Reah’s Crib

Okay. I will do my best to make this my last article about Farm Town. I just couldn’t help myself, when there is still a lot to talk about this popular Facebook App.

If you are one of those people wondering why it takes you so long to level up in higher levels, that’s because the experience points needed at that point are higher than at the lower levels.

So far, the highest level is 34 which is a Green Wizard. That’s the only time you can buy a mansion. But all will start of course at level 1 with a 12 x 12 land to start with. Different experience points are needed at each level to progress, and certain features are unlocked once you reach certain levels.

Here are the experience points to reach in advancing to the next level. For example, to reach level 4 from level 3, you just need 50 more experience points. 50 + 50 = 100. Apprentice or Level 4 is at 100 experience points.

SOURCE: Farm Town in Wikipedia

I’ve read that sentence often while playing Metropolis, another Facebook App I came across. It’s a game to build your own city. The more people you have the more jobs get filled, the more you earn. Happiness may decrease though overtime if your citizens aren’t happy on the way you manage your city. But you can buy happiness by buying certain landmarks or creating entertainment.

Well, there was one feature that allows other players to populate (give one citizen) your city or entertain, and they can only do one at a certain time. Since happiness can be bought and not people, most players in Metropolis prefer other players to populate their city rather than have their city entertained. Hence, you would often see: Don’t entertain. I can buy happiness but not people.

Somehow, a phrase of that sentence is the opposite of a common saying, that money can’t buy happiness.  Even if you have a lot of money and can afford to go out to entertain yourself, you will still feel empty if you are looking for the true happiness within yourself.

I wish that I could really buy happiness.

I can buy happiness and not people…

Another sad reality of life is conveyed on the later part of that sentence. Yes, you can buy people.  To lie for you. To make love for you. To serve you however you want. But you cannot buy the people who loves and appreciate you sincerely.

I wish I could buy people.

Did you know I used to play Ragnarok Online? It is an multiplayer online role-playing game from South Korea. Yeah, I’ve been addicted to it in 2005 that even in my dreams I was playing Ragnarok. One time, I answered a phone call while I was half asleep. The phone was ringing just right above my head, so I grabbed it, and said hello as usual. However, I mumbled about ragnarok items after. Only when my caller asked me “What are you talking about Reah? What’s a muffler?” that I got back to my senses.

Anyway, while waiting in Farm Town’s marketplace last week, I remembered the emoticons in Ragnarok Online. Especially the crying emoticon. It would be fun if farmers in Farm Town could show a crying emoticon if they are pleading for a job, or a thanks emoticon when they get hired.

Ragnarok Online Emoticons

For me, emoticons was one of the best things in Ragnarok aside from the real game. So that players could  socialize better with other players. Here’s some videos I found in YouTube showing Ragnarok players communicating with emoticons, or at least reacting with emoticons.

Adding this kind of animation in Farm Town though may add to the bandwidth being used in the game, but I still hope Farm Town developers are considering such feature in the future. And oh, letting the farmer/avatar  sit too would be cool.

For the meantime, I will use the Ragnarok Emoticons app to bug my friends in Facebook.

The initial land’s size in Farm Town is 12 x 12. This is enough land when you are starting the game, but as you reach higher levels where more experience points are needed to level up, 12 x 12 land size may not help you anymore. Instead, you may want to upgrade your land so you have more space to plow fields, plant crops, and put new decorations on your farm.

But you can only start upgrading your land when you have reached level 15.  So it is best to know while you are at a lower level than 15 how much it costs to upgrade your land, so you can save coins for it. Here’s the sizes and costs.

• Level 15 – 14 x 14 size – 20,000 coins
• Level 17 – 16 x 16 size – 25,000 coins
• Level 19 –  18 x 18 size – 30,000 coins
• Level 21 – 20 x 20 size – 35,000 coins
• Level 23 – 22 x 22 size – 40,000 coins
• Level 25 – 24 x 24 size – 80,000 coins

The 24 x 24 is the most expensive one. You can decide to buy it at a later time if you still don’t have enough coins. Since you cannot skip any land size, you have to buy it all. Example, you cannot upgrade to 22 x 22 if you still haven’t bought 18 x 18. The total cost of all the upgrade is 230,000 coins.

