Lost in FarmVille?

If you're having trouble getting a hang of the way of things in FarmVille, you're not alone. I know of quite a few people who got into the game expecting it to be easy as pie and were quickly frustrated. In fact, I was one of them. So I went looking for a guide to help me master the farming life.

I actually tried quite a few of these guides, but not many of them had much helpful information to give. They were either designed for people who'd gotten all the way to the upper levels already, or they were severely outdated because of additions made to the game since they were released. FarmVille is a relatively new game and is still in the Beta stage, so a lot of improvements have been made to it in a short time and many of the guides on the market have not been updated to account for these changes.

So I finally broke down and bought FarmVille Secrets. This guide has been released pretty recently, so it's up to date on all of the latest advances in the game. I found it to be immensely helpful to me, and I was quickly raking in the coins and moving up in levels like you wouldn't believe.

In addition to the helpful tips, FarmVille Secrets also includes some handy charts and other resources that help you to compare items available in the Market and also helps you to plan out your spending and improvement strategies. I think you'll be as pleasantly surprised as I was when you read this guide and put the tips in it to use on your farm. I started to see results overnight almost. It's definitely a guide worth checking out if you're having trouble getting the hang of FarmVille, or if you just want to give your game an extra boost. Either way, you'll be happy you tried it.

How to Make the Most Money in FarmVille

FarmVille is a great place to go to escape the rigors of everyday life. You can get back to nature and enjoy the peace and tranquility that comes from working on the land. However, not everything in FarmVille is an escape from the ordinary. You still need money for just about everything you do. You have to buy the seeds to plant, and you'll even have to pay a small sum for each plot of land you plow.

These costs are easily managed of course because you're harvesting and selling your crops for more than it cost to plant them. There are a lot of other items you can buy in the FarmVille market to decorate and build up your farm, and you won't be able to get these without some significant sums of cash. Buying these items will also get you some much needed experience points to help you advance to the next level, so you'll have to find a way to make sure you have enough money for all the discretionary items you want to buy.

Earnings Per Hour

Because you'll be needing your coins for so much in FarmVille, you need to maximize the earning potential of your farm. The best way to do this is to figure out which crops pay out the most coins per hour. For example, strawberries sell for 35 coins per plot of land harvested and they take 4 hours to grow. Pumpkins, on the other hand, take 8 hours to grow and sell for 68 coins per plot of land harvested.

That means, for the same acreage planted, you'll earn 8.75 coins per hour by planting strawberries, while the pumpkins will only get you 8.5 coins per hour. This may seem like a small difference, but these small amounts can add up fast. Of course, you won't be getting your money's worth unless you can harvest the crops as soon as they're ready and immediately replant on that land.

A Quick Turnaround

If you're not going to be able to get back to your farm for 8 hours, you're much better off planting the pumpkins. The longer you leave a crop after it's done maturing, the less you'll be getting per hour once you harvest it. You can only make money fast on crops that mature quickly if you're going to be able to harvest and replant as soon as they're ready for sale. Make sure you take these details into consideration when you're selecting your seeds at the Market, and you'll be seeing your bank account swelling in no time.

How to Get the Most Ribbons in FarmVille

It's pretty easy to earn a few ribbons in FarmVille. As you just go about your daily tasks, you'll wind up accomplishing at least some of the early ribbon-worthy tasks. You may notice when you do win one though, that the bonuses they pay out are pretty hefty. You can actually earn a lot of money and experience points quickly if you collect as many ribbons as you can. This is relatively easy to do, but you do have to put some effort into it if you want to get as much as you can out of your FarmVille experience.

Know What You Need

You won't be able to focus your energies on earning ribbons unless you know what you need to get them. You can find this information easily enough by clicking on the ribbon icon in the lower right hand corner of your screen. This will bring up a list of all of the possible ribbons and show you how you're progressing in each category.

Pick One

You do have limited resources, particularly when you're just starting out in FarmVille. Because of this, it's a good idea to focus on one type of ribbon at a time. Of course, it's likely that whatever you do to earn those ribbons will help you to earn some other ones as well, but you can focus on those when you get to them.

Which to Pick

Before you decide which set of ribbons to go after first, you should take a few moments to learn what each ribbon category is about. This way, you'll be able to get a good sense of which ribbons to go for first. For example, the Tree Hugger ribbons require that you harvest fruit from a particular number of unique trees, meaning that to get these, you'll have to have a variety of different types of trees on your farm.

