Farmville Strategy Series: Just the Basics

According to the most recent statistics, on an average day between 30 and 50 million people spend time tending to their farm in the Facebook game Farmville -- a web-based game that features about what you would expect from a game that loosely simulates farming. The secret to the incredible success of the game has a lot to do with instant gratification and the social aspects of its play -- the average gamer ends up playing the game because one of their friends invited them to -- making it a near-perfect fit for the social networking platform.

What keeps gamers coming back is the easy to attain success that play provides, combined with the visual evidence -- in the form of virtual trophies -- that result from play. These take the form of rare animals, plants, and trees, to special signs awarded for mastering a given crop. There are special buildings, event-based items, and holiday items that can only be acquired by playing the game daily, and a carrot in the form of new play options based upon the level the player has obtained, giving the player easy to grasp goals to strive for.

Competition plays a major role in the game, with friends competing to make their farm better than their neighbors, and recent additions to the game include a crafting system, tree orchards, and expanded buildings that add to the gaming aspects, permitting gamers to diversify their play in order to stand out in a particular area in contrast to their mates.

That sums up the technical details that contribute to the success of Farmville on Facebook, but in simple terms, the reason that the game is so successful is that it is fun. If the statistics are correct, about half of the gamers who visit our site either play Farmville, or have played it in the past, and the rest are likely to try it at some point in the future. That being the case, we thought a series on play strategy would be well received, starting with the more basic concepts of the game, in order to assist the new player with getting their farm started, and perhaps show the veteran gamers some tricks that they were not aware of.

Farmville Basics

When you start playing the game you begin with a small farm -- in order to increase its size you either have to add a certain number of neighbors, or spend real-world money to purchase Farmville Bucks (in-game virtual currency) in order to pay to expand your farm. If you go the neighbor route, you still have to spend a form of in-game money called Farmville Coins, but coins are earned in the game for completing various tasks, including harvesting crops and collecting resources from the animals on your farm, rather than exchanging real-world money.

While we are on the subject of virtual money trade, using Bucks to buy items in the game is how Zynga -- the company behind Farmville and many other similar games -- profits from hosting the game. Players are not forced to participate using real money -- most of the items in the game can be acquired using coins earned in the game -- and while a smaller percentage of items can only be obtained using Bucks, most of the items that sell for Bucks can also be obtained either with coins or as free items received from the "feeds" of your friends and neighbors (more on that in a bit).

Every new farmer starts out with the same potential, a plot of land upon which they can plow and seed, and harvest their crops. New players should complete a few crops to earn some working capital in coin -- a good target is around 20,000 coins -- of which they should always retain 10,000 for use in planting the next crop, as seeds cost money to buy. Once extra coins are available, the player should purchase a Chicken Coop and Dairy Barn from the in-game store, as these two buildings can hold a certain number of chickens and cows (respectively) allowing the player to store them and harvest from them in one click. The Chicken Coop also serves as an interactive element in the game for your friends, who can visit your farm and, once a day, feed your chickens for you, providing the opportunity for them to find a special egg that can contain rarer chickens, buildings, or special items when it is opened.

In addition to feeding your chickens, visiting friends can also help fertilize your field, thereby finding collectible items or cans of fuel, and once you have constructed one of the recently added special buildings -- like a greenhouse -- they can also help you with the process of combining seeds to make new plants. Each gesture of assistance that you provide to a friend -- or they provide to you -- is rewarded with coins and potentially, special items.

Once you have those two instant-structures installed on your farm, you can begin building the structures that take materials to complete -- a Nursery and Stables. You can obtain the materials that you need by either asking your friends to gift them to you (you are allowed to send free gifts twice a day) or by obtaining the items from their feed. Either way, building the stables and nursery are a good idea, as the stables allow you to store and harvest horses as well as breed new horses, and the nursery allows you to take young cows and horses and raise them to their adult forms.

The Feed

Like most apps on Facebook, Farmville writes events to your Wall -- these events and your Wall are called "The Feed" by Farmville veterans, as the events are a constant source of new material, items, and sometimes rare and special animals and plants.

Each time you find an object in the game, or create something new, you are given the opportunity to post that to your feed -- and in the process share one or more of that item or resource with your friends. For example, when you feed your chickens or those of a neighbor, and find one of the special eggs, you have the option to "share" that find on your Wall. Any of your friends can then click on that post to receive one of that item as a bonus, thanks to you. There are limits however -- for example with eggs and building parts, only a certain number of people can claim a bonus, then they are exhausted.

Players are allowed to obtain up to 125 items each day from the feeds of their friends -- but items like rare animals and special trees only contain one bonus copy, so it is first come, first served, a limitation that has a lot of serious players stalking the feeds of their friends throughout the day, hoping to grab good items. Obviously spending a few minutes reviewing the feeds of your mates is a good idea, as you never know when you could be the first in on a claim!

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Crop Strategy

One of the bigger mistakes that most new farmers -- and some vets -- make, is planting a crop with a bad time-cycle on it. Each type of crop takes X number of hours to grow. Once it completes growing, after a few hours if you do not harvest it, the plants begin to wither, and die, rendering them useless to you. When your crops wither, you lose their value and what you spent in planting them, so the first strategy in farming in the game is to always pick plants whose grow time is convenient to your play schedule. If you know you are not going to be on over the weekend, pick a plant that takes 3 or more days to grow. If you will be available all day, you can grow several crops of shorter duration.