For me, the cost doesn’t matter. It is worth it, since you can plant more crops if you have a bigger land. Hence, earn more coins. That was my goal when I started playing the game–to upgrade my land as soon as possible, and save a lot of coins after I’ve got the biggest land size.

By the way, do you know where and how you can upgrade your land?

Well, you can upgrade it by going to the Realtor’s Office. Just click the map icon on your Farm Town screen. A window will pop up, and there are icons that represents the several places you can go to. Choose the Realtor’s Office. Once you are in the office, another window pops up which shows the land you can purchase and how much it is. Just click the buy button on the land size you want to buy, and changes will be made in your farm a few seconds after that.

I am into a lot of Facebook apps lately, if you have noticed–Typing Maniac, Farm Town, Mafia Wars, and Word Island. At the same time, I am also into investing books. So, I got curious if there is one app about investing that I could play in Facebook. Perhaps a virtual practice account in investing like the one I have in Investopedia.com. Luckily, there is a Facebook app! A stock investing simulator called kaChing, which uses the actual data in the US stock markets.

So far, I like using kaChing app more than the virtual stocks account I have in Investopedia. You know why? Because I have $10,000,000 in the virtual portfolio which is a higher amount than the one I have in my Investopedia practice account. I can buy more stocks, and trade more here in kaChing. =P

You might have tried playing Typing Maniac in Facebook but your computer might not be able to support the Flash game, or it will not load. I have exeprienced that same problem with my old desktop computer. I have upgraded my flash but my screen still sometimes freezes because of the low specs of my desktop. I got frustrated with it so I ended up playing the game again with the laptop.

I want to use the keyboard on my desktop though in typing games, so I tried to find other typing games in Facebook that I could play with my old desktop. And I found some.

1. Typing Monster – This App has an old-school design, incomparable to Typing Maniac. The good thing about it though is you are going to type a paragraph, which combines uppercase letters and punctiation marks, while numbers are in a bomb. You should type the numbers as soon as they appear. Of course if the bomb explodes you will lose one life. You have 5 lives to spare, and if all are used up, the game is over.
2. Typing Race – As name implies it is a race on typing, LIVE. On your first time playing, you will choose a car, and your country. Then choose whom would you like to race with: with your friends or with random people in Facebook playing the game at that time. This is a good game to see for yourself how fast you can type against other people in 30 seconds. You will see your typing speed at the end of the game.
3. Typing Speed – This is just a simple and short game. In 30 seconds of typing  you can find out what is your typing speed and accuracy rate. Typing Maniac does not compute your typing speed, so play this game if you want to find out.
4. The Typing of the Ghosts – Ghosts appear together with the words you have to type. The ghosts get bigger and bigger, so you type the words, or numbers as fast as you can. If not, the ghost will snatch your life. You have 5 lives to spare in this game too.
5. pa-Ching Typing Game – See how fast you can type by typing three sentences or 10 sentences. That’s it. I would say that the goal of the developer of this app is just to gain money in Adsense.

Having able to play these five typing games, I realized that Typing Maniac is the best among all of the typing games in Facebook.

Yeah, I have a lot of free time lately that I can even play a lot of Facebook Apps and computer games. Aside from Farm Town and Mahjong Titans, I am also into Typing Maniac in Facebook.

To type fast and accurate is one of the skills I have been trying to perfect eversince I got my own computer. I used to practice with Typing games that I downloaded for free online. So when I saw one of my Facebook friends news feed saying she was playing Typing Maniac, I was excited to try the game.

Typing Maniac has a cool game interface, and just like othe typing games, the ability to type fast and accurate will help you advance in the game, and get high scores of course.

The speed goes faster, and words get longer when level increases, but you can get through this challenge with the help of the bonus tiles: Fire, Ice, Slow, and Wind. You can get the bonus tiles by typing the words in the colored tiles which are red, blue, yellow, and purple. Then the bonus tiles pile up on the right column after you got the words correctly on the colored tiles.

Since you can only keep up to 6 bonus tiles while playing, it is best that you strategize when to use your bonus tiles, and what tiles to keep. To use a bonus tile, you have to type the word.

