WARNING! DO NOT CLICK ON EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT LINK IN FARMVILLE FREAK!!!

I am pissed since I donated money to Zynga to give to help kids, or so I thought. I was reading about it on Farmville Freak.

Here is what I got when I clicked on the link for the Edible Schoolyard Project: (Click to enlarge)

Farmville - How to Buy Love Potions Half Price!!!

We love our Love Potions, especially during a weekend where we can have control over the sheep we breed. I wish it were like this all of the time!


Tired of paying $10 Farmville Dollars for buying 5 Love Potions?  Here is a great workaround. Using your Craftshop, the one we drove Zynga Customer Service crazy about with our tons of complaints, create a Love Potion. Just make sure you have lots of Cherry Baskets. You can see both of my entries on what you need to make the Love Potion and how to get the Cherry Baskets. Plant one farm of strawberries, one farm of tomatoes, and buy a lot of cherry trees. You can store the in an orchard and more more for free. Forgot to add that once you make the Love Potion, you click on "Finish Now", then pay $1 in Farmville Cash. You make 5 for $5.00!  Enjoy!

By the way, Dirt Farmer Fans, don't you Love how I spelled Love correctly?! ; )

I would love to know what other tricks people use to make more of these. : )

Farmville Crafting Silo

Here is a chart on how you get the items you store in your Farmville Crafting Silo from your farm:

(Click twice to enlarge to full size)

Hints: You have to have room in your crafting silo to be able to get what you request. You have room in your crafting silo if the "Capacity" is below 100.

I requested Maple Syrup Baskets and was not able to get them (even after I accepted them in the Game Requests page) because my silo was full. Five people had sent them to me and, as a result of not emptying my silo before making the request, I lost all 5 Maple Syrup baskets. So please remember to reduce your Farmville Crafting Silo's capacity FIRST, then make your request.

To empty your silo: Open it up (click on it and choose "Look Inside"), scroll to the items you have over 10 of and click the "Share" button. So if you have 23 Cherry Baskets, click "Share" and get rid of 13. I find this is a good general rule but may change if you are crafting a lot of one item. 

To request an item from your friends: Click on your silo and choose "Look Inside". Then click on the "Ask" button. You can also get crafting items from your wall from your friends' posts.

Below, I have highlighted "Capacity", the "Share" button, and the "Ask" button as well as the quantity of Cherry Baskets (as an example) in bright pink. (Click to enlarge)

If you have more basic questions on the Farmville Crafting Silo, please click here for the link from Farmville Feed.

Farmville Craftshop

Farmville Craftshop

(Click to enlarge)

Purpose of This Post: In this post is a video on how to use the search feature, a guide of what you can make, pictures of each item and it's relative mastery sign, experience points needed to master, recipe times, Farmville dollars needs to finish it instantly (right after clicking the "Make It" button), mastery stars needed to unlock, and bushels and baskets needed.

I also explain how to quickly level up in Total Mastery Stars so you can unlock various items such as the moats, for example. Also included are some hints and basic information. On a follow up post, I will include some Silo information.

Hint on Adding Helpers: Make sure you craft the item that you want to get an extra one for FIRST, then click "Add Helpers". For example, I want 2 Love Potions. I make the Love Potion first THEN I click "Add Helpers."

The Craftshop has a nice search feature so you don't have to scroll through all 14 pages in order to find what you want to make. Here is a video I made that will show how to use this. You can click on the four arrows in the lower right-hand corner of the screen to make it full screen. Please pardon the lack of video professionalism since I am new to using Camtastic.

Here is the Farmville Craftshop Guide:

(Click twice for full size)

* Bushels/Baskets Needed: see the Silo link - CLICK HERE

**Here is the same chart with the Mastery Index. (see below) The Mastery Index is the total number of minutes to complete a Level of Mastery for that item. I will use an example of the Lucky Penny to show how I calculate this. The equation is:  Lucky Penny Mastery Level 1 = 5 minutes X 15 harvests. (75 minutes = 5 minutes X 15)

The lower the Mastery Index, the quicker you can master the items. Use the lower Mastery Index items to quickly gain Mastery Points to unlock items that you need to have higher mastery to unlock. For example, you need 4 stars to unlock the Dainty Fence. The quickest way to get the four stars is to choose the item with the lowest Mastery Index for level 1. The Lucky Penny would be the lowest, so you would spend 5 minutes at a time to make and get each Lucky Penny. It would take a total of 75 minutes to get all 15 harvests so you can get 1 mastery point the quickest.

You get 1 mastery point for each level you complete. So if you have 3 Mastery Points (needing 4 to unlock the Dainty Fence) and make the Lucky Penny 15 times in a row, you will have achieved the quickest way to get up to 4. It will take 75 minutes to get 1 Mastery Point. Please post any questions you may have and I will answer them in posts. You can post below and do NOT need a Google account to post. There is no need to sign in, just select "Anonymous" and post.

Farmville Craftshop Mastery Index Chart:

 (Click twice for full size)

Here is some basic information on making and using the Farmville Craftshop. You can find this information on many different websites. I choose to quote Farmville Updates since I like to create original information based on my observations with a focus on game strategy. Farmville Updates does an excellent and thorough job of explaining this below:

ACCORDING TO FARMVILLE UPDATES:


CRAFTING ON MULTIPLE STATIONS
Players can craft 6 items at the same time, but each item has to be different. You cannot craft 2-6 bottles at the same time. You can however, craft one bottle on the Home Farm and another bottle on the English Countryside Farm.

