Farming Life – Beginners Guide

This guide is about what to do first when not using the tutorial. I take you through the first few hours of playing the game and about planning for the future.

Initial Tips

  • Cat and Dog – the cat keeps the mice away from your crops, and the dog keeps foxes away from your crops so it’s worth it to keep taking care of them. Probably twice a day. I like to assign one employee to do this. NOTE: choose an employee then when you click on the dog house or cat ‘house’ two options pop up – Refill feeder or Take Care of Cat/Dog. I ignore the Refill Feeder as it uses up the cow’s milk (for the cat) and the raw meat (for the dog) and tells you you are running low on these things. So I just click on Take Care of Cat or Dog. This means the employee will only feed one unit of food to the cat/dog at a time and will also clean the animal and pet them. Cat/Dog happy.
  • Pause Is Useful – use it as often as you want. You can remove trees while in pause. And do other things. This way you feel more control over the game and can spend more of your time keeping an eye on all of your employees and the fields and plan things out.
  • Map orientation – when the game first starts let’s assume you are facing north. The farmhouse where your first 5 employees will live is on your left of the front gate, the pickup truck garage is north of that (above) and you have space below (south of) the farmhouse. When you are able to start expanding the land, the map you look at will be oriented the other way (so upside down) so think about the plot you are buying. You will be expanding to the left (west) of the farmhouse and below (south) of the farmhouse.
  • Planning for the future – the manual doesn’t tell you this but it’s useful to think about where you will park your farm machinery, like tractors, harvesters, and their attachments. Tractors, harvesters and trucks need garages BUT attachments need SHEDS. If you try to buy an attachment with no shed built the game will tell you. But this means you need to plan where your roads will go so that your tractors, harvesters and trucks can drive to fields and to sheds to get attachments. I like to leave the left of the farm open for roads and sheds and garages. At first I didn’t and got stuck because my vehicles couldn’t go anywhere, and I had to start over.
  • Requests and the Mayor’s Competition – I ignore all the personal requests because often they are hard to do, or I find they just get in the way. on the other hand, you need to complete the Mayor’s Competitions in order to buy more land and expand your farm (which is the ultimate objective of the game). My objective on the other hand is just to have a viable farm and expand very slowly. I don’t really care about my reputation even though I think you get discounts or something the higher your reputation. Having said that, my reputation does grow anyway because of progressing through levels by expanding, creating more fields, cutting down trees, etc.
  • Grow carrots first – the first Mayor’s Competition is to grow carrots. Once you have done that you can buy your first additional plot of land. Woohoo. This plot is to the left (west) of the farmhouse and that’s where I plan to build roads leading to garages and sheds.
  • PAUSE is useful when you’re removing trees, building roads, and other things.

Level 3: Mayor’s Competition

When you have reached level 3, click on the mail box and enter the Mayor’s Competition for carrots. (click on Try). Now grow those carrots.

When you have enough in your granary or silo or house (your Employees automatically know when to sow, weed, fertilize and harvest) a notification will pop up and tell you to claim your reward. Go back to the mailbox and claim the reward.

Then click on the Town button, go to the Municipal office and buy another bit of land. You now have a good sized piece of land to work on.

That’s when I start cutting down those trees and clearing the land so I can expand my fields, install a few garages for farm machinery and put up more houses for more employees.

