Farmville Game

Have you ever noticed all those Farmville posts pop up on your Facebook screen?  Does it seem like a lot of your friends are playing it?  Well if you have seen those and a lot of your friends do play Farmville you may be thinking about playing it yourself.  I'm going to write a short review of the game and a how-to to give you an idea of what it's about and how to get started.  Then you can decide whether or not Farmville is a game for you!

Farmville Game: Before Getting Started

The Farmville game brought to you by Zynga.  If you are wondering who Zynga is they are a company that develops all kinds of games.  They specialize in creating games that you can play on social networks (just like Facebook).  Farmville is one of the many games they have created and it's madly popular.  These type of games usually require the help of friends, who also play the game, to really get the full effect.  So the first thing you need to ask yourself is, do you have any friends that play this game?  If you don't it's ok, you can find friends to play it with you fairly easily.  Then again you may decide you want to try a different game that more of your friends are already playing.  One way to tell if your friends are playing or not is to look at all the posts on your Facebook page and note how many people are posting Farmville requests (or other games if you're thinking about starting to play a different one).  If you see a lot of friends posting for Farmville then you know they are active players and you're good to go!

The next thing you may want to look at before getting started is whether or not it's your "type" of game.  If you like designing your own cities, parks, villages, or in this case farms you're on the right track. If you like watching and reading posts on facebook a lot Farmville may be a good game for you! You can get lots of cool prizes by grabbing what fellow Farmvillers
share.

Farmville Game: Getting Started and Farmville Neighbors

 This game starts you off with a rather childish (but cute) skinny bodied avatar with an exceptionally large head that you can customize to your liking.  The game comes with tons of different outfits and costumes you can dress your avatar in.  Of course some of the best ones cost money or Farmville cash but there's plenty to choose from that are free.

Once you customize your avatar you will start with a little series of tasks to teach you how the game is played.  The pointer will show you where to click and what to do.  The first thing it will teach is how to harvest crops (a very frequent task in Farmville).  It's really very simple and just takes a little practice to remember what the icons mean.   Just remember to be sure and click in the corner of the plowed land.  It will highlight yellow when you have your indicator in the right spot.  It goes through a short series of harvesting, plowing, and replanting crops to give you a little tutorial.

At this point in the game it's going to pop up a little screen and ask you if you want to add neighbors.  As I said, to get the full effect of the game you really need neighbors.  You will want to tell it yes and it will give you a list of all your friends.  You should remember who your friends are that play Farmville and find them on that list.  When you find them just click their name and keep going until you've found all your friends that play the game.  Once you find them all click send at the bottom of the box and it will send a neighbor request to all of the friends you chose.

Now you know how to plow land, plant crops, and harvest crops and you've got some neighbors.  The next step is building up your money.  There is a small icon in the lower right hand corner of the screen, along with several other icons, that indicates the market.  Go to that icon and you'll find a category for crops.  Since you are just a level 1, planting and harvesting crops is the only way you have to make some money.  I recommend going into the crops and finding the flower category.  From there you can pick the special flower Farmville has available.  For example, for Valentines Day they have the flower red roses available.  These special crops usually give you a pretty good return for the investment and is the quickest way I've found to make money.  You'll be able to tell the special crops by the background in which they are featured.  They generally have a special colored background. You might see red or pink with hearts (for Valentine's Day) and it states in the description of the crop that it's for that particular holiday.  These special crops are generally only available for about a month and then they come out with a new special crop.

Farmville Game: Crops and Withering

You want to go ahead and plow several plots of land.  You can even fill up your whole farm or just about if you want at this point.  The more you plant the more you will make.  Don't worry you can get rid of those extra plots later to make room for buildings.  Keep in mind when planting crops that each crop has it's own harvesting time.  Some crops may take 6 hours to grow while others take 24 or even 48 hours to grow.  You want to pay attention to this so you can plant something that you know you will be available to harvest when it's ready.  A good rule of thumb is to plan to be able to harvest the crop in the same amount of time it takes to grow.  So if you choose a crop that takes 6 hours to grow then after the initial 6 hours is up and the crop is fully grown you will have 6 more hours to get it harvested before it ruins or withers.  If you choose a crop that takes 12 hours to grow then you'll have 12 hours after it's grown to get it harvested and so forth.

If your crops do wither one way to get them back is to use an unwither.  This is an item Farmville gives out for special occasions, such as their weekly raffle drawing.  Using one of these items will completely unwither all of your crops.  Also you friends or neighbors can visit your farm and help you unwither your crops.  The last option is to pay money to unwither them.  You can do this by buying farm cash using your credit card or by buying a Zynga game card at the store.  There are many special items and expansions that can only be bought with farm cash.  You can either spend money on the game or collect 1 farm cash for each level you attain.  So if you plan on playing Farmville a lot save up those farm cash for something good.  When you first start it's fairly easy to level up and get some farm cash racked up.

