The Best FrontierVille Secrets, Tips and Cheats

If you use Facebook, you probably know that the game FrontierVille is quickly becoming one of the most popular games on Facebook. Since you are here, you most likely have just started an account and want to know how to make the most of it, or you are wanting to know how best to achieve those goals that the game has set for you. Here are some great tips and secrets to help you level up faster, complete those missions more efficiently and get the most out of the game.

Getting Friends

Getting lots of FrontierVille friends is one of the most important aspects of the game. Having more neighbors means that you will be able to unlock and have access to more items in the market, especially those hart-to-find, rare and limited edition items.

Another great reason to get more friends is completing missions, especially timed missions. Often, you will have a limited amount of time to complete a mission and the missions will require you to ask friends for certain items. You can only ask five friends so many times for the items and unless they avidly check their Facebook account, you are likely to fail the mission because you don't receive enough of the items in time.

Another fantastic reason to get as many friends as possible is to expand your visiting abilities. If a mission asks you to tend three neighbor eggplants and you have six friends and none of them ever plant eggplants, you are not going to complete your mission. Having lots of friends means that you can look through twenty or so farms to see if anyone is planting eggplants that day.

If you are an avid player and just can't get enough FrontierVille, you should know that more friends means more play time. You can visit an unlimited number of farms in one day, so the more friends you have, the more farms you can visit and the more time you can spend playing. Not only that, but visiting farms gives you more energy so you can work on your own farm more. You can also earn more coins, gain more experience and acquire more collectibles the more neighbors you have to visit.

Why else should you have more friends? More gifts, of course! Many friends send gifts from time to time, so if you have plenty of friends, your inbox will always be full of free gifts. Gifts of meals mean more energy so you can get more done and other items can be used in the game later. You can also get rare items and other useful items such as fences and animals from receiving gifts. Remember to send your friends gifts in return to keep the cycle going. Sending out gifts regularly will remind your neighbors to send some back to you.

Lastly, more neighbors means excellent game networking opportunities. This can be vital to completing missions. You can gain more FrontierVille friends by looking at the wall of your other friends' pages. This will help you get even more friends.

If you don't have enough of your own friends that want to play the game, you can go to the FrontierVille community forums to get more: http://forums.zynga.com/forumdisplay.php?f=307 Scroll to the bottom to the "Add Me" forum and go to the last page in the forum. There will be lots of players to choose from who are all looking for more neighbors. Message those that you are interested in and send them a friend request on Facebook. Always be absolutely sure to put "FrontierVille Friend Request" in the message line so they know why you are adding them to your friends list. Once they accept, be sure to send them a neighbor request from your FrontierVille account.

How to Get More Items Quicker and Complete Missions Faster

Even if you have twenty neighbors that play, you may still find that you have some trouble completing missions and getting enough required items for things like buildings. Here's a great way to get the stuff you need fast.

First, create a FrontierVille folder in your bookmarks at the top of your browser. Next, get on Facebook and visit each of your friends' "Walls." The Wall is where your friends and other players post items that you can collect. Some players don't like FrontierVille posting things to their Walls, but you will notice that some players have Walls that are filled top to bottom with game requests. When you see a page like that, add it to your bookmarks in your FrontierVille folder.

When you get done going through your friends' pages, go through all of your friends' friends' pages. Look on your friends' Walls for other people who have posted there. Check out their Walls, too. If they do not have their Facebook page set to "friends only," you will be able to check their Wall for game requests. If they have a page that is full of game requests, bookmark their page as well. Go through all of these pages linking through friends' accounts and bookmark the ones that have tons of requests posted on their Walls.

You want about one full page of bookmarks. Now you have a valuable resource for completing missions and getting the items that you need fast. If a mission calls for you to have twenty nails, guess what? You now have a full page of bookmarks linking you to player Walls that each are filled with game requests. You can click through them until you have found twenty game requests for nails.

Also, don't ignore requests for help on other players' Walls. Each time you fill someone's help request, you get something too, usually a duplicate of the item you sent. That means that if you send someone the elbow grease they asked for, you get one, too! Sometimes sending items will gain you coins or experience instead. You can fill fifty requests per day and you can accept thirty free items per day and you do not need to be neighbors with the players you accept requests from.

Staying one Step Ahead of the Game

Sometimes, when visiting other Walls, you will see items that you don't yet need. Don't ignore these! They might mean the difference between achieving and failing a timed mission. If you notice that there are suddenly a lot of game requests for hip boots popping up, you can be sure that it means you are about to also receive a mission asking you for hip boots. By collecting lots of hip boots before you begin the mission, you can ensure that you will have plenty or enough already before you even start. Easy!

Other items you will find are important later on and should be collected even if you think you don't need them. When you are first starting out, you won't have any idea what all of those ribbons, spit balls, chalk and inkwells are for, but once you get your school built, you'll be happy that you stocked up on hundreds of them because you will be able to start buying game boosts right away that will allow you to do things like get more money from harvesting crops, get more experience for working on your farm and give you a discount at the market. Accepting and sending game requests on other pages regularly can mean spending one day on a mission or spending a whole month on it.

