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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’ll be talking more about the English Countryside, including the addition of new quests and the option to pause your farms. We’ll also talk about the Spring Garden, the refreshed Wishing Well, and we’ll also have a sneak peak of what’s coming up in FarmVille.
Many of you have flocked to see the new English Countryside, enjoying the lush new scenery, Mastering all new crops, and taking advantage of the fertile soil for extra harvesting bonuses. And, of course, many of you also have the new Sheep Pen and have experienced the joy of breeding your own sheep. This is an exciting time for FarmVille, and we’ll be continuing to add new features to the English Countryside in the coming weeks.
Speaking of sheep breeding, many of you had questions about how you can get particular colors or patterns, and how gender plays a role in determining the type of lamb you get. We’ll tackle that last question first. The gender of the lamb is based on pure chance—however, if you get a lamb of a particular gender three times in a row, the next lamb you get will be of the opposite gender. So if you get three ewes in a row, the next lamb you get is guaranteed to be a ram.
Next is the question of patterns—any possible patterns the lamb may inherit are determined by the father alone. Patterns are never inherited from the mother.
Lastly, what about the colors? Are they randomly chosen or is there some hidden method? As it happens it’s a little bit of both. The lamb’s two potential colors are chosen from one of the parent’s two colors. Those base colors can then be shifted to a certain range of colors, based around that base color. For instance, a light purple color can be shifted all the way to a reddish shade or a deep, dark purple, or somewhere in-between. There’s a lot of room for variation, so between the purples of Brutus the Ram (which you can get via a quest in the English Countryside) and the generally available white sheep that you can buy in the Market, eventually (and with some luck) you’ll be able to get many of the colors you want.
Many of you have also asked about a breeding limit. Yes, there is a sheep breeding limit across both your Home Farm and your English Countryside farm. You’re currently limited to keeping a total of 100 bred sheep across both farms, which can include lambs, fully grown sheep, and lambs or fully grown sheep in your Sheep Pen and Gift Box. This limit does not include sheep bought from the Market or earned through a quest (in other words, “normal” sheep that have not been bred). There are technical and performance limitations that we are examining currently, and we may address this limit in the near future so please stay tuned!
One big change we’ve made recently is the ability to toggle farm pausing. Previously, with the release of English Countryside, when you were “active” on one farm, the other farm was “paused” so your crops would not wither, but they wouldn’t grow either. Other items that used timers on that farm, like orchards, animal breeding buildings, and so forth were also paused in this manner. Many of you didn’t like this feature, so we decided to provide the option to pause your farm instead.
Now, when you travel between the English Countryside to your other farm, you’ll get a pop-up window confirming your travel request. The previous default is having Pausing selected, meaning that when you go to the Home Farm, your English Countryside farm is Paused. If you go back to the English Countryside, your Home Farm will be Paused.
At the bottom right there’s a link to “Change Options”. Click on that and you’ll see the Travel Options screen, where you’ll see the “Pause current farm” option selected. You’ll also see the option to “Play both farms”, meaning crop cycles and other items on a timer will keep growing no matter which farm you’re on. If you want to do that, click on the option for “Play both farms” and click Save. (If you don’t want to make a change, just leave it the way it is and select Save.)
Back on the original window you’ll now see a change indicating that both farms are now continuing to grow at their normal pace. Note that you’ll get this travel window every time you travel between your Home Farm and your English Countryside farm, so you can make the change to pause or not to pause really at any time. To go ahead and move between farms, select Travel Now! or Cancel to not make the trip just yet.
We’ve also added two new sets of quests to the English Countryside this week. If you’ve finished the first set of quests (which take you through sheep breeding and the pub), you’ll see new quests involving the dairy barn and an archaeological dig. A dairy barn icon will show up on the left-hand side of the game window showing you have the new quest set active. Once you finish the set of dairy barn quests, you’ll unlock the capability to place a Sheep Pen on your Home Farm!
Another new release this week is the Spring Garden. It’s a multi-level constructible building where you will be able to choose which visual state of the garden you wish to see on your farm. You’ll get the Spring Garden frame for free the first time you play FarmVille after the update, and you will immediately be entered into Placement Mode. You can place the Spring Garden on your farm now, or you can choose to place it in your Gift Box for use later (by switching to the Multi-Tool for instance). If you put it into your Gift Box, you’ll be able to place it on either your Home Farm or English Countryside farm.
If you lose your sell your Spring Garden, you can purchase it again in the Market. It is listed under Buildings and is available for 5 coins. (If you see that it is Locked, make sure you don’t already have one by checking your Gift Box.) Note that a Farm Cash version is available, though it is for a fully constructed Spring Garden (and available at a discount). You can only have one coin version of the Spring Garden at any one time, though you can have multiple Farm Cash versions. You also must be Level 5 or higher in order to use or purchase the Spring Garden.
Once the Spring Garden frame is on the farm you can click on it, then select “Look Inside” to see what you’ll need to start building it out. Level 1 requires 12 building parts (4 Wooden Boards, Nails and Bricks each), Level 2 requires 48 parts (16 of each) and Level 3 requires 90 parts (30 of each). Like many other constructible buildings you can acquire these parts asking your neighbors for parts, spending Farm Cash, through the use of Special Delivery Boxes, and so forth.
The Spring Garden is harvestable once every 24 hours for Flowers; the bigger the Garden, the more Flowers you’ll get out of it. Flowers can also be gifted to other neighbors via the Free Gifts page, and you can also acquire Flowers by harvesting neighbors’ Spring Gardens. There are 5 different types of Flowers available, though they all will eventually do the same thing. You’ll be able to use the Flowers soon so save them up!
By default the visual look of the Spring Garden will change and grow as you build it. However, one change we’re trying out with the Spring Garden is the ability to let you choose how it’ll look on your farm. When you complete Level 2, you’re given the option of choosing how you want the Spring Garden to look. There are four different options, so yes you can actually build up to Level 2 and have it look like Level 3. Simply click the Choose button underneath the Spring Garden design you like the best. Note that you won’t be able to change it again until you finish Level 3, when you can change the look of the Spring Garden any time you want by clicking on it, then selecting Look Inside to get the selection window.
So let’s get to the coming soon segment of this week’s podcast. We have more quests coming to the English Countryside in the next few weeks, which should prove just as interesting and exciting as the previous quests we’ve released so far.
In the coming weeks we’ll be making a few changes to your gameplay experience, including revamping the first-time user experience for new players and adding a “building parts cursor” mode. If that sounds a little confusing, don’t worry! It’s basically a very fancy way of saying that it’ll make using building materials a whole lot easier on the farm.
A new Spring Basket is coming for those Flowers that you’ll now be collecting from the Spring Garden, with a set of items you can redeem them with. Some revisions are coming to the Pig Pen as well; changes we think you’re going to like a lot.
Alright folks, that’s it from me this week. Again, my name is Lexilicious and I will be back on April 22nd to bring you all of the latest news and information about FarmVille from Zynga!
Happy Farming Everybody!