FarmVille 2 Most Important Tips

FarmVille 2 Most Important Tips by killumshannon

I figured I’d give a few of the tips I’ve found to be the BEST as far as general gameplay – those suggestions that will make the game MUCH more enjoyable for even the casual daily player:

1. FERTILIZE EVERYTHING!

It doubles the yield of your crops and trees for the same amount of water and time. It’s the biggest no-brainer in the game!

You need a lot of fertilizer to do this, so prized animals end up being worthless – sure they give you xp but they also don’t produce fertilizer, so your crop/tree yields are halved.
(Note as of October 29, Zynga is announcing coming changes to the prized animal situation, and recommends storing as many of your prized animals in inventory as possible. This post will be updated when the new system is announced). The “Coming Changes” announcement is here: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.p…s-Coming-Soon!

Nubian Goats and Cochin Chickens produce fertilizer the fastest – nubian goats are the best value for your coin money (providing a NET equivalent return of about $F450 every time you feed one – considering its cost). The maximized configuration is about 3:1 Nubian Goats to Cochin Chickens (Rhode Islands if you can’t get Cochins yet) until your farm becomes profitable & you no longer need coin. After that, switch to 3 Cochins to every 1 Nubian. Unless you spend Farm Bucks on Ibexes or you simply want a different animal because it’s pretty, there is no reason to have any other animal on your farm.

2. CLEAR YOUR INBOX OFTEN!

Not only do you help your friends doing this, but you progress your game play. Never let your inbox get to 200 if you can help it – as soon as it gets to 200, you start losing stuff and start hurting your friends. It’s a really good idea to clear your inbox twice in a row when it’s gone up to 200 messages; you might have as many as 75-80 messages in your box immediately after you cleared it. Clearing it twice in a row instead of just once will free up all that space for requests you can benefit from =);

3. SPEND YOUR RESOURCES BEFORE CLEARING YOUR INBOX!

THIS IS HUGE HUGE HUGE

If you have 30 waters and 30 in inventory and 12 bottles, you will lose out on MANY waters and bottles when you clear your inbox. Spend your water and your bottles (if you need them) BEFORE clearing your inbox each time – with 200 messages, you can get 20 or more water and 6-12 bottles just by clearing your inbox. If you are full when you do it, those resources are LOST!

CLEAR YOUR INBOX 2-3 TIMES IN A ROW, or until it says you have no requests. Sometimes – especially after you sent your gifts to everyone, those silly “thank yous” will clog your inbox and they won’t always show up right away. You might have 200 messages the first time, then like 7-8 immediately after that, then 150 immediately after that. If you only clear your inbox once, you could end up with space for only 50 new requests. This is kind of a “glitch” in the programming – but DON’T TRUST THE MESSAGE INDICATOR NUMBER! The inbox is perhaps the most beneficial thing to you & your friends in the game – keeping it clear will give you the most resources, AND help your friends out the most. If you’ve cleared it within the past 20 minutes or so it’s not a big deal, but if it’s been a while, make sure to clear it 2-3 times in a row!

4. CONSIDER USING THE FIVE PLOTS TRICK!

You can get TONS of high-value crops in minutes with no extra water. Even if you don’t use it yourself, please be courteous and click on the five plots your neighbors have set aside if you see them on their farms. For more information on the five plots trick, read here: FarmVille 2 Tell Neighbors What You Need With Wooden Sign Guide

5. ALWAYS keep less than 30 water in your stocks

once you get to 30, you don’t make any more;

6. Remember to use the FREE GIFT tab daily!

With 300 neighbors each, we ocould all recieve 300 extra water per day this way (if we all kept our inboxes clear). That’s a LOT of water! I would suggest ignoring the cutsie temporary gifts (like candy) and send water instead – it’s the thing people universally need!

