Where is Zynga's Customer Service for Farmville???

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Zynga has a great Customer Service Department. As a loyal Farmville fan, I was dismayed to find out today that the support link is gone!!! No, I was pissed. They expect us to play the game, which has so many bugs, and now we are left alone to fend for ourselves and search forums for answers!

Let's work together to complain LOUDLY. To do this, there is a suggestion link at the upper right-hand corner of the screen. I clicked on it and made my complaint. I am asking all of you to work together with me to let them know their loyal fans are not happy!!

What happens if you purchase farm cash with your own money and some glitch causes you to lose some or all of it??? Removing their great Customer Service Dept. has got to be the stupidest move on Zynga's part EVER!!!

Zynga won't be seeing any of my money until this is fixed!

I welcome your comments!

Farmville "Fertilize All Won't Work Twice in a Row" Workaround

Ever use the Instant Grow feature and then try to use the Fertilize All and it won't work? It gives you an error message like "There are no fertilizer ready plots on your farm." You know that is not true.

I found that if I left the farm, went back into Facebook and then back into my farm, I could get the Fertilize All to work. This has been a glitch for a long time. At least there is a workaround so you can get the most mastery for your harvest!

Jade Falls Imperial Shipyard

We have all been wondering what this is. It's the Imperial Shipyard. It looks like it will arrive around July 16th.

What is it for? Well there are some rumors. One rumor said we will be able to transfer stuff from farm to farm.

I guess I will ship my Ferris Wheel from my Home Farm to my Hawaiian Farm. I don't know if they will charge us Farm Cash to ship or if our coins will suffice. I really hope they don't charge us Farm Cash. Zynga seems to charge Farm Cash for all the good stuff.

Get Farmille to Load Faster?

Okay, it's been almost a year since they came out with the feature to let Zynga save some files on your computer to get it to load faster. I tried it today and it did not make that much of a difference. I did not time it but it was not instant like I read on another blog. One has to wonder if that post was from a Zynga employee. The real test will be how long it takes to load it on my home farm. My home farm takes forever to load.

I noticed that when I cleaned up files with CCleaner and Privacy Guardian, I had to "reinstall" the fast loading feature by clicking on the link when the game starts loading. I will have to time my home farm the original way and then time it with this new method. Stay tuned for the results!

Anyone else have experiences with this new Farmville loading feature?
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So I have tried this feature. It helped the farm to load a little faster but caused the Adobe Shockwave Player to crash so I don't use it. Adobe is having a major problem getting the player to update for Firefox users. 

Farmville Belted Cow Trick to Earn Coins and Level Up

I am going to share a video from Farmer Katie. She will show you how to level up quickly using the Belted Cow in Farmville. You get 10,000 XP points when you purchase a Belted Cow. She uses the "Move Tool" and not the Arrow (default) to add Belted Cows into the Dairy Barn, that is ready to harvest. I presume this is because you would harvest the cows before you got all of the Belted Cows into your Dairy Barn if you used the Arrow. She gets 3,000 Farmville Coins per Belted Cow that is harvested.Watch her video and try it for yourself.

Note: The "Dairy Farm" is not the same thing as the "Cow Pasture". Zynga has stopped us from purchasing Dairy Farms, probably because of this.

Farmville Market Not Working - A Workaround

I have had some problems since I got my Winter Wonderland farm. One of these problems is that I cannot access items in the Farmville Marketplace. I wanted to plant some seeds but could not. I have since found a workaround. Please click on the link below to watch the video I made. It will take you to You Tube where you can maximize the screen to view it:

Farmville Farmer's Market Workaround

Workaround for the Gamers' Unite Snag Bar NOT Snagging Issue

This problem happens to me. I use Firefox as my preferred browser.

I found that if you reset the count for the snag bar, then start snagging. Wait a bit, you will get an "Unresponsive Script" message (re: problem with javascript in the GU program). Close the box with the "X" at the top. Wait about 30 seconds, and it should start snagging again.

I keep several tabs open so I can go back to playing Farmville while I wait for it to snag again.
I used to be against the toolbar but I researched it and found that there isn't any malware associated with it. GU also updates the snagbar to provide fixes and prevent "zero-day" attacks. I find that by using the snagbar, I avoid repetitive strain injury and increase my enjoyment of the game. The one-click gifts is great for taking the BOREDOM out of Farmville. When you send gifts, you can click up to 40 active members to  send gifts to or request gifts from.

I DO use it to snag items. I say so publicly on this blog. If someone wants to unfriend me, I really don't care. BTW, how does one WIN at Farmville??? I snag stuff so I can feed my addiction and keep playing. Besides, I don't have the time to click, sit, and wait, wait, and wait some more to see if I got a gift. I think EVERYONE should use the snag bar.  What the complainers don't realize is how many times I have helped them get something via the snag bar MUCH MORE OFTEN than I could do so without the GU snag bar!

