FarmVille Podcast - August 28th, 2010

FarmVille Podcast - August 28th:

Hey Farmers and welcome to this week’s installment of the Official FarmVille Podcast! My name is Lexilicious and I am here to bring you all of the latest news and information about FarmVille from Zynga. This week, we will be discussing our latest releases and you guys will all be getting a sneak peek of things coming to FarmVille in the near future!

One of this week’s most exciting releases was the long awaited Pigpen feature. Pigpens are FarmVille’s newest constructable Animal Building that will allow you to store up to 20 of your Pigs at a time. If you are level 16 or above, you will be able to place the Pigpen foundation on your farm upon logging in. Alternatively, you can also purchase the Pigpen frame from the Market for 5,000 coins. In order to use your Pigpen, you’ll need to finish building it. Selecting ‘Look Inside’ from your foundation’s menu will show you what you need to complete your Pigpen.

Neighbors can send you the materials you need to construct your Pigpen from the Free Gifts Page, or you can click the “ask for more” button from the pen’s menu. When neighbors send you materials, they work exactly like any other free gift. After you accept the gift it will appear in your gift box. After clicking the "use" button under the gift it will automatically be added to your Pigpen.

Alternatively, if at any time during your construction process you decide that you’d rather simply purchase the materials required for the pen, you can do so by clicking the “Buy” button from the Pigpen’s menu. Every 24 hours, you’ll be able to collect from the pigs stored in your Pigpen and you may only have one pigpen on your farm at a time.

As I said in last week’s podcast, there will be additional functionality added to the Pigpen in the coming weeks. If you have any feedback you would like to share with us about the first version of Pigpens, please make sure to visit the official FarmVille forums and let us know what you think.

In addition to pigpens, Farmville’s newest feature allows you to proudly display your accomplishments! Crafting Recipe Mastery has just been released and will reward you will Experience Points, Coins and Mastery Signs for all of your Neighbors to see! Now, you don’t need to do anything extra to start gaining levels of crafting Mastery, you just need to continue making goods at your crafting building. As your recipe level increases, you will unlock greater levels of mastery, and get an XP and coin bonus for doing so. Of course many of you have already achieved fairly high levels with some of your recipes. The appropriate Mastery stars will be automatically awarded to you for each recipe, as well as the XP and Coin rewards that accompany those Mastery stars. Mastery signs will all be placed in your gift box. You’ll also get a pop-up notice of this the first time you open your Market Stall or Crafting Building. If you are looking for a little more information on how the details of this feature works, please make sure to visit the Game Updates section of the forums for more information. 

And lastly, our first installment of the Wild West Theme made and appearance this week, bringing with is some great new animals, decorations and buildings for you to decorate your farm with. The Wild West theme looks very different from any other theme we have released in the past and it is perfect for our farmers who may have a little bit of a wild side. 

Now before I get into our coming soon segment this week, our friends from the iphone FarmVille team wanted me to give all of you a quick reminder about the “where do you mobile farm” photo contest. This great event ends at 11:59 pm on August 31st and you can win up to 500 farm cash for participating! All you guys have to do is take a picture of yourself playing FarmVille on your mobile device and you can win big. Head on over to the FarmVille Mobile forums for more information on this event and make sure to participate while you can!

Alright! On that note, let’s go ahead and get into the part of the podcast I know all of you skip forward to hear… it’s time for a sneak peek as to what will be coming to FarmVille in the near future. 

Well, first up this week is something I know our breeders will be very excited about… Nursery barn expansion will be making its way to Farmville in the coming weeks. Along with this will be a new Wild West themed Mystery Game and more Wild West items.

And lastly, we will soon have new and improved Neighbor visits for all of our players. With the new visit system, you will be able to do more on your friend’s farms besides fertilizing. Soon, you will be able to plow your Neighbors fallow plots, collect from their animals and harvest their trees. 

When doing these actions on your Neighbors farms, you will gain coins and experience points for helping and your Neighbors will also receive the appropriate amount of XP and coins when they return.

Alright folks, well that’s it from me this week. I will be back next week with all of the latest news and information from around the farm. Again, my name is Lexi and I want to thank everyone for tuning in this week. Happy Farming everybody!


[Via FarmVille Forums]

An original post by

Sociolatte

FarmVille Crafting Mastery

As you know FarmVille Crafting Mastery is now available for all farmers.

To begin your Crafting Mastery just continue making your Goods. When your Recipe levels increase you will unlock more levels of mastery which will give you more XP and Coins.

Each Recipe is organized by Star Levels. The higher tier level of your Crafting Building, the higher the Craft Mastery will be for that Recipe. Each Recipe will have five Mastery or Star Levels available per each Crafting Recipe. If it seems confusing, refer to the chart below, provided by Zynga, that displays what Recipe Level is required before you can unlock a specific Mastery Star.