• Type fire if you want to burn all the tiles.
• Type ice to freeze the tiles
• Type slow, so that the speed slows down
• Type wind, if you want to make your error percentage back to 0%, so you could play the game longer

Since the game will be over once you have a lot of misses or 100% error percentage. it is best you have stock up in bonus tiles when you reach the higher levels.

Aside from bonus tiles, you might also have noticed the dark tiles. You have to get the word right on this tile on your first try or else, the speed will increase.

Strategy on Playing Typing Maniac

My strategy in playing depends on what special tiles I get while I level up, but I make sure I have Slow and Wind tiles so I can advance. I also to perfect the scores on the first levels, up to level 10. If I don’t have any error in typing, the bonus points I get on these levels help me make my score high. If I miss to perfect a level I make sure I at least have perfected one of the higher levels. The bonus points are bigger at this point. When I want to do this, I should plan well what bonus tiles to keep and use.

So far, my highest score is 380,344 at Level 19 679,666 at level 26 830,700 at Level 29. The top 1 one on my friend’s list got 921, 680 in Level 27. I am not sure what he did to reach that score. He’s just a random friend though so I could not really ask if he is cheating or not. Could you cheat in this game? Maybe he is really just fast typer, and good at using his power-up tiles.

With six new crops laid out today in Farm Town, the Facebook App has become even more exciting. For sure, you already have seen these  crops when you clicked on the store earlier this day. These are cotton, pineapple, blueberry, pepper, carrot, and raspberry.

Cotton is a 4-day crop, but cheaper than pumpkin. Pineapple and blueberry are 3-day crops, while pepper and carrot can be harvested in 2 days. The best among these new crops though is the raspberry, which can be harvested in 2 hours, lesser hours than if you have harvested grapes. As long as you have time to tend it, raspberry had replaced grapes as the top crop to plant if you want to gain experience points faster in Farm Town.

It could have been better if one of the new crops is an 8-hour or 10-hour crop.

Hire to Plow

The six new crops isn’t just the big news today in Farm Town. You might even consider this as the greatest enhancement of the game on this latest update. You can now hire farmers to plow for you! That is really awesome if you are keeping a big farm, since plowing at that stage tends to become a boring task.

When you hire other farmers, you spend less than what you could have spent if you have plowed the fields by yourself. Instead of 20 coins, you will spend either 10 coins or 15 coins. This depends if you are neighbors or not. The farmer plowing your field will get coins too: 5 coins if you are both strangers, and (someone told me that you get) 10 coins if he is a neighbor you hired to plow.

Okay now, you want someone to plow at your farm, but what about experience point? Will you lose it? A resounding no! You will still get 1 xp, and the farmer you hired to plow will also get one experience point per field plowed. So it’s a good deal for both of you. You might also consider getting hired to plow so you could gain experience points faster.

Hiring someone to plow at your farm is just like hiring someone to harvest. You just click on the player’s avatar, and click Hire to plow at your farm. Once he is in your farm he can only plow on fields that are previously harvested or on fields with crops that have gone to waste. He cannot plow on the green fields.

P.S.

When you hire someone to plow, it is best you wait until he is done plowing before you plant your crops. It’s hard to get over the ‘saving’ feature. You could try, but it would just frustrate you.

One of the mysteries Farm Town developers left in their App is the question, what levels are required to get the other crops. When you go to the store as a newbie or in Level 1, the crops you can only purchase are grapes, tomato, rice, corn, and potato. Then the other crops are locked. When you go harvest somebody else’s farm, and you would see their crops, especially pumpkins, you would wonder when will you be able to plant those crops too.

Anyway, I was fortunate that I was able to level up quickly in one week and had unlocked all crops in 8 days. So below, I listed the levels and what crops get unlocked when you reach them.

The costs of the crops are also listed according to the: price when you buy them / price when you harvest the crops yourself and sell them / price when you harvest them, put the crops in the storage first, and sell them/ price when someone else harvests the crops for you and  you sell them in the marketplace.

