Farm Town: A Guide for Beginners

Facebook has a great choice of games to play and one growing in popularity is Farm Town, developed by Slashkey. What's more American than starting out from scratch, getting a piece of land and building your farming business? Everyone will enjoy this addicting game once they get crops growing and have animals roaming their terrain. Here are a few tips for the Farm Town Beginner!

Basic Farm Town Set up

Initially you establish your farmer name and appearance and start out with $540 and six seeded fields in various stages of growth. One of the fields is ready to harvest, so you'll "harvest" it by clicking on the "Harvest" tool then clicking on the field that needs to be harvested. You'll be given the choice to either harvest and sell or harvest and storage, the storage option pays more. When you hover over the other five fields you can see what stage each field is at.

Now you can begin to expand your farm using the available cash. You can buy trees, seeds, animals, buildings and farm tools. More items become available as your experience increases.

Laying Out Your Crops in Farm Town

When first playing Farm Town, new farmers usually continue to plow (click on the plow icon) in the center of their property, and plant the cheapest seeds possible. But instead of just plopping down fields and randomly picking crops, look at some options:

Eliminate Spaces Between Fields - You can adjust your preferences to place fields closer together, which will maximize the farm land. Go to the wrench icon (preferences) and click remove space between fields. The original six fields will continue with spaces unless the land is cleared in that spot. To clear, click on the tools icon and pick the bulldozer.

Fence Animals - Eventually, you'll want a fenced area for animals, so consider where that spot might be. Fencing is expensive, so don't plan too large a pen.

Gifts -Your Farm Town Friends will be sending Farm Town trees, flowers, and animals to you as gifts, as you will to them! You can receive a gift daily from each of your Farm Town friends, which helps you grow your farm faster. Knowing that these items will be coming your way, plan where you will put them. The edges of your property are best saved for trees.

Buildings - Once you move up the ranks in Farm Town, you'll be buying a farmhouse, creating paths, and ponds. All of these things are purchased by clicking on the store icon. But even if you know where you want that farmhouse, you can farm the land until you have the cash.

Buying More Land - As your farm fills up, you'll want to go to the Realtor's office (Map) to enlarge your acreage. One thing to consider is that as your farm gets larger, the program takes longer to load, your farm is more expensive to keep seeded, and play is slower. Until you have become efficient at running your initial piece of land, don't spread out to more.

Things Can Be Moved - Animals, fences, paths, scarecrows, tree, etc. can be moved around on your farm. The fields can't be "moved" but can be removed and replowed in another area.

Becoming a Rich Farm Town Farmer

Making money is your goal in Farm Town. Of course, making the farm look cool is fun, but think like a real farmer and keep your land working for you. Plow and plant as much and as often as you can. Buy the fun stuff gradually.

Here are ways to make money:

1) Pick crops wisely - As you choose the crops you want to plant, keep in mind the cost for seeds and the harvest time. While grapes are cheapest, and they'll be ready in four hours, if you don't log in and harvest them in time, they will go to waste. If you can be a little more patient and wait a few days for the seeds to be ready to harvest, pick crops that you'll make more money for your initial cost. Plant according to your playtime, so that you don't waste the money you spend for seeds.

2) Maximize Harvesting Earning Power - If possible, sell and store when you harvest yourself. Better yet, hire someone else to harvest for you and make 25% more money! When you have crops ready to harvest, just go to the map and head to the marketplace where you'll find other farmers roaming around, all looking for work. Click on one of them and hire them to work your farm. As farmhands, they earn money for harvesting your crops and you make more than if you did it yourself. Not doing this is silly.

3) Neighbors - Once you've gotten your friends to play Farm Town and become your neighbors, you can earn some extra cash by watering, weeding or raking leaves on their farm. You can visit your neighbor's farm to tend to it, or while you are working your farm, you'll get invitations initiated by FarmTown to help out at your neighbor's farm. Either way, when you help out you'll earn extra coin!

4) Harvest for Someone Else - Just like you hired a farmhand, you can become one. By heading to the marketplace and roaming around offering to help work a farm, you might get hired. Just like in real life, when you know someone is hiring, walk your avatar right up to them and let them know you want the job!!

5) Sell animals - Eventually you'll find your animals are filling up their pens. If you need some cash for crop planting, sell an animal or two! You'll get another as a gift from other farmer friends in a day or two!

Keeping Your Farm Town Up and Running

The graphics on Farm Town can use a good deal of memory space and you will be booted out of the game periodically. To keep things running more efficiently you can do a few things:

Freeze Animals - In the Preferences, click on "freeze animals". Having a bunch of animals roaming around looks cool, but strains computer rsources and may make it run slooooowly.

Trees - Trees use a flash program and may slow game play. If the game is sluggish, you can hide them or sell them to reduce the number taking up space.

Follow Avatar - Choosing this option in the preferences will allow you to move the screen to view your fields easier. If not clicked, the view will keep springing back to your Avatar's location. You can also zoom out to see your farm, but is harder to see the details in that mode.

There are a few bumps in the dirt road for the creators of Farm Town to smooth out, but overall, playing the game is fun. You'd probably be surprised by how many of your grown-up friends are already Farm Town farmers. So, get planting and happy harvesting!

Farm Town FAQs

Resources:

Facebook/Farm Town Application
Slashkey Website