My Tips and Tricks for Farmville on Facebook

Are you on Facebook? Play Farmville? Want to know a few tips and tricks for making your farm cooler...faster? The following tips were all learned from personal experience and I will share them for free. You can buy guides that may have these and other ideas, but who wants to pay? Everything is fair and not hacking. Just taking advantage of what the game gives you.

For Farmville beginners; don't worry about what your farm looks like in the beginning. You want to maximize experience points (XP) and money. By gaining XP you will gain levels, which unlocks new crops and decorations. Gaining coins will help you buy the new unlocked items.

A quick tip to save a ton of time is to fence your farmer in. When you start up Farmville he will be in the same place every time. Surround him with fence and he will plant, plow, harvest, and build from there. He must use Jedi mind tricks or something to save all that walking time.

Another key is how often do you log on? You want to set your crops to your schedule. If you can only check your farm once a day you want to plant 1 day crops. If you get on less regularly you will want to shoot for 2-3 day crops. More time on Facebook can lead to more profits. If you get a day off and can check your farm often, plant some fast growing crops then harvest and repeat for time available. If you are going out of town put in some 3 day crops for more coins and XP.

Remember that your crops wither at the same rate they grow. 1 day plants go bad on the next day. DO NOT let your crops wither!!!It is a complete waste of time and money. Stay diligent and gain XP by harvesting crops. Tress and animals don't yield XP when harvested, but are a great source for coins because they don't wither. Stockpile them and make sure to harvest them. A tip here is to let all of one species ripen then harvest all of them at once so you can keep up easier. They will then all come ripe at the same time going forward.

Look for the most profitable crops that you can put in the ground. Remember to add the 15 coin plow fee when calculating profit margin on different crops. Strawberry seeds cost 10 coins and plowing is 15...you get 35 coins selling for a 10 coin profit. Continue adding plots when you can afford to plow AND plant them. They are no good if you can't plant them. Try to keep your plowed plots in multiples of ten for easy math. 10 plots of Strawberries yield 100 coins per 4 hours.

Gaining ribbons are also key to early advancement. Ribbons give you XP, coins, and/or items as a bonus. Gaining lots of ribbons will pay off with faster leveling. Most of the beginning ribbons are easy to get. Remember that all ribbons have four colors so keep checking back to see when you are close to getting one.

A tip for "Architect" is that rest tents count and they are only 1000 bucks at level 4. Look for potential neighbors towards "Local Celebrity" in your friends list. You can also find new neighbors on the Farmville discussions board. Go to your Facebook profile page, find a post from Farmville. Something like "You fertilized your friends crops" or "You leveled up." Click on the little corn icon there. It takes you to the Farmville Facebook page. Click the discussions tab and you will find links to people who will be your Farmville friend. Take time to help your all of your neighbor's farms every day. You gain lots of additional coins and XP doing so.

Send gifts to your friends to receive returns. At first, hoard your gifts in your box. Only place items when you have multiples so that you can get "Gifted not Spoiled." Tell different friends to send you different gifts because all of them have to be unique. Keep all of your decorations until you get "Pack Rat."

Sell off all unwanted gifts once you max your ribbons. Don't feel like every gift you receive needs to be put on proud display. You will always be receiving more if you gift back. The extra coins add up. You need coins!!!

When you have advanced higher you start to need large chunks of XP to level up. There are ways to work the system if you have the coins. If you have followed the tips above you should have a fair amount of coins built up. Don't go crazy buying buildings and buying decorations yet. A barn costs 40,000 coins and gives you 400 XP. A farmhouse is 150,000 coins and 1500 XP. You gain 1 XP per 1000 coins for buildings.

I have tip that yields far more XP for less coins. When you plow a new spot of land it costs 15 coins and gives 1 XP. You can then use your shovel icon to delete the square and repeat. 1000 plowed spots yields 1000 XP and only costs 15,000 coins!!!! That is ten percent of the cost of a farmhouse for sixty-six percent of the XP. You gain one XP per 15 coins this way. Much better ratio of pure XP to coins. If you have the coin to spare, this is helpful when you want to advance to the next level quickly.

The last part of helping your farm is Farmville cash. You earn some when you level up and can buy it out right. Buying cash is a way to make a huge advance in Farmville. If you don't want to spend real money, save up your cash as you earn it for bigger rewards.

If you keep checking your farm regularly, and utilize the tips above to maximize your farming potential, you should be able to make your farm awesome faster than you thought possible. Start buying buildings now that you have unlocked most of them and can afford to buy them. Think about how you want it to look instead of how many coins you are earning. Decorate to your liking because you have earned it, and know how to keep it going. I hope this makes your Farmville time more enjoyable. I wish I had known all of this when I started...