Level 1

• Grapes – buy for 20 coins /sell for 50 coins, 56 coins, OR 67 coins
• Tomato – buy for 50 coins / sell for 126 coins, 140 coins, OR 168 coins
• Rice – buy for 80 coins / sell for 171 coins, 190 coins, OR 228 coins
• Corn – buy for 130 coins / sell for 257 coins, 285 coins, OR 342 coins
• Potato – buy for 40 coins / sell for 89 coins, 99 coins, OR 119 coins

Level 2

• Strawberry –  buy for 30 coins /sell for 77 coins, 85 coins, OR 102 coins

Level 6

• Wheat – buy for 80 coins /sell for 162 coins, 180 coins, OR 216 coins

Level 8

• Sunflower – buy for 115 coins /sell for 249 coins, 277 coins, OR 332 coins

Level 10

• Coffee – buy for 150 coins /sell for 268 coins, 298 coins, OR 358 coins

Level 13

• Watermelon – buy for 35 coins /sell for 83 coins, 92 coins, OR 110 coins

Level 16

• Cabbage – buy for 45 coins /sell for 96 coins, 107 coins, OR 128 coins

Level 19

• Peas – buy for 90 coins /sell for 182  coins, 202 coins, OR 242 coins

Level 22

• Onions – buy for 170 coins /sell for 304 coins, 338 coins, OR 406 coins

Level 25

• Pumpkin – buy for 200 coins /sell for 356 coins, 396 coins, OR 475 coins

P.S.

Please leave in the comment section anything you know that is not accurate on the numbers I listed above. I got the prices when-you-sell the-crops from this Facebook group. Also, there might be updatesin Farm Town that would change the prices. But whatever it is, it is clear you will earn more when someone else’s harvest the crops for you and you sell them to the marketplace, and you will earn less if you harvest the crops yourself and sell them directly without placing them first in the storage.

After being bored with Mahjong Titans, I decided to try another App in Facebook, the Farm Town. I got interested with Farm Town after seeing a photo of my friend’s farm. I was amazed how a barren land could turned out pretty after few times playing the game. Making a farm online like that was like building my own dream farm.

Despite the low coins when I started the game, I was not discouraged to try the App. Besides games like this really start with almost nothing. I just have to start playing it and I will surely advance.

On my first day, I planted a few grapes, added another App to get free coins, and added my Facebook friends, who are already playing, as my neighbors. I was fortunate I had a lot of friends playing because I could visit their farms and earn coins by working on their farms like weeding. Once I had good amount of coins, I started planting more grapes.

But it was not only the coins from working on my friends’ farms that helped me to advance quickly in the game. I was able to get big jobs from other farmers in the Inn, and Realty. Yeah, me as a newbie got impatient in the Marketplace I went to. So I decided to try the Inn and Realtor without knowing I can just click the Marketplace icon again to be in a different market, and if lucky got a job.

After a few minutes I became determined to upgrade my land to the biggest as soon as possible, so that I could plant more crops, and in return earn more coins, and in return create my beautiful dream farm. Seems impossible eh, but I made it. How?

• I planted and harvested grapes mostly to get more experience points.
• I removed the spaces between fields, so I could make more fields.
• I planned to make my farm as simple as possible. Less expenses on decorations like buildings and fences and trees.
• When in the marketplace, I made sure I didn’t sound begging for work.
• Sent messages to my friends who had crops ready to be harvested if I could harvest for them, and good enough one of them replied and let me harvest his pumpkins!
• I went to the discussion board to look for a good resource and overview of the game, and I did. This one.
• Whenever I was hired by another farmer, I tried to make a conversation so we could be friends and so he could hire me again next time he has new crops ready for harvest.

So these were my strategies. I started playing in the afternoon of June 22nd, and seven days after I hit level 24, and got the second to the biggest land. I was actually aiming for level 25 so I could get the biggest land, but I wasn’t able to. But level 24 was still a good level to hit in just one week.

Now, I am in level 25, already got the biggest farm, but my goal now has changed. I am not aiming to level up quickly but to save more money so I can create a pretty farm. My strategy has changed too. I won’t plant grapes anymore (or for the meantime) since it’s kinda hard to tend on a big farm. I decided to just plant pumpkins, onions, and peas so I can rest. The first week was tiring anyway. In fact, there were nights on my first week  that I got up in the middle of the night to harvest my grapes. lol.

Here are some screenshots of my farm on Day 2, Day 5, and Day 7.