Going to Market to Sell Things

  • I usually choose one employee in particular who goes to market and sells products several times a day depending on how much I have in storage. I also have this employee take care of the dog and cat and when not busy doing either of these two things, then I have them picking fruit from trees around the farm and even outside the farm plot. Just for extra money. I also buy a couple of beehives as they are easy to care for. An employee can collect honey once a day and sell that at market. I also plant a few fruit trees (when this option unlocks) and berry bushes (which are available right away). another way for a few more bucks.
  • Granary Or Silo – make sure to buy one of these early on as you will need them once you start growing stuff. The Granary is cheaper.
  • To Market, To Market – okay, pay attention here because I had a lot of trouble at first getting an employee to take things to market. So here’s what to do:
  • LMB (left mouse button) on the employee first
  • Then LMB on the granary or silor farmhouse (if you don’t have a granary or silyet)
  • A menu will pop up showing what you have stored. Click on anything except the cow’s milk (cat’s food) or the raw meat (dog’s food). Hold control ttake 10 items of something.
  • Don’T Close This Menu Yet. This Is Important. When you have chosen the products you want ttake tthe market, select MOVE PRODUCTS at the bottom of this menu. Then exit from this menu.
  • LMB on the truck itself. An icon will pop up saying Sell Products and Return. Your employee will automatically take the products out of storage, put it in the truck, drive ttown, sell the products and return tthe farm.
  • TMarket TBuy (And Sell) – swhen your cat and/or dog is running out of their food (and a notification will pop up on the upper right ttell you) you will want tbuy more at the Trade Center. At the same time you may want ttake products tmarket and sell then buy the food and return. Syour actions for this are a bit different. As follows…
  • LMB on the Employee first
  • LMB on the granary/silo/farmhouse
  • Menu pops up and you choose what you want tsell.
  • Don’T Close The Menu Yet (as I said earlier). Click on MOVE PRODUCTS then close it.
  • LMB on the pickup truck and the option tSell and Return will come up as before. But instead of clicking on that, RMB on that tcancel that task. Then LMB on the truck again and more options will pop up. LMB on the option Park and Trade.
  • Your employee will gtthe market and wait for you ttell them what tdwhen they’re there.
  • Tfollow the employee click on the Employee menu top left and click on the Employee’s name. keep clicking on their name and the game will keep you on them. Or you can just follow the truck with your mouse.
  • When the employee parks the truck at the market, get them texit car. Then click on the Trade Center. Menu pops up. Choose SELL ALL. The crate in the back of the truck should disappear.
  • Then click on the Trade Center again. Scroll down till you find the cow’s milk and raw meat or whatever else you want tbuy (like hay tfeed sheep) and click buy on the item.
  • A crate should then appear in the truck. Tell the employee tDrive and return tthe garage (at the farm)
  • Tget a vehicle out of the garage – click on the garage. A ‘menu’ will pop up and if it shows a magnifying glass (just tshow you the truck) right click out of that menu. Wait a bit then click on the garage again. ‘menu’ pops up and now you have a little picture of the truck moving out of the garage. Click on this picture and the vehicle will move out of the garage. Now you get an employee tdrive the truck by clicking on the truck, and click Drive.

Continuing On

  • Once you get the hang of things, start putting in more fields, slowly. You don’t need thurry in this game (even if your reputation is dropping or not getting higher). It doesn’t really matter.
  • Add another field or twand hire more employees. Your farmhouse will house 5 employees altogether. After that you need tbuild lodgings for more. Each lodge will house 3 employees.
  • Hiring an employee and getting them tyour farm – gtTown (skyscraper icon on bottom left bar) and gtthe Employment Agency. Choose an employee and hire. They will automatically make their way tyour farm.
  • a notification will pop up eventually (top right) telling you the new employee has nothing tdo. Click on the Employees menu (top left) and click on that new employee. The game will take you tthem waiting at the bus stop. Click on them then home icon that pops up.
  • When they arrive at the farm, abort task (of sending them home) and click on a field tget them tstart working on it.
  • Benches – put a couple of benches out for employees trest. They dget tired by the end of the day. Let them rest (out of kindness). Or you can push them (abort task of resting and get back twork – crack that whip!!) I like tbe kind tthem.
  • Mayor’s second Competition – is fairly easy. You have tbuild 15 roads (meaning 15 squares at $6 each I think) and some decorations. I dfences as decorations because they’re cheapest and you can easily put fences on the entrance tthe farm. When building the roads you can dthis just below and off tthe left (west) of the farmhouse for future equipment and machinery.
  • Keep an eye on your fields – hover over each of your fields and watch for humidity, weeds and pests. Eventually when you start buying a tractor and attachments you can get the tractor ttake care of these things but at first you need the employees tdthis. Sometimes when I have several fields going and notice one of them is not doing well I will move an employee over from a field that is doing well tthis field. You just have tremember tput them back or hire more employees if needed.
Created by rcaerweber

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