Speeding Up Your Game

One of the biggest mistakes I see new players (and sometimes even seasoned players) make is packing their frontier with every conceivable item they collect. You have seen frontiers like this, I'm sure. The players have twenty cows, thirty pigs, fifty ducks and one hundred chickens all stacked and packed together in neat little rows like sardines in a can. Every pixel of the rest of their frontier is packed with blinking Christmas lights, jack-o-lanterns, Thanksgiving turkeys, snowmen and colorful collectible animals.

Keeping and collecting every animal you ever bought or received is just not necessary. Not only that, but it slows your game to a crawl. Your neighbors won't want to visit your farm because it takes five minutes for your frontier to load. That's no fun at all. Don't be a FrontierVille pack rat. Sell off the stuff you don't want or need or that doesn't make you happy. Keep your seasonal stuff that you just can't get rid of in your storage shed until next year.

Sell easily obtained items that you don't need such as fences and stone borders. Keep items in your inventory (think of it as free storage) until you absolutely need them. Sell off the unnecessary items from your storage. You'll be making tons of coins with this tip sheet, so you won't need to hoard everything for want of funds. You'll have more money than you know what to do with, trust me. Just a few animas of each kind is all that you will need or have time to deal with.

Visiting Neighbors

When neighbors visit your frontier, you will have the option to accept their help or dismiss the help. Remember that you don't have to accept. If you do not accept, it will not prevent your neighbors from receiving the rewards they earned. It will simply prevent any change from actually occurring on your farm.

Before clicking "accept," run your cursor over the neighbor's character and everything that your neighbor tended will appear highlighted in blue. If something is highlighted that you don't want changed, hit "dismiss." For example, if your neighbor cut down a tree that you don't want cut down, dismiss the help or if your neighbor watered crops that you didn't want watered because it will stagger the harvest, causing the crops to possibly ripen when you won't be around and then spoil.

Making Your Frontier User-Friendly

Another mistake of the beginning player is to think that part of the goal of the game is to clear your frontier of every tree and blade of grass. The modern developmental mentality of razing your property to bare rock just doesn't work when playing FrontierVille. You will quickly find that all of the trees, grass and other debris are very important to playing the game.

Many missions require you to clear a certain number of thorns, skulls, cacti, wildflowers and grasses from your frontier. If you clear them before you need them, you won't have them when it's important and it can take a very, very long time - sometimes months - for these items to show up again. Clear just the areas you need to use and let some spaces grow wild. Leave your thorns, cacti and skulls if you can. This is good not only for you, but for your neighbors as well. You'll be required to clear certain kinds of debris from your neighbors' farms in order to complete missions, so make sure you have plenty for your friends to use to complete their missions as well.

If you do not have very many of a certain type of debris, be sure to decline help requests when other players come to your farm to help out and want to clear debris. This will allow them to collect the debris they need to complete their missions and the items won't disappear from your farm. You will still be able to use them later.

Keep your neighbors in mind when designing other areas of your frontier as well. Plant a variety of crops from time to time and keep a couple of each type of animal on your farm. Your neighbors will need them in order to complete their missions.

Hang On to Your Collections

At first, you will be tempted to turn in your collections for prizes. Don't be. Many missions will require you to have certain collectibles in order to fulfill your goal and you could spend weeks looking for a particular item. I like to leave at least two of each item in my collections before turning them in. Many missions will ask you for two of the item. If you had some and then turned them in, you may not be able to complete your mission for a very long time.

Varmints

Varmints on the frontier can be friend or foe. At first, you might be frustrated because you are spending precious energy getting them out of the way of what you really want. Don't hate those varmints just yet. They have a purpose and even when they are being a nuisance, you can use them to your advantage.

Snakes, groundhogs, foxes and bears are all necessary to complete a variety of missions. You will also get collector's items by clobbering them. Not only that, they are a concentrated source of food and coins. You will get more items per energy point than doing almost anything else on your frontier.

When varmints become a nuisance, such as when you need to harvest your crops and you only have just so many energy points and those darn groundhogs keep popping up, you can use them to your advantage. Only one varmint of a kind will pop up at a time. This means you can't have two of the same kind on your frontier. If there is already a groundhog, you won't get another one until the first one is clobbered.

So, before clobbering the groundhog, harvest all of the crops around it that are not red before whacking it. Sometimes it will move far enough out of the way for the last couple of red items to no longer be red. Then you can finish harvesting. Always harvest the crops that are not red before you clobber each time. You can use this tactic with items around foxes, bears and snakes as well. As long as you leave one varmint of a kind up, no more of the same kind will bother you elsewhere. Then you can take care of it when you are ready. Don't worry, the varmints don't cause any trouble on your frontier other than keeping you from working right around their immediate area.

Free Coins

Do you need money fast? There are a few ways to maximize your coin-earning potential. Oxen drop a large number of coins when fed. You can request oxen as gifts from your friends. Clobbering varmints also maximizes your coin earnings. When you have expended your energy on your own farm, visit all of your friends' farms. Simply visiting will earn you coins. Then you can earn even more by helping out on their farm. Feed their oxen if they have any as you are more likely to make more coins this way. This is another great reason to have more neighbors. The more neighbors you have, the more free coins you can earn.