Fertilization = Better XP

Fertilized crops deliver a bit of extra XP when they are harvested, which is why in the past players tried to encourage their friends to visit and fertilize their crops by doing the same for them, but a recent addition to the game has changed how that works. A new item, called the "Fertilize All" bag can be obtained by visiting your neighbors and fertilizing their crops. If you are lucky, the item will pop up and you can then both obtain it -- and share it with your mates. That being the case, it is a good idea to grab a bag whenever you see it shared on one of your mates' feeds so you can stockpile it, allowing you to quickly level up in the game by earning double XP from every crop!

In addition to obtaining the Fertilize All from your mates farms, it can also be obtained by building a beehive and stocking it with a Queen Bee and Worker Bees on your farm. Each day you can harvest the hive, and each time that you do, there is a random chance for obtaining a Fertilize All bag, so that should be on your list of building projects as you work on improving your farm.

Trees, Orchards, and You

A new addition to the game is a building project called an "Orchard" that can hold 20 trees in a smaller, more compact area, and that allows you to conveniently harvest all 20 trees after a set time has passed regardless of the grow times for the trees individually. That makes Orchards a blessing in Farmville for new farmers, not just because of the convenience of having all of the trees in a compact area when you do not have a large farm (though that is a convenience), but also because the filled Orchards have the potential to give you a special item called a Watering Can with each harvest, as well as a Seedling of one of the trees inside the Orchard.

Seedlings can also be obtained from your mates' feeds, and are one of the best ways to obtain the rarer trees that you do not have. Simply collect the Seedlings and Water Cans from feeds, and then "grow" them by placing a Seedling and applying 8 Water Cans to it, and you have a new tree for your farm.

About half-way through watering the Seedling you have the chance to share either a Seedling or Water Can with your mates, and you get that chance again when 3/4 of the way through. When you grow the tree at the end, you can also share one on your Feed, so this approach is a great way to both share resources and trees with your mates, and obtain plenty yourself from their feeds -- which is something to think about.

Gifting Strategies

You are allowed to send free gifts to your mates several times a day -- and when you log in you are presented with the gifting screen automatically, so sending the gifts is pretty painless, but picking which gift to send? Not so much.

To make things a bit easier the folks at Zynga recently added a special gift, appropriately called the "Special Delivery" box. What this is in simple terms is a sort of mystery gift that functions as a targeted gift -- when your mate opens it, the server looks at what they really need to receive, and gives them that! So, for example, if your mate is building an Orchard or other building, the server will give them one of the components that they need -- making the Special Delivery box the perfect gift to choose when you do not know what your mates are wanting.

However, in your feed you can see posts from your mates when they are looking for a particular item -- and you can also be guided by that. In addition to the regular items and resources that you can gift via the web-based interface, there are also special items like the Tropical Planter and Red Maple Tree that can only be sent if you are logged into the Farmville Client on Zynga's site rather than on Facebook. There are also special items like the White Apple Tree that can only be sent from the Farmville iPhone client. If you have an iPhone your mates will appreciate it when you send them items that they cannot be gifted any other way, so that is worth a thought.

Making your Farm Unique

This final section of the first article in the Farmville Strategies series is on decorating your farm. With games like this, making your space unique is a given -- and understandable -- which is why the folks at Zynga have provided a plethora of items that can be used to do that, from buildings, shrubs, and topiary to fences, flags, and plants -- a wide variety of items that you can use to express yourself.

It is understandable then that most players choose to do this, but when you are first starting out it is a better strategy to restrict your decorating only to items that can return a profit to you -- trees are an excellent example -- or buildings that generate income, like the Stables and Nursery.

Choosing a vehicle for your farm can serve two functions -- decorate while at the same time make your life easier -- because vehicles in the game are functional. Picking a tractor and putting it on display is a stand-out but did you know that using that tractor to plow your field allows you to plow four plots at the same time rather than one? Of course you have to use up fuel to do that, but getting a tractor as soon as the game allows you to unlocks more opportunities to obtain fuel!

As you level up, there are pivotal levels you will want to reach. At Level 20 you can participate in Farming Co-Op Jobs, which include both XP and income as well as special items you can win by completing the job in a certain time period -- items you can then use on your farm both as decoration and function. For instance, the School Bus Plow and Red Pickup Seeder are pre-upgraded, allowing you to seed and plow nine plots at the same time. There is a job that has a Biplane as its reward -- and while it looks cool to have that Biplane parked on your farm, you should be aware that it can be used to force your crops to mature early if you are pressed for time, or need to quickly grow crops to get a Co-Op job in on time!

When you reach Level 25 you can participate in the crafting system in the game -- and hitting that special level prompts the game to ask you what craft you want to participate in? The choices are a Spa, Winery, or Bakery, and what you choose will influence the crops you grow in the future, as growing crops is the best way to obtain the ingredients that you will need to craft.

More Advanced Strategies

This pretty much concludes the basics -- in future pieces in the series we will look at more advanced strategies and tricks, and how to maximize your best results for special event and holiday play. But before we sign off on this first piece, a warning...

Farmville is possibly the most addictive game on Facebook. It can easily suck away hours of your life -- hours you can never get back! We here at Gaming Update are not suggesting that you play the game, we are only giving you useful information if you choose to do so. The point to this? Just that moderation is a good thing, and if you have issues with obsessing and video games, perhaps a good game of chess would be a better choice for you?