Happy Freedom From Clicking!!

Ari Red

Farmville Lighthouse Cove

Since I am from New England, I am really getting into this cove. I had a ball decorating it. I think that's what adds to the fun in the game is decorating the farms. Many people play for the mastering of crops, which is fun too. But I love the decorating it. It brings out my creative side, which feels the need for a lot of expression lately as you can see from the enclosed pictures: (Click to Enlarge, Then You Can Use the Scroll Wheel to Cycle Through Them)

Zynga Chat Only Available to "Paid Customers"

What does this mean? I asked Zynga and they said if you have spent $1.00 for Farmville Cash, then you are a paying customer and can access chat for customer support. Otherwise, you have to submit your issue and they will respond via e-mail. Hopefully, they don't raise this limit! (Click to enlarge)

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:

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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

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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!!

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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!!!

Sorry Zynga, I Don't Like Your Game Bar...IT'S SPYWARE!

Some people are using Zynga's game bar. They don't know that it can access your emails. See the picture below: (Click to enlarge)

I get requests to install this feature, which to me, is SPYWARE. People don't know. Do you read every agreement when you install software? Actually you should.

Anyway, to get rid of this request, if someone keeps sending it to you, you can click on the "x" (in Firefox) and select "Ignore all requests from [Person's Name]?" Select "yes". (Click to enlarge)

When I Turn 100 on Farmville

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Soon, I will reach level 100 in Farmville. I do not know if this will be a big event as far as what happens but I figured I will videotape it so you can see what happens. I have been saving a ton of fireworks for this event, which will be set off after I reach 100. Thank God it's not 100 in real life, eh? So come back to this link and check out the video that I will post soom!

Useless Stuff We Can Do Without

We can now build a Crafting Silo. So you think you can craft Love Potions in your Craft Shop and a Fertilize All in your Crafting Silo? NOT! Now we need two buildings to craft one product. AND Zynga makes it more difficult...we have to now get a Cherry Basket to make a Love Potiron instead of getting Red Tulips from your neighbors.

 (Click to enlarge)

Why can't we keep the Craft Shop as it is? You can use the crops to craft items and then introduce new items to craft in the Crafting Silo. Now we have two buildings to do the same thing! Does not make any sense. Their creative department, or whatever department thinks of these, was half asleep when they thought of this one.

Does anyone like having to have two buildings on their farm to make the same item? If you have started a Fuel Can, for example, in your Crafting Silo, you cannot start a Love Potion in your Craft Shop.  This is so ridiculous!

What do you think of the new Trading Post? I thought I could preorder Habanero Chilis to use to master the crop while I was plowing Habanero Chilis. But that would be too easy. No, we have to click on orders to help us master the crop. Too much clicking. I would just rather master them by using the crop in the Farmers Market Stall. Then I have to click on all of the orders that I get. To me, the Trading Post is an exercise in clicking.

I would rather Zynga get the bugs out of the one-click posting than produce items that make us do more useless clicking.

I am going to have to think of some really cool ideas on what Zynga could do to keep the excitement going for the game. Allowing us to stable stuff is a great idea as well as the colorful sheep and pig breeding. The duck pond is cute. Let's put our heads together and think of some great ideas.

The people at Zynga are watching this site so let's create a stir like we did when we complained about the slow release of the Craft Shop. Remember how we were getting 100 Love Potions from their Customer Service Department as a result of our complaints until they got so many complaints, they finally released it? I have alerted quite a few of their Customer Service reps of this site by sending them links to this site. Apparently my viewership in the cities where Zynga has offices has grown EXPONENTIALLY!!! According to my Google Analytics, ZYNGA IS WATCHING WHAT WE SAY HERE! So now is the time to get what you want and to be really creative and submit your ideas as a post to this site. You can post anonymously, so you don't have to create a Google account to post. Of course, I moderate the comments before posting them. I cannot accept "add me" requests in my posts. I have to keep my links safe from viruses and malware for my readers.

The New Farmville Collections for 2011

As you may already know, Farmville has released new collectibles. I was a little puzzled as to how to earn them at first until I started to experiment. In the charts below, I show each collectible, what is needed to achieve it at Levels 1 through 3, pictures of the Category/Collectible/Reward, and the Reward's details. After the list of collectibles for Levels 1 through 3, I show Levels 4 through 10. The rewards just repeat themselves in the same pattern. For example, after you get the Pig Pumpkin from mastering Level 3 of Squash, you will earn the Farmville Arborist at Level 4 (as you did in level 1). (Click image to enlarge)

Farmville Berries Collection 2011

 Farmville Citrus Collection 2011

 Farmville Cows Collection 2011

Farmville Berries Collection 2011

 Farmville Grains Collection 2011

 Farmville Squash Collection 2011

 Collection Levels