7. If you have nothing to craft, craft butter using the milk from your goats. 

It only makes you 10 coin and 2 xp but it prevents wasted craft power so you are constantly making money/xp instead of letting your craft kitchen sit useless

8. Get as many FV2 active player friends as you can.

You can only have a certain number of direct neighbors, but you can receive gifts/requests/farmhand help from unlimited facebook friends in-game. 2,000 friends goes a long way toward helping you get almost anything you need quickly. To find/add friends as FV2 players using the Facebook interface, check out these step-by-step instructions: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.p…5#post12730535

9. Planting about 33% of your plots with a longer timed crop (say 12 hours) will free up a lot of your well water to use for trees, etc.

10. Did you click on something you shouldn’t have?

Until Z provides a STOP/CANCEL ACTION button, if it’s something REALLY bad, you can quick hit REFRESH/RELOAD on your web browser. If you can reload the web page before your farmer-self completes the action, then you will have effectively cancelled it. Great when you meant to move your farm and instead set a water action for a bazillion trees & you really need to save your water, etc.

11. A lot of people know this one but I just figured it out. You can click on the clouds above your animals to feed them instead of having to click on the animal itself

this can save a lot of frustration when you have a lot of animals close together!

12. If you are into collecting newsfeed bonuses, you NEED to play the game using Zynga.com as the wrapper instead of Facebook.

FORGET those auto bonus collectors and the PIA they are (not to mention how mad they make your friends and how they violate Zynga’s TOS & risk your account getting banned) – playing at Zynga.com allows you to collect those feed bonuses easily & very simply. If you don’t like it, just go back to Facebook – you can go back & forth seamlessly!

13. If you AREN’T going to need any requests in the next 18 hours – send out requests for water, bottles, or 1/2 and 1/2 before you leave the game.

It won’t do you any good, but your neighbors can get one for giving one – it’s like double gifting & if you don’t need the request “space,” then it won’t hurt you at all. It just takes a few seconds & could DOUBLE the numbers of water/bottles we all get if everyone did it =)

14. Always ask for more crafting power every day.

Not only does it give you five more energy, but those who help you get energy as well! The energy you receive will be in your inventory – you can get 5 per day (which means you are helping others get those energy as well)

15. After you send your gifts, be sure to clear your inbox regularly (like every 5-10 minutes) NO MATTER HOW MANY MESSAGES IT SAYS YOU HAVE.

The message counter is notoriously slow, and all those “thankyou” gifts of five coins will quickly block your email box so you can’t get the good requests.

16. Don’t sell anything you don’t need to (except fully crafted goods) unless you really need the coins for something!

You might think “wow, I have enough potatoes, might as well sell some.” I wouldn’t. Higher level recipes can open up uses for those crops and you can find yourself re-planting them. Inventory space is unlimited for crops and tree goods (tested to 7,000) so you aren’t losing any space. Again, if you NEED the coins for something, then by all means go ahead – I just suggest not selling any crop/tree goods “just for fun.” At level 33, I could NEVER have enough eggs, potatoes, wheat, nutmeg, plums, apricots, limes, or 24-hour crops to use for feed. I’m glad I have thousands of milk & cheese.

17. Check the OFFERS tab in-game before buying farm cash (or before buying anything online)

you might be able to get farm bucks at no relative cost, or get something “real” in addition to what you would have spent on farm bucks alone. For more information, see this post: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.p…-Relative-Cost

18. If you play your farm with any kind of intensity (like more than a few minutes a day), then keeping prized animals on your farm is a BIG BIG BIG waste of money and experience points.

A Nubian Goat provides a net profit of $F24,000 over its life, which can be as little as 12.5 hours. You gain $F462+/- EVERY time you feed a Nubian Goat (including consideration of its cost) – that’s every 15 minutes! For more information, see this post: http://forums.zynga.com/showthread.p…g-with-Nubian)

19. TELEPORTATION

As your farm grows larger, it can take a very long time while your little farmer-self runs from one side to the other. In some cases, you can drastically cut this time using the crafting kitchen and feed mill. By placing the crafting kitchen in one corner of your farm and the feed mill in the other, you can jump back and forth quickly. Just click on your feed mill and then cancel – your farmer-self will be teleported to the feed mill, and as soon as you cancel, will continue doing what he/she was doing before you clicked on the mill.