The Knock on Wood ribbons can be earned by simply harvesting any type of tree a certain number of times. This means that if you focus on earning the Tree Hugger ribbons, you'll automatically be making progress towards the Knock on Wood ribbons as well. The converse is not necessarily true because you could get the Knock on Wood ribbon for harvesting from only one kind of tree.

Get Some Neighbors

Neighbors help you get ribbons both directly and indirectly. There are ribbons for just having a certain number of neighbors, how many times you help your neighbors out, and how many different types of gifts you receive. All of these categories are easier to progress in the more neighbors you have, so don't hesitate to hit up your friends and earn some ribbons that way too.

How To Choose The Right FarmVille Crops

Choosing the right crops to grown in FarmVille is vital to keeping a constant flow of coins into your FarmVille pockets. If you are struggling on picking the right crops, here are some easy to follow tips that you can use to maximize your profits:

1. Know when you can realistically be at your computer: Be honest here and figure out the times that you will realistically be sitting down at your computer and have the time to harvest and plant new crops. If it's before and after work, then you will know that 8 hour crops will work while you're at work and 12 hour crops will work while you're sleeping. This way you can easily maximize your profits and you won't have any withered crops when you come back.

2. Keep in mind the ultimate FarmVille rule: FarmVille time is not normal time. Yes, you read that right, FarmVille time runs on a 23 hour day instead of a 24 hour day like normal. So, you want to keep that in mind when you're planting crops and trying to time when you'll be on to harvest. Remember this, especially when you're planting 1 day crops that they will be ready in 23 hours instead of 24 hour blocks. It's not really a big deal to those that are planting crops that are in lower hour increments than 1 day, as you'll be back in that amount of time to harvest them. But for those that are doing the longer timed crops, you will be cutting off an hour at least depending on what crops you choose.

3. Crop mastery is an excellent thing to work for: When you are planting crops in FarmVille, you want to make sure that you work toward mastering each crop and then moving on to a different one. Why does crop mastery matter? Because when you master one crop, you get the chance to get extra experience points and more money when you harvest them. This alone is an excellent thing to work for, as any amount of extra experience points are a good thing and every FarmVille farmer knows that more coins only helps them plant more crops.

4. Pick your FarmVille goals carefully: This basically means that you want to know what the maximum cash or experience per hour/plot is before you plant. There is no point in planting crops that won't yield a good amount of return on your investment as it will only waste time. Believe it or not, but there are crops like this in FarmVille. So, you want to calculate your overall return before you plant. To do this, you simply take the amount that it costs to plant one plot of that particular item, add in 15 coins for the plowing and you have your cost. Then, subtract that amount from the end result, which is what you gain when you harvest that crop. To figure out what your hourly return will be, divide that number by the number of hours that it takes for that crop to mature. You can easily figure out which crops will give you the most for your time and effort very quickly and not waste any time.

Simply use these great tips when you are trying to pick the next crops to plant on your FarmVille farm and you will easily start to reap the benefits of that extra time you put in.

Getting Started in FarmVille

If you're new to the world of FarmVille, it won't likely take long for you to figure out why this game has captured the imagination of so many people. There are a ton of options when it comes to what seeds you can grow, what buildings and decorations you can put on your farm, and which types of livestock you choose to raise. Because you do have so many options though, it can be a little difficult at first to figure out where to start in order to develop your farm right.

Expand Slowly

You want to get the most out of your land when you're working in FarmVille. This means that you'll want to clear a substantial amount of land so that you can plant as many crops as possible. You do have to be careful about how much land you clear at once though. It costs 15 coins to clear one plot of land, so if you clear too many at once, you won't have any coins left to buy the seeds you want to plant.

It's best to slowly expand your plowed plots of land so that you're always able to take full advantage of their planting potential. After each harvest, it's a good idea to replant on all of your current plots first. Once you've done this it will be much easier to figure out how much more land you can afford to clear this time around. Following this pattern will quickly allow you to expand your farm while ensuring that you always have enough money to plant on all of your cleared plots.

Plan Your Harvests

Another aspect of FarmVille that it can be tough to get the hang of at first is timing your harvests right. Each crop you plant in the game will take a particular amount of time to mature. Once a crop is mature, you can harvest it. But don't wait too long. If you don't get back in time, your crops will wither and you'll just have to plow the land again and start over. It's important to plan your plantings so that you'll be able to get back to check on your farm before this happens.

One of the great things about FarmVille is that you can take it as seriously as you want to take it. If you only want to log in once a week, that's fine. Just make sure you plant crops that will last that long. Once you start playing though, it's not likely you'll be able to stay away for very long.

