Farnville Bonus policy

Notice from Farmville:

"
There is now a limit of 10 feed collections per day. This includes all bonuses so food, exp, coins, items, etc. are all counted in that 10."

 

They are talking about the Facebook feed of reward items That means if you collect 10 truffles or whatever, you can't collect fuel rewards or a copper butterfly. Read it and weep!

 

What is the new Farmville gift limit?

You may have noticed that the Farmville gift box now accepts many more gifts. There is a limit though. Apparently the limit is 200, though it might keep changing.

 

The giftbox is at the junction of a lot of not too great design decisions. The first problem is that the gift acceptance mechanism doesn't know the box is about to be full, and doesn't warn you evidently until you have lost a gift. The second problem is that the gift box has to hold a lot of things that should not be there, because they should be sent directly to their destination or to an overflow if the destination is full. For example, if you are building a stable, there is no reason why the parts have to go to the gift box rather than to the stable. There is no reason why Tuscan wedding favors can't go to the wedding tent, rather than making you pump away at accepting them and then making you waste time again getting each one into the tent. Farmhands and Arborists accumulate in large numbers if you are smart, and they should get a separate store. Collectibles should be going straight to the collectible store, and if if some of the items go beyond capacity too quickly, the capacity should be increased. It's not our fault there are too many emperor butterflies and not enough copper butterflies.

 

Beyond all these problems there is the problem of the fixed size of Farmville. There just isn't enough space for half a dozen mansion, assorted prizes like the Eiffel tower and all the other things that accumulate for top end players. There should be a way to expand the farm or else to add a link to a second farm.

 

Still, 200 is better than the old limit of 50.

Farmville Bi-plane

Farmville has a great new bi-plane that can take all the fun out the game. You fly the plane and it grows your crops. The first flight is free. Then it costs money - Farmcash money. Farm Cash is scarce and be had in quantity only by paying real money.  There is a Farmville coop job (peanut butter and jelly) that gives these planes as a reward for a gold medal finish. I wonder if the first flight of each plane is free.

 

Of course, what it means is that anyone who gets Farmcash by buying it can finish their coop jobs with gold medals in a jiffy - ten a day if they like. That's not much of a game, is it?

The cost of a bi-plane flight depends on how many plots have to be ripened and on on how long it would take for them to grow. That is, if you plant a long maturing crop like artichokes will l cost more, perhaps around 15 FV cash to igrow it instantly. If you plant blueberries, which mature in 4 hours, it might cost 5 cash. The amount also depends on the number of plots. Maturing 10 plots costs less than maturing 400 plots. If you want to save money, use the bi-plane only after crops have matured for several hours.

 

 

Correction - Farmville Toolbar Bonus

The 25 FV Cash bonus is avialable by clicking the link in the sidebar at http://farmville.com

On the left there is an announcement about the toolbar. It doesn't matter if you already installed it. You can do it again.

Sometimes at the end of the process you get to farmville and it says there is 25 cash in the giftbox but it is not there. However if you open the page again or restart the browser, the 25 cash really do appear in the gift box.

 

It is available for Firefox 2.0 and supposedly for IE7 if anyone still uses that. It doesn't work in Chrome or IE8 or Safari it seems.

 

Ami Isseroff

25 Farmville Cash to install toolbar in Firefox - Get it while it lasts

In Firefox 2.0 plus - Click on someone's Chicken coop expansion and probably elsewhere and you get this link:

 

http://apps.facebook.com/onthefarm/index.php?ref=rewardPage

 

Use the link to install farmville toolbar. When all done, go to farmville again and you get 25 FV cash. There are a few kinks. You will need to click at the top of the page to let Farmville install the toolbar. When it is installed, the intallation process doesn't see to go anywhere. You need to go back to your Farmville page. But there are really 25 Farmville Cash waiting in the giftbox.

 

No kidding. Get it while it lasts.

 

Ami Isseroff  

Farmville Stable Expansion - nasty surprises

Farmville's stable expansion is here. It's not very generous. You need to accumulate 10 each of the five stable parts to add 5 (five) horses. And then you can expand again, so save the extras. Farmville doesn't tell anyone in advance that you can only add five horses at a time. If I find out what the limit is, I'll let you know. For the number of horses I have, I may be accumulating parts for the next two years.

 

Warning - people are complaining that they have suddently lost things like Provencal gates, apparently related to the stable expansion.  Mine is still there, but my virtual dogs stopped doing tricks. They just blink for a split second when they are supposed to roll over or play dead or shake. Real dogs are harder to train, but they stay trained. Doggone.

 

 

Getting the most out of Farmville Co-op jobs

I have quite a few gripes about Farmville Co-op jobs, but they are the best way for people with small farms to get ahead quickly and get bonus points. How else can someone with a hundred or 200 plots regularly get 1000 XP in a day or so without a lot of planting and harvesting?  

 

The biggest problem initially was that many neighbors and friends could not join jobs of other neighbors and friends. This seems to have been improved.  

 

Some tips:

 

1- All the jobs use crops that do not have a high point value. If you plant your whole field with grapes (2 XP per day) to do a Co-Op job, you can lose, say, 400 XP that you would have gotten had you planted peas (3 XP). But if you have enough partners, you don't need to plant a lot of grapes or anything else. Everyone gets the same XP bonus for a job, no matter what their contribution was, as long as they harvest before the job is done. The best sort of job management allows as many people as possible to join. If you are leading a long job (4 days 21 hrs)  and have enough neighbors, you can afford to plant only part of your field for the job, and then wait a few hours to allow others to join. Meanwhile, plant a fast crop like blackberries on the rest of the fields. If there are not enough people joining, you can always plant up the rest of your fields for the job, allowing enough time to get the gold medal.

 

2- Don't start a job if you don't have a lot of Facebook friends who play Farmville. Only friends of the group leader can join your job.

 

3- Don't join a job that is very late unless you can add enough to finish it. Chances are, if nobody joined after a day, nobody is going to join - the leader hasn't got enough neighbors and friends who play farmville.

 

4- There is always the possibility that someone will not harvest in time, which can sabotage the job. To get insurance against this, each person can plant more than is required, even if it doesn't register as seeded. If your job requires grapes, all the grapes harvested while you are in the job will be counted, regardless of whether or not they were registered as seeded, up until the maximum. Of course, this means that those who do not harvest in time may be shut out. And you can plant, for example, grapes, and then join a job afterwards. Seed more grapes, and then you can harvest the ones you planted and the harvested grapes count for the job. The seeded ones will not be counted when they are harvested, but still, it means you can actually (in theory) finish a job in an hour, if everyone joins the job after their grape (or tulip or whatever) crop is ready.  

 

5- If you can coordinate a team of people who do jobs together, you will all start together and finish quickly, minimizing the wait between jobs.

 

6- Not everyone in the job is necessarily listed on the main job page display, because the space is limited. Click the "Friends" tab to see all the people in the job.

 

And remember - it really is only a game. :-)

 

Ami Isseroff