The Path to Mastery -- The GU Farmville Series
You can purchase an Orchard ready-built for the sum of 30 Farmville Bucks on both the American (white fence) and English (dark fence) with each having a capacity of up to 20 Trees. You can purchase the 'Super Orchard' for the sum of 40 Farmville Bucks, and it has a capacity of up to 40 Trees. Finished Orchards can also be purchased in packages of three complete and ready-to-fill Orchards for 60 Farmville Bucks as well.
The third option for adding Orchards to your farms is also the option that does not require you to use real-world money (Farmville Bucks), and that is the Orchard Kit, which costs 1,000 Coins and upon placement on your farm already includes a single (1) Brick. To complete the Orchard Kit you must add a total of 9 Bricks, 10 Nails, and 10 Wooden Boards, after which the Orchard is ready to use. You can only deploy one (1) Orchard Kit at a time on your farm, and must complete the current kit before the Farmville Store will allow you to purchase another.
There does not appear to be a limit to the number of completed Orchards that you can place on your farm, other than the limit of available space that is.
Before we begin discussing the trick as it applies to trees be aware that not all trees in the game are part of the Mastery System, and some trees that are part of the Mastery System may not be compatible with Tree Orchards and so cannot be Mastered using this trick.The following trees are decorative ONLY and are not harvest-able in the game: Dogwood Tree, Evergreen Tree, Jacaranda Tree, Joshua Tree, Lantern Tree, Magnolia Tree, Mangrove Tree, and White Willow Tree. There may be others that I am not aware of, so this list is not considered all inclusive.
In addition to trees that are not harvest-able, there are trees that will not place in a Tree Orchard that ARE harvest-able: Persimmon Tree.
The bad news is that the Harvest Flag Reset Trick does NOT work on Tree Orchards if you try to place a tree from your farm directly into an Orchard, as that simply reset the flag and the tree you just moved in without you receiving any benefits for the doing of it. However there is a way to get a 50/50 chance for a seed by moving trees into Orchards that have the Harvest Flag already set... Watch the video below for a step-by-step example:
This method is demonstrated by Farmville gamer TheMrHeckerman, and depicts the only method for using the same trees over and over to leverage the Harvest Flag on an Orchard container. While this method does require significant advanced preparation, it has the added effect of permitting you to maximize Mastery Gains quickly with the chance for a seed in the process!
In the video above what TheMrHeckerman has done is to build a set of Orchards along one side of his farm and place one tree in each, while at the top of the line is an Orchard with the trees that he wants to obtain seeds for. Once all of the Orchards in the chain have their Harvest Flag set, he harvests the top Orchard, which contains the five Giant Lucky Cookie trees that he is trying to get seeds for.
There is one Giant Heart Candy in each of the Orchards in the rest of the chain -- the significance of that tree is simply that it is a tree that he has not yet mastered, and is also a tree that he will not mind obtaining a seed for should it end up being the tree that wins the roll when a seed spawns -- which is a smart way to set up the chain. Because you are moving trees from one Orchard into another instead of moving them from the farm into the Orchard, the server does not consider the move a violation requiring the flag to be reset, and so it allows the move without altering the state of the Harvest Flag.
Once all of the Lucky Cookie Trees are moved into the next Orchard in the chain, that Orchard is harvested. If you end up with a seed, that is excellent! But you continue to move the trees along the chain in the hopes of obtaining additional seeds. Each time you harvest an Orchard in the chain each of the Lucky Cookie Trees as well as the place-holding Giant Heart Candy Tree receives one Mastery Point each, for a bonus on top of the bonus of any seeds that result!
This becomes valuable to you when you are filling your orchards with trees with a harvest flag that is longer than 48 hours, as the Orchard overrides that flag, resetting it to 48 hours. That being the case, unless you are looking to spawn seeds. Space in your Orchards should be reserved for trees with long harvest flags on them -- so the following trees should NOT be placed in an Orchard, since they have a harvest flat of 48 hours or less.
(1) Cherry Trees
(2) Maple Trees
(3) Red Maple Trees
(4) Yellow Maple Trees
(5) Ornament I Trees
(6) Ornament II Trees
(7) Acai Trees
(8) Asian Pear Trees
(9) White Apple Trees
As you can see 48-hour harvest trees are a short list compared to all of the other trees in the game, so keeping those nine trees out of your Orchards means freeing space for trees that, with a much longer grow time, maximize the benefits provided by the Orchard.
When an orchard contains a mixture of tree types, the seed that is produced can be from any type that is in the Orchard, and the number of a given type of tree in the Orchard compared to other types in the same Orchard does NOT appear to factor in with respect to the type of tree that the seed will grow into. Basically if there are five types of tree in the Orchard regardless of how many of each type there are, it has an equal chance to be any one of the five.
To control your seed production, your best practice is to place only ONE type of tree in the Orchard, however even doing that is not a guarantee that you will receive a seed, since the Orchard has a higher chance of producing Watering Cans. The odds of producing a seen appear to be around 20%, with an 80% chance of producing a Watering Can.
Seed production is random, and there is nothing that you can do it improve on the chances of harvesting a seed over water cans.
The secret behind the popularity of the game has everything to do with the same motivation that is found in the Boyscouts and Girlscouts -- completing Mastery of a given item in the game results in the awarding of a Mastery Sign which, much like a badge patch in Girl Scouts and a Merit Badge in Boyscouts -- which in the end is a visual symbol for accomplishment... Bragging rights as well as status goes a long way in the gaming world, and having a large farm with lots of rare animals and items can be enough, sure... But having a forest of Mastery Signs? Priceless!
When I first started playing the game I played daily, did what I called "making my moves" and I thought that I was doing well -- until I saw that my friends and neighbors were doing better than I was even though they started at around the same time. It took me a while to figure out that they were doing things that I was not, like milking their neighbors feeds for items, and taking whatever shortcuts there were to be had.
I just assumed that they were spending real-world money in the game, but it turns out that they were doing nothing more than to take advantage of the sort of tricks like those discussed here. Future articles in The GU Farmville Expert's Series will cover other areas of the game -- and there are a lot of ways that you can minimize your effort and maximize your returns!
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