Saturday, 9 January 2010

Planning Your FarmVille Layout to Optimize Your Earnings

Planning Your FarmVille Layout to Optimize Your Earnings

One of the main things that makes FarmVille so much fun to play is that there are really an endless number of possible ways you can arrange your farm. You can also rearrange things whenever you'd like, so you never have to be bored by coming back to the same old farm over and over again. (If only redecorating your own house was so easy.)

What appeals to your aesthetic taste isn't the only thing you should keep in mind when you're setting up your farm, however. How you arrange your buildings, decorations, animals, trees, and plowed plots of land can have a significant impact on how successful you ultimately will be in FarmVille. You should certainly choose a layout that makes you want to visit your farm often, but you need to take some more practical matters into consideration as well.

Space for Crops

By far, you'll be making most of your money off of the crops you plant and harvest. Because of this, you'll need to make sure you have plenty of space set aside for this purpose. Depending on the size of your farm, the actual percentage of land this entails will vary, but you should be careful not to cut your crop space down too much. Also, it's a good idea to group all of your plowed plots together to make it easier to harvest, plant, and plow with your farm equipment.

Building for Success

Getting some buildings up on your farm is a good way to make it feel like home. It's also a good way to earn a bunch of experience points at once and level up quickly – particularly at the higher levels. You'll only have so much space for buildings, however, so be sure and choose carefully when you go to buy them. Of course, buying the buildings just for the experience points and then turning around and selling them is always an option. You'll lose quite a bit of money this way, though, so it's not something you'll be able to do on a regular basis.

Trees

Trees are also a good source of supplemental income. Depending on how much time you're willing to spend harvesting them, you can pack quite a few trees into a pretty small space. You just want to make sure that your trees aren't obscuring any of the other items, plowed plots, or animals on your farm. It's easy to lose space to the shadow of a tree. That's why it's best to plant them mainly on the far edges of your farm. That way, you can enjoy their attractive appearance and coin earning potential while still being able to take advantage of all of the available land on your farm.

Animals

Animals are always nice to have around, but they can take up a lot of space too. If you want to make some money off of your farm animals while conserving space, you should focus on keeping chickens in a chicken coop and cows in dairy farms. These particular types of animals don't bring in a great deal of revenue individually, but keeping them in these structures allows you to harvest them all at once and saves you a ton of space that you can then devote to other things.

Helpful FarmVille Leveling Tips for the Higher Levels

Helpful FarmVille Leveling Tips for the Higher Levels

When you first start playing FarmVille, it's pretty easy to accumulate enough experience points to move up to the next level. The number of experience points needed to advance at this stage of the game is not that high, and pretty much everything you do in the game earns you a few experience points. Plus, because you're trying to build your farm up quickly, you'll be earning extra experience points without even trying.

Once you get up to the higher levels, though, the experience point gaps between levels get bigger and the small bonuses you get for helping your neighbors and planting and plowing your fields are no longer enough to allow you to advance quickly. There are things you can do, however, to make it easier for yourself to move up.

Build, Build, Build

Since you probably have a pretty substantial farm, and thus a substantial and stable stream of income, you should have plenty of coins on hand. If this is the case, you will actually be able to “buy” your way to the higher levels buy purchasing buildings and other items. All of the items you buy give you experience points, but buildings provide the most by far.

Of course, you can only fit so many buildings on your farm at once. But as long as you have enough coins on hand, you can keep buying buildings and other items and then selling them at a reduced rate. You'll certainly lose quite a bit of money on the deal, but you'll gain a ton of experience points. Once money's no longer an issue for you, this is a good way to build up your experience points quickly.

Reevaluate Your Crops

Early in the game, you'll most likely be choosing crops that help you earn coins quickly. When you're trying to advance in the higher levels of game play, though, it's a good idea to reevaluate your crop selection. Shifting your emphasis from cash crops to crops that yield the most experience points per planting and per hour will have a significant impact on your ability to advance quickly.

Often this means going with the crops that take 1 day to grow. That's because these crops yield 2 experience points per planting, but take the minimum amount of time to grow for that level of experience earning potential. There are certainly other crops that offer the same experience bonuses, but they take longer to grow and so don't allow you to accumulate experience points as quickly.

Another option for seeds that may help you level up quickly are strawberries and blueberries. They only take 4 hours to grow, meaning that they only yield 1 experience point per growing cycle. But since the short growing time allows you to harvest and replant quickly, you have the potential to earn 2 experience points per plot of land every 4 hours – as long as you can get back to harvest them on time, that is. And of course, work with your neighbors to get as many of your crops fertilized as you can on a regular basis.

Getting the Most out of Your FarmVille Neighbors

Getting the Most out of Your FarmVille Neighbors

Even if you haven't been playing FarmVille for very long, you're probably aware that having neighbors can bring you some substantial benefits. Many of these benefits are obvious, such as allowing you to expand your farm inexpensively, but some others are more easily overlooked. If you really want to be successful in FarmVille, though, you'll need to make sure that you're getting absolutely everything you can out of your neighbors. Sometimes this will require a little bit of effort, but it will be well worth the extra work in the end.

Crop and Plot Fertilization

Of course, it's beneficial to both you and your neighbors if they can fertilize your crops and you can fertilize theirs. You get extra experience points when harvesting fertilized crops, and your neighbors get to earn a few extra coins for each plot of yours they fertilize. However, when you're not going to be able to get back to your farm for an extended period of time, you might think there's no point in plowing your fields since you can't plant on them.

