Farmville 2, By George!

New "Great Britain" Content Added

With all the Fall and Thanksgiving content additions that have been added to Farmville 2 over the past 2-ish weeks, it was a bit surprising to see the pop-up screen to the left appear today. There's nothing particularly British about today's update, at least that I could find. It's not a Bank Holiday, as the Brits have the same good sense to schedule their official days off like we do in the US i.e. on Fridays and Mondays. In any event, there was actually a new limited-time, craft-able plant item introduced, as well as 3  limited time craft-able recipes. Truth be told, Zynga also introduced a limited-time, Farm Bucks-only Elderberry Tree, but I try to ignore Farm Bucks exclusive content in the same way I'd ignore poor manners, bad grammar, or Justin Bieber.

New Plant:

English Rose

•  Good until December 23rd
• 2 Hours to grow
• 42/59 coins to plant/recieve
• 3 XP
• 5 Feed
• Can be crafted to make Rose Jelly:
• Requires: 8 Roses + 3 Sugars
• Rewards: 1510 coins + 9 XP 

New Recipes:

• Elderberry Tea
• Good until Dec. 23rd
• Requires Farm Bucks, so why bother with details? 
• Petit Fours
• Good until Dec. 23rd
• Requires: 2 Blueberry Custards + 3 Batters
• Rewards: 2710 coins + 27 XP

So there you have it - a proper English menu, at least according to a game made in the US of A.

Farmville 2

Level 20 Skidoo!

 

Bottles 'n Bucks Needed

I reached Level 20 in Farmville 2 this morning, and for once was smart enough to plan(t) ahead with a full field of long growing (24 hour) strawberries and sunflowers. However, I was less than happy when I dived into the details of what was required in order to unlock the farmland. It was not pretty:

• 13 Chainsaws (easily fulfilled from Zynga.com)
• 300,000 coins (pricey, but I'd already amassed around 120,000 coins without even trying)
• 1 Adult Brown Swiss Cow (so I have to buy/raise a baby cow - no big deal)

Except, a Baby Brown Swiss Cow costs 65,000 coins (!) and requires 16 Baby Bottles (!!). Suddenly,one trivial item on the unlock checklist became a major resource sink. I bought the baby cow, started feeding it, and ran out of Baby Bottles after about 6. The freebie giveaway on Zynga.com was no luck - there was a huge run of just free Feed and Water available at the exact time I needed anything but.

So here I sit, waiting to raise enough resources to unlock the farm area. Frustrating. Don't make punishment part of the reward, Zynga.

Farmville 2: Thanksgivingpalooza!

Fall Content Updates

A ton of new content was dropped within the past week in Farmville 2. I'll examine in greater detail over the next few days the specific pros/cons and quest tasks. In terms of new, limited-time items to purchase in the General Store, there are new plants, animals, trees, and decorations. The vast majority of these new items require real-cash Farm Bucks, so I won't discuss those items in any detail, as this blog is primarily dedicated to the free game experience.



Plants:

• Parsnips 

 Animals:

• 4 Types of Birds (2 Chickens/2 Turkeys). All require Farm Bucks. Blech.

Trees:

• 2 Types (1 only type, the Plum Tree, yields fruit for crafting). Both require Farm Bucks. Blech times two.

 Quests:

• L'il Rebel Turkey: rewards 1 Baby Turkey upon completion.
• Turkey Calls: contains 6 sub-quests. A turkey is required as part of one of the quest tasks, so completion of L'il Rebel Turkey beforehand is vital.
• Feast Table: mostly requires friends to supply building materials/sweat equity for construction to complete, although there is a food crafting sub-quest in the middle that will require strawberries, so start planting now. Once the Table is completed, you then invite four 4 friends to 5 different feasts. The rewards are pretty good for each successful feast you hold, so make this a high priority on your 'To-Do' list. 

And, that's it in a nutshell. Happy Farming to all!

Farmville 2: It's Like A Circus!

Bread & Circuses, Actually

 

After powering through the quest wasteland that was level 15 in Farmville 2, I finally got some new quests, which revolved around preparing for a circus (I think - I'm not one for back-story in FV2, when there's precious crops and animals at stake). Anyways...these quest were pretty straightforward, until I got to the the 3rd in the "Circus" series. It required 3 Cheddar Loafs. Sounds pretty simple, eh? Well, there's 2 problems with said Loaf:

1. You need Salt (which you can't make)
2. You need need Cheese (which you might be out of)

If you're playing FV2 via Zynga.com, it should be relatively easy to obtain Salt via requests. Cheese, however, is another matter. It's a rare drop from Cows/Goats, and since you had to last purchase said livestock, they might have evolved into "Prized" animals, which no longer drop any produce, aside from XP and coins. So, it's Baby Bottle and Feed time once again to raise them into productive members of the farming community. So, take it with a grain of Salt, but if you stock up on your cheese-dropping barnyard critters, and you can (Cheez) wiz through this quest quickly. See what I did there? Funny stuff.

