the edge of the plot, as that looks nicer.

Hay Bales work great for this, as do Fences -- either way, when a farmer is trapped they are unable to move, which means that they will not have to move to the location of whatever item you have clicked on before it can be acted upon, saving loads of time for yourself and your visitors!

Being forced to wait for a farmer to walk between plots is widely viewed as a frustrating burden, and most players consider placing traps on your farm to be a good neighbor action -- and you always want to be a good neighbor! Note that some neighbors will refuse to visit farms that do not have a farmer trap in place -- something you will want to bear in mind.

A Little Farm in the English Countryside

The English Countryside

The game was recently expanded to include a second farm -- the English Countryside -- and this is obviously something that you are going to want to explore once you reach Level 20 and can take advantage of it. The English Farm can be worked at the same time as your regular one, or you can choose to have it (or your regular one) suspend time while you are at the other.

In terms of progression you should probably treat the second farm as a goal to work towards after you are a very high level player, and focus all of your efforts and income on the main farm first. As for working the farm, save for minor differences all of the information that applies to the main farm in this guide applies to that one as well.

Lighthouse Cove

The game was recently expanded to include a third farm -- Lighthouse Cove -- and this is obviously something that you are going to want to explore once you reach Level 20 and can take advantage of it. Lighthouse Cove can be worked at the same time as your regular one, or you can choose to have it (or your regular one) suspend time while you are at the other.

In terms of progression you should probably treat the third farm just like the second -- as a goal to work towards after you are a very high level player, and focus all of your efforts and income on the main farm first. As for working the farm, save for minor differences all of the information that applies to the main farm in this guide applies to that one as well.

Winter Wonderland

The game was recently expanded to include a Fourth farm -- Winter Wonderland -- and this is obviously something that you are going to want to explore once you reach Level 20 and can take advantage of it. Winter Wonderland can be worked at the same time as your regular one, or you can choose to have it (or your regular one) suspend time while you are at the other.

In terms of progression you should probably treat the fourth farm just like the second -- as a goal to work towards after you are a very high level player, and focus all of your efforts and income on the main farm first. As for working the farm, save for minor differences all of the information that applies to the main farm in this guide applies to that one as well.

Hawaiian Paradise

The game was recently expanded to include a Fifth farm -- Hawaiian Paradise -- and this is obviously something that you are going to want to explore once you reach Level 20 and can take advantage of it. Hawaiian Paradise can be worked at the same time as your regular one, or you can choose to have it (or your regular one) suspend time while you are at the other.

In terms of progression you should probably treat the fifth farm just like the second -- as a goal to work towards after you are a very high level player, and focus all of your efforts and income on the main farm first. As for working the farm, save for minor differences all of the information that applies to the main farm in this guide applies to that one as well.