Remember when I had you make the list of bookmarks? Game requests are the fastest and easiest way to earn coins. When players turn in their collections, they post boxes of money on their Walls. Click the brown chests that look as though they are filled with gold. These usually contain 100 coins each. Also, look for requests for building materials. When friends post that they need supplies such as windows, nails, hammers and school supplies, you will get coins (usually 25) for each one that you send.

Turn in excess collections. If you have lots of collectible items, you can turn in some of your collections. Most of them award coins.

Sell your gifts. If friends send you extra animals that you don't need, raise them to adulthood and then sell them for cash. Adult animals are worth a lot more money than young animals.

Complete missions. Most missions award money. Even if they do not, the prizes that you receive are often worth quite a lot. You don't have to save every single thing that you win so if you can live without that little blue hedgehog, sell him. Mine was worth 6000 coins! You'll probably have a chance to get another one later.

Snowy Rooftops

More a tip than a trick, if you want your buildings to look as though they have snow on top in wintertime to match your snowy background, you can go to the customize option for each, choose the thatched roof, then select the white color. This gives a sort of snowtop roof look to your buildings. You can change them back once winter is over on the frontier.

What Drops the Most Food?

You will need some of everything on your frontier, so don't just plant or grow only one thing, but if you want to earn more food quickly, these are the items to concentrate on.

Of all of the fruit trees, peach trees drop the most food - twice as much as most of the other fruit trees. Pears give the second most and cherry trees give the least amount of food.

Peanuts, when harvested, give more food than any other crop, so if you want more food, focus on harvesting peanuts from your neighbors' farms.

And, as always, you can collect free food by accepting game requests for food from your friends' pages. Some actions, such as clobbering groundhogs, allow players to post free food offers on their Wall, so keep your eyes open for those if it's food bonuses you are wanting.

Best Gifts to Send to Neighbors

Some of the most useful and most requested gifts in FrontierVille include ribbon, nails, and meals, especially the meals that award the most energy points. Look for seasonal foods. The limited edition foods (such as fruitcake at Christmas) often give the most energy points.

Log In Every Day

Simply logging in every day can earn you free things. If you only have a minute, log in and then check the weather (the small square cloud button at the bottom left) to receive your free prizes for the day.

Collecting Your Messages

Be sure to collect all of your free gifts from your messages in Facebook. First, go to the FrontierVille log in page and at the upper right, click the link with the cards icon that says "games." Scroll down the games page and accept all of your FrontierVille game requests.

Once you have done this, go to your Wall on Facebook. In the left side column, scroll down and click next to the yellow horseshoe icon where it says "FrontierVille." This will open the game with an additional window that will allow you to collect even more free gifts. Once accepted, you can begin playing the game.

Plan Missions Ahead of Time

You can find out what you need to do to complete a mission before you even start it by reading the game guides written by other players. They include instructions and screencaps so you can be ready for the missions before they start. Link: http://forums.zynga.com/forumdisplay.php?f=371

Don't Bother With the Free Horseshoes From Affiliates

Signing up with FrontierVille affiliates supposedly earns you free horseshoes, but it's only a scam. You'll not only end up having to purchase something from one of the companies to get the "free" horseshoes, you'll also have to deal with future spam and junk mail from each company you sign up with. If you want to pay less for horseshoes, just buy them through the game when they go on sale at deep discount. You're sure to get your horseshoes without fighting for them and you won't have to deal with all of the spam.

Level Up With Windmills

Purchasing windmills in the game (check in the market under the "decorations" tab. Windmills are expensive, but if you have tons of extra money (like many long-timers) and want to level up quickly, you will receive 800 (as of this writing) experience points for each windmill that you install.

Don't Buy Some Seasonal Items - Earn Them!

You may be tempted to purchase seasonal items from the market either with coins or horseshoes but before you do, check and see if you will be earning any via completed missions first. You don't want to spend 25 horseshoes on something that you could get for free.

Avoiding Scams

Don't fall for any of the scams you may see on Facebook. These may include links to pages that offer free horseshoes, huge amounts of free energy or coins, or anything else that sounds like an incredible deal. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is and going to these pages and joining up allows them to gain access to your information as well as your friends' information. Worse, you may end up clicking on spyware or downloading a virus.

When Zynga has a real promotion, they will let you know. You will be able to see the promotion either on their page or in the game. Most promotions are announced in-game while you are playing.

Plant Around Your Schedule

If you don't play often or if you are not sure if you can use your computer to check your game daily, plant crops that take the longest to grow. Crops take the same amount of time to wither as they do to ripen so it will give you more time to get back to them without them wilting. For example, Clover ripens in five minutes so once it is ripe, you have five more minutes to harvest it. Peanuts take four days to ripen so once they are ready to harvest you have another four days to get around to them again. This will reduce the amount of time you spend digging up withered crops and it will save you lots of game money.

For more tips and tricks, visit the FrontierVille forums hosted by Zynga (click "forums" under your game screen). Happy playing!