Farmville 2: Power Leveling

Bad Pun Alert!

Plowing Through Levels in FV2

I recently had an odd situation occur in Farmville 2; I hit Level 15, and suddenly ran out of quests. I (correctly) assumed quests were given to player based on certain levels i.e. I'd finished levels that the level designers at Zynga had assumed would take me until at least Level 16 to complete. So with no quests to occupy me in Level 15, I wanted to level up as quickly as possible. In the end, it took me about 36 hours to get to Level 17. Here are some tips to turbocharge your leveling:

• Play at Zynga.com. I cannot emphasize enough how much more efficient it is if you play the game through the Zynga portal.  You can get literally dozens of neighbors in the space of a few hours who can supply you with XP when you visit their farm, or provide you with quest items when you request them. Again, Zynga.com is a godsend when it comes to accelerating the leveling process.

• Crafting. Every step of the crafting process rewards you with some amount of XP. Cumulatively, each step in creating an item gives you a few XP; put them all together and you can get 20 to 30+ XP per item.

• Plant items with quick grow times and higher XP rewards. For example, Radishes, which thankfully unlocked at Level 15, have a grow time of 2 Minutes and reward 3 XP per plant. 

• Fertilize as much as possible. For every prize winning plant you grow, you are rewarded XP equal to the number of pounds (lbs) of the vegetable or fruit. In other words a 12 lbs. Pumpkin will give you 12 XP.

• Prized animals reward higher XP than animals that produce resources, like eggs, milk, or cheese. I usually keep a half dozen Prized livestock stored away in my inventory, and break them out into the barnyard when I need my livestock to produce just XP, not resources.

I am sure there are other strategies other players use to level up quickly, so I'd love to hear any other tips you have. Happy leveling!

Farmville 2

No Quests?!?!?

The Curious Case of the Camouflaged Quests

Perhaps 'camouflaged' isn't exactly the right word, but it had a nice alliterative ring to it. Anyways....here I am at Level 15 in Farmville 2, with nothing to do. All my quests have been completed, and no new ones have appeared in their place. A bit of Google-ing on the topic revealed that other players have experienced this as well, on other levels, so my educated guess is that the quest designers just don't anticipate players completing certain quests before reaching certain levels. Thus, I am now left to my own devices.

"Wake me when we get to Lvl 16"

I expect once I hit Level 16, some new quests will be triggered, but what to do in the meantime? I need 4,492 XP to reach Level 16, but who's counting. Quests are the best way to level up, as they have high XP rewards. But without them, it's just a grind. You get 6 XP per neighbor farm visited, 10 XP for per day for Prized animals, harvests, and the rest is just rewards for prized crops, and that's dependent on the crop size i.e. a 15 Lbs. Tomato = 15 XP, and also appears perhaps once every 10+ fertilized crops. 

This is going to be a long week. Any tips of power-leveling, please send them my way. The alternative is to get a life, otherwise. 

Farmville 2 - Pecan-apalooza!

Strategies for "Bake Sale" and "No Horsing Around" Quests.

Hint: It Involves A Lot Of Pecans

Around Level 14, you will encounter the aforementioned quests in Farmville 2. Like most quests in FV2, they aren't difficult, but rather time-consuming, if you are not prepared. Both quests revolve around Pecans, which unlock at Level 13, so you in all likelihood, you might not have planted any Pecan Trees yet, which will put you behind the curve when it comes to completing these quests. In a nutshell (ha!), you'll need to craft/make 5 Pecan Muffins for the "Ho No Horsing Around" quest, and sell 10 Pecan Muffins for the "Bake Sale" quest. Luckily, this means the effort you put into 1 quest will apply to the other quest, which makes things a bit easier.  If you do the Crafting math, that means you'll need 50 Pecans to complete the pecan portion of both quests. The logistics of getting 50 Pecans are as follows:

1 Pecan Tree Harvest  =      2.5 Pecans Nuts (on average)

Pecan Tree Harvest Time =  12 Hours

Therefore, 1 Pecan Tree will = 5 Pecan Nuts per Day. 

So, it will take 10 days to get enough Pecan Nuts from 1 tree to complete the crafting for these quests. Or 5 days with 2 Pecan trees. And so on...So plant ahead, and save some time.

