How to Play FarmVille

By J B Clare

© Copyright J B Clare 2009

Author of How to Really Beat Computer Games.

This article deals with the Facebook game Farm Ville created or built by Zynga.
(Information correct at time of publishing).

I am going to explain how to run your farm and get the most out of this game.

Each time you login to Facebook, you receive notifications for each application which you are using, friend requests, gift requests, etc. Go to your home page first and start collecting and accepting either gifts or requests.  You will automatically be asked if you have more pending gifts for whichever application you are using.

You may have to sell the gifts your friends give you in the early stages to gain some coins or fill out a free survey to get some coins.  Always gift back, using the free gift option.  Both Farm Ville and Mafia Wars have the option to select your friends who are using that application, but there is a limit each time.

Also note that on every day on your first playing you receive a certain amount of coins in the daily raffle.  You will be gifted a large amount of coins on completing certain levels and achievements.

When starting out on FarmVille, decide on how many plots you are going to have in order to plant seeds.  Then use the plough (spelling this word the English U.K way or plow as it is in Farm Ville) tool to create a grid.  I personally prefer a ten by ten plot when starting out.

This gives you the chance to plant several types of seeds in each row:-  one row of five raspberries, the next wheat, etc.  As you progress through the levels you will unlock different crops that will give you more income in coins, likewise with buildings, animals and decorations.  
Don't forget to note down the grow time and return as and when appropriate to harvest your crops, whether it be two hours or three days for anything to be ready to harvest.

I tend to do things in an organised manner.  On any given visit to my Farm, I will check first of all what crops are ready for harvesting.  If none (unlikely) then I will check whatever animals are highlighted as being ready for collection of their eggs, milk, truffles, etc.  Then I will move my mouse pointer over the trees to find out what (%) percentage their growth is, usually these having being gifted by friends who are playing the game, if they require harvesting then I will collect the coins in the process.


Next, I will visit my friends farms and do jobs for them on their farms and and when possible.  All “Help” jobs give you 20 coins and 5 experience points, so do this as and when possible, the experience points always helping towards the next level.  

Harvesting alone, does not gain you experience points. Ploughing and planting certain seeds does.

Always have goals:-  what do you expect to achieve from your farm.  Do you wish to organise your animals by creating a nice white wash fence enclosure, purchase a red barn, or a tractor to speed up ploughing.  Do the math's, using you desktop calculator or real world calculator, work out how much every action costs.

When you plough one plot of fallow land (land that has already been ploughed, had some seeds planted and harvested), it costs fifteen coins and gains you one experience point.  Decide which seed or seeds will bring in the most coins.  Some seeds give you more experience points when planting.  

A tractor is an expensive luxury, but does making the ploughing quicker.  Just as an example ploughing two plots of land costs 2 fuel, 30 coins gives you 2 experience points.  The tractor fuel recharges eventually, but there is no clock counting down to when that will happen.  So, you do not need to rush out and use cash to pay for petrol.

You could always specialise in selling livestock, just as farmers do in the real world.

Expanding your farm.

The ultimate goal is to be able to expand your farm, so you can plough more plots and plant more seeds, keep more animals and earn more money.  To do this you need to add your friends.  This is not always easy, especially if you have a limit number of friends who either a)  don’t know how to use a computer or b) do not have a Facebook account.

If you are in contact with say five family members, then all you need to do is ask them to sign up to Facebook.  If they are not handy with computers, then you will have to sign up for them, but do ask their permission.

Of course, it is entirely possible to create made up fictional family/friends on Facebook.  I discussed this in my e-book How to Really Beat Computer Games.  You will need hot mail Email accounts and plenty of imagination.  The limit I have found is three hot mail accounts per day.  Make sure you keep notes of your passwords and Email addresses. You will also have to create a date of birth  If you use this route, then make sure you spend time filling out some of the profile so you can at the very least find the fictional family member by location.  There are plenty of free Email service providers, so you are not necessarily restricted to hot mail accounts.

These fictional family/friends can be valuable assets and gift you items that you can sell when money is tight.

One other way of recruiting friends is to do a search for your old school friends.  I typed in some names on the search option and sure enough, people who I knew some 20 years ago have accounts.  I have rapidly expanded my Mafia, in Mafia Wars by clicking on the Mutual friends links when Facebook make suggestions as to other people you may know.   When I make contact with these people I always include a link to the game I am playing.  I also have a photo on my wall so people may or may not recognise me.  FarmVille and Mafia Wars allow you to select from a list of friends playing the same game.  In Pirates Rule the Caribbean, you have to recruit them from your friend list.

Games like these are incredibly addictive but at the same time they are great for children and adults alike.  They teach logic and how to manage finance, how to think and plan ahead.  I am currently playing three games or applications, this is my limit as if I started any more I simply wouldn’t get any work done!

I should add that these games are often in “Beta” or testing mode and are subject to change frequently.  Just as an example when I first wrote this article, for one weekend only Zynga added Super Berries to the seed list.  These you could buy cheaply and sell for 100 coins.  I was raking the cash in and very happy, then suddenly they disappeared from the list and left us all wandering when and if they might return.  I only found out that they were just there for one weekend by making a post on my wall and some one responded saying what had happened.

The makers of the game have now added a pet option.  I think this is a waste of programming as all it seems to do is when you click on the animal and highlight the pet option, the animal just makes a noise.  If they had made it so the animal had a limited increase in “harvest ready” time, then I could see the point.

I wish you every success with FarmVille.