Farm Ville Guide

Basics- learning the ropes

FarmVille is a multi player game, with a twist. Every Facebook member is eligible to participate in the game. Irrespective of whether a Facebook member has joined the game or not, friends who are already registered users on FarmVille can send virtual gifts to them and also invite them to join.

Upon joining FarmVille, you get a small piece of land, some virtual seeds, and money to plough the land and to sow the seeds. How you use the money to develop your farm is left to you.

In FarmVille you can plow, plant and harvest crops to earn money. The money earned can be used to buy different items for your farm or further expand and improve your farmstead. You can also earn money by harvest trees and rearing livestock.

The Twist: FarmVille is a multi-player game. But each player has individual plot of land. Your friends on Facebook can assist you with various aspects of farming as you move on. While you all play simultaneously, there is no competition in the gaming sense of the word. FarmVille gives virtual farmers great sense of freedom. You can customize the farm as you want and develop strategies to make money soon or rather choose to beautify your farm by spending the money you earn.

Basics:

• Farmer: You, the Facebook user is the farmer. You can customize your look with available features.

Examples:

• Farm:

The farm is where you grow crops, rear livestock and plant trees. Each user can customize the farm as he/ she likes.

• Plots:

Each square in the image indicates one plot in the farm

• Tools:

The tools are used to plough the land and to harvest crops.

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1) multi tool

2) plough tool

3) hoe

• Money:

Money is needed to plough the farm, buy seeds, sow seeds and other items from the market. Every time you harvest crops or rear livestock, you earn some money.

In FarmVille there are two types of money- Coins and FV ( currency notes). To buy items on FarmVille, you mostly require coins. However, some items like buildings and extra land can be bought only by FV notes. Coins can be earned soon. But earning FVs take time.

( Image showing coins and FVs of a level 10 player.)

FarmVille integrates real world money with the virtual world. You can pay up using credit card or your Pay Pal account and buy coins and FV notes instantaneously.

Here’s how.

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• Ribbons:

Ribbons are like awards that you get for your farming skills. Once you earn a ribbon, you can publish it on your Facebook wall and even share your wealth among friends who are farmers on FarmVille. You will not lose any money upon sharing wealth.

• Market:

The market is a place where you can buy seeds, trees, animals, buildings, decorations, more farming land and vehicles for your farm.

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Click

Playing the game

My Farmer

You can change your farmer’s appearance by clicking on your avatar. This will display the avatar customize screen, where you can modify skin color and various facial features, as you did at the beginning of the game.

Customizing your looks (options)

NEXT SELECT & SAVE

Walk

By clicking the arrow button, you set your farmer to walk. In this mode you can walk your farmer to anywhere on the screen by clicking that location. This is the default setting and can be used to open object menus (to move or sell trees, decorations and buildings) and use the contextual commands (for example, clicking plowed land to seed or fully grown crops to harvest).

Plow

When you click on the hoe, you enter Plow mode. Now you can click on any fallow or clear ground to plow it. Each square plowed costs 15 coins and gives you 1 experience.

(You can find this on the right hand corner of your farm)

Plant

If a square is plowed, you can seed it by clicking on the plowed square. This opens the Market where you can choose which seed to use. The mode is changed to planting and you can click multiple plowed fields to plant that seed again. Seeds cost different amounts depend on the level needed to unlock the seed and how long it takes to grow. Most seeded crops awards 2 experience, but crops that take less than a day to grow only award 1 experience (and future types may yield no experience). Plan ahead by planting crops that will become ripe by the next time you can check your farm.

Harvest

Crops can take from 2 hours to 4 or more days to grow before they can be harvested. Click on the ready crop to harvest it. Harvested crops are immediately sold for coins. Care should be taken not to leave the fully grown crops too long or they will wilt, becoming spoiled and useless. Crops will start to wilt after a period of time equal to their growth, so a 1 day crop will start wilting after 2 days have passed since planting.

Example: The user has planted Soyabeans here. The seeds required for each plot of the farm costs 15 coins and when harvested, it can be sold for 63 coins. The time required for harvesting is 1 day. The image indicates a 69% growth. This means that the time span of 1 day is not yet complete in this particular image. Suppose you do not harvest it for 2 days, you will find it withered and it results in loss.

Level and Experience

Actions like Plowing, Planting, Helping Friends and Buying Farm items (buildings, trees, animals) award experience points. As these points accumulate the farmer raises his level and more items are unlocked.

Example:

The user here is on level 10. The user must have got a few awards and rewards by now depending on the performance. The money accumulated by this user is 19,089 coins. The money accumulated across different users on level 10 can differ depending upon how they have spent it. To reach level 10, the user should earn a minimum experience of 1800 . In this case, the user has accumulated an experience of 2238 through incessant farming over 10 levels. Once the experience reaches 2800 , the user is promoted to level 11. The items the user can afford to buy on Level 11 cannot be bought by someone on level 2. The buying and gifting capacity betters with each level progressed.

Market

Click the Market Icon to open the market menu. From here you can purchase a variety of items:

(You can find this on the right hand corner of your farm)

• SeedsThese are the seeds used to plant crops. The higher the level needed to purchase a seed, the more coins can be made by harvesting and selling it.

Each seed has is sold for a particular price, has a particular harvesting time, the farmer gains some experience and the harvest can be sold at a certain profit.

Example: At FarmVille, strawberry seeds can be bought for 10 coins, they are harvested in 4 hours and can be sold at 35 coins. The farmer gains 1 experience out of each plot harvest made.