If you go this route, though, you'll miss out on the opportunity to have your entire farm fertilized when you come back. Your neighbors can't fertilize fallow land, but they can fertilize plowed plots even if they haven't been planted yet. And when you do return to plant on them, your crops will be instantly fertilized. Also, it's important to pass this information along too. If your friends have to spend some time away from their farm, you want to be able to earn your coins fertilizing their plots as well.

Gifts

Because the game no longer directs you to the free gift page every day when you log into FarmVille for the first time, it's easy to forget to send these special items to your friends. And, of course, it's easy for your friends to forget to send gifts to you. Even if you don't necessarily need any of the items that you receive as gifts, you can always sell them for some extra coins, so you'll want to remind your neighbors to keep sending them if they've been neglecting this aspect of the game. And the best way to remind them to send gifts your way is to remember to send gifts to them.

Bonuses

Every time your neighbors earn a ribbon, you'll have the opportunity to receive a bonus from them. Some of these bonuses are as small as 50 coins, and it may seem like more trouble than it's worth to peruse your news feed to find them all. But these small bonuses add up fast. You'll be missing out on a lot of you don't take advantage of as many as you can find.

It's never a bad thing to have some extra coins lying around – you can even use them to buy some extra items to earn experience points and level up more quickly. In order to be successful in FarmVille, you need to be able to take advantage of every opportunity that's presented to you, no matter how insignificant it seems at the time.

Getting the Most Out of FarmVille Ribbons

Getting the Most Out of FarmVille Ribbons

The various ribbons you can earn while playing FarmVille can be pretty easy to overlook and take for granted. After all, you earn most of them simply by doing the things you would be doing in the game anyway. Ribbons for plowing and harvesting different kinds of crops are easy enough to earn – as are ribbons for simply spending money at the market. The bonuses you get when you win these ribbons are not small, however, and so you can help yourself a lot by making earning ribbons a priority. This is much easier than it sounds, and is well worth the small amount of effort it requires.

Targeting Your Accomplishments

Of course, if you're going to be working on earning ribbons, you'll need to know what you have to do to get them. You can find this out easily enough by simply clicking on the ribbon icon at the bottom of your screen. This will bring up a window that will allow you to peruse the many different types of ribbons that are available and see what you have to do to earn each one.

Complimentary Sets

Some of the accomplishments rewarded by ribbons are complimentary, but some others are not. For example, you can earn ribbons by harvesting a certain number of vegetable crops, and another by harvesting a certain number of fruit crops. Because you only have a limited amount of space to devote to your crops, it's best if you focus on one of these achievements first, and then shift to the other. Trying to split your resources between the two will only make it harder for you to accomplish both of them.

Some separate ribbons are complimentary, however. For example, you can earn ribbons by spending money in the market, and you can also earn ribbons by owning a certain number of decorations. Since you have to spend money in the store to accumulate these decorations, you can work towards both of these ribbons simultaneously.

A Winning Layout

You can also change the layout of your farm in order to earn ribbons more quickly. For instance, if you know you're going after some ribbons that have to do with harvesting or planting crops, you should maximize the amount of space you devote to plowed land. Once you've taken care of these accomplishments, however, you can adjust your layout to reflect your new goals. You don't want to get rid of all of your plowed plots, however – just make sure you have enough space set aside to pursue your new goals.

Sharing in the Wealth

Since you can share the wealth with your friends every time you earn a ribbon, you should be sure to take advantage of all of the bonuses you can earn when your friends collect ribbons as well. Checking your news feed frequently for your friends' announcements and clicking on the link to collect the bonus they're offering is a great way to earn some extra coins and get ahead in FarmVille fast. Just make sure you're offering the bonuses to them as well so that they share with you every time they can.

A Quick Guide to Animals in FarmVille

A Quick Guide to Animals in FarmVille

There are an ever-growing number of animals that you can choose to keep on your farm in FarmVille. It can be a lot of fun to collect as many as you can of the ones you like, and animals add a lot to your farm. They also provide some revenue, although the amount varies a great deal with the type of animal you're collecting from. There are certainly plenty of reasons to keep all of these animals, but they do take up space. In order to make sure that you're not sacrificing too many of your resources for the animals you're supporting, you should consider a few things when you're deciding which animals to keep.

Space Savers

On your farm, space is always at a premium. That's why it's a good idea to focus on raising the animals that will take up the least amount of space. This list include the obvious smaller animals, like ducks and bunnies, but also a couple of others you might not expect. As long as you have enough neighbors (or enough farm cash) you can purchase dairy farms to keep your cows in. These hold up to 20 cows (or 19 cows and 1 bull) each, and you can buy as many as you want.

Not only do dairy farms take up much less space than 20 individual cows would, they're also much easier to collect from. With one click, you can harvest the milk from all 20 cows within your dairy farm. And cows aren't the only one's who get this type of special accommodations. Building yourself a chicken coop will save you time and space in the same way by giving you a place to house up to 20 chickens. Unfortunately, there is a limit of 1 chicken coop per farm, so you're best off keeping your total chicken population to 20 so they'll all fit in the coop.

Where to Get 'Em

All of these animals also don't come from the same place. In fact, the only animals you can buy with coins as this point are sheep and pigs. These animals are fine to have around, but they're not particularly space efficient, nor do they bring in a ton of revenue. There are a few other specialty animals that you can buy only with farm cash – several special varieties of chickens and an orange tabby, at the moment. And there are usually a few seasonal specials too that are only available for a limited time.

All About Gifts

You shouldn't need to buy any animals at all though if you're patient and have managed to accumulate a few good neighbors. There are quite a few different kinds of animals available as gifts, and if you get them this way, they're free. That means that you don't have to wait until you've made back the purchase price to start making money off of these animals. You can also get many more types of animals this way, so just tell your friends what you'd like to receive.