Monday, February 21, 2011

the orchard and the trees

   the tree level thing works like this: so far, there are two levels of trees. the level one trees produce level two trees and level two trees produce level two trees (with the exception of the golden and caramel apple trees). an example would be the plum tree (level one) and the golden plum tree (level two), the confetti tree (level one) and the disco ball tree (level two), the gulmohar tree (level one) and the mountain ebony tree (level two), and so on. 
   you can figure out which tree is level one and which is level two by looking inside the orchard. if you hover over one of the pictures of the trees inside, a picture of another tree slides down and says "makes seeds for:" and shows another kind of tree. usually the relationship between the level one and level two trees are kinda obvious, but not always. cow ewe gnome.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

the pigpen

   the pigpen is a great way to earn a ton of coins. normally, pigs take two days to be ready to harvest. if you put them in the pigpen, you can earn twice as many coins!
   the pigpen holds 40 pigs when fully expanded and can be harvested daily. the saddleback pig is available in the market for 300,000 coins and earns you 3,000 xp when purchased. 
   when you harvest your pigpen, you earn 1,000 coins for each saddleback pig that you have inside.
  you probably won't be able to buy 40 saddleback pigs in one sitting (i know i can't) so check the news feed. you can fill your pigpen up with the different breeds of pigs that your neighbors are sharing on the feed. then, as you can afford it, remove a pig from the pigpen and buy a saddleback pig to take its place.
   the plain pig, black pig, and ossabaw pig all harvest for 30 coins each. if you are trying to decide which pig to remove from the pigpen to make room for a saddleback pig, i would choose one of those three first. cow ewe gnome.

the basics of the dairy farm (i call it a dairy barn)

   dairy barns are great because they hold up to 40 cows and you can harvest them all in just one click. with your coins, you can buy up to five dairy barns. you can purchase additional dairy barns for farm bucks but why bother... 
   if you are the type of farmer who likes to share lots of bonuses with your friends, you should keep one bull in each of your dairy barns. when you harvest a dairy barn with a bull inside, you might get lucky and produce a calf to share with your neighbors.
   personally, i find that most of the calves posted by my neighbors are fairly common ones, like the baby calf or the brown calf, which are boring. to prevent boring calves being born, i only keep a bull in one dairy barn and have the other four dairy barns filled with the more common cows (no bulls). i have one dairy barn dedicated to the rare cows (like the blue cow or the tuscan cow) that i've purchased with farm bucks.
   you won't always produce a calf, but when you do, it will definitely be a good one. cow ewe gnome.