There are 29 varieties of seeds in all. In the image, the first 8 varieties of seeds are displayed. On clicking ‘=>’ you can see the next 8 variety of seeds. Since the user on level 10, he/she can afford to buy any of the displayed seeds. But for a user on level 2, the seeds on the second row would be ‘locked’. As the user progresses to higher levels, greater choices of seeds are available for sale.

• TreesThese are fully grown trees that when purchased can be planted where you desire when purchased or given as a gift. Trees take 2-5 days to grow a crop of fruit, and after a crop is harvested a new crop starts growing. Fruit from trees will not wilt. You can sell Trees (either bought or gifted) at Level 7.

• AnimalsSome animals can be purchased from the market; others can only be given as gifts. You can sell Animals (either bought or gifted) at Level 7. Animals will yield products to be sold every 1 to 5 days.

• BuildingsThese items can be used to decorate your farm, and in the future may have game effects on the farm. At present they award Experience when bought.

• DecorationsThese items like fences, wagons and garden gnomes will help make the farm more complete. They award Experience when bought.

• Expand FarmYou can purchase additional land to expand your farm.

• Vehicles

You can buy vehicles for your farm and fuel to run them. As you progress, the choice of vehicles you can purchase increases.

Gifting

You can receive gifts from your friends as well as send them gifts. Usually gifts are trees or animals. Send your friends gifts often, and they’ll be sure to return the favor!

Select the gift you want to send and click : proceed to send’.

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It takes you to this page

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You can check the person you want to gift and click on ‘send FarmVille gift request’. The gift will be sent automatically.

Instead of spending money and buying items in the market, you can use gifts given by your friends, the more friends you have on FarmVille, the more gifts you get.

Example: In buying a cherry tree, you will have to shell out 225 coins, you can have it gifted free of cost instead.

Neighbors

By using the MY NEIGHBORS page you can invite a friend to be one of your neighbors. Your friend must accept the invitation.

(All your neighbors will be displayed below your farm.)

In buying some property, say to expand your farm by buying a 14×14 Homestead, you cannot buy it unless you have 8 neighbors.

Visiting and Helping Neighbors

All Neighbors are shown in the list at the bottom. By clicking on a Neighbor from the bar, you open a menu that has an option to visit that friend. When visiting a friend you haven’t done a job for that day you will get an offer to perform a job to help that player. Performing a job awards experience and money. Invite new friends from the INVITE page and invite friends to be neighbors from the MY NEIGHBORS page.

On clicking ‘accept’ , you will be taken to your neighbor’s farm. Helping your neighbor is just a click away and you can earn 20 points by doing so.

Options

• Mute Sounds Turn on/off sound
• Mute MusicTurn on/off music.
• Toggle Graphics QualityTurn on/off anti-aliasing (picture jaggies)

Camera/Full screen shot/zoom in-zoom-out

These options are available just above the tools/market options bar

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1) Zoom In

2)Zoom Out

3)Full Screen

4)Camera (can take photographs of your farm at any point and display it on your wall)

Moving Up in the game:

The vital components of FarmVille has been explained, But if you want to excel in the game, you need to play smart. Here’s how you can make FarmVille a rewarding experience.

Money making:

Whether you want to grow different types of crops or make money soon and move to higher levels, here are some smart ways of doing so.

• Profit-loss sowing theory: you may want to grow different crops in your farm, but when you start, grow those crops which give a good return on investment.
• Timing: Buy seeds according to the amount of time you play. If you play all day, you can buy raspberry seeds which can be harvested within 2 hours. But if you play only once in a day, choose crops that take a day to grow fully. Withering of crops leads to loss.
• Buying items: choose carefully when you buy. A tractor that costs 30000 coins can be sold only for 500 coins. Decide if it is worthy of buying.
• Neighbors: Invite your friends to be your neighbors. This will help you unlock ribbons and unlock farm plots when you want to expand your farm.
• Daily Raffle: this depends on luck. You can win as many as 100 coins a day in the daily raffle.

• Animals and trees: unlike seeds, which once harvested need to be bought again, animals and trees are permanent entities on your farm. Even after collecting eggs from chicken and harvesting trees, they remain in your farm and reap again.

Aesthetics of FarmVille Farming

• The landscape: You can move items in the farm and arrange them the way you want. Unleash your creativity to beautify your farm.

Below are farms of three different farmers on FarmVille:

• Accolades: on reaching higher levels and collecting ribbons, can be published on your Facebook wall. Tell your friends about the accolades you earned as a farmer. Be a proud farmer!!

‘Farming’ (Step by Step Explanation)

Step 1: Login

Step 2: Click on ‘Applications’

Step 3: Click on ‘FarmVille’

Step 4: click on ‘Play’ to start playing.

Step 5: Select the ‘plow tool’

Step 6: Click to plough the fallow land

Step 7: Click the fallow land to ‘plough’

Step 8: Go to the ‘Market’

Step 9: Buy seeds:

Step 10: Sow seeds

Step 11: wait for a day to harvest and harvest when it is ‘fully grown’

Note: You can grow and harvest other crops similarly. The cost of seeds, harvesting time and profits differ across different crops.

Livestock

The livestock on the FarmVille farm includes Chicken, Cows, Sheep, goats, Pigs, Rabbits, horses and ducks. Different animals take different time to reap products.

Example: Collecting eggs:

• The chicken takes 1 day to lay eggs. When the chicken is ready, click on the chicken

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Collect eggs

You can earn coins by collecting eggs.

Conclusion: You can rear other animals similarly. The cost of animals, reaping time and profits differ across different animals.