Zynga's Example: "If you have a 1-star Bakery on your farm, the first recipes available to you were Pumpkin Bread, Strawberry Shortcake and Spicy Muffin. You can earn your first Mastery star in those three recipes once that you reach recipe level 20. If you upgrade your Bakery to 2-star, you unlock a new slew of recipes: Patty Pan Tart, Triple Berry Pie and Peanut Butter Cookie. For these recipes you need to reach recipe level 23 to get your first Mastery star.

In order to get a second Mastery star for Pumpkin Vinegar (which requires a 4-star Winery) you will need to raise your recipe level to 39."

If you would like to check your current progress for a specific Recipes Craft Mastery, ..
Craft Mastery Rewards & Craft Mastery Signs

So, you may ask what is the point in participating in Crafting Mastery? Just like with Crop Mastery, mastering a Craft Recipe rewards you with additional XP (experience points) and bonus Coins. Not to mention, you get a cool Crafting Mastery Sign for your farm to let everyone know that you are a master crafter.

After earning your first star with a Crafting Recipe, you will be rewarded with a Recipe Mastery Sign. You can find the Craft Recipe Mastery Sign in your FarmVille Gift Box. By placing your sign on your farm you can simply hover over the sign to check your Mastery progress and what you need to reach the next Star Level.

Whenever you earn more star levels, your sign will automatically update to reflect your current mastery status.

Crafting Building Mastery Signs can also be placed in storage.

The chart below reflects the specific Recipe Mastery level with coordinating XP and Coin Rewards.

Upon earning each star level, you will be given the opportunity to share a FaceBook newsfeed notice with your FarmVille neighbors. Up to 5 neighbors can receive a free good from your post.

Remember, that any progress up to this point is retroactive, meaning that all your hard work will automatically count towards your Crafting Mastery.

Some of you may find as soon as Crafting Mastery was released you immediately earned Crafting Mastery for some Recipes by finding the Crafting Mastery Signs in your FarmVille Gift Box.

This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak. 

An original post by

Sociolatte

FarmVille Pig Pen

FarmVille Pigpens will be coming very soon, maybe even as soon as this week.

According to the images after the break, it looks like the Pigpen building materials will require:

• 8 Bricks


• 8 Nails


• 8 Wooden Boards

Note, as this is an unreleased item, it is subject to change without notice. There is no official release date or guarantee that it will be the same upon debut to FarmVille.
This article originally appeared on FarmVille Freak.

An original post by

Sociolatte

FarmVille Tips and Tricks

With 82 millions users world wide FarmVille is by far one of the most popular social games on the Internet. There will come a point on Facebook where you will hit the Play FarmVille button and get started. Here are a few helpful tips for you to get the most out of the game.

Space Utilization.
make sure your plots are well organized on your farm. This leads to experience and profit.

Neighbor's Gifts
Instead of buying from the FarmVille marketplace like animals and trees. Add a lot of neighbors who can actually send you these items as free gifts. make sure you send some back because what goes around comes around.

Taking advantage of your animals
More than just being cute once your animal counter reaches 100% you can collect milk, wool and eggs which you can then sell for coins. The more coins you have the richer you are to spend for other items

Build them up.
Buildings don't just add to the aesthetics of your farm they also provide you with experience and profit. Horse Stables, Chicken Coops and Diary Barns are used to store your animals and if your lucky you can find a Foal or calf when collecting from your Horse Stable or Dairy Barn.

Add more land to your Farm.
If you feeling cramped and need to expand your horizons add more land to your farm. land can be purchased from the marketplace for Coins or Farm Cash. In order to expand your land for coins you must have enough neighbors. Check the marketplace to find how many neighbors you need to buy more land for coins.

Farm Rides
In order to help you with your farming needs FarmVille features a Hot Rod Tractor, Harvester and Seeder that can be used to plow, plant and harvest your farm in no time.

Fruits from your trees.
Once your tree counter reaches 100% you can then collect fruits and sell the fruits for coins. Fruits harvested do not wither and there is no problem with keeping them as they will not rot. So collect and sell your fruit for coins.

Achievements
FarmVille from time to time launches a lot of achievement contests. Like earning a ribbon to show off to your friends. By completing various tasks within the game you can gain Experience Points (XP), Decorations for your Farm and Coins.

Harvest Timing
Time your planting well because FarmVille features crops that harvest at varying times. So make sure you plants crops that ripen when you are available. Ensuring that your crops are less likely to wither.

Helping your neighbors
Go to your neighbors farm and help out with their daily chores and fertilizing their crops. Doing so will give you valuable experience points and coins. In addition fertilized crops will give you additional experience points when harvested so don't let them wither.

Leave comments for your neighbors 
FarmVille features a comment box which can be used to send and receive messages from your friends. By clicking the Visits Tab in your comment box you can easily keep a track of who has visited your farm, fed your chickens, fertilized your crops and sent you gifts.

Save your coins.
When starting of for the first time do not add too many plots. Plant and plow in moderation for the first few levels. You do not want to spend all your money on plots and run out of coins to buy crops.

FarmVille shortcuts.
Many consumables are available on FarmVille to make your daily chores easy. You could use the 'Arborist' and 'Farm Hands' items to harvest all your trees and animals with a single click.

An original post by

Sociolatte