Web Puzzles

Farmville provides millions of people with entertainment and fun with online Facebook friends. But the number of hours spent on this game in order to enjoy all the different activities they offer are simply staggering. Here are some ways to maximize the fun and minimize the time spent.

Trap the Farmville Avatar

When harvesting, plowing and planting Farmville crops, as well as collecting from trees and animals, the user if often left waiting for the farmer avatar to slowly make his or her way across the screen, or catch up with the crops that have been clicked. This is a huge waste of time for the real-life farmer.

Isolating the farmer with fences or haybales where the avatar appears in the middle of the screen is a great way to speed up this process. Hedges also work, although for reasons passing understanding the avatar will occasionally choose to sneak through the cracks where they meet. Using haybales, the farmer can be confined to one single plot of unplowed land. Or create a larger decorative area in the center with fences. Remember that whenever the farm size is expanded the center point of the screen where the farmer appears will shift, and the isolation area will need to be moved accordingly.

Use Farmville.com to Claim Rewards

Claiming rewards (collectibles, eggs, coin rewards, fuel, building expansions and more) through the facebook feed can involve many wasted minutes of clicking down through old posts, searching through status updates and other feed posts for farmville updates. Farmville.com offers a "game feed" that consolidates at least the most recent of Farmville feed posts by all Farmville friends. Using the Farmville.com interface instead of the Facebook interface can save a great deal of time. The only downside is the inability to monitor facebook chat requests or other notifications from this screen.

Claim Farmville Rewards Using Browser Tabs

Probably the biggest time-waster when playing Farmville, even when using Farmville.com, is waiting for the screen to reload in between claiming rewards (especially when it turns out the rewards are all used up or expired). But it is not necessary to do this each time to claim items.

Simply open the Farmville.com interface in one window and click on each reward link by right clicking and using the "open link in a new tab" or similar command/process. Open all the tabs that are of interest and then go through and collect all at once. On the last tab, allow the window to completely refresh and all applicable rewards will be waiting in the fuel tank or gift box. Do keep tabs on the total number of gifts that can be stored in the gift box at once (announced as increased to 50 in a March 2009 podcast), especially if storing consumables in like arborists or farmhands in the giftbox. It may be necessary to stop once in the middle and empty the gift box before continuing.

Playing Farmville with Facebook friends can be fun and entertaining, but even more satisfying when using these tips to reach goals faster. For more tips, see Farmville Speed Collection Tips and Farmville Crop Speed Tips.