Facebook FarmVille tips and cheats

A guide to all the tips and tricks to build the best farm in all of FarmVille, the best farm game on Facebook.

The newest, hottest game on Facebook right now is FarmVille, a cross between the super hit YoVille and the upstart Farm Town. If you've played either of these two games you'll immediately recognize many of the features in the game. Still, FarmVille comes with it's own set of clever tricks and funny cheats that you can take advantage of to make the game experience even more fun, get rich, and build the best ranch in the county.

Money do grow on trees!

To get anywhere in FarmVille, you're going to have to get down and dirty, and grow your own crops. Like any good self respecting farmer, you'll be living off the fat of the land in this game, but first, you'll have to get get dressed.

When you start up your new FarmVille account, you'll be asked to pick what gender farmer you want to be, and to pick your hair color and style, and pick from different facial features. For YoVille veterans, this will be very familiar as the character creation has not changed from that game. The only difference is that FarmVille does not let you pick an outfit, it's overalls and plaid shirts for everyone, something the game has borrowed directly from FarmTown.

All the set up done, time has come to get started on your farm work. You start out with a patch of land, and a sorry patch of strawberries that are ripe for harvest. This is your cue to make your first FarmVille dollar, select the harvesting tools from your tools menu in the bottom right corner, and click on your strawberry patch. As you harvest your first batch of produce, you'll get credited your money instantly, no need to go to the market and sell your crops to Farmer Tom. As soon as you've got your first berries sold though, it's time to go to the market anyways and put the money you've made to work.

Time to buy some seeds and get to sowing. As a brand new FarmVille farmer, you also have a few patches of already plowed field, so you're all set to sow your first seeds. Click on the market icon in the menu and you'll get to the list of available seeds. Strawberries might seem tempting, as they are very cheap to purchase and taste excellent with some half and half, before committing to strawberry farming though you should make sure that you can log onto FarmVille again in 4 hours. Strawberries ripens the fastest of any fruit in the game, which can turn out to be a real chore later in the game. For now though, in the initial stages of the game, logging back on in 4 hours might not be to bad, and if you can do it, getting the cash flow going as fast as possible will be a big advantage.

If it's already getting late, or you for some other reason can't log on to FarmVille again in 4 hours, you should pick a different fruit that will take longer to be ripe. The reason is that strawberries are eerily similar to grapes in FarmTown, quick to ripen, and quicker to spoil. If you spend all your cash on strawberries and let them spoil because you waited 6 hours to pick them, you've put yourself in a hole it will be difficult to dig out of. You can always make money harvesting crops for your friends and strangers, but making money of your own ranch is always by far the best. So, make sure the first batch you plant is one you'll also be able to harvest. If the four hours seems like it might be just too quick, pick a vegetable that will take one day to be ready, the best return on your money would be the peas(?), don't pick produce that take longer than 1 day to be ready. While the payoff might seem tempting, you should focus on getting a cash flow going early. FarmVille is more forgiving than previous farming games when it comes to early cash flow, but the key to successful farming will still be to establish a profitable harvest routine as fast as possible.

Awards and levels

FarmVille has included a leveling system where you open up new features for your farmer and farm as you progress through the levels. To level up need to collect experience points, which are handed out for tasks like plowing and harvesting. This is another reason why you should consider the faster growing crops. You leave a lot of experience points on the table if you only plow and harvest your fields every third day. As you start out you will fly through the early levels, and unlock more seeds and animals as well as collect awards for your different achievements. The achievements awards are a particularly welcome addition for new FarmVille farmers, as most of the awards comes with a nice cash bonus. A clever farmer can leverage these cash bonuses to build up a strong cash flow a lot faster than you could on harvesting alone.

There are many achievements in the game, they are typically awarded every time you perform one of the core functions in the game for the first time. Such as plowing a new field, adding a neighbor, visiting another farm etc. To maximize the effect of these early game awards, try to perform as many tasks as possible before you start planting your first crop. Send out gifts, visit all of your neighbors, and try to collect as much money as you can. Doing this before you plant your first batch of crops will allow you to plow more field and sow more crops, and by leaving this step last you will make sure your fields are all planted at the same time, and so they will be ready for harvest at the same time. Try to avoid having to check in on your farm every hour to harvest different parts of your fields. If you use this strategy, be prepared to do a little math, as you need to make sure that you don't spend all your cash on plowing and not have enough to buy seeds. Always decide what seeds you are going to buy before you start plowing, that way you can keep track of how many patches of field you can afford to plow and seed. If you don't like doing math, try working in batches of 10 to make the numbers easier to handle, plow 10 fields for a cost of 200 coins, then sow with the seed you chose, check if you can afford 10 more squares of seeds and plowing, and repeat the process until you're out of coin

Lazy farming

Slaving away for crops can be a chore for many farmers, you have to constantly be aware of the health of your crop, and the financial fallout if you miss harvesting one of your crops and it spoils can be disastrous. For lazy farmers who want a more sedate farming lifestyle, FarmVille offers some additions to the game that make it easier than ever to run a farm without any crops to worry about at all.

FarmTown veterans will recognize the fruit trees and their income potential, trees usually bear fruit in three or four days, and nets a small profit when harvested. The profits are small and the trees expensive, so exclusive fruit farming is a possible, but not very viable options. A new addition to FarmVille changes the picture though, as you now can get profits from your animals. You can collect milk from your cows, eggs from your chickens, etc. The best thing about keeping animals on your farm is that unlike crops, the yield from the animals never goes bad. You can add a cow, and once it has produced enough milk to collect, it will stand around happily waiting until whenever you come around to your farm again. This way, it is possible to create livestock farms where you are not locked into any schedule. A field filled with cows would turn a very healthy profit, will never need reinvestment, will never spoil, and best of all, through the gift system, you can get most of your livestock completely free.A goat is slightly more profitable, but has to be unlocked. One of the best paying animals is the duck, which is available as a gift from the start of the game. It's even possible to combine animals and high yield fruit trees such as avocados to run a farm that makes money and never needs any maintenance outside of actually collecting your money. The highest profit tree is actually the Acai tree which is available leter in the game. Keep in mind thought, that this kind of lazy farming yields a lot less experience points than regular crops farming, and the process of collecting milk from a field full of cows can be daunting, since theres no visual difference between a cow that is ready to be milked and one that is not.

The tricks

One of the best cheats to use on FarmVille is the unlimited gift cheat. If you are interested in running a farm without crops, this cheat will enable you to build up your farm for free. The unlimited gifts cheat works best if you are using Firefox.

To use the cheat, before you have given any gifts, right click on the 'gifts' tab on top of the game and select 'open link in new browser'. This will open the gift giving screen in a new tab in your browser. Repeat this as many times as you'd like. I have tried the cheat with up to 20 different tabs without problems. Once you have all your tabs with the gift giving page open, go back to every single one and select the gift you want to give. Do this for every single tab without confirming the selection. Once you have done this for every single tab, go back again and confirm on each page, selecting who you want to send the gift to. Again, do not confirm the sending of the gift on this page. Do this in every tab again, and when you go back to your first tab, you should be able to confirm the gift and send it from each of your open tabs. This way you can send unlimited gifts to your friends, or if you'd like to receive unlimited gifts, create an alternate gifting account that can send you an abundance of any gift you would like.