 

Farmville 2

No Horsing Around Quest

I Gotta See A Man About A Horse

The "No Horsing Around" quest in Farmville 2, which probably appears somewhere around level 13 or 14 (but your mileage may vary), contains yet another minor mystery concerning the acquisition of saddles to complete the quest. The quest text merely says "Gather 3 Saddles..." and unhelpfully has a "help" button marked "Go To Farm", which brings back to staring cluelessly at your farm. Are they hidden? Do I make them? What's the deal?

The answer, like most things in FV2, is that in order to get said said saddles, you have to buy them. Actually, you have to buy a horse which drops saddles. On occasion. When the mood strikes said horse, it appears. Go to the "General Store", and buy yourself a baby Black Arabian Horse. If you have the Farm Bucks, and want to save yourself the in-game money, or bottles, you can also buy an adult Black Gypsy Horse for 54 Farm Bucks, or an adult Black Arabian for 30 FB. Either way, they're not cheap. 

Even if you go the cheapskate route like I did, and buy a baby Arabian, the numbers still aren't great. Here's the cold hard numbers on a Baby Arabian Horse:

Cost:                                 22,000

Bottles Required:                6

Feed Required:                  12

Time Between Feedings:    24 hours

Drops:                               2 Horseshoes

                                         3  Saddles (sometimes)

Thus, it could take several feedings to acquire the Saddles i.e. days. You could buy multiple horses, but with Level 15 land unlock looming, which requires, among other things, 125,000 coins, this is not the time to be spend multiples of 22,000 coins to get 2 or 3 horses  to get 3 saddles. So settle in, cowboys and cowgirls. This quest might take some time.

FarmVille 2

"Spicing It Up" Quest Hints

aka Cheese Please!

OK, so I've playing Farmville 2. Well, that is to say, a lot of Farmville 2. It's a lot of fun, and the annoyance of having to co-opt FB friends to be farm "neighbors" is gone with the advent of the game on Zynga.com. Anyways....I am currently at around Level 13, and just got the 'Spicing It Up" quest series. Nothing on the surface of the quest seemed all that difficult: Master Habanero Peppers, Harvest some Wells, and make 5 Spicy Quesos sauces. Making Quesos proved more difficult than I thought - it requires 4 Cheese Wheels (which come from cows and some goats), and 10 Habanero Peppers. Simple enough on paper, right?

"Please don't cut the cheese!"

Wrong! Despite having 3 cows and 1 cheese-producing goat, I was getting no cheese after feeding them. After about a day, the goat gave up 2 cheese out of perhaps 5-7 feedings. I was regularly making milk, and fertilizer, but cheese drops were like winning the lactose lottery. In other words, very seldom. Turns out cheese is a rare drop, meaning it doesn't happen with every feeding. This is the type of thing I'd expect from a hardcore RPG like World of Warcraft, not a casual Facebook game like Farmville 2. Plus, there's no visual indication, or text, to let you know cheese is not going to be dropped 100% of the time after each feeding. It's a relatively hardcore game mechanic, coupled with really poor user feedback. So be forewarned in the future.

Also, I'd recommend going with the Sanaanen Goats, rather than the Loghorn Cows, for cheese production; Cows require 4 hours between feedings, Goats require 15 minutes.

Zynga Cares!

Leads Charge With Hurricane Sandy Charity Aid

Really Zynga? Temporarily disabled "wither" in Farmville 2? What generosity. How about matching player harvesting with in-kind monetary donations to an aid organizations like the Red Cross? 

Win, Place, or Show?

Having a bit of a minor dilemma over what game to focus on next. Also, from My Singing Monsters to World of Warcraft in one paragraph.

Miscellaneous/Micro-Review

At the moment, I'm simultaneously playing My Singing Monsters, Jurassic Park Builder, and Restaurant Story, with moments of Farmville 2, as well. Deciding on a focus is proving difficult as each has some quality that keeps me coming back hour after after. Monsters is outright musical, silly, fun, Jurassic has a really robust set of missions and realistic (for a theoretically improbable zoo) sim feel, and Restaurant Story is mostly sheer stubbornness on my part - I want a diner that still runs smoothly when I'm asleep. Then there's Farmville 2 - a game I swore I'd never play again. But the more I play, the deeper I find the gameplay. As soon as I unlocked the 'crafting' house in Farmville 2, it was all over. As a reformed crafting junkie from World of Warcraft days, turning apples into scones via the right combination of ingredients was all I needed to hook me.

UPDATE: I'm going with My Singing Monsters for my next review. I just unlocked a whole new island with a different song, monsters, etc. Plus: a Time Machine. Really.