Farmville Game: Buildings

It does take time to play this game and it is a game that is ongoing.  So you may not be able to do much at first but just sit and wait for your crops to harvest so you can build up some money.  Just hang in there it gets better.  Once you have some money built up you can start getting buildings.  I would recommend starting with a chicken coop.  These pay really well and pay even better if your friends stop by your farm to feed your chickens.  Plus as you accumulate chickens you have better chances of finding mystery eggs.  These are quite fun and offer lots of varieties for different chickens.  You may open your mystery egg and get more chickens or an array of different prizes, you never know!  Farmville will guide you some as you go as well.  For instance, if you buy a chicken to put on your farm then a box will pop up letting you know you should place a chicken coop to put the chicken in.  You can't get mystery eggs unless you have a chicken coop!  Each building takes special parts to build as well.  You can get these parts from (yup you guessed it) your friends and neighbors.  So the more friends you have that play Farmville the faster you can get building.

Farmville Game: Animals

There are all kinds of animals in Farmville and they release more all the time!  They have farm animals, wildlife animals, winter animals, zoo animals and on and on.  They have very unique animals as well from a winged pegasus all the way to a disco sheep!  Each animal goes into a particular pen, such as a rabbit would go into a wildlife habitat.  A horse would go into a horse paddock and so forth.  Now you can buy some animals in the market but your best bet of getting good animals is to play their mini games (offered weekly for free) and watching your Facebook page for posts about Farmville.   As you begin to build animal pens you will be able to harvest them (usually once a day).  When you harvest them you get a few things out of each one.  The first thing you always get is money, the amount of animals you have in that particular pen will determine just how much money you get.  You may also get scoops of animal feed.  And sometimes you may get is a mystery baby.  These are generally little cribs that you place on your farm and use animal feed to grow up.  If you do get a mystery baby you have the option to share a freebie with your friends.  You should do this at least on occasion even though it does require a few extra clicks.  These are the posts you want to watch for on your Facebook page, your friends sharing freebies with you!  I try to claim the freebies I want fairly quickly because there are several other Farmville players out there waiting for them as well.  That's the best way to get unique animals without spending your own cash on them.  Plus, when you grow your mystery baby up it's always a surprise!

Farmville Game: Trees

Another feature of Farmville I love is the amount of unique trees they offer.  There's the regular old Granny Smith Apple and Cherry trees then there's the Ice Cream tree, Cupcake tree, Bubblegum tree, Flaming Orange tree, Starry Night tree, Giant Cornucopia tree, Sapphire tree, and on and on.  The trees work much the same way as the animals do.  You can place them out on your farm or you can buy an orchard for a chance to get mystery seedlings.  I recommend getting an orchard so you have the chance to duplicate some of your unique trees and share them with friends.  If you do get a mystery seedling these are grown up using watering cans.  As with animal feed there are several ways to get watering cans.  You can ask your friends for some, you may harvest some out of the orchard or watering wheel, or you can get them in special deliveries.

Farmville Game: Special Deliveries

Now we are down to special deliveries.  This is another important part of the game.  Special deliveries are sent to you by your friends and they hold a variety of items.  It's usually something you need to finish a building or to grow up your mystery seedling or baby.  These come in very handy and makes building or growing things up much easier.  The more friends you have the more special deliveries you can get.

Farmville Game: Neighbors

There is a feature in Farmville that allows you to add people as your Farmville neighbor but it doesn't put them on your Facebook page as a friend.  This is a really great feature for the most part and allows you to get lots and lots of neighbors to help you without adding all of them to your friends list.  The game will pop a box up on occasion and let you know there are other players out there looking for neighbors.  You can then click the accept button to send these players a neighbor request.  As soon as they accept your request their names will appear at the bottom of your Farmville screen as one of your neighbors.  This means that you can visit them and send them gifts simply by running your mouse pointer over their name and clicking the option you want.  However, these neighbors are not on your Facebook page so anything you share via a post they will not be able to get or help you with.  That's one reason why it's important to have friends on your Facebook page that play Farmville as well.

Farmville Game: Quests

The game also offers a variety of missions or quests that you can continuously work on for unique prizes and rewards.  Working on these missions is a good way to level up fast.  They often involve asking your friends for certain items, harvesting a set number of a particular crop, and another task of some sort.  It may be crafting something or harvesting a particular animal pen or animal itself.  Working on these missions is a very large part of the game for most players.

Farmville Game: Summary

Well you should have the basic idea of how to play the game.  There are a lot of other things that you will learn as you go.  You'll expand your farm, you'll get new farms, you'll be crafting, and farming in no time.  Remember to send your friends lots of special deliveries and to share freebies with them on occasion.  Always check your games and apps area of your facebook page.  This area will notify you of Farmville requests from your friends.  They need parts for buildings too!  Farmville does have a little window that appears initially when you open the game that tells you of any pending requests from friends but I've noticed this window doesn't always show them all.  I'm not sure why but on occasion it seems to miss a few so don't forget to check the apps and games area.

One last thing, if you've started playing but decide you need more your friends to play farmville, there are places you can go to get them. I mean actual friends to add to your Facebook page so you can get their freebies and they can help you with quests and missions.  You should follow the link below and look at the posts there.  Find some people that you might want to add and then send them a friend invite.  When I've done this I always send that person a message letting them know that I'm looking for friends to play Farmville with as well.  They've always accepted me and many have turned out to be great friends to play with!


To get more friends and neighbors for Farmville click here -----> Farmville Neighbors

Well that's the beginner's guide to getting started playing Farmville.  I hope you enjoyed it and have decided to play.  I know you'll love it and be just as addicted as I am!  So keep on gaming Gamevillers!