19: XP Boosting

Chapter 19: XP Boosting

At the end of your farming day, when the tractor is parked in the Garage with its engine ping-ping-pinging away the heat of the days work, and the crops on their way to market, there is only one real way to determine how well your efforts paid off -- your XP gain for the day.

Most farmers consider any day that ends with a level-up to be a good day; rare are the days when you gain more than one level but, if you could do that, would you?  Well as it turns out you can...  That is one of the tricks in Farmville that the serious players use, and it is entirely based upon simple alchemy -- the act of turning Coins into XP.

Most players will experience this -- often on their own -- as they realize that they can turn their Coins into XP by plowing a crop plot, planting a seed that pays 2XP and then deleting the plot, turning those 30 Coins into 3 XP.  If your first reaction was to feel maybe just a little guilty about doing that -- that is perfectly natural.  After all, you are gaming the system.  Doing something that was not intended to be a normal part of game play.  But are you actually cheating or breaking the rules?  The simple answer is no, you are not.

While it is true that the game was not intended to include XP boosting, as long as you are using a legitimate resource to create that XP the powers behind the game have confirmed that it is perfectly acceptable game play.  The thing is, trading 30 coins for 3 XP?  Yeah, that is not really going to get you where you want to go quickly, is it?

Think Big

If you are going to dabble in coin alchemy you should take the same approach that the big boys do, and go for your XP measured in the hundreds of points -- of course that means transmuting large amounts of Coin, but all that really means is you need to understand how to get large amounts of coin, right?

Translating Coin into XP has a very basic exchange rate that is jokingly called the Double-Ought Exchange.   When you see a player saying that, what they are talking about is the fact that you can instantly tell how much XP a building will give by knocking the last two zeros from the price -- so a building that costs 100,000 Coins will pay off 1,000 XP.  Now you know what the basic exchange rate is for changing Coins to XP!

Look at the following list to see what your options are:

-- Dairy Farm 10,000 Coins / 100 XP
-- General Store 200,000 Coins / 2,000 XP
-- Glass House 100,000 Coins / 1,000 XP
-- Post Office 100,000 Coins / 1,000 XP
-- School House 50,000 Coins / 500 XP

Right, so you get the idea...  Now you need to look into maximizing your Coin income so that you can turn those coins into XP!

You are probably thinking crops right now -- which crop pays off the most Coins?  That is a good start, but that is not really how the pro's do it.  You see to make money that way takes effort, time, and money.  You want to make it, not spend it, right?  Right!  Still, go ahead and plant profitable crops, because every bit earned helps -- but do not ignore the real money-making opportunities in the game in the process.

There are two areas for you to focus upon -- Trees and Animals.  We will discuss trees first.

Buying Buildings for XP

Orchard Farming

All trees are not equal -- that is the first lesson you need to learn.  Look at the return rates for the following list of trees and see if you can tell which ones you should be filling your Orchards with:

Tree Name -- Harvest Return -- Source

-- Acai -- 158 Coins -- Market / Seedlings
-- Arjuna -- 140 Coins -- Gift
-- Autumn Gingko -- 390 Coins -- Market / Seedling
-- Jackfruit -- 140 -- Mystery Gift
-- Lime -- 75 Coins -- Market / Seedlings

The list above may seem like an obvious choice -- but it actually represents a logical progression.  The Autumn Gigko Tree is what you want your Orchards full of -- but getting those means a lot of breeding, so to start out your Tree Farm you will need a tree that has a decent return that you can easily obtain.  That tree is the Lime Tree!

You can purchase Lime Trees all day long from the Marketplace for 750 coins each.  No matter what tree you choose, since you are placing them in Orchards, their grow time does not matter.  The Orchard has a 2-day grow time so end of discussion!

While you will largely populate your Orchard with Lime Trees, you will want to include any high value trees that you already own in the mix, because money is money.  So take stock of your current Tree inventory, set aside the good earners, and get rid of the rest.  Then start building Orchards as fast as you can.  Once you have your Tree Farm in full production, every two days you will be gaining between 1 and 3 Levels!

Ranching Profits

While Tree Farming is an easier to manage project from a logistics point of view, animals can also provide a very nice income! 

Building Hoisting is one of the methods that we touched on earlier in the guide -- this technique is mostly used to boost Ribbons and boost collection items but it also gives coin -- and it can be done on the Stables and the Dairy Farm.  Simply use the move tool to move a Cow that is ready to harvest into the already harvested Dairy Farm and it changes back to harvestable -- giving you another chance at spawning a collection item, and the coin for the harvesting.

Animals to Concentrate Upon

The following are the animals you want to have on your Farm for Professional Ranching:

Desired Cows -- Harvest Amount
-----------------------------------------
-- Belted Cow -- 3,000 Coins
-- Baby Cows -- 80 Coins

Desired Horses -- Harvest Amount
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-- Baby Horses -- 80 Coins
-- Named Horses -- 140 Coins

Other -- Harvest Amount
-----------------------------------------
-- Arapawa Goat -- 1200 Coins
-- Saddleback Pig -- 1000 Coins

Basic strategy here is to get as many of the higher-value animals as you can (but that is a best case scenario approach and will not often apply to most farmers).  The second part of the basic strategy is to pack your buildings to capacity -- even if the animal type is not a high return one -- because you are going on numbers.

The Basic Steps

(1) Build a Dairy Farm
(2) Fill it completely with cows
(3) Immediately begin the expansion process
(4) When expanded, fill it up!
(5) Expand it again to the limit.
(6) Keep it filled.
(7) When you have completed the expansion and filled the Barn buy another, rinse and repeat.

The same logic applies to the Stables -- but NOT the Nursery!  The facts are that the baby horses you have are simply worth more you to you placed on your farm in densely packed lines.  You should be actively breeding to obtain as many as you can.

The general logic here is numbers -- the more you have the more you make, and animals do not cost you money to keep and raise!  The most profitable crop in the game is trees, followed by crops, and finally animals.

Once you have your Tree Farm, your Ranching, and your crops in full production you can average a million Coins or more per day!  That translates to 10,000 XP a day which is one heck of a fast track.

Taking Advantage of Free Cash

Every month companies come to Zynga to advertise their services or products via the game -- and these often appear as Free Cash offers in the Sponsored Link section of the main page below the game interface.  Sometimes you just have to watch a commercial -- often there is a mini-game involved -- but in the end, you get a few free Farm Cach Bucks for your time, and that is certainly worth doing!  Between the Bucks you get for viewing these ads and the Buck you get for each level you reach in the game you can easily acquire enough free Cash to buy some of the special items that you want in the game. 

Remember that most of the special items that are cash-only have nice chunks of XP included in the purchase of them!