20. Another time-saving tip is that your farmer self will continue to take commands as long as there is no error.

Say you have 90 plots, six wells, 30 water in reserve. You can plant all 90 crops, water the first 30, click on 2 of your wells, water then next 20, click on two more wells, water 20 more crops, click on the last well, water the last 10 crops, then start fertilizing the crops that have been watered. Even though your farmer is still watering the first 30 plots and hasn’t even harvested the first well, he/she will continue running around doing stuff until it’s all done. There’s no need to wait for him/her to finish one thing before giving commands for the next. Be careful, though, to make sure the command you’re giving won’t make you run out of water, fertilizer, etc. because that will make an error window pop up and clear all pending actions. You can plant, water, harvest, fertilize, and then even feed your animals in this manner then just sit back and watch yourself accomplish your long to-do list without wasting time waiting for each thing to finish in order.

21. When using the feed mill, be careful not to just click the crop you’re using for feed until the screen greys out.

If you have room in your silos for one feed, and click a cucumber (15 feeds), the mill will use the cucumber but only give you one feed for it – wasting the other 14 feeds. Over and over again, you can waste a LOT of feed this way. Make sure to stop clicking on the feed crop BEFORE you get to max silo capacity. Then, you can either click on another crop to get you EXACTLY to your capacity, or just leave it short of full.

22. when feeding animals, you can click on the feed mill and make more feed before you run out, and it will credit that feed to pending animals.

For example, if you have 10 Nubian Goats (8 feed each) and a silo capacity of 75, then you can click on all 10 goats to start feeding them, then click on the feed mill BEFORE you run out of feed and make some more. You don’t have to feed only the animals you have space for, then fill up, then click the rest of the animals. However, if you run out of feed, all pending animal feedings will be stopped. This saves a lot of time when you have 45 animals to feed!

23. Farmhands can’t be used for watering trees, but that doesn’t matter.

If you don’t need them for crafting, use them to water your crops, then use the water you saved to water your trees; it doesn’t matter who watered them – just that they’re watered =)

24. If it’s been overnight/a while since you played, and you have tons of ready crops/trees, don’t harvest them all right away.

First, harvest 3 plots, then re-plant them and water them. Now, go to the crafting kitchen and craft at least 5 things (make butter if you have nothing else to do). NOW go back and harvest everything. It can take several minutes to harvest and re-plant everything. If you are full on water and crafting power, that time is “wasted.” Might as well be earning water and crafting power while you’re clearing & re-planting your farm!

25. Farmhands provide only four plot helps, but will give you five power if you use them in the crafting kitchen.

Want to take it to its max?? Not everyone is interested in leveling up as quickly as possible, making as much coin as possible, etc. This guide is more about general tips to help everyone (whether they are intense players or decoration hounds who just want a pretty but not intense farm). If you ARE one of the people who ARE interested in running their farm to its highest intensity, check out my guide here: Read the Maximization Strategy Guide

I’m also working on a watering strategy calculator to help you maximize your water. It will eventually let you maximize for coins or XP, as well. To read about it and access it, check here: FarmVille 2 Watering Strategy Calculator

TECHNICAL SUPPORT IS AVAILABLE & EASY TO ACCESS – JUST BE SURE YOU NEED IT!

Finally, many people don’t know that Tier 1 technical support is available via live chat and very easy to access. For more information, see this post: Click Here for Instructions on Contacting Support

Just some very simple tips that can as much as double your water intake and almost eliminate the need for you having to request water/bottles. Others (like the wooden sign/five plot trick and recipe profit maximization) will fine-tune your game, but the above will provide major improvement to game play with minimal effort. Happy farming!!!