Last week, we brought you some tips for the flash-based Farmville game from Zynga (myfivebest.com -Sept. 3, 2009).  Since then, we’ve had dozens of questions about the game and adding to our list.  Here are five things to do if you’ve moved past the basics in Farmville.  They will help you conserve your resources and gain more money and experience – and of course, have fun while you are doing it!
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Break up your farm into quads of eight and plant your crops in intervals so you can use your farm equipment effectively.  You only have so much fuel to use and buying more is a waste of your Farmville dollars.  The best way to plant your crops is in intervals of 2-3 hours.  This way, your fuel levels have a chance to build back up and you spend less time tending your farm by hand.

Know what trees to plant.  By the time you’ve reached level twelve, you’ve got tons of trees.  Keep track of what ribbons you have, but you will find that you don’t need all of those trees.  The real reason you keep them is because it is a steady income.  I won’t keep any tree that doesn’t produce at least a half a coin per hour – with one exception – cherry trees.  The cherry tree is able to be harvested once ever two days and will help you get your “Knock on Wood” ribbons faster.  Other than that, I only plant the top five trees and get rid of the rest.  NOTE:  Don’t start getting rid of trees until you’ve finished the “Tree Hugger” ribbons.  Here is a list of the trees and what they produce.

Acai: 2 days, 158 coins, 2.29 coins/hour
Olive: 4 days, 112 coins, 1.67 coins/hour
Date: 3 days, 69 coins, 0.95 coins/hour
Pomegranate: 5 days, 108 coins, 0.90 coins/hour
Banana: 3 days, 56 coins, 0.78 coins/hour
Passion Fruit: 5 days, 93 coins, 0.76 coins/hour
Grapefruit: 3 days, 50 coins, 0.69 coins/hour
Lime: 5 days, 75 coins, 0.63 coins/hour
Apricot: 4 days, 56 coins, 0.58 coins/hour
Lemon: 3 days, 41 coins, 0.57 coins/hour
Fig: 3 days, 37 coins, 0.51 coins/hour
Avocado: 3 days, 37 coins, 0.51 coins/hour
Orange: 4 days, 48 coins, 0.50 coins/hour
Peach: 4 days, 47 coins, 0.49 coins/hour
Plum: 3 days, 30 coins, 0.42 coins/hour
Apple: 3 days, 28 coins, 0.39 coins/hour
Cherry: 2 days, 18 coins, 0.36 coins/hour

The same goes for animals.  There are only a few animals that actually produce any coin for you.   Sure, they look nice and friendly on your farm, but you only have so much room.  Stick with horses, goats and wandering animals.  Make sure that you get all your ribbons before you start selling them off to market, but then streamline your inventory. Pay attention to the “Zoologist” and “Animal Shelter” ribbons before discarding.  Here is a list of the animals and how much they produce.  Note: If you have to choose between trees and animals, the Horse, Goat and Duck outperform most trees.  The exception to this is the Chicken.  It produces fast and it is small.  You can get a lot of chickens to help you out with the Zoologist ribbon.

Horse: 3 days, 84 coins, 1.17 coins/hour
Goat: 2 days, 54 coins, 1.13 coins/hour
Duck: 2 days, 45 coins, 0.94 coins/hour
Sheep, Black: 3 days, 56 coins, 0.78 coins/hour*
Pig: 2 days, 30 coins, 0.63 coins/hour
Rabbit: 4 days, 60 coins, 0.63 coins/hour
Cow, Brown: 1 day, 12 coins, 0.50 coins/hour*
Sheep: 3 days, 28 coins, 0.39 coins/hour
Chicken: 1 day, 8 coins, 0.34 coins/hour
Cow: 1 day, 6 coins, 0.25 coins/hour

Build up your neighbors.  They can give you extra experience and coins.  You can find them if you click on the tab “MY NEIGHBORS” and scroll down the page.  It will give you a list of the people already your neighbors, then friends that play Farmville, but are not currently one of your neighbors.  You need fifty neighbors to get the blue ribbon for “Local Celebrity”.  Make sure you give a gift out to your neighbors as much as you can.  Don’t always give the best thing you can offer.  You get ribbons for variety and receiving 20 Pomegranate trees a day is annoying.  Keep an eye out on your wall outside of the game, too.  Each time one of your friends reaches a goal, it will post the achievement on your Facebook screen.  You’ll want to click on this to receive additional coins.  Helping out your neighbors each day will also give you between 1-5 experience points each, as well.

Another aspect of the game is buildings and decorations.  You don’t have a lot of space on your farm for the important stuff like crops, trees, and animals, so think conservatively when buying these items.  Owning 12 farmhouses will do you no good if you can’t keep enough cash flow coming in to support your crops.  The best thing to do is buy rest tents and bales of hay.  With those, you’ll save the room you need and still get your ribbons as fast as you need them.  You can always go back and stylize your farm when you’re rich and high level.  What’s important off the get-go is to build experience through finishing your ribbons.

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