STATIONS
Everyone starts with one station. All station expansions require the same amount of buildable materials. In order to unlock a new one, you will need :
5 Wrenches
5 Pipes
5 Clamps

HOW DO YOU GET PARTS
There are different ways acquiring building parts. Here’s how:
- Asking your neighbors for these parts by posting a help request to your feed (click on the “Ask For Part” button for each type of part).
- Give parts to your neighbors via the Free Gifts page or the “Send Gifts” button.
- Acquire parts by spending Farm Cash. Click on the “Buy” button for that particular part to purchase all of the particular part that you need (the cost is X Farm Cash, where X is the number of parts left that you need), or buy those parts individually in the Market (you can find them in Farm Aides -> Other).
- Acquire all needed parts for the building by spending Farm Cash (click on the “Complete Now” button to purchase parts for the rest of the building). The cost is X Farm Cash, where X is the total number of parts left needed to finish the building.
- Using individual parts already available in your Gift Box.

SHARING POSTS
5 friends are able to click and claim rewards from published posts.

OVENS HAVE FOUR DIFFERENT STATES :
Locked – Stations 2 through 6 are locked by default & require building parts to unlock
Empty – The station is not active but is available to be used
Baking – The station is actively crafting an item. See timer for status.
Ready – When your station says, “Get it,” your item is ready to be collected.

ADD HELPERS FOR A BONUS ITEM
On the left hand side of the Menu exists a “Add Helpers” button. When you add 4 Helpers to your crafted Item you get a bonus item, and all of the people who “Helped” will also receive that item as well. NOTE: It is not necessary to “Add Helpers” to complete your crafted item, but helpers activate a bonus for involving your friends!
You can request helpers every four hours or when you finish creating an item, you can request helpers that will count towards your next created item. Please note that if you do not have at least 4 helpers, they will not be used on your crafted item and instead will stay on the left hand menu screen until you can complete a set of 4.
Click on “Add Helpers” the top left of your Craftshop pop up.
Source: http://farmvilleupdates.com/page/2

Special Delivery Glitch Workaround

You know the message "50 of your friends been working hard on their farms. Send them a Special Delivery." So you select 50 people in the list but then cannot see the send button to click on it. You try scrolling down...no luck. You try using the tab key...no luck. 

Here are two possible workarounds. The first one works for me:

Pick the 50 people to gift the Special Delivery to. Then delete people you don't really know ; ) until you start to see the "Send" button. Or you can delete the last 2 lines of people's names and that should bring up enough of the "Send" button so you can click on it to send.

My friend Catrin Pendry suggests that you "click to highlight (like you are going to copy) and hold [the mouse button], then just pull your cursor down till you get to the bottom of the box and your send button should be there." Thank you Catrin!!

Norton Gives Mastering Farmville a Safe Rating

Norton Antivirus (Symantec) gave Mastering Farmville a green check mark meaning that it is safe from Viruses, Malware, Spyware, etc. One of the purposes of this blog is to provide a safe online experience to Farmville fans and everyone who reads this blog. (Click image to enlarge)

If you like my blog, please Google "Mastering Farmville Blog", when the page comes up showing the link above check the blue box "+1" to the right of the green check mark! Please feel free to link to my blog in Facebook, Twitter, Myspace. etc.

Tell Zynga to Lower Their Prices!!

(Click to enlarge)

While we love playing Farmville, the cost of items is way too much! I am ashamed to even say what I spent recently. For example, you can buy 115 Farm Cash for $20.00. But look at the costs of the items above. It figures out to be about $5.00 for the Brown Gypsy Horse. THAT IS RIDICULOUS!!!

We are in a severe recession. Now $1.00 versus $5.00 for the horse would be much more reasonable. Many people just won't part with their money and many don't have it to part with. Think about it Zynga, many people who are playing the game, do so because they do not have a high-paying demanding job. I am sure this is not the case for everyone. But the workaholics are not playing. Be fair to your fan base. Can you imagine if the 47 million fan base all purchased something for $1.00 today???

Now I know we would LOVE to just pay coins and not FV cash but think about it. Someone has to pay the following people:

• customer support to handle our problems with the game
• developers to create the code to be able to get the new innovations to work
• graphic artists to create the artwork (more designs if you can rotate the item)
• network engineers to make sure the servers don't crash 
• penetration testers to test and help protect the game from hackers and crackers
• marketing and planning departments to come up with exciting facets of the game
• accounting and finance to pay everyone, process transactions, and handle the current IPO

Zynga is not a charity. It is a company. Yes, they could pay for the game through advertising, which they do with some of their promotions (e.g. Lady Gaga, Capital One, Rio, etc.). But would you want to deal with a ton of ads popping up? NO!


I propose that we contact Zynga via their online support email. Click here. Ask them to lower their prices by 80% for the items purchased with Farmville Dollars. Tell them to try it for one week to see if their volume goes up dramatically. They may find that sales increase exponentially and that this would be a WIN-WIN for everyone!!!