4 Organization Tips For Your FarmVille Farm

When it comes to your FarmVille farm, it can be awful hard to figure out how to organize it to optimize your crops and earnings. Believe it or not, but there are several great things that you can easily do that will help you organize your farm quickly and efficiently. Here are four great tips that you can use to clean up your FarmVille farm and get it running more smoothly:

1. Trees: These are excellent sources of income for any FarmVille farm and ones that you should never give up when you get them as gifts. But, they do take up a lot of room and some can make it hard to see crops, animals, or other items on your farm. So, here is what you need to do with them: start with your tallest trees and place them in one of the far corners on your farm. Line them up as close together as you can pack them. Once you have the tallest trees out of the way, go to the next to tallest, and so forth, so that you create a stair-step look with your trees that will allow you to see when they are ripe and ready to harvest. Make sure that you pack them in as closely as you possibly can to maximize your area.

2. Animals: Just like trees, animals are a superb extra source of income that you can easily utilize on your FarmVille farm, but they can also take up a ton of space if you don't know what to do. So, here is how you maximize your animal profits and your FarmVille space: open up a space in one of the corners of your farm and start by placing the largest of your animals in the corner. Do just like you did with the trees and stack them as close together as you possibly can. Then move on to the next to largest animal and so forth on down the line until you get to the smallest ones. Pack them in as close as you can and you will find that you'll maximize your space. However, as you go, you want to make sure that you click "stay" on each animal so that they don't take off and start roaming around your farm, taking up more space.

3. Buildings: For those that are lower levels in FarmVille, you probably won't have many buildings yet to worry about. But even lower levels can have dairy farms, chicken coops, barns, and more. These buildings can build up pretty quickly and take up too much room if you aren't careful. So, you want to make sure that you optimize your FarmVille farm so that your buildings aren't in the way. The best place to put them is in the upper corner of your farm. Start by placing the largest of your buildings in the upper corner and placing smaller ones around it so that you can still see them all. Pack them in as close as you can, unless you are decorating your farm up with them, and you'll maximize your space.

4. Crops: This is one area of your farm that is vital to how much income you'll make. You need to make sure that you have everything else packed together to offer you the maximum amount of open land to plow and plant on. Once you have the largest chunk of land possible, you want to make sure that you use it wisely. Start plowing in the corner and don't leave any room between your plots and the edges of your farm. By not allowing any extra space in between your plots, you'll easily be able to maximize your crop area and profits.

By using these four simple tips, you can easily maximize your farm and gain everything possible from it.

3 Tips For Using Your FarmVille Neighbors To Your Advantage?

When it comes to playing FarmVille, there is a good reason that you want to have tons of neighbors on your list. The good thing is that you don't have to spend a lot of time searching for them either, you can simply join some of the fan pages and add your name on any neighbor lists they have going around. Once you put in even a tiny bit of effort when it comes to adding neighbors, you will easily find that your neighbor list will explode. But what do you do when you have all of those neighbors? Here are three tips to help you use your FarmVille neighbors to your advantage:

1. Postings: When it comes to wall postings, most people will post anything from FarmVille. This can actually be a good thing though and here is why: if you're on top of your wall postings, you'll be able to catch things that you want, tons of extra money, and plenty of great extras for your farm. For example, you can gain animals that you can't buy in the market, you can gain extra specialty items during special events, and you can even get some great collectibles on a constant basis. For this reason, it is a great thing to have plenty of neighbors that will always be posting things from FarmVille on their walls for you to snatch up.

2. Visiting: This is where the main bulk of your neighbor needs lies - in visiting them. When you visit your neighbors, you gain several things. The first is coins, as you get offered to do something for your friends when you visit them (although you can only do this once a day). You will gain anywhere from 5-20 coins for this job, as well as extra coins for doing other things on their farm such as feeding chickens. The next thing is experience points. Again, you'll gain experience for doing a job for them, but you'll also gain it for fertilizing their crops and feeding their chickens. While it's not much, it can really add up quickly and get you some great experience points for free. You can also find collectible items as you visit other neighbors and do things for them. Some collectibles can only be found by visiting friends and neighbors so you want to make sure that you do this as often as you can.

3. Co-ops: This is a new area to FarmVille but offers so much that it's hard to say no to it. Your friends will open up these special jobs that you can sign up to help them with. If you help and they complete the job, then you will get a great bonus from it as well. Of course, you can also sign up and create a job that your friends can help with and you'll get an even bigger bonus at the end if everything goes as planned.

While these are the three main reasons that you'll want friends, gifts are another great aspect to them that you don't want to miss out on either. No matter what reason you feel is the biggest, you want to make sure that you have the most neighbors possible when it comes to FarmVille because you really never know how far they can get you.