Farmville Gotchas

I did this. The first thing I did when I started playing farmville was plant wheat on every plot. Now I had to wait three days to do anything else. I could have dug up the crops but I used all my coins to plant the wheat so I was stuck.

Plowing, plowing, plowing and not looking at coins remaining

Here I was, plowing away, clicking and clicking. When you get ahead of your farmville character the squares turn faded. So here I am clicking 30 or more plots ahead. I looked up and I had 234 coins left. I watched as all my coins disappeared. No coins to buy seeds with!

Fertilize before you leave

When you help a neighbor you receive points. When you visit their farm you may be asked to help pick weeds, chase raccoons away, or some other task. Once the task is complete a fertilizer icon will appear and you cursor will have a fertilizer bag. You must fertilize before leaving or the bags will be gone when you come back.

Fertilizing is important. Not only does it help your neighbors crops grow strong, it gives you coins and exp points. It also will earn you the "Crop Whisperer" Robbins.

Not coming back in time.

Strawberries are a 4 hour crop and I came back about 8 hours later. You loose all that revenue and you have to plow up the withered crops.

Once I planted the entire farm with raspberries which are a 2 hour crop and came back about 0 hours later. The whole crop was withered. Boo Hoo.

Oops, the game did not save before I closed the browser!

This happened to me and was really an unpleasant surprise. I was up late and plowed and planted a 20x20 field of Sweet Seeds for Haiti. This is a six hour crop so I was planning to harvest it in the morning. When I got up in the morning and opened Farmville there was just an empty plowed field. What's going on here!

Well I realized that sometimes my internet connection gets lost. Since the state of you farmville game is stored on the server, if the connection is lost for a period of time, even though the application is running locally the information does not get to the server. Did you ever get the big cow message "The bits got lost on the way to the server"?

If you re-establish the connection before closing the browser everything usually everything is OK and you will find a nice field of sweet corn in the morning.

So how do I know if what I did just made it to the server?

The best way I have found to be sure is to go visit a neighbors farm before quitting. If you don't get there, i.e. the screen just stays on your farm, then your connection is lost. You need to re-establish your internet or wireless connection and try again. If you do get there, you can help them and come back home. When you get back home you will see your seeds are planted. You can also click on the free gifts menu at the top.

Empty you garden shed before you harvest

If you do not there